Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • November 21, 2021 8:17 AM

@ Ted, ALL,

Insurance companies are also reporting that attackers are researching what companies have coverage, and are therefore more likely to pay out.

Yup the insurance companies even pretend to be surprised by this very predictable activity.

Look at it this way, for centuries farmers have slaughtered “the fattened stock” not the scrawny screws only the “dog meat man” or “rag and bone man” might take away.

Why would the insurance companies not expect ransomware attackers to only go after “the fattened stock”?

Clive Robinson • November 21, 2021 5:18 PM

@ Ted,

Has anyone tried to see what info Amazon has collected on them?

As I’ve indicated in thr past I regard Amazon as criminals who stole from me. They took money about the equivalent of 300USD in todays money for books, and kept claiming they had “delivered them” to the people doing actuall delivery. Despite several days of sitting working at home and with CCTV watching my property the delivery people did not turn up either at the times they claimed or not at all.

They did not refund the money to the Credit Card Company or the credit card company “American Express” lied to me.

Either way I have not use either of them since as I wrote actuall letters to both of them –not easy in the UK– and informed them that there theiving services were not required any more, and closed the accounts including the email account I had been using with them.

Amazon did not respond, and American Express sent a “form letter” saying they were sorry but…

So one simple experiment into “Online Shopping” via a credit card, a compleate disaster, never to be repeated.

As I don’t travel abroad these days due to ill health –not alowed to fly– I do not need a credit or debit card. If I need to get something that is only available on-line, them I use other methods open to me.

But to be honest Amazon don’t just steal from their customers, they also steal from small companies who use them. By creating what are the equivalent of “knockoff” products they sell in competition. Also their anti-knockoff policy only applies if you are a “brand” organisation with sharp legal teeth and a reputation for litigious behaviour.

So my advice don’t use them, and especially do not use any of their products as they most definitely come with very undesirable features where you are spied upon for profit over and above what you thought you were buying… Take their “Ring” security products where they actually sell access to the camera footage to other organisations… Now think about who has access to all that audio recording from their other products…

But they are not the only ones doing this, longer term readers would have been aware about occassional stories over the past decade or so about your “white goods” and other “household connected” electronics such as TV’s IoT devices that were spying on you. Often not because of the actual spying but because they had stolen other peoples work to do so (the most famous for such IP theft being Sony and their anti-piracy software on CD’s). Mostly it was “China box” IoT products and one or two far east manufacturers out of the south china seas tech countries.

Well the general view has been it was just a way to make a few extra cents on the dollar of hardware sales.

Well no it’s not a few cents on the dollar it’s billions of dollars. In some cases the actuall turnover is twice that of the hardware sales, so heven alone what the actual profit ratio is maybe as much ad 20:1…

If you think “surely not” have a read of Cory Doctorow’s recent piece on a fairly well known brand “Vizio”,

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio

Clive Robinson • November 21, 2021 7:31 PM

@ Ted,

Some people also became connoisseurs of bugs.

Not sure that “connoisseurs” is the right word 😉

Many in the West eat prawns, oysters, muscles and some eat snails, yet the idea of locust –which actually tastes OK– or candid “bugs” or bugs with peanut sauce –again tastes OK– makes them pull faces.

I’ve actually eaten a “bug burger” and whilst it is OK it suffers from the problem nearly all low fat beef patties do as well which is a distinct lack of taste.

A little known but important fact, as old school butchers will tell you the flavour in meat that we so love, does not come from the meat but as they say “the blood and the fat”[1] being caramelized together, it’s what forms the “drippings” in the bottom of roasting dishes from which the most heavenly of meat sauces are made.

And also why chefs use “lardons” sewn through game meat and similar low fat meat with a big needle. Or they inject butter into the meat and chill it for some time prior to cooking. Or in the case of some fowl like turkey which is virtually tasteless they lift the skin away and put in lots of soft butter undetneath it or more traditionally wrap it in fat bacon or fat ham like Spanish “Jamón Serrano” or Italian “Prosciutto crudo” (both uncooked “air cured” legs of fat swine). In France they will use their dry cure equivalent “Jambon” or the more interesting taste wise “Speck” which is “lightly smoked and seasoned” over and above the initial salt curing process, it adds a rustic farmhouse taste to the cooked fowl.

Oh importantly for health reasons, properly made hams do not use “nitrate salts”[2] and it is very very rare to find any kind of ham or bacon in the US not laden with nitrates though they may try to hide this by claiming “celery salt” or “pink salt” or other nonsense. You do not want to ever use nitrates in high temprature cooking like grilling or roasting or even some types of frying…

[1] Actually that red fluid that comes out of meat in your fridge or in the bottom of fridge packs is not blood… It is liquid that comes from the muscle fibers as they relax and contains “myoglobin” not “haemoglobin” (though the both use iron to hold oxygen). Myoglobin, leaks out of the muscle fibers along with other molecules including water. When exposed to oxygen, it turns a lighter brighter red which we associate with fresh raw meat (it’s not, freshly slaughtered raw meat is normally dark purple in herbavour quadraped mamals, omnivors such as swine and milk fed young have “rosé” meat).

Myoglobin like haemoglobin has three natural colors depending on its exposure to oxygen and the chemical state of the iron within it. If little or no oxygen is present, the myoglobin in the meat appears a dark purple red. You will see this in large catering vacuum packaged meat, and it is because the myoglobin is in the deoxymyoglobin state. When meat is exposed to the oxygen in air it turns a much brighter red and is typical of meat in retail display. That “misting” of water you see in some large store butchers fresh meat displays is not actually water… It’s actually dilute hydrogen peroxide. The water stops the meat loosing “water weight” and the hydrogen peroxide breaks down to water and oxygen, where the oxygen keeps the meat bright read/pink for way way longer than it would naturally (think days to weeks) and also stops surface bacterial and other pathogen growth. Eventually myoglobin goes “rusty brown” in colour which you get with properly aged meat after half to two months of “aging” preferably “hanging”. To prevent this browning in display packs the gas inside is not air… (best not to ask).

Now other meat animals like poultry are considered white meat because they require less oxygen in some of their muscles and therefore contain less myoglobin. It’s why the basically useless flight muscles in the breast and wings of fowl like turkey and chicken is known as “white meat” and is basically tasteless (why nearly every other low fat meat protein tastes like chicken). With the legs and back muscles being called “dark meat” as they actually do real work and have real flavour when cooked. Oh and the bit of the chicken which has most succulence and flavour are the “olives”.

[2] Air / dry cure hams take around a year to cure, using nitrate salts you can gain a similar effect in less than half a week with little or no “drying out”. So it is very popular in the US for the usual reasons, even though it has what are politely called “toxicological disadvantages”[3] (basically means it kills people). Whilst the meat industry is switching to the supposedly less harmfull sodium nitrate it does not have some of the advantages of the more traditional nitrate. In the past the nitrate of choice was Saltpetre (Potassium Nitrate or KN03). Saltpetre is a reducing agent, used in making amongst other things gunpowder and many other explosives. Traditionaly Saltpetre was obtained from “middens” or other wet garbage heaps where household rubbish like wood ashes, human daily waste products –both solid and liquid– and the cleaning out of pig styes etc were dumped (you can find “piss-n-straw” recipies online). Contrary to “old nuns tales” saltpetre does not cause a lack of sexual urge, however it does have an effect on blood vessels as many nitrates do and can cause headaches and other deleterious effects both short and longterm. It’s also used as “stump remover” which should raise a few red flags in peoples minds. The excuse used by the swine processing industry in the US is nitrates stop botulism poisoning… Whilst that is true, it’s realy irrelevant. Because botulism only occures when the processing of meat is so very bad, it most likely would kill you for other reasons. So in reality the real reason nitrates are used is it makes making hams realy realy cheap, especially as it can be used to assist in making the hams hold upto half their weight in added water… It’s why some “Thanks Giving” turkey recipes call for “brining” with certain curing salts that contain nitrates, it helps keep moisture in the flesh and also helps with colour…

[3] You will find the spelling as toxilogical, toxicological, and toxological… Take your pick, though the longer toxicological is the one most often seen in dictionaries.

Clive Robinson • November 22, 2021 4:30 AM

@ nitrites,

The paper makes interesting reading, especially the issue of lipids acting as a switch on the behaviour of ascorbic acid and the production of carcinogens.

Clive Robinson • November 22, 2021 9:51 AM

@ Ted, nitrites, ALL,

much like you said, it looks like what is present with the nitrate/nitrite and how it is processed affects what molecules it can turn into and their subsequent effects.

The link you give mentions Vit-C (ascorbic acid) as being “protective” which is what is pushed by the medical industry…

But the paper @nitrites points to says something a bit different…

It indicates that yes Ascorbic acid does function that way with vegtable. But… when lipids (fats) are present it actually switches the other way and helps produce carcinogens…

Now I’ve been aware of the “rancid effect” of ascirbic acid and lipids for some time (it’s why you have to be careful when you make certain foods including cakes with icing on that contains ascorbic acid). But I was unaware that the process could aid in making carcinogens.

So it might just be the reason why “processed meats” with nitrates in are not safe at any level as the observational science has indicated for over fourty years.

My chemistry is not upto working my way through the “reaction energy ordering” that decides which chemical reactions happen in prefrence to others.

So as they used to say in “Who wants to be a Millionaire” I’m going to have to “phone a friend” to see if they know, or know someone / research that does.

Clive Robinson • November 23, 2021 2:00 AM

@ Ted,

I also heard that some nutrients in tomatoes are more bioavailable when the tomatoes are cooked. More reasons for soup-making this winter.

Depends on what you mean by “nutrients” and “bioavailable” especially when you talk about “whole foods” like potatoes and avocados.

Those nutrients lists are for food in one state such as “raw” or cooked in a certain way (usually boiled for vegies). And you find the nutrients change a lot (see glycemic index GI and load GL charts to get a feel of the issue).

What happens in the likes of root vegtables is that the starchy carbs are locked in with the very complex carbs of fiber and you simply can not get much out in your dietary transit. Cooking however helps break carbs down so the usable carbs become much more available. Therefore the GI goes up. But cooking also changes the water content of foods if you boil potatoes they retain more moisture than if you bake them as for deep frying well how much water is in what they call a “crisp” in the UK and a “potato chip” in the US? Not a lot. The water content changes the GL quite a bit because upto 95% of the mass of some vegtables is water held in place by very complex cards or fiber we can not digest. It’s why raw celery actually takes more energy to process in your dietary transit than you get out of it.

But a little experiment you might want to try…

Take a banana that is yellow with faint traces of green. If you peal and eat it tastes dry and floury (and has that yuk raw potato feeling). However if you squease and squash it without breaking the skin, the inside becomes sort of puréed. When you taste it, it is a lot lot sweeter to the taste buds and a lot more moist to the palate.

Try just mauling one end of a banana and try tasting the differences.

What you have done to the banana is kind of “pre-masticate” it breaking down the carbs and releasing water.

You can see chimpanzees and other non human primates apparently go to a lot of work to eat a banana… That’s because they are smarter than humans and know they will get a lot more out of an under ripe banana if they do put some work into it.

Some fruits such as pears and strawberries have a similar effect without needing to be manipulated as they become ripe or overly ripe they become very juicy if not squishy and briefly a lot more palatable[1].

Avocado interestingly having little fiber but a lot of fat tends to loose available nutrition when you cook it… But does increase the available nutrients if you squish/squeeze it or raw purée it.

The reality is all cooking reduces the nutritional value of the food. The higher the heat the more is lost. However it can with some foods make what nutrition is in the food much more bioavailable in your dietry transit so you gain by it…

Oh but renember… Most plants are full of poisons because they do not want to be eaten. Fruit pits for instance contain “bitter almond” flavour of cyanide. Tomatoes, potatos and rhubarb you should never eat the leaves or stems and even with tomatoes don’t eat what is green.

As for “casava root” seriouly just do not eat it unless you know how to get the cyanide levels down…

As one UK newspaper food columnist said “Seriously look up on the Internet ‘death by casava'”.

[1] If your strawberries have gone to squishy, all is not lost put pure cold pressed apple juice in a pan add the strawberries and smash them in with about the same weight of white granulated sugar. Bring to a gental boil add a small nob of unsalted butter and stir it in take off the heat and spoon off any froth/scum and pour into a bowl and put in the fridge. You now have “fridge jam” you can spread on toast, or put in cakes etc.

Clive Robinson • November 24, 2021 2:57 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, All,

I surmised that outcomes may vary depending upon how recently someone who got infected had previously had a common cold.

Back then or there abouts I posted a link to “observational studies” that showed that people who had pets, particularly cats, were more likely to be asymptomaticaly infected.

It raised a similar question about if “cat corona viruses” of which there are many, caused a partial immune response in the pet owners.

As with many other “opportunities” to save lives of people who would likely die of COVID-19 if they got infected, the research would not pay drug companies returns so it was actively quashed…

It’s long been known that pet owners have not just different disease profiles –swine farmers as well– but even their “gut flora” is sufficiently different to stand out.

We talk about zoonotic transfer as though it’s an all or nothing event. Yet we know nature follows the normal distribution curve in almost every thing it does…

So as a hypothesis it’s not unreasonable to say that zoonotic transfer and an immune response of some level will happen to all virus that you get in you, even if humans do not go on to full infection where they then cross some –as yet unknown– threshold where they then become disease vectors.

To support this we are aware that if two virus get in the same cell simultaniously the replication method can end up doing a “mix-n-match” so ending up with what is a major not a minor mutation, which will go on to try and infect other cells in the host and if successfull become a new disease or varient there of.

Clive Robinson • November 24, 2021 7:24 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Bert Hubert knows what he is talking about.

Not got time to watch it yet, as it’s in “the working day” here.

Read the blurb which basically says,

1, Browser developers
2, Mobile Phone companies.

I can tell you why movile phone companies have such influance…, it is that they solved –all be it badly– the “rendezvous protocol” issue.

That is the Internet under IPv4 was never realy ment to provide “floating connectivity”, it’s based on hosts being not just in one place but also connrcted ro the same wire pair…

Clive Robinson • November 24, 2021 4:23 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing, MarkH, Winter, ALL,

With regards,

“For computers, this is RAM, for biology it is RNA.”

Actually when you think about it RNA is more like “cache or register memory” not the implied core DRAM.

That is core DRAM is nicely seperated not just by process/thread but by code / variable type, and the reuse apart from on the heap is low, and it stays that way. In short it’s effectively stored “at rest” memory very similar to the Flash memory just that the individual “bag of bits” data types are packed (FRAM) and unpacked (DRAM).

However Cache and importantly register memory hold tiny fragments whilst “processing” / “exacuting” just as it is inside the cell. They both “realy mix it up” with heavy reuse which is why mutations happen in both. Not just the occasional minor, blip but the major events when two viral or program threads get mixed up.

Clive Robinson • November 25, 2021 5:47 PM

@ Anders, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

New strain is making headlines. B.1.1.529

From The Grauniad piece,

“Prof Francois Balloux, the director of the “University College London”(UCL) Genetics Institute, said the large number of mutations in the variant apparently accumulated in a “single burst”, suggesting it may have evolved during a chronic infection in a person with a weakened immune system, possibly an untreated HIV/Aids patient.”

Not exactly unexpected…

What was it I said this time yesterday about RNA being more like Cache and Register memory rather than storage FRAM or core DRAM…

I’ll be honest and say that I’ve been expecting a mutation / varient that is both,

1, Significantly more infectious
2, Significantly more virulent

Thus significantly more lethal not just in the short term, but longer term due to an increased systemic damage factor causing organ failure or novel autoimmune disease.