Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 15, 2022 2:57 PM

@ lurker, SpaceLifeForm, All,

The eruption was certainly explosive

Sorry, it’s got to be said,

“A new crack a tonga?”

But getting serious you would think such an event such as this would be “big news” within hours, but apparently not.

https://theconversation.com/why-the-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga-was-so-violent-and-what-to-expect-next-175035

I guess Aus, NZ and a big chunk of the East Pacific coast are going to see some tsunami effects, but what of Tonga, and it’s people?

It’s a tiny nation that has scant resources, so is far from wealthy, or in much of a poistion to deal with potentially months of disruprion…

Clive Robinson • January 15, 2022 8:47 PM

@ lurker,

I’m taking your words out of order a bit,

The internet being offline is not surprising, underwater fibre cables are probably not designed to withstand the forces applied to them yesterday.

Not just that, think about the cables to peoples homes that can be easily swept away when above ground.

But also small vehicals float and become battering rams, likewise trees and poles are easily brought down by flooding water and become significant hazards in many ways. You can be swept from your feat by as little as 100mm / 4 inches of water moving at 2.2m/S or 5 miles an hour. That’s the sort of water movment you can have in a large stream or small river you would not think twice about crossing. But as an unconscious person you can drown in half that depth of water, and even when not flowing water sucks the heat from you atleast twenty five times faster than ordinary air at just under fog/dew point that even in summer gives you the chills. Just ten mins in 4 degree Celsius water for too many is a slow and horible death sentance without first world medical care.

As an engineer with knowledge of “intrinsically” and other types of “safe system” I’ve had to learn,

“The How? When? and Why? of failure”

Both inside and outside of the lab.

But also the stark details and mechanisms of the tragedy that almost invariably comes when things fail in the real everyday world.

It takes a certain mindset to put the “empathy” and “anger” aside yet not be “fatalistic” about such things. To accept the necessity to treat it “as data” knowing that if you get it right good will come from it, if not then you know what is going to happen.

When I’ve been in the US and other places where “cables are on poles” it reminds me of why “free market” and “infrastructure” should never be together. Stringing cables on poles though full of risk in it’s self is cheap and quick and easily expanded. But if yoy are honest you know it’s going to fail in all probbablity suddenly, unexpectedly, and with significant consequences in fairly short order…

Which is why you ask the sensible question of,

But where’s the backup?

The the thing about the free market is it is unregulated thus free to pick and chose what it does. It also as PEG customers have found takes a very very short term view point about “Shareholder value”

So if you don’t know or don’t care about the down side you will not see the need for backups, especially as they do not come for free and have eternal costs and no profit.

But there is another darker side to the supposed free market and that’s the “Drawbridge effect”. Technology moves forward and reduces in cost as quickly. The system you put in today will in as little as three years will have a competitor at double the capability at half the cost. So to make money you have to stop alternative systems. In the US people who want to go “off grid” are told that is illegal… The joke of it is they are told it’s for “safety” as a backup… Well Texas has revealed the truth about that particular lie.

The drawbridge effect is simply where a free market entrant as they establish devote large amounts of resources to turning the free market into a regulated market. The sole purpose of the purchased regulation being to stop alternatives and competition to give the entrant a legal monopoly. The US political system makes this much easier than most other first world countries.

Which brings us to your observation of,

which is concerning especially since we know the potential of HF battery powered radio.

Comparatively it is “expensive” and Tonga has an economy that is small and a population by first world standards that is poor. Thus the take by taxation from the economy has “further to go”.

Oh and you can be absolutly certain that those infrastructure companies aluded to the reliability of there systems and so much more when taljing about putting the systems in. But you can be equally as sure they have not been contractually, or by regulation let alone legislation, been made to put in place any such guarantees. And if by chance there is, something, you know those companies are just going to walk away.

The sad thing is we know this is all going to happen, yet we don’t do what is necessary, which is put in place legislation for the benifit of the citizens, just the corporations.

Clive Robinson • January 15, 2022 10:23 PM

@ null clam, ALL,

Tonga is on the Ring of Fire.

Actually Tonga is not “on” the Ring of Fire, it’s actually “in” the Tonga Trench subduction zone[1] which makes a big difference as the two island chains are quite geographically different and in turn differebt to other parts of the ring. Especially when you ask,

Are there other indications of something happening on the ring

The answers are at the moment,

1, There is always something happening in that region.

2, Aside from the actual event it appears there were no clear lead up signals that “stood out” from the others(1).

3, At the moment there are after effect signals but what they mean has not yet been made clear.

But a lot of water has been displaced some of which will make it across to the US Pacific coast all along from the tip of South America up to Alaska. The movment of that weight of water is enough to cause the earth to change shape slightly if that will trigger other faults or not is yet to be seen. Personally I think not, after all the moon is causing the earth to change shape all the time.

As far as I can tell though, from available information the subsea “explosion” is from “a continuous process” where in effect “the pot has boiled over” and will do again in around a thousand years. So the question of if sufficient energy has been bled off or not.

From a personal perspective you should be “aware” of what effects flooding or earthquakes have or could have in your area and act accordingly. If not now would be a good time to “do a little research”.

As for what to do for the people in the effected areas, appart from what aid agencies are currently doing, there is not much else, due to lack of information due to no communications. For all we know most of the basic infrastructure may not be critically effected so got back up and running fairly quickly when the waters subside and things dry out a bit. But it’s been indicated there is also volcanic ash, that stuff is always bad news.

[1] Warning this is a large picture as the map is quite detailed,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/EQs_1900-2013_worldseis.png

You can not see where Tonga, or the Tonga Trench are because of all the blue, red, green dots and yellow triangles over the top.

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 5:02 AM

@ Winston Smith, ALL,

“Paul Nelson has solved the subconvexity problem, bringing mathematicians one step closer to understanding the Riemann hypothesis and the distribution of prime numbers.”

Which part of the general subconvexity problem?

Perhaps of more interest to some here though, is that just solving it for some L-Functions would make life a little more interesting in the world of “Knapsacks” and other supposadly “one way functions”.

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 11:32 AM

@ null clam,

But the real question remains: why do hotdogs come in packages of 10, but hotdog buns in packages of 8 ?

Oh that’s easy, did your mum never tell you it’s to do with “House Rules”.

But first, you’ve heard of “spoilers” with information such as story lines…

Are you sure you want to read on?

Well the physical universe has it’s equivalent which is “spoilage”…

For which there is the “Five Second” counter rule. Which can be applied before “dropped” becomes “spoiled” (you hear kids especially call “five second rule” with toast when they grab it up). Where they claim the pickup right.

Now there is also the “loved pet rule” that can be applied but is given not claimed, which alows stray “dropped” to become exempt from “spoilage” as long as there is a pet to “snaffle it up”.

It applys for about ten seconds before the arbitter in all things gives the finall call on “spoilage” with something along the lines of “johnny, just you pick that up and put it in the bin!” when it gets to the bin it comes under the mortal sin of “wastage”.

Most “snaffle” pets are carnivours and see free meat as a bonus and as we know moral teaching about waste is more strict with meat than wheat or vegtable, which is important with mortal sins.

But… Pets are not supposed to recieve “table food” but can have kitchen “scraps”…

But you don’t get “scraps” with processed foods…

So how is the pet in the house supposed to feel loved by the occasional tasty treat, not excluded by the lack of what their owners get…

Those extra two hotdogs alow for such transactions “under the rules” Oh and importantly turn a potential mortal sin into a saintly act of love for our four footed friends 😉

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 2:24 PM

@ squid brain, ALL,

IMO, TPTB won’t be satisfied until they get the youtube-dl program completely chased into the underground

That is not the intention of the law suit.

The intention is to get “creative commons” and similar licencing being made illegal or ineffrctive.

From a publishers point of view creative commons very specifically discriminates not against them but their potential to make money by,

1, Fully controling rights to publish.
2, Stealing from those who self publish and using it themselves for profit.

In short you have to go through them to have any protection from banditary that they mostly practice against creators.

What they are aiming to do is get a legal president they can use directly or as a steping stone, so they are not in any way going to backdown.

But there is the side question of whether YouTube’s “rolling cipher” is or is not a technical protection measure. Well no it’s not, but that is not going to stop the lawyers having a bun fight over it.

There are only three things fundementally you can do wirh information,

1, Store it.
2, Communicate it.
3, Process it.

You then ask where does YouTube’s “rolling cipher” apply

Does it apply to storage of information? Obviously not on YouTube’s Servers or on the client computer where things have to be stored “un protected” to function.

Does YouTube’s “rolling cipher” apply to Communicating information? Obviously yes at some point between YouTube’s Servers and the client computer and some little distance in to the YouTube defined security end points. Outside of that no it does not. As youtube makes the plaintext of the file / information available to the user for processing without restriction it is very obviously not a technical protection measure. It is in fact at best a privacy protection measure.

Does YouTube’s “rolling cipher” apply to Processing information? This is the only place “a technical protection measure can actually work” if you think it can anywhere else you are misleading yourself. As indicated YouTube’s “rolling cipher” in no way provides any protection in this area. Therefore it is not being used as a technical protection measure method in the formal sense. Actuall technical protection has to come by other means, and currently it does not in YouTube’s entire distribution system.

But as I said that is not what the lawsuit is about, and the sooner people realise this and make appropriate noise about their personal rights of self determination and expression being stolen the better.

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 3:45 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

There is no way the fake ransom message can be stored in the MBR.

True but it does not have to be…

At one time the convention was just sector Zero at CHS-0:0:0. However it was not enough so it was sector zero and sector 1, and like Topsy the cat once hard drives got above a certain size and LBA was there the entire first track ie CHS-0:0:- was left free. GNU have some documents around if you want to read them but the cliffs notes is,

“Do not use any sector in track zero as it is reserved for the boot process.”

For some reason some people even exclude the entire zero cylinder… Which means there can be quite a lot of space enough to store an entire OS and apps to give a shell interface and low level maintainance tools…

Some further info can be found via,

https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/index.html

But it deals mainly with the top side of GRUB not the bottom where the BIOS/IO firmware inter reacts with GRUB or other bootloaders found via sector zero.

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 6:32 PM

@ Ted, Anders, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Remember I said there was something odd with Microsofts post?

Well from the tweet,

“The blob contains the 16-bit assembly code used to, upon system restart, display the ransom note on the screen.”

Which is what I would expect.

Microsoft said it ran on shuting down…

So yeah my suspicions are even further aroused ={

But man “16bit asm” I guess the Kremlin still has metal filing cabinets with old PC mags stacked in the bottom…

Maybe someone should contact R.A. Penfold and ask if they are using his code?

Tell you what if I found somebody was using my 16bit assembler code from a third of a century ago I’d get it printed on T-Shirts 😉

Clive Robinson • January 16, 2022 10:36 PM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

American intelligence agencies that year confirmed a similar attack from China using Huawei equipment located in the U.S., six of the former officials said, declining to provide further detail.

Beware any technical article from Bloomberg, that contains “unnamed insiders” it usually turns out to be a compleate pile of cack. As it was with the “china inside” on motherboards to be used by Apple.

Take a look at what is being said and then realise just how dumb it is,

“At the core of the case, those officials said, was a software update from Huawei that was installed on the network of a major Australian telecommunications company. The update appeared legitimate, but it contained malicious code that worked much like a digital wiretap, reprogramming the infected equipment to record all the communications passing through it before sending the data to China, they said.”

So all data gets recorded and forwarded to China… Begs the simple question “How?”

That is “Where is the bandwidth?” and “Where is the physical route?”

In short things very obviously do not add up, yet that Bloomberg Journalist just swallows obvious lies, and his editor likewise just swallows obvious lies… So either they are incredibly incompetent and terminally naive or they full well know they are publishing very bad propaganda for political favours.

Clive Robinson • January 17, 2022 1:18 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

I do recall that. But, IIRC it did not require root to run the Oracle engine. I do not recall that I needed root to enable “raw” access.

To get “raw” access to a partition you needed the correct permissions on the device. To set those correctly you needed root at the point in time you do it.

But before that the device has to exist and that needs root privileges to achive.

But even so the the application should not get access to sectors outside of the “raw” partition…

That is the OS should protect the sectors outside of the assigned partitian for the raw drive at all times. Also all the OS tools –bar one or two– should not alow an active MBR to be included in a partition (so flags need to be cleared first and that can only be done by root).

The point is though, that the MBR should have been “off limits” so when the Oracle Engine said write to “sector XXXX” and it got signed int or what ever wrapped around to write to “sector 0000” inside the Oracle Engine, it should have not been alowed to happen. But it did and there went your drives active MBR…

The thing is few noticed that it happened for a couple of reasons. Firstly because once a system is up and the Oracle engine is running the MBR is not used again and the uptime on some systems was years… The second was few admins used the active boot drive for the Oracle Engine raw partitions. Instead they used dedicated drives so they could get better performance.

So for the fact the boot sector thus MBR has been slagged to be shown, the raw partitions would have to be,

1, On the active boot drive
2, In the right place on the drive.

and,

3, The system would have to be comming up from reset.

So on most servers it did not ever show untill something horible happened to the active boot drive or the server it’s self. And I’m sure Oracle were glad of that as they did not have to tell anyone, and if it was found it could be blaimed on the “something horrible”.

However when Oracle started to push out from just the “Big boy servers” for Corporates and Governments, towards smaller enterprise systems with a way larger market using that illusive “middleware for web” the fault became known to some, and they worked out how to get it to happen.

It was after all once you know, relatively easy to fix with a periodic check and if required a run of a dd as root to put a new boot sector with MBR in place. The fact few sys_admins would know how to find out the binary file just sitting somewhere on a drive realy was a “boot sector image” made it all the more usefull.

I used to have some odd files hanging around one had the encrypted form of a password I knew by heart that you could run within a script that would drop it into the top of the shadow file by inode without needing to be root… Usefull when you had contractors being the day to day SysAdmins.

Clive Robinson • January 18, 2022 6:36 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Remember the Y2K22 bug?

Yes…

Oh and remember with “Abstract Data Types”(ADT) abstract enough and they are all the same data type “A Big Bag Of Bits”, and GIGO blesses them all 0:)

But from where I look up, all that type stuff is meta-meta-data all I realy care is which register… 😉

Clive Robinson • January 19, 2022 9:21 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Hand cranked Ham Radio would be very useful now

Probably not…

Unless you are using some of the newer specialy designed portable and QRP (low power) sets most standard QRO 100Watt HF sets for Ham operators draw 1-2amps at 13.8v even when just in receive mode and +20Amps in transmit. The TX/RX cycle in a MsgCen is around 1/3 so (2+2+20)/3 ~8amps or +100Watt continuous. There are two reasons for the heavy RX draw, firstly the flashy back lit displays, secondly the fact that the “Power Anplifer”(PA) stages have a high bias to be “linear” and most kit manufacturers don’t switch it… But these days EmCom is not “key or voice” as it was still just half a decade back, it’s nearly all digital modes these days that can be plugged into data networks and be

First find a hand crank that will do even ~50Watts and then try using it…

I used to own an ex millitary device and it came on a specially designed and heavy duty tripod. On which were welded a fold up saddle seat and foot loops and was heavier than a 1980’s era “jimpy” GPMG or Detachment Support Weapon[1]. It was designed so one person could actually use their whole body to get the required mechanical power in via the handles that had a two foot turning circle.

The adult male at rest consumes about 2100 “cals” which is about 100Watt continuous for 24hours which is why when doing those “efficient house” testing we used to use side table lamps with 100watt bulbs to be the people in rooms etc. Your upper body is actually not that strong unless you carry out certain excercises which will ruin your body before you are fourty. Now even in my “healthy days” when I was considered fit, I would be like a damp dishrag after just a few minutes use of such a “hand cranked” generator.

Also being a mad keen cyclist doing a hundred miles a day or walking/running 20miles I also found the leg crank equivalent was difficult to maintain at any sensible output power. If you search Ebay or equivalent for “Peddle Generator” or similar you will find they are ludicrously expensive and down in the 15-50watt range[2] and certainly more efficient than those in the 1980s and earlier.

It’s why anyone doing serious “off grid” / “Grid down” “Emergancy Operations”(EmOps) or EmComs uses SolarGen or WindGen, and as I said QRP, with digital modes. Not QRO kit and voice / key.

There is a US ExPat living up at “60degree North” (call sign OH8STN) and he does a lot of U-Tube videos and blogging not just on “off-grid” but EmCom type stuff where he packs a hot tent and all the other gear you need for just a couple of days in the field in the sort of testing conditions you might have after a small disaster. He recentky did a QRP+Amp -v- QRO test,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ7ZFXrv1_M

Note that the “clear weather” made Solar operation possible. Half a mountain of dust in the air from a volcanic eruption or worse brings you down to almost twilight conditions for days look up “Nuclear Winter” for details (I’ve been doing some work with emergancy HF Kits for Iceland which has the occasional grumbling mountain issue and they assume low light condirions).

I guess if it was down to me I’d look into a sealed gen set, like a heat powered Strling engine or equivalent external combustion engine. Then as long as you can get about a fifty degree difference you can get power out.

[1] A typical light / detatchment support weapon of the 1980’s would be a Belgium FN “MAG” split between two squadies and extra amunition with other squad members,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_MAG

[2] You will find the likes of the “K-Tor 20 watt Pedal power generator” that is not exactly robust or well designed, for more than $300…

Clive Robinson • January 19, 2022 1:12 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

I gather this gent is from down your way somewhat, and is a bit of a privacy proponent,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kemd9RGRxio

But has some figures you might be able to verify.

Clive Robinson • January 19, 2022 8:04 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

Then I got stuck behind a long endless loop of …

None of that came up in the UK on a non logged-in account with cookies turned off…

He went through some interesting figures about areas around LA basically indicating take up was about the same regardless of the colour of the county, yet reported infections were very different… The implication being socio-economic or something worse not ubrelated to todays thread…

Clive Robinson • January 21, 2022 6:51 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

All organizations, regardless of sector or size, should immediately implement the steps

As always my first question would be,

What is the VALID business reason to have these machines connected to an externally available communications system?

And when you get down to it very often there is not realy one, “It just seems like a good idea”. Well you’ld have thought the message would have got across by now “It’s a realy bad idea”.

As I keep saying,

If they can not get at them they can not attack them.

If people have seen the latest UEFI APT attack you should by now realise as long as a machine is connected it will be successfully attacked, it’s just a matter of time…

So,

“Pull the plug and buy yourself some time”.

It you genuinely can not pull the plug, work out how to “mitigate” but that’s a much longer more lucrative set of advice 😉

Clive Robinson • January 21, 2022 2:36 PM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

Critics of some suppression orders say they go too far and clamp down on open justice, or hide corrupt behavior by powerful people…

So say many in Scotland…

Where Graig Murray got given 8months for “jigsaw identification” by a Scottish Judge[1], who was way way to Close to Scotland’s First Minister who’s friends were lying in court about sexual abuse stories they chose to make up and claim had been committed by a political rival of the First Minister.

Now you or I would probably say such lying in court under oath is perjury, which carries a significant tarriff and rightly so. But these “accuser” friends of the First Minister are just poor bewildered individuals and apparently justice would not be served by taking action against them for their proven lying…

So,

“It ain’t what yer knows, but who!”

Speaking of which, this witch hunt of course would have nothing what so ever to do with Craig Murray’s continued reporting on Julian Assange (who in turn probably fears going to Australia as much as he does to America).

So as always,

“Something is rotten in the State of Denmark”

(Marcelis, From Act I, of Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

[1] https://gordondangerfield.com/2021/07/29/the-crown-came-for-craig-murray/

Clive Robinson • January 21, 2022 5:13 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Lack of Amateur/Ham radio in Tonga.

Basically they don’t have any licenced operators or equipment. The few that do “pop-up” from time to time are “DXpeditions” where First world Hams drop in for a week or two with all their own kit etc.

Also even if there were, there are “electrical storm” issues caused by triboelectrification in the suspended volcanic dust,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IEd8Mo8BNhM

Oh and a mention of the preasure wave being measured in the UK.