Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • February 19, 2013 4:12 AM

@ Chris W,

Cyber-espionage is simply a must, just as much as traditional espionage.

Yes it is in effect a “given”, however my concern is why do we see it painted –to use that old term– as a “Yellow Peril” rather than what all capable nations do to each other.

Is it just a passing phase as once was “Red’s Under the Bed” with Russia during the “Cold War” or is it the build up to something else?

It concerns me because I lived through a chunk of the Cold War Paranoia and found out much to dislike about the “Governmental -v- Civilian” mindset of turning virtualy entire nations into “cannon fodder” or “Ash City”. A study of the “Cuban Missile Crisis” shows how a “We are the good guys no questions to be asked” and “might is right” mind sets can lead to near disaster. History tends to show that infact the CCCP/USSR political mindset was more often than not the stabilizing effect on US/West rhetoric and saber rattling. Whilst we saw them as “The Russian Bear” they regarded the West as either a pit of “Rattle Snakes” or a pack of “Rabid Dogs”.

We appear for various reasons to be trying to push China into the same mold which is not a sensible thing to do. That is the US appears stuck in a 1950’s political mindset and are rapidly turning into an Orwellian “Us -v- the rest of the world” bunker mentality nation much as Israel currently is, and a few other Western nations who should know better are still clinging to the US apron ties encoraging the US along like “happy clappy” sycophants.

One side effect of this is that we can see China is responding to the US saber rattling. China had adopted the idea of strengthaning economic ties to promote stability and had invested heavily in the US economy in various ways. Whilst they are still doing it, their direction has changed it’s now a case of not “buy in” but “drag it over”. But China has started to devote more of it’s resources to external offense/deffence weaponry than it has in the past and appears to be “digging in” against a potential US attack.

What makes it worse is the way the US has beeen stiring it up between North and South Korea. As some will know technicaly the North and South are still at war and have been since the 1950’s. As a divided country Korea has a problem or two. The North is economicaly “dirt poor” despite having significant human and mineral resources and manpower whilst the South has a lack of both human and mineral resources but has technology and now some considerable wealth. It would be in the interests of the citiizens of both halves of the nation to re-unite. However as far as the US and other major powers it would be undesirable to have them re-unite.

This has of course caused strange effects to arise one of which is the close liason between North Korea and Iran and the cross transfer of dual use technology. Iran untill Stuxnet poped up appeared ahead on uranium isotope seperation and N.Korea on rocket technology. However Stuxnet caused the N.Korea’s to “thumb their nose” at the US and inviite nuclear inspectors in and show them more advanced centrifuges than Iran has. And as many will be aware just a few days ago carried out an underground test that many believe is for a small size uranium based nuclear war head capable of being mounted on their long range rockets they recently used to put a satellite into space ( http://n2yo.com/?s=39026 ).

Potentialy N.Korea will be ICBM capable within a year, the question then becoms what will the US do. If past behaviour is any indicator they will give N.Korea an invite to the “top table” rather than have them “beyond the pale”.

But both the North and the South have both had a change of leadership. The incoming South Korean Premier is of a vastly different mentality to her predecessor who would blaim anything on the North and the leader of the North is young and so far not set in his ways.

Thus the question is will the US leave the Korean’s sufficient space to come to their own relationship or will the US up the ante to the point where hostilities break out again and potentialy develop into a full war, that would drag China back into the conflict?

One of the mistakes that Germany made during WWII which brought about their eventual downfall was to open up a second front in the East by attacking the Russians. The US currrently has a self made war in the Middle East which they are trying to pull out of. Thus do they intend to pull back or go after Iran, and in either case do they realy want to be opening up a second front with China via Korea?

Which ever the US are certainly talking up the “Yellow Peril” into another “Cold War” style opponent…

Clive Robinson • February 19, 2013 4:12 PM

@ Federico,

There is no valuable information in Apple, not to what a country security concerns, so what would china will hack apple in the first place

It’s not the value of information at Apple that is at stake, it’s the value of the information put on Apple products by Apple customers that’s at stake.

It’s the reason RSA got cracked and why quite a few CAs got the works as well.

Look at it another way, what is the point of spending a considerable period of time finding a second zero day attack, when you can use your first to put your own special backdoor into an OS or Application that everybody uses?

I would be looking to get at the developer code repository for the likes of MS Word, Adobe PDF reader etc, to give me what I want with the minimum of fuss and bother…

Clive Robinson • February 20, 2013 5:29 AM

@ Rookie,

You might very well regret that Rupert Murdoch is alive,… …but he has nothing to do with The Register or the headline mentioned by Nick P

Read Nick P’s second paragraph about news outlets then view my comment with respect to that.

With regards to,

In regards to the Koreas, I believe the US would welcome any reunification between the North and South, like they welcomed the reunification of East and West Germany. Citing the US as the one causing provications on the Korean peninsula i glossing over a heck of a lot of history since 1953

I’m sure the US would like a reunification BUT on US terms not the Koreans or Chinese terms.

And you only have to see the mess that follows every time the US tries to do that in the past few years in other partss of the world (Think Somalia, the “free and fair elections” where Hamas got voted in, Iraq, and then there is Arab Spring etc etc). The reason German reunification worked was three fold, firstly it was obvious to all that the East German Government could nolonger govern and that Russia and the surounding countries were not going to support them, secondly that the US was pretty much kept out of it by the EU and thirdly the other “occuping powers” could nolonger afford to keep dumping huge sums of money into the German economy via their occuping forces spending. I was in Germany for the early parts of the reunification and I can tell you the people who were least scared by it were the Germans themselves, the main concern they had was the way the currancy union had been pegged.

But getting back to Korea there are a rather large number of US military personnel stationed in South Korea and other locations near by, who the US have no intention of withdrawing. They have very actively instigated / participated in war games along the disputed border with the North and around the North’s coastal region and arguably encroached into the North’s territorial waters, which has provoked thankfully only a minimal response from the North.

But if you look back across the 60 years, you will find almost countless cases of provocation from the South towards the north by or with US backing.

Much if not most of this military action involving the US is “politicaly” aimed not at North Korea, it’s actually mainly aimed at provoking China. As are the US activities in Taiwan and surrounding areas. Which has (alegadly) caused China to send out Subs and Divers to cut under sea telephone/data cables and one or two other retaliatory actions such as major Chinese War Games.

Prior to the out going South Korean Premier, there were serious attempts to start the re-unification process by both the South and the North. If you talk to South Koreans who were there and lived through it you get to find out that the US insisted on being involved and would make promises of basic economic assistance to the North that where conditional… But when the North complied the US would not deliver on the promises and the aid was not delivered. Thus North Korea insisted that the US nolonger be involved and restarted their former activities…

So make of it what you will but I would say that the US has been heavily involved with causing problems between the North and the South, not because they are particularly interested in Korea but as a continuance of the “Proxie War” between the US and China. And if history is anything to go by the US won’t stop untill they nolonger see China as a threat, which unlike Russia is very unlikely to happen in the next life time or two.

As I’ve said on a number of occasions in the past China takes the longterm view and the US and most of the West take a very very short term view. Thus China is most likely to come out well ahead in any race between the US/West and China. And if you had not noticed a big chunk of the West is now called the European Union and whilst it’s in a financial and political mess currently (due to to insufficient integration and to rapid expansion) it’s intrests in and dependance on the US are significantly waning, instead it’s facing Eastwards and is encroaching on Russia’s doorstep (which is causing Russia to get nervous). Which leaves the UK in an interesting position being in the far west of europe in a diferent time zone with little or no natural resources and more politicaly aligned with the US and thus regarded with suspicion by many EU countries…

US global power is diminishing and it is soon going to run into it’s own significant financial difficulties. The US dollar is still the world trading currancy just, because of this it has confered certain economic advantages on the US. But you need to consider what would happen if either the European or Chinese currancy became a more than significant contender as a major trading currancy. As one economist put it unless the US sorts it’s self out befor then it’s looking at second or third world status. Which whilst it might sound astonoshing is by the way, what is currently happening to one or two southern EU countries.

I don’t have crystal balls to gaze into so I can’t tell the future by magic, but I can over the short term make some predictions based on past history and thus I can say we in the West are realy going to find out the meaning of the ancient Chinese curse of “May you live in interesting times”

Clive Robinson • February 21, 2013 7:42 PM

@ 999999999,

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Your last comment,

)That just does not sit right with me

Is the crux of the matter for most people only they try and avoid thinking about it.

As I originaly asked people to consider and you further qualified with,

There is no difference in the actions of the Israel war machine and AQ.

If you remove the political element then the actions are simply that of the criminal charges of conspiracy and murder. And further if the reasons for the crimes being commited was valid which is in of it’s self is likewise political.

Thus it’s the politics of the issue which count and where we need to think the most about what is done in our name by others, and eventually how others judge us, not as individuals but as one of an entire nation of “joe Averages”.

As known individuals nearly all humans are difficult to hate with vengance, as unknown members of a faceless mass vengful hate is all to easy. Because it is not a person but a manufactured image, for which we feel no sorrow, guilt or compassion and don’t question our thoughts.

The result of course is each side manufactures with rhetoric the image of those they chose to call an enemy and embue them with certain charecteristics which are usually false but which encorage feelings of mistrust and eventually unreasoned hatred. Such feelings are often driven by feelings of impotence that turn to desires for righteous vengence that are based on almost entirely false images. Such is the power of propaganda.

Whilst it can be relatively easy to build up these images it is can also be extreamly difficult to pull them down. They develop a life of their own and go on in peoples minds and get passed on from adult to child long long after they have served there purpose.

As we know such fueds can go on for centuries getting stronger with each generation not just in remote places but close to home as well. In the UK for instance we still have such divisions in Northern Ireland, but for those that care to look there are similar issues in Scotland, and in England, and in Wales.

In essence we are still under the skin mainly tribal and we view “me and mine” above others, for what once were sound genetic reasons.

The fact that you can say,

But I see a difference in the consequences accountability, PR, financing, chain of command

Shows that you can think on the problem in a more abstract way and importantly realise that there are consequences for such actions.

Many however can not, or chose not to, or worse actualy plan to gain advantage by people thinking not of individual people but of manufactured images. Currently we see various nations cultures and religions being “demonized” by those with political agenders.

We should ask why we don’t hold such people to account, but most of us chose not to. Not as a deliberate choice, but mainly we don”t know there is a choice, or because we cannot see how to excercise that choice. Eventually we lose the choice as it is taken away from us.

We who live in representational democracies are encoraged to believe we have choice by the balot box. Few people turn around and actually think about the process and the reality of the lack of choice we are presented with. Even less people want to face up to the fact that the choice is actually controled by people we don’t vote for who control the funding and exposure poolliticians need to become elected.

Does it matter if you call it a plutocracy or puppet goovernment, and is it’s actions realy that much different to various forms of dictatorship.

The reality is not realy, and that is a problem because we can see from history that dictatorships usually end in only one way with blood shed and war be it civil or imposed from outside.

Many of the places these terrorist come from are dictatorships in one way or another, they view themselves not as terrorists but freedom fighters etc, who are seeking to change the political structure of the places they come from. The advantage they have today is technology they can use it in various ways to put preasure on the dictators. OBL was fairly clear about his aims and objectives which esentialy boiled down to wishing to stop the US supporting the dictators in the middle east specificaly the house of saud. Although he failed in that objective he certainly achieved others, wether he intended to or not, one of which is for US citizens to start feeling what it is like to live in a police state.

So arrguably a political change has been brought by OBL and AQ and this in turn has enabled others to start the political change process.

Which gives rise to the unsetaling feeling that even in a representational democracy significant political change is possible by undemocratic means, arguably faster and more effectivly than by democratic means. Worse that beyond a certain point even assassination will not put the genie back in the bottle. Which then raises the question of did assassinating OBL actually achieve anything other than revenge?

The argument Israel has worked on in the past is preemptive action. That is you remove a problem before it becomes a problem. But when you are talking of assassination preemption is a very very weak justification for the crimes of conspiracy and murder and it does not sit well with the ideas of justice which is supposadly the bedrock of all nation states.

As you note many nations either do or have carried out extra judicial executions Russia and Israel appear to be at or close to the top of the list both of whom have carried out what is refered to as State Sponsored terrorism.

However two things apear to arise firstly it does not appear to be even remotely effective. Secondly you don’t see sanctions or handing over of people for their actions. Which calls into question the notion of international justice, in that some countries are exempt from it whilst others are not.

This is obviously ripe fodder for propaganda for these nations supposed enemies. As we have seen, it actually creates considerably more problems than it solves.

Several thousand years ago a chinese writer on state craft emphasised that to defeat an enemy it was essential to first know them. Oddly perhaps the way to stop conflict and fueds is the same, by the opposing sides getting to know each other.

We have found that giving people democracy produces apparently unexpected results. In the case of Hamas it was entirely predictable by those who saw the voters as individual people and had come to know them. But entirely unexpected by those to whom the manufactured image was all they knew. Likewise the problems of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Slowly a decade or so late the realisation is occuring that to get political change on the ground means getting to know the people and that includes the supposed enemy. Much as it sticks in the throat, Hamas, Hezbola and the other groups have a place in the political future of these places.

The question then becomess how do you stop these places becoming dictatorships again. The answer is not easy but one thing we have found out is people with nothing to lose have everything to gain by attacking us. Perhaps giving them something such as a future and the oportunity to coexist not just peacfully but equally would give them not just something to lose but little or nothing to gain by attacking us. And that they get to sort out their differences amongst themselves and vote for their future whatever it might be.

History actualy tells us, that as far as the middle east is concerned one of the most peacfull and prosperous periods in time where coexistance was the norm was actually prior to the crusades. Whilst I would not recomend we return to the past there maybe lessons we can learn from it.