Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • July 25, 2020 4:03 AM

@Tatütata:

“Swiss neutrality is an illusion.”

History shows that nearly all ‘neutrality’ is in reality an ‘illusion’ have a look at Swiss neutrality during WWII, it was a case of “pander to German financial needs”. Both Sweden and Southern Ireland pandered to alied needs during that period, even the Spanish were playing both sides off against each other as well.

There reasons were different but at the end of the day the countries and their politicians stayed out of the conflict and traded to survive.

Reprehensable as it may appear to many, there civilian populations and their infrastructures remained intact thus many lives and unknown quantities of historic items were saved and they did not have to bleed their treasuries white to buy arms to defend themselves or rebuild after hostilities ended.

The trick has always been to avoid appeasement which is a form of slavery not neutrality. Russia found to it’s cost that it could not buy of the National Socialist political ideals and eventually were draged into the European War that had gone global. They learned a lesson and put various measures in place, which although the “Cold War” is in name over, still continue to today and I suspect will continue to do so for decades to come.

Whilst trade can be equitable and sometimes profitable, war is a dead distructive loss from which none of the participents ever win.

So neutrality and trade, would appear on balance to be the only sensible course when two or more beligerants kick off. It’s a leason that a few more could learn the benift of. Especially as it’s extreamly unlikely we will stop either war or crime in humanity, they appear to be an artifact of greed, that appears endemic in the population, or atleast in those who think they are a societies leaders.

Clive Robinson • July 26, 2020 1:19 PM

@ Anders,

From The Register article, the final paragraph is,

The attack once again underscores the importance of properly securing network-connected databases, and carefully checking access policies to limit writes and reads as necessary.

However as usual the fundemental inportant question that overides all of the above in effect placebos has been ignored in it’s entirety…

The question you should first ask as it will save you a lot of pain later is,

Why on Earth should this be connected in any way to a public network?

The real answer usually is “none what so ever” but some idiot will give the “Well maybe we could do this…” argument. Some of the more embittered veterans of cyber-attacks have argued only half humorously that such people should as the old saying goes “Should get them the Indian mutiny treatment” also known as a “firing off at the mouth”[1]…

The number one rule is “No back end business system, be it sales, marketing, managment or engineering should ever be visable from the Internet”. This is true for nearly every business system, whilst their are exceptions they are rare. Also there are correct ways to go about it none of which involve connecting any primary business or engineering system to the Internet.

This is because the number one rule is based on a very valid assumption,

Any publicaly connected system will be attacked.

The only reason we do not see so many systems getting “blown out of the water” is it’s “A target rich environment and comparatively the number of attackers is low”. Thus “when not if” your system gets attacked has a degree of probability involved (please note “when” not if).

So connecting a back end business or engineering system to the Internet assumes that firstly you’ve not made a target of your self in some way, and secondly you never throw “snake eyes”. Both of which are highly improbable…

The reality is if you want to avoid the real possibly existential pain and embarrassment of a system being attacked don’t put it where it can be attacked. It’s simple to say and almost as simple to do. But also remember if you do make the mistake of connecting to a public network, even if you think you’ve done it securely as The Register artical final paragraph –incorrectly– assumes is possible, new attacks are thought up several times every day… So what might have been secure will inevitably become insecure, it’s just a matter of time and a degree of probability as to which low hanging fruit goes bad and the next fruit chosen to be consumed.

[1] The Indian Mutiny was one of the less savoury items of British Empire history and it resulted in various of the alleged mutineers leaders being strapped across the open mouth of a field piece with their commrads lined up in front of them, and the field piece fired. Because it was assumed by the half mad[2] Senior British Officers (SBOs) that those who survived would have been taught a lesson[3]. However the practice was rather more common than many are led to believe,

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

[2] Many of the SBO’s of the British East India Company were half mad before even leaving England as they were suffering from “Various Diseases” specificaly syphilis (tertiary stage attacks the brain). However even those who were not “clap ridden” became half mad for other reasons two of which are firstly some Indian cooks were poisoning them slowly with very unhealthy food. Secondly Rawlings who invented Indian Tonic Water was inadvertantly filling them with a neuro toxin every day. The purpose of Indian Tonic Water was to stop malaria by getting the foul tasting quinine into the officers and their wives etc. Rawlings observed the drinking habits of British Officers and found they drank between three and four large gins on average in their mess of an evening. Thus the recipe they came up with was to put a dose of a quater of the required upper limit of quinine in a measure of soda or sparkilg water and add sugar to make it more palatable and the result bottles of Indian Tonic Water. Unfortunatly what they did not know was that in India the officers were drinking morning noon and night and were getting through between ten and twenty large gins a day often more… The result neurotoxic poisoning… Modern Indian Tonic water still contains quinine but only just enough to give flavour, so if you must drink the stuff it’s fairly safe (and no there is no verifiable information that it staves off COVID-19 even with zinc).

[3] It’s actually the British authorities who should have learned lessons. Part of the problem was “greased paper” in ammunition for the new Enfield Rifle. Because animal fat was cheap and easily available as tallow it was used in the Woolich Arsenal in what was known as “The London Method”. Now tallow is actually a mixture of animal fats depending on the qualities you want thus it could be from Cows, Sheep, Pigs and even Whales. Some faiths have issues with Cows others with Pigs, you can thus see how this could easily become a problem[4].

[4] As has been said in several ways on several occasions by several people “Those who do not learn from history are condemed to relive it”… and guess what? Yup the British Authorities did not learn. As @echo and others will confirm fairly recently UK currancy has been changed from paper to plastic, “so what” most people would say, only parts of the process need lubrication and animal fats were being used and the story got into the news…

Clive Robinson • July 27, 2020 10:45 AM

@ Anders,

“microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance”

As the saying has it “Colour me unsuprised”.

The reason being is “tax payer dollars being thrown at Police State formation”

The Silicon Valley Mega Corps are all at it one way or another, they have in effect joined the MIC we were warned about before most of us were born.

All these Corps are doing is “picking money up of the table” that is it’s virtualy free cash for the repurposing of existing technology development.

The advantage for those handing out the free tax dollars is that they get buy in not just in terms of directing the direction of the technology but also “blackmail compliance”. That is as you can tell from the way Alphabet, Microsoft et al try to keep it under wraps theu know that there is a major major downside to this free cash, call it “Bad Publicity” but in effect it is in reality “A pact with the Devil” as there realy is no such thing as a “Free Lunch”.

Even Bill Gates predicted the end of Microsft some years ago, and he knows why, which is why he apparently publically “stepped down” and went away to do his Wife’s Foundation stuff.

However his prediliction for building under ground bunkers where ever he is likely to spend some time fairly well tells you what is going on.

Because Bill like several other of the extreamly wealthy who own significant debt (via the stockmarket etc) get to talk to the real movers and shakers that most politicians never ever meet or in some cases realy get to know about. You can see who some of those who do know who they are at places like Davos running interferance with political leaders.

The thing to remember is where the money for the philanthropy comes from, at least Bill and Melinda are doing something with it, unlike several others “in the club”.

Clive Robinson • July 27, 2020 7:38 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

With regards “Travlers” in England, they are without doubt a thorny issue.

So much so back in the 1980’s the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to legislate them out of existence. She went as far as making it illegal for them to aquire land for living on and thus forcing them into very unsuitable places, where friction resulted.

A lot of people get confused between “gypsies” originally from Eastern Europe where they were persecuted under communism and befor that the German National Socialist party and “travlers” who are in theory of Irish ancestry (though some have Scottish blood mixed in).

Both communities tend to live in caravans and legaly are of “no fixed abode” which means over the years they have been subject to legal persecution. There are a whole load of issues to do with their children in terms of the fact that some do not have their births registered so they are technically “stateless” but more importantly their education is to put it politely “spoty”, which has a significant effect on their future prospects.

As is fairly well known there is a correlation between lack of education and poor socionomic and health indicators. Also a higher likelyhood of being involved with crime of one form or another.

Having been a school Governor of a school near an official site for gypsies and travelers I can say that I’ve seen some bad and quite a few good kids. However things were realy not helped by the site they lived on effectively being on the edge of an industrial estate and almost beneath a railway station, the site regularly got used for “fly tipping” often of hazardous materials simply because it was known to be a gypsy / traveler sight. Which also encoraged others to commit vandalism and arson often late at night.

Therefore the children often got prejudicial labeling from other childrens parents and bullying from other children, which we could try and deal with on school premises but not unfortunately off premises.

As with a lot of things gypsies and travelers are frequently seen by those in authority as “somebody elses problem” thus they tend to not recieve help that other minority groups do get, such as language and learning support for those who’s first language is not English, even basic community healthcare can be denied them because “they’re not in the system” and few in authority appear to want to help change that…

Clive Robinson • July 28, 2020 8:16 AM

@ name.withheld…,

When people say technology is agnostic, I say BS.

As I’ve stated before,

<>”technology is agnostic to it’s use“<>

Think about a piece of well known technology like a hammer. By inspection it can be seen it has no control over what it is used for, that is it’s down to the hand that holds it, which in turn is under the control of a “Directing mind”. Because the hammer “Has no agency” or “Free will” nor can it “sense” or “be aware” to all intents and purposes it’s as inert as a rock.

So unless the technology has a defect that can be shown, or the operator can show inability to show foresight and respond any harm caused by the hammer is clearly the responsability of the operator, which is also the legal position[1].

Thus all the fuss back in the 1980’s when self driving or autonomous vehicles became a reality due to “fuzzy logic”[2]. The fuss arose because as the vehicle had no “directing mind”, the responsible directing mind would “in theory” be down to the system installer, the system manufacturer, or who they obtained the software from, unless they could show they had acted responsibly. That is at the top of that chain is the “technologist” or who would be responsible.

Which is where your BS argument holds. That is technologists and those that renumerate them are the “Directing Minds”, in more than one way.

As I’ve seen way to often technologists can easily get “hung up on an idea” their focus narrows to solving the idea and they fail to see what effect the idea will have on the broader system or ultimately society. This started to become a problem back in the 1970’s when engineers with rather more foresight than their coleagues started to refuse to work on military projects[3]. By the late 1980’s it had become a significant issue and managment started lying to not just researchers but developers and engineers. It was the engineers that started “voting with their feet” and moving to less well paid jobs rather than work even unknowingly on weapons of mass destruction[4].

Which had a spin off effect because they enabled the rapid development of consumer products and actually changed the entire technology industry. That is electronics and software had been driven by the needs of the military, and a limited amount “trickled down” into the consumer industry. However this changed and within a decade had reversed, the electronics and software industries were led by consumer product development and the military took first a back seat and later became “the begger at the banquet”. Which is why amongst others the CIA started funding start ups and the like to try and regain some way to get their technology needs met.

Fourty years ago it was “weapons of mass destruction” these days it’s “surveillance” but the game is still the same, the likes of the Intel Community due to their own failings have fallen well behind the “expectation curve” of politicians and those who hold the purse strings that keep the IC Empires going. The end of the cold war frightened them because not only did they not predict it due to believing their own lies, they had failed to realise where the real future of national security issues had moved to with the the fall of the CCCP[5]. What the IC ended up doing was what a number of people predicted, they found/created a new enemy based on FUD to scare people with and “turned upon the hand that fed them” ie the hardworking tax paying citizens, by recasting the “Red Scares” to “Terrorist Scares” of “An enemy within”. All with very predictable results.

The difference now however is not military wants driving technology needs, but commercial technology being repurposed for Police State needs.

Thus technologists can distence themselves more than they could fourty years ago. They can design technology for “consumer good” and turn a blind eye to others repurposing it dor “societal harm”.

Take the Amazon Ring and similar home security products or the various “electronic personal assistants” like Siri/Alexa/etc. To keep costs down the sensors are made “dumb” with high capacity communications enabaling the “smarts” to be run centrally in a much more cost effective way.

The problem is that whilst it makes the technology affordable and easy to update rapidly with new features, it also at the same time makes a very effective foundation for a Police State. That the likes of Palantair, Amazon and Microsoft are now supplying to not just the various IC agencies around the world but to as many Law Enforcment Agencies who can meet the price. What most people do not realise is that the Palantair business model is at best questionable if not illegal, and it’s very similar to that of drug dealers. What they are doing is puting in systems below cost and waiting for LEO’s to become dependent on their “leased products” then when that has been achieved raising the prices such that the LEO’s can not get themselves “off of the hook” of dependency.

But worse Palantair is deliberatly using information across silos without acknoledgment or payment. Those LEO’s typing in crime reports and other statistics for their own use are having that data misappropriated by Palantair who “sanitize and repackage” it to sell on to other entities who have no right to see it or any products derived from it. From a legal stand point the data has become “fruit of the poisoned vine” and those using it know it and thus take steps to keep it hidden hence we have terms like “Parallel Construction” etc arising.

This has come about primarily because some technologist has had “a neat idea” they have run with without considering what all the potential uses would be. Worse if you challenge them they show a degree of naivety that beggers belief from those who are a little more worldly wise.

Thus it is the naive technologists, not the actual technology, that is very far from agnostic. However such naive technologists will not listen because you are in effect saying they are at best callow, which they will reject vehemently. Because it implies their cherished idea is as much if not more of a danger to society than that of weapons of mass destruction, and their cognative biases will not except that at any price. Hence they will drive on harder just to prove you wrong, whilst not looking up to see that you are infact right…

[1] In the case of say a sledge hammer, a “defect” such as, the hammer shaft breaks causing the head to fly off in an orbital elipse and hit someone. Or “inability” to respond that is somebody moves into the work area where the hammer is being used such as behind the operator where the operator can not see them, or thr hammer glances off in an unexpected direction and hits a co-worker.

[2] Fuzzy logic can be difficult to describe but it kind of arose from investications into how some nuerological feedback systems work that was a side issue of AI research back then. The upshot was that existing mathematically based control systems that needed a half million dollar computer to run in real time, could be replaced with an 8bit microcontroler and a couple of kilobytes of ROM and ROM. So things such as “soft/smoth start and braking” on unmand railway systems became practical.

[3] With the rapid rise of the microprocessor and what it could do, the making of the likes of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems involved a lot of new people than those of the traditional MIC. This brought both soul searching and conflict into what had previously been seen by many as their “play ground” and various organisations were created. By the late 1980’s the issue for the MIC had started to get sufficiently critical that the remuneration they were forced to offer made such work difficult to avoid. As with what we are seeing with Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other Silicon Valley mega corps, managment picked the money up off the table and lied to their employees about who the actual customers were. This came to an unexpected head in the Dec 86 Dr. Dobb’s Journal, which was a highly respected software journal for developers. They published a viewpoint by one of their team the again highly respected Allen Holub. The readers replies were fairly polarized and some were quite threatening. However they were effectively either supportive or extream FUD, indicating that many had unfortunatly had their cognative bias and self denial chalenged and thus over compensated in a very Dunning-Kruger way, essentialy showing the old “bigger weapon” / “challenged masculinity” mentality that arises from an inability to understand the specter of their own unreasoned fears which also drove the Cold War Arms Race much to the profitability of the MIC.

[4] This effective “brain drain” caused near panic in the MIC, Pentegon and even Whitehouse. The reason was the US Inteligence Agencies had fallen for a simple Russian ruse. They made the US Intel Community believe they had considerably more weapons production than they actually did. Primarily by changing the numbers on the sides of ship, planes and other military hardware. This in turn was not helped by the US IC counting every conscripted Russian soldier / sailor as “front line” whilst also saying that US troops were mainly non combat support such as cooks and motor mechanics etc thus making Russian numerical superiority –from conscription– look very much worse than it was in reality, where in fact Russian soldiers were not getting even basic equipment such as a second pair of boots. So this started to get the MIC / Pentagon / Whitehouse not just worried but making actual plans to try to force people such as researchers and engineers to work “Russian Style”, in effect conscripting them onto military programs and putting them in work camps etc.

[5] One prime example of this was the nonsense comming from Condoleezza “Condi” Rice when she was the 20th United States National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005 and subsequently as the 66th United States Secretary of State untill 2009. She did not get the message over 9/11 and appeared stuck in an old way of thinking ill suited to the changes we have seen since then.

Clive Robinson • July 29, 2020 3:10 AM

@ echo,

Japan wants in on Five Eyes.

You have to dig way down in the linked article to find it, but yes I’m not at all surprised.

Put simply it’s China’s behaviour over atleast the past two decades.

In essence China has decided it want’s to control amongst other things,

1, The South China Seas.
2, Strategic minerals and other resources.

I’ve mentioned both several times in the past on this blog for several years. But nobody would believe me back then…

Oh and it’s not just Japan that are making moves away from China and towards the West. Many nations around and in the South China seas are making noises about what China is upto and it’s not been helped by China throwing it’s weight around over fishing rights (it claims them all) and the attacking sinking and otherwise disapearing of unarmed fishing vessels from other nations.

Whilst the US has been in the south China seas the only news we realy get to here about it is when they play “laser tag” with China using multi megawatt systems.

China are fighting on various fronts not least of which is sending into Europe what might be politely called “Economic Agents of a Foreign Power” to try to get control of either the companies or their assets of small to medium sized companies trading in critical infrastructure technology to the world that many are not considering.

For example FM Broadcast transmitters are actually quite sophisticated technology these days those sold to Africa, South America and other “developing regions with resources” are not large in size or output power but they build these developing nations critical infrastructure effectively. Thus gaining control of not just the manufacture and sales of these critical communications infrastructure but their operating enables what is in effect a stealth take over of nations on China’s list of resource nations to take over.

It’s an area of stratigic communications you do not here about these days but they are essebtial in any “Hearts and Minds” operation and for “White Propaganda” through to “Black Propaganda”.

You can also see this occuring in the ramping up of high power HF stations as the West cuts back on it’s “Overseas Radio Services”.

Clive Robinson • July 30, 2020 12:29 AM

@ Anders,

To quote a saying in the UK,

You have to take the rough with the smooth.

It’s something you can not avoid with such schemes.

One of the main problems with all such schemes is, as the article indicates,

“In administrative proceedings, the PPA is unable to identify persons convicted in a foreign country if the information has not been entered in international databases.”

It’s been a long internationally recognised issue of “refugees” having “criminal records” not because they have committed a crime but they have been convicted of a crime for “political” reasons. Further other countries will “do favours” for other countries by making people criminals just so “awkward people can be removed from circulation”.

Thus an evaluation has to be made on each case, especially as the “politicaly convicted” are not likely to know they have been accused let alone bern found guilty in their absence.

But there is another issue “business control prohibitian” again countries for political reasons can ban people from holding control positions, whilst many are legitimate some agencies (OfCom UK for instance) to try and stop things for political reasons start legal proceedings to “begger or bankrupt” those who are carrying out legitimate business activities quite legaly.

But I note from the article one of the biggest failings of the scheme is quoted to be Estonian Banks not just not alowing people to open accounts, but are also closing existing accounts.

Unless people have access to basic banking not only can they not run a business in the country they can not live in the country either…

In the UK the banks got to the point of not alowing people to open accounts such that many many citizens could not work. Thus something like 10% of those capable of working were caught in a poverty trap. Thus form as this had become “a political embarrassment” the UK Government passed legislation such that people could get “basic banking” access.

But it is just as bad with small businesses in the UK. Say you are a market stall seller, almost by definition you are a “cash trader” the Halifax Bank as was for several years closed such accounts down without notice for no better reason than than the Bank wanted to “reorganize”. Likewise “trades” such as builders, electricians, plumbers, etc etc got their accounts closed, the official reason being given as EU “Money Laundering” legislation, the real reason the banks were under pressure from the UK tax authorities to crack down on the “black economy” where VAT and TAX were not being paid for various reasons (onerous Government paper work and regulations requiring non core business staff that were expensive and cost tens of thousands of GBP sometimes hundreds of thousands being just one of many). All the while the UK tax authorities were chasing little people any way they could large businesses were costing the UK Treasury hundreds of billions of GBP, companies like the well known “coffee shop” brands, Google, Amazon most of the mobile phone operators. Then there was all the money laundering the UK banks and Lawyers were doing as well. In essence the UK had become the worst of the worst for “white collar” financial crime… Oh and then there was the fun one, trade across the EU borders to commit VAT fraud known as “Carousel Fraud” which is estimated costs upwards of €200billion or about twice the entire EU budget,

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

Have a look down the Wikipedia page untill you come to the “‘Bond House’ decision” in essence the UK Tax authorities decided to “criminalize innocent parties” as well as witholding vast sums of monies these innocent parties were entitled to forcing an unknown number into bankruptcy or other distress, including prosecuting some. “Bond House Systems” decided to fight and as so frequently happens with the UK Government, when it got to the EU courts they got their wrists slapped and have had to pay the innocent parties back. But rather than give up the UK Government put barrier after barrier in the way…

The UK Government is not the only EU Country to “blaim the innocent” because it is both convenient and profitable. Many actively encorage such behaviours with “profit share” style “bonus schemes” the problem being is that having handed over the bonus they can not ask for it back, as that bonus can be about 1/5th of money “saved/recovered” when the EU court decides against the Government they loose big style as those who win can also claim lost interest at a much higher rate than any bank will give you. It’s this fear of loosing in the EU court that makes the UK tax authorities unjustly chase small companies whilst the large ones mentioned previously great the authorities with room after room of tax lawyers to rip them to shreds, hence the “closed door deals” that have cost untold billions.

The problem of the EU Court consistantly finding against the UK Government behaviors is one unspoken reason why Brexit got “ram rodded” through on lies and fraudulant claims.

Clive Robinson • July 30, 2020 4:38 PM

@ myliit,

With regards,

“Schrems II Offers an Opportunity—If the U.S. Wants to Take It”

The authors of that paper have made a fundemental mistake, which in turn blights much of what they say. Untill they recognise this they are going to keep making incorrect assumptions.

The problem is whilst they probably do not realise it they actually “buy in” to the idea of the US as the “master of all they survey” which is a very wrong position to take under international law.

They should not be talking about “US National Security” giving the US the right to impose it’s views and double standards on the rest of the world. There are clear jurisdictional limits that the US claims other nations should be constrained by but the US is “exceptional” thus they can impose their unwanted views and beliefs on other countries. Thus the authors implicitly “buy in” to the notion that the US can steal out of bank accounts in other nations, can impose fines on companies that have nothing what so ever to do with the US and a whole raft of other such Imperialistic Behaviours including taking away the human rights of entire nations of peoples.

With regards the Internet as I said back at the time there was a watershed moment in the UN ITU conference in Doha in 2014. Various nations made it clear that US Government and US Corporate behave being more or less the same were nolonger acceptable.

The result has been the increasing Balkanisation of the Internet. Countries are now laying subsea cables etc away from the Five-Eye “choke points” and putting in place national firewalls. I fully expect this to continue and more importantly certain nations “ring-fenced in” to keep them out of other nations communications.

Atleast the authors recognise that what the US accuses other nations of the US has been guilty of for a considerable time befor hand.

The simple fact is that the US finding it’s self at the center of the web on an “All Roads Lead to Rome” basis abused it’s position as much as it possibly could. Whilst some had been waving large flags over this abuse from before the begining of this century the majority of people did not believe it. Even after Ed Snowden made it abundently clear as did a number of others, still people did not believe it and many even now refuse to countenance it and in effect go “la la la la” whilst putting their fingers in their ears every time the subject of the illegal behaviour of the US Government and US Corporations.

At the moment other nations still trade with the US but it’s clear that many many more people than there are Americans are now fed up with US behaviour.

Thus I fully expect more court cases to go the way of Max Schrems court cases, and for other nations to slowly have less and less to do with the US. The EU certainly has started taking a different view, anoyance over Iran is still fresh in many political and diplomatic minds, along with much else. Which is why many in the EU are secretly glad to see the back of Britain, that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair made clear was the American lap dog, which is why he was given the title “Bush’s poodle”. Many can see PM Blair’s behaviour as giving the US the excuse to create mayhem in the Middle East and the EU is picking the tab up over.

Is US influence in the world on the wane, well yes, the problem is though that even a toothless tiger is still a danger to all around. The current US leadership are in effect the worst of the worst, they will quite happily destroy the world if it gives them a little more status and they have certainly not learned the lessons of 9/11…

Clive Robinson • July 31, 2020 4:46 AM

@ name.withheld…,

With regards “NICE Framework”…

I should have known better, that’s half an hour of my life I’ll never get back…

Before others read it, in essence it’s a “nothingburger H&R / Management tool” that is in effect too abstract to be of immediate real world use.

Though I can see the K&S getting put on some peoples C.V.’s much like we used to see Prince II level/task numbers some years ago.

Clive Robinson • July 31, 2020 5:17 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

If Rupert Murdoch is involved, watch out down under.

Yes indeed, Rupert ‘the bear faced lier’ Murdoch as normall is the architect of his own disaster.

Those alledged 3000 jobs were going long before Google and Co.

Basically the bear faced lier had bought up local newspapers that were quite valued for their “local reporting” and stripped out what those buying them wanted and replaced it with a “Marxist Model” of “central control” and “Sanitized Information” produced by less and less experienced writers (not even journalists). To keep the ratings up he went down the “Dirty old man” route with “Tits and Bums” on every page and invented media gossip that pushed the liable laws beyond the line.

People wised up and not to be nasty the older generation of buy a daily paper types came to a natural end.

The fact that Google & Co came in towards the end of this self immolation by the bear faced lier was just the new generation doing a new thing.

The problem the bear faced lier has is his children are not far short of being moronic law breakers themselves. They thought they could build a new media empire on line but forgot the fundemental rule of the internet,

No story is single source for more than a few minutes

Something the bear faced lier is guilty of doing which is “copy and change to avoid copyright”… Then try to charge people by putting firewalls every where the bear faced lier and the little liers could think of…

Unsuprisingly people went else where like the UK “Daily Mail on Line” and “The Guardian on line”.

After all why pay the scumbags when you can see the same story for free at multiple locations.

Anyone who is daft enough to have shares in News International should remember that much of the bear faced liers empire is now effectively worthless and only “creative accounting” is keeping that dead ‘old’ man walking. I suspect the current pandemic caused economic crisis will hit NI harder than the banks have been hit (one UK Bank has just anounced more than 2billion in losses, and I doubt there’s any way things are going to improve for them for many quaters yet to come).

Clive Robinson • July 31, 2020 6:05 AM

@ MarkH,

My Prediction Was Wrong

Err perhaps you should say “not yet right”.

As I’ve noted above I made predictions for California that thakfully for a while turned out to be wrong.

Now unfortunately the direction on the graph has changed and the number of infections is rising.

My hope as best it can be is that the infection to death rate figures are improving as we learn more about the virus.

I’m not a religious man, but my thoughts, hopes, and wishes are for things to get better and as quickly as possible.

Though it would appear that it is unlikely to happen as greed has set in and it’s slowing things down a lot. As has been noted vaccine researchers are getting their computers attacked by those from foregin countries. This would suggest the researchers are being deliberately secrative over and above any humaniterian ideals. As I’ve said before now is the time to seriously think about “Individual Rights -v- Societal Responsability” and now is not the time to be anything but socialy responsable. It’s said that “no man is an island” and “we all share the same canoe” so we are after all, all in this boat together and who lives or not should not be an “Auction of Death”.

Clive Robinson • July 31, 2020 6:25 AM

@ name.withheld…

Wasn’t the Murdoch family indicted in a spying case in the UK that eventually brought the Sun down?

It was for procuring illegal services (phone tapping and hacking) and it sun set “The News of the World” which was Murdoch’s flagship “tits, bums, gossip and slander” Sunday Newspaper (known affectionaly as “The news of the screws”).

It also nearly brought the Sun down as well but somehow the flame haired spouse beating editor managed to leave evidence up against a dustbin or something like that in a garage.

The Murdoch’s “lawyered up” and the little morons all went and hid in the US to keep away from subpoenas and warrants and other nasty bits of paper inviting them to come and tell the truth…

As usual it was the little guys that got hooked and dropped into the can. It will be interesting to see how well the bear faced liars “shut up and we will look after you” promises actual pan out, after all he did kind of pleed senility in his “requested” apperance.

Clive Robinson • July 31, 2020 3:18 PM

@ Singapore Noodles,

So the next hacker target will presumably be the computations themselves. How are these secured ?

They are secured by the lattice encryption.

There are three things you can do with knowledge/information,

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

The first two are solved problems as far as being secured by cryptographic processes, and have been one way or another since the 1950’s or earlier (see Dorothy Denning’s book from the 80’s about encrypting databases etc[1]).

The third has been a pain, for some time and is what you need homomorphic-encryption for.

We’ve known how to do bits of it for years, but whilst you can do seperate functions such Addition under one cryptographic type (stream) you had to use a different type for Multiplication etc to be secure. Any system so far has required thousands to hundreds of thousands of CPU cycles to carry out each basic function thus was not exactly efficient.

Also various functions present a problem, take a simple comparison used as a test before a change in the flow of execution. One basic way is to XOR the bytes together and check they are all zero. Obviously you can not do this on an insecure or hostile machine because you would leak information that would enable the crypto protection to be obviated.

Which brings us to your future view question of,

So the next hacker target will presumably be the computations themselves.

There is rather more to securing computarions on an insecure or hostile computer than just the basic functional steps homomorphic-encryption gives you.

If you think about the structure of a program and how it’s algorithms/methods respond to data you can tell a great deal from the resulting “execution signiture”. Look on it as “Traffic Analysis for Processing”.

As a subject there is not much available, so far it’s been mainly about deducing where data resides in “Encrypted System Core Memory (RAM)” in microcontrolers such that you can carry out “bit flipping” or similar attacks. The earliest uses of which were to get “Free access to ‘Pay to View’ content” on the likes of settop boxes and the likes of algorithms used to protect artistic content when used “off line”.

[1] Denning, Dorothy E, : “Cryptography and Data Security” (1982). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-10150-5.

Clive Robinson • August 1, 2020 11:25 AM

@ name.withheld…,

And I forgot to say my real answer of,

Podia on the Podium.

Clive Robinson • August 1, 2020 1:40 PM

@ name.withheld…,

May I suggest that a pediatrist is in order?

Just remember a pediatrist spends their working lives working with “defeet” 😉

That rustling sound you hear is me exiting stage left at high velocity 0:)

Clive Robinson • August 3, 2020 5:35 AM

@ echo,

It should also be the bread and butter job of statisticians and data verification and collation. There is no rocket science here so why the government has got itself into a mess I don’t know.

It is the National Audit Office that allegedly provides the honest statistics in the UK Government. However as I’ve noted in the past with COVID figures I’ve significantly doubted them especially as to how the attributed excess deaths over the previous five year average.

That is their figures failed to take into acount “lockdown” changes. That is for instance other sources had shown road and industrial accidents which represent a measurable percentage normally had dropped away to near zero but likewise they had not shown the rise in medically preventable deaths because people with heart conditions and the like had avoided going to seek medical treatment.

So if the NAO supposed bastion of all that can be measured were getting basic things wrong, then what hope that any other UK Government Dept?

Especially with the “PMs Brain” cumming and going to independent scientific advisory meetings basically telling them what they should say…

The simple fact is that the UK was “The Dirty Man of the World” for quite some time even using Government manipulated figures. The death rate per head of population was appaling yet the story coming out was we had things under control… Which I guess realy ment that the propaganda arm was earning their overtime pay.

Eventually other nations caught up and even the Swedish population realised they had been conned by a “cult of personality” into behaviour even lemmings avoid.

As I’ve mentioned before some people actually see profit in as many elderly deaths as possible whilst others see savings. Yet their mantra addled brains have not worked out that they to will one day be old and have no voice and history has a habit of repeating on those who do not learn… Oh and the basic fact that “Disease especially an airborne one is no respector of wealth, privilege or power”[1].

However there is a new attack by those who do not like basic science and they’ve managed to get some scientists to go along with them.

It’s the argument that huge sums of money and other resources are being wasted on “Surface Cleaning” where people can touch and potentialy come into contact with SARS-CoV-2 virus. It’s being “dressed up” in various ways but the underlying message is it’s taking money out of the pockets who think the money should be theirs…

The point they are not telling and it’s a very very important one and that is,

The Fallacy of Defence Spending.

The simple fact is you never know when you are overspending on defence, all you can know is when you have not spent enough thus you get attacked and maybe die.

The second problem is war is rarely expenential because it is tied to “linear” production processes. Disease transmission is however as we all should know by now “exponential”.

Thus by the time you realise you are not spending enough on defence the exponential rise is going up to fast to easily get on top of, and requires in comparison to the defence costs many many times more.

Something those in Leicestershire and other parts of the UK are finding out the hard way…

And this is not helped by certain politically motivated agendas some of whom are academics claiming the new shutdowns are in fact “racial and religious discrimination” against people from West and South Asia (basically those from Pakistan or of the Muslim faith).

The simple fact is the figures show that the problem of community spread has been growing alarmingly in those areas and despite several weeks of warning the UK Government failed to be responsive and instead sat on it’s hands and as usuall waited way to long before they were forced into acting…

[1] Something senior US politicos with a contempt for basic science are finding out or more correctly their families are back in April Forbes had a tally on then,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/04/07/these-34-us-lawmakers-have-tested-positive-for-covid-19/

I dread to think what it is now but “proudly being mask free” is a somewhat stupid thing to die from.

Clive Robinson • August 5, 2020 1:42 AM

@ echo,

I’m not aware of any specific legal requirement for the BBC to provide “balance”

The BBC Charter is a legal document and in some respects it is like a “letter of Marque”[1] given by a soverign to a merchant ventura, that confers on the holder the ability to do something that others are legaly not, but it also applies constraints.

Thus every few years the Government of the day “re-assess” the BBC charter and there is little the BBC or anyone else can do to change what they decide[2].

All I can sayis I’m jolly glad I’m not like them.

After years of thinking about things and thus changing in the process,

All I can say, is I hope I’m not like them in action or deed. But at the end of the day like most people I’m a product of how I am treated.

We are all of “common clay” in our making, as Shakespeare had Shylock note in the Merchant of Venice,

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”

We thus have to hope we can rise above the clay at all times despite the provocation of others who have sunk below it, for greed or other sins that are said to be deadly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque

Note that what was issued to a “privateer” was actually a “Letter of Marque and repriasal”.

[2] For instance the “Free Licence” was a “gift from the Government to certain people”. That is the BBC still recieved the money from the Government for those licences (which was in 2017-18 £655.3 million or 17.1%). Well now they have changed it so it still appears as a “gift from the Government” but in reality the entire expense of that “gift” comes out of the BBC’s finances, but… It’s actually worse than that as they are also required to “outsource” the operation of collecting licence fees to one of the Government’s “Cronie Corps” like Serco / G4S / Capita, all of whom have had significant fiducuary irregularities to their benift which most would call fraud. But these people in turn gain prosecutial powers that they use against mainly the disadvantaged in society. Due to a bonus scheme that pays licence agents to essebtialy commit what many would consider supplying false evidence to courts. The result of this includes sending armed police officers to peoples homes, which they have done a number of times all of which is paid for by other licence payers…

Clive Robinson • August 5, 2020 7:27 PM

@ echo,

Yeah and it’s bloody tough going at times.

Nature decided that life would never be easy, and it does not help that some believe in making it worse a lot worse for their own gain.

Perhaps the biggest mark of a society is how it looks after all of it’s own, especially those who through no fault of their own have become disadvantaged.

And perhaps a mark of equall importance on a society is how it deals with those that harm others and take that which they have no right to. Whilst being selfish or greedy are not crimes, acting on those impulses so that others come to harm used to be legislated against or dealt with by common consent of peers (Tort). Thus we had valid reasons to exclude people from society (imprisonment etc) or take back from them by equal or greater measure what they had taken from others (fines etc).

However our current crop of legislators have fairly clearly been either corrupted or perverted by those who’s sole interest in life is to have “self entitlement at the expense of all others” and to create lies and induce false fear or faux envy to try to make what they are doing apparently less evil or less morally or socially wrong…

Thus the question arises as to how to clear out this mess that makes removing the piles of festering corruption in the Aegean Stables appear trivial.