Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 30, 2021 4:12 AM

@ Nick Levinson, ALL,

The lady concerned is disabled and spends her life trying to make life better for other disabled people.

Her real crime if you can call it that, was “being easy to contact” both personally and through her employer, because she want’s to make life better for other people.

People on this blog, have wondered in the past why I do not have my own blog and do not give contact details of either myself or the people I have worked for over the years.

Well the reasons are several, one of which is I don’t want to appear to be “hanging ‘a for hire’ notice up” when I give advice, and in part the work involved as our host @Bruce can testify to. But more importantly my liberty and property.

As I’ve mentioned before I had a very near escape back in the 1980’s when UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went on the war path and wanted mine and others scalps on her belt. Also later one or two others in the bad old days before “responsible disclosure” became a subject first of conversation, then later a de facto way of doing things as “best practice” (something several like Oracle and their resident blood suckers hated).

Thus I found out that “speaking truth unto power” can have a significant price to pay for the unwary.

Clive Robinson • October 31, 2021 4:57 AM

@ Ted, echo, NL,

I remember the show’s host being rather incredulous as to why Depp would take this to trial considering all the additional exposure it would bring.

Look up UK “super injunctions / interdicts” they were at one point a very good reason to come legal shopping in the UK to protect your image,

https://www.alstonasquith.com/super-injunctions-a-brief-history-of-revealed-cases/

You will see that Rupert “The bear faced liar” Murdoch MSM outlets have been hit with them rather more frequently than others. As was once noted about one of them, their behaviour made the gutter press look respectable.

But for other reasons than puerile yellow jounalism, I think the news outlet with most court experience is the satirical bi-weakly “Private Eye” which Ian Hislop is Editor of[2]. But unlike the Murdoch bumff Private Eye brings real public interest stories to light that are otherwise kept hidden.

But to get an injunction you first need to have a court case going through the long slow legal process, which is where English “Defamation Law”[1] comes in that covers libel and slander and other act,

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

As such it covers both private (civil) and public (criminal) duties in a slightly convoluted way.

The thing is “Defamation” means different things to different people(s). For instance the House of Saud has made it equivalent to terrorism and treats it in similar ways to the US “War on Terror” with what is considered “extrajudicial execution” in other parts of the world. In South Korea it in part covers espionage, as well as being applicable even if the libel is infact true (false light / intent argument)…

[1] As for the story that English Defamation laws arose out of a need for “Gentlemen to avoid the cut and thrust of dueling, and lawyers are oh so much nastier than a rapier to the guts anyway” it’s not actually true, sadly. What happened was an upsurge in libel actions coincident to, but not consequential from, James the First making dueling illegal. Because as both ritual murder and suicide were “mortal sins” as far as the Church was concerned. Unless they were the ones handing it out as penance etc (and yes the Church jealously protects what they see as their “privileges” with a zeal like no other).

[2] The interestingly quaint thing about “Private Eye” is not just how it came to be, but the way the annual dividends are payed…

Clive Robinson • October 31, 2021 1:57 PM

@ MarkH, MikeA., someone,

I remember young computer enthusiasts claiming that the red emergency stop button on IBM mainframes activated a pyrotechnic cutting device to sever the power cables!

That old chestnut has a beard that’s longer and whiter than that of Methuselah.

It all comes from two related things,

1, HAL is one letter before IBM.
2, An unused 2001 plot line.

The plot line was saved over for the 2001 book sequal and involved a ceramic bladed cutter that could be activated by someones desk calculator if they typed in the right equation.

As many will renember HAL was the name of not just the computer but the initials of the company that designed it in 2001. The “HAL is a one up on IBM” statment was always denied by the author of the book. Which as it was written at the same time as the film script HAL may not have actually been the authors original idea…

Any way the other story about “Big Red Safety”(BRS) buttons is apparently true, there was a young lady called Molly and when quite small she did indeed push the BRS button on an IBM 4341 one day, hence the need for the “Molly Guard”. However similar “switch covers” had been around before that.

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2021 6:20 AM

@ Anders, SpaceLifeForm,

Fun reading

It takes me back to several years before that summer of fun…

Imagine if you can a tall teenager with lank hair standing on the lawn of an English Garden with “post office” bakalite moving metal plate (tellephone receiver) headphones on, with the cotton covered wire sneaking off towards a large wooden shed. In the teenagers hands a length of plastic drain pipe with the reworked parts of a VHF Band II antenna, it’s brown plastic cable in much stiffer coils, than the headphone wire likewise snakes back to the shed. The teenagers eyes are closed and a look of intense concentration is seen on their face, because they are like primeval man spear in hand hunting for the spore of the prey they seek.

The hunter turns left and right slowly listening intently to the static from the headphones, seeking a tone, as the prey is driven by the immutable forces of celestial mechanics towards them over the horizon.

Suddenly the posture changes, now alert and sharp the hunter has the spore, the track begins. The barely heard tone becomes a grinding warble of a mechanical beast traversing the heavens crying out it’s primal song of the sky as endlessly it moves at great speed devouring the miles in just a heartbeat of the hunter. Can he keep up and follow the track of the beast as it arcs and turns in it’s driven flight. The pipe rises it follows a little dance of left and rights ups and downs keeping the warble loud in both ears as it ascends, high across the sky it tracks, the hunter turns as he follows the warble to it’s zenith, then the warble descending to the horizon where the spore is lost.

Huredly the hunter puts down the pipe tears off the headset and sprints to the shed and calls out. Because time is of the essence for soon the beast shall return with a new song of the sky, and there is much to be done between.

In the shed a doctor stands, his hands upon the instruments he has just used to captured this song of the sky. In his mind he wonders is it good, what secrets will it show, are they going to be a portend. The open reel of tape spins back the counter ticks down a mark is reached. Another instrument receives attention as the tape now rolls forward, the song of the sky is heard again, and on the instrument a bright dot traverses across the instruments face, falters but then steadies, each traversal takes the dot down a hairs width mesmerising in it’s path.

Quickly the tape is rolled back the hunter now in the shed, goes to a box mounted on a sturdy frame and checks it. A nod to the Doctor and so the procedure starts with a flurry. The light goes out the selector is turned the song of the sky repeats. The hunter presses a lever and an eye in the box opens. It tracks the dot as it traverses the face of the instrument the minutes pass the dot descends and the Doctor stops the tape and the hunter closes the eye and leaves the shed.

Inside the darkness the doctor opens the box and removes with care a small square of plastic, he drops it in a tray and another lever is pressed. In the tray a liquid swirls a strange brew stirs and the magic it brings turns silver to the gold of information. Slowly though unseen a picture forms. Suddenly a ping is heard a dim satanic light appears the doctor’s shadow thrown in gothic relief against a bank of equipment the slip of plastic is moved from tray to tray and the magic continues the image is now seen in miniature as though tattooed upon it.

A click and flicker and the white florescent light returns and the hunter enters with two cups of steaming brew which are placed with care on the table of operation the doctor is at, his fingers busy with a scalpel, cutting the square to shape. With speed and dexterity of practice the square is fixed in yet more plastic. The Doctor turns and drops it in a carrier slot, and then pushed into another box. A switch is thrown and a bright light shines forth and the image is seen. As the brew is sipped the eyes of hunter and doctor alike look with keen attention. The hunter turns and says,

“That’s dirty weather off Calais”

And the doctor nods and looks at his watch and then a list on the wall and replys,

“Five minutes to the next pass”.

A few more sips the cups are done, the hunter leaves with them. Inside the doctor turns out the light and pulls another plastic square from it’s dark lair and fixes it in the box. The hunter returns to his spot puts on the headphones and picks up the pipe and the hunt for sky songs begins again.

================

This hunt of NOAA’s beasts was back in the 1970’s and the weather pictures obtained were part of a school project for not just an examination but to provide teaching information for several classes.

Part of the project was actually quite dangerous, and it was the conversion of a black and white TV to act as the CRT display as the equivalent of a “photo ploter” using a raster rather than a vector projection.

Now I know the valve/tube TV cost 25pence at a jumble sale and the conversion though involving lots of rewiring only needed the addition of a dual tetrode and socket for an audio amp got from a valve radio also for 25p at the same jumble sale.

As for the 135MHz receiver that was from a modified “Pye Westminster” PMR transverter that had been originally modified to the 144MHz 2 meter amature band and just required a new channel crystal and slight retune.

But the modified TV and home made camera box were the equivalent of the actual working guts of that many tebs of thousands of dollar printer that the Bell Labs team were wrestling with that “Summer of Seventy Nine”.

The advantage we had was we did not have to serialise an image to drive it, that was done by the NOAA satellite for us, and we just recorded it on a rather nice reel to reel 1/4 inch tape recorder (again got from that jumble sale).

The funny thing just a couple of years later I was working on programing a 16bit computer, writing a satelite tracking program that not only output tables of “pass data” but produced a map of the world with the satellite track on it as well as the radio coverage track. Which would show up on a Textronics graphics terminal or a large drum plotter as a fun college project, at about the same time the Bell bods were doing their “summer job”.

As I’ve mentioned before, my official course project was the design and build of a D2A and A2D converter board including PCBs for connecting to CP/M 8bit computers in the computing lab so that other students could “learn”[1]. I later wrote software for it to connect up to a lab X/Y vector display and one of those Polorid instant photo cameras. And yes I used an audio tape and PLL circuit to display WeatherFAX pictures[2] transmitted in the MF shipping band and a modified version of the D2A board to write up “vector” text just like you would see on the very very expensive textronic terminal.

So yeah, it brings back memories of when computing was rolled up sleves, hot soldering irons, and wire wrap guns to make images for other people to put in their project documentation, or just get safely from A to B…

[1] As they were cheap and plentiful I used a DB25 IDC connector and ribbon cable to connect it to the lab computers giving 8data, 6address, R/W, CLK, Enable, power, and ground lines. Which later had the ubexpected advantage that just the addition of a couple of TTL chips ment it worked on the “centronics” parallel connector on my Apple ][ and the early IBM PC as well as the “Hewlart Packard Instruments Bus”(HPIB) used at the University electronics labs.

[2] Another project I did was a compleate “WeatherFAX” machine using originally a Tangerine 6502 board, then a Z80 SMC board and later a custom Z80 card and the guts of an Epsom dot matrix printer, for a company to custom case and sell to sailing clubs and more affluent day boat sailors. They only made a few as they could not get “production” organised in a sensible and cost effective way[3]. Cottage industry production is OK for custom production but not commodity or consumer production, a lesson that has served me well over the many intervening years).

[3] What also might not of helped was the rapidly declining cost of home computers and printers. I Rewrote the WeatherFAX software to run on a couple of very low cost computers including the Jupiter Ace Forth computer and in effect “gave it away” on casset tape…

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2021 8:23 AM

@ MarkH, ALL,

With regards, the Unicode “bidi” algorithm bug.

Thinking back to when the *nix internationalisation was causing issues and what people did as work arounds. There may be a simple work around[1] for some source code,

1, Run all source code through a filter that converts Unicode to ASCII (many editors will have a “Save as ASCII” option anyway).

2, Run the filter output through the compiler pre-processor only, so you get code expansion.

Take that expanded pre-processor output and then do your code review on it…

[1] Not all compilers are going to have this issue, because they don’t accept “unicode source” as input.

Why modern compilers do by default is a bit of a mystery as well… They realy should not do so unless specifically told to with a “switch”. On the “least unexpected behaviour” principle and likewise the “No hidden behaviour” principle (which did cause older source code control systems to barf).

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2021 6:20 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Normal yarns are not a tensile-strong compared to other spun, woven or rove ropes of similar dimensions. But once knitted they become highly elastic and drape.

The reason they become “elastic” in layman’s terms is something I looked into when younger. It’s also known as a “right royal pain” to anyone handling “spooled” items such as wire etc. Hence the kinks and mutterings it you “drop over the end spool” rather than “unspool / unroll”.

Whilst the thread may not be longitudinally elastic, it tends to be gracious to torsion. Thus energy can be stored in a similar way to turning a spring where the diameter of the turns changes. Within limits a rough rule of thumb is the stiffer the thread, the better it is for storing energy and the faster it will release it.

One important point the material should not be ductile or maliable as any energy that takes it to about 2/3 rds of it’s plastic limit will be used to permanently distort the material. So avoid many precious metals and if using iron, ensure it has a high carbon content (which is known to cause embrittlement if not properly dealt with).

Fun fact, if you are going to use diamond as a cutting tool, remember they disolve fairly quickly and easily in molton iron… It’s one of the reasons “carbide tools” are suggested for cutting iron based materials, they wear less.

Clive Robinson • November 4, 2021 6:55 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

With regards,

“The sanctions effectively prohibit any U.S. company, as well as American citizens working in the U.S. from doing any business with NSO”

Sounds like a blanket “You’re not Welcome here” notice[1].

But…

“This sanction does not prevent NSO from selling its spyware to U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agencies, Jacobson said.”

Hmmm so it’s actually not a “go away” notice but aone way street arangment of “keep shipping your spyware to us and we will keep buying it”

So NSO could get the goods and services it needs from other places, then just “pass the cost back” to the USG and LEO’s…

Begining to sound more like “taking target practice at the podium” by the USG…

[1] Such sanctions are fairly easy to avoid if those sanctioned wish to. The just buy through another country with an unrelated company name or ownership, and then ship to where they wish. Some countries would actively help them for a little “Quid Pro Quo”

Clive Robinson • November 5, 2021 10:14 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

I do not see a vehicle, yet the shadow indicates there should be one.

After looking at it for a few minutes and comparing it to the white vehicle to the left…

My guess and it is just a guess as the resolution is not sufficient is that there is a dark coloured vehicle parked up in almost exactly the same way as the white vehicle. The difference being,

1, It’s colour is probably dark blue
2, It has the left hand door open
3, The angle of the glass in wind screen and door are causing flare in the direct and adjacent pixels in the camera sensor.

If you look for a while on the right hand side of what looks like the shadow you can see a small curved bump before the shadow curves to the left. Comparing with similar on the white vehicle, I would say that is the rear left bumper / tail end.

If you look for a while at the entire shadow area you actually see a slight diference in both colour and stipling aproximately the same shape as around the white vehicle.

Further if you look at the white vehicle it appears to also have sun flare off of it’s windscreen as well in the same way as is seen on the right hand shadow/vehicle. Also on the left hand side of both shadows there is a small bump that would appear to corespond to where you would expect door/wing mirrors to throw shadows. That is you can see the door/wing mirror on the white vehicle, if you draw,a line up from it to the bunp, it is parallel to a line you get from the rear of the roof to the maximum point of the shadow. The angles are very slightly different on the dark vehicle shadow. But… If you look at the right hand side, you see the left hand side of the vehicles and the angular difference coresponds to that of those cast by what are door/Wing mirrors.

So my guess and that is all it is, is almost identical vehicles probably both “company vehicles” leadsd/purchased at the same time, but one white the other a different colour probably dark blue. They are parked up at almost the same angle as the difference betweeb the white vehicle and dark vehicle is that the left hand door from the drivers perspective of the dark vehicle on the right has its door open. Even though there is no “human shadow” suggesting the person who opend the dooe is in the vehicle.

So “over to you” and others to tear my rumey old eyesight appart.