Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • March 18, 2023 1:35 AM

@ vas pup,

Re : Phages are alternatives to antibiotics.

I first heard about the use of phages back in the 1970’s when anti-biotics wwre still not that good especially if you had an alergy to penicillin as many do.

The research had “leaked out” across the “iron curtain” where anti-biotics were even less well developed and instead they had gone down the phage route. Why I can not remember precisely (I was quite young) however I do remember the Vietnam war was still hitting the news almost every night and it was clear that the meds available were not sufficient to meet the needs of those hurt.

The research on phages had progressed quite well into the 1980’s and as a therapy it was being used fairly widely behind the then Iron Curtain.

The problem from the West and Big Phama perspective back then is what it still is today. No matter how good something is unless Big Phama can make inordinate amounts of money out of it they won’t touch it. So Big Phama in the West chose to go down the streptomyces family of bacterium and produced quite a number of DNA interfering antibiotics and one or two that interfere with RNA (some of which were looked at for C19 treatment).

Worse if it’s a quick cure Big Phama won’t want to touch it either. As was seen a decade or so later with “stomach ulcers” Big Phama was spending the equivalent in todays money of billions researching not a cure but ever more expensive symptom treatments that you would have to take indefinately, thus at an eye-wateringly high price year after year it was in patent or in the US other legislation.

You can imagine the horror the US drug industry felt when an Australian Doctor discovered the ulcers and potentially a stomach cancer were caused by a bacteria from sewage that was living in the highly acidic conditions in the stomach[1].

Worse for Big Phama he was curing people of ulcers quickly and relatively symptom free for just pennies as the antibiotic that was most effective at the time was out of patent and US legislation and was “generic”. I can not remember what the kick back was at the time in the US but I do know some patients “went down to Mexico” to get treatment that was being denied them in the US.

Any way there is no money in phages for Big Phama so it won’t get approved by the FDA even if the rest of the world goes down that route.

If you doubt what I’m saying look up a gout medication that is about the only one that works and it’s been used for over 3500years. It’s a bitter tasting naturally occurring alkaloid extract from all parts of the autumn crocus plant. It’s been used to treat acute inflamation of various types not just gout for most of that time and it apparently works via the white blood cells. In modern pill form you take between two and four 500ug tablets a day and no more than twelve tablets in total for any one flare up of inflamation.

So 12 tablets, that cost at most pennies to make, so you might ask,

“Where’s the profit in that?”

Obviously there is not either for Big Phama, or the FDA, or is there…

So a new wheeze was thought up and it’s called the “Waxman Hatch Amendment”. All such “old medicines” will have to be tested under FDA approvals legislation. In return for giving the FDA a substabtial “back hander” URL Phama got exclusivity, and upped the price from 9cents 5000% and based on various figures would have pulled in a half billion dollars a year back then.

A US Congressman wrote to URL Phama “requesting” costs and reasoning after the outcry… Apparently also URL thought it was OK to send leagal threat letters to Drs who expressed outrage at what URL had done and the big fat backhander the FDA got.

After URL was sold to Takeda Pharmaceuticals, they launched several legal cases against another (UK based) pharmasutical company and eventually lost and was ordered to pay tens of millions for lost revenue (which was penuts on what they were making),

https://www.reuters.com/article/ip-colcrys-idUSL1N1YJ039

The sad thing is there is over a thousand drugs that were in standard use befor the FDA existed and any company that does a bit of alleged research and hands over around $50 million to the FDA will get as a minimum three years sole rights to the US market and can basically charge what they like with the FDA bkessing, and potentially get several billions back from the US tax payer both via taxes and health care insurance…

Whilst the rest of the world carries on paying the 10 cents or less for the generic pills made in places like India to the highest standards required…

So no I can not see phage based pharmaceuticals ever getting onto the US market.

[1] The bacteria is Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) and around half of us have it in the mucus lining of the stomach after we ate-dirt or worse when we were very young children. Curiously few go on to develop ulcers, and it appears there is a “susceptible type” where the bacteria gets out of control. These days a simple though unplesant test is carried out and a several week cource of out of pattent antibiotics kill the infection and the ulcers heal naturally.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/h-pylori/symptoms-causes/syc-20356171

One interesting thing is some doctors on just seeing the symptoms start a patient on the antibiotics, and there have been a few cases where the test came back showing what was cancer. However some Doctors continued the treatment and the cancer went into remission.

Clive Robinson • March 18, 2023 10:40 PM

@ vas pup, meh, ALL,

Re : Security threat of neo-con thinking.

You correctly note that,

“That is absolutely true not only in drug field. Financial interest is always prevail health interest of common Joe and Jane but also by attitude that the rest of the world is wrong by we, US, are right by default.”

But you did not go on to the point relevant to this blog of it’s effect on “security”

I won’t go into full details again but just note I have done for healthcare long befor C19 on this blog and other places in the past. And shown that the neo-con thinkers can not protect themselves from their own stupidity as pathogens respect no human status divides. So the neo-cons suffer the same results as those they inflict on others, which C19 demonstrated and still continues to do so. And if the rumored news is true that a variation of “Bird Flu” found in the US is “human transmisable” it will demonstrate again that neo-con thinking is a security threat to all, not just those the neo-cons see as inferior to themselves.

But also security is threatend in another way, neo-con and libertarian thinking mainly regresses to very very limited horizons as a friend once said “to what they can punch, kick, or beat”. Which in turn increasingly leads to “short term thinking” which regresses to the point of “tommorow never happens” which is highly destructive to society and leads to both fragility and a downward spiral. Both of which effect the neo-cons as well as those they incorrectly think are inferior. I pointed out the dangers to both the economy and stability of society that amoungst other things “Off-shoring” brings. C19 demonstrated a part of this with the colapse of supply chains. It also demonstrated a significant loss in “skill” at all levels of the general populous. Which is still being demonstrated when you look at the issues with seniconductors and much else involving manufacturing that China coverts from it’s neighbours in the South China Sea and West Pacific. Worse it also has caused the loss of “basic life skills” in much of the US populous, such that they can not respond to change that our grand and great grandparents regarded as part of normal seasonal life like how to keep warm, comfortable and productive with minimal fuel usage. The question arising is “Has the US and much of “The West” gone over a tipping point?” that is can the US and Europe and similar re-skill or try to find new skills to keep ahead? Crypto-coins, Smart Contracts, NFTs and one of the Web3 nonsense notions demonstrate the falacy that kind of thinking can bring out, but directly appeals to those of neo-con very short term thinking).

Which brings up the changes of societal living conditions, thus life expectance, that can only inevitably lead to conflict. As we should all know but for some inexplicable reason ignore, conflict is always more destructive than can be imagined (need I mention the events to the East of Europe as a current example of “oppressor stupidty” and the global security consequences arising?). Worse conficts destruction brings no advantages to either side even short term, it is when all is said and done at best pyrrhic especially when seen via “lost opportunity” costs.

The fact neo-con thinking is charecterised by “Them and us” and “Might is right” attitudes almost always gives rise to oppression and conflict which points out why for “security” such thinking is such a risk to all.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2023 9:12 AM

@ Nick Levinson,

Re : Crook or Criminal,

“A crook but not a criminal: I’m not a lawyer; but I think calling someone a crook (communicated to a third person) is slander or libel in the U.S.”

The libel/slander difference is the “by written or spoken word” would issue and the law regards it with seriousness because it effects the size of the potential harm.

But it becomes irrelevant if there is “no third party” it’s due to the same strange reasoning as to why assult and tourture are different (ie intent of directing mind).

But there are other concernes, which was why I was carefull to say,

“It’s reasonable to enquire if some one is a “crook” if the behaviour they exhibit towards you warrents it.”

The defence to liable/slander comes “built in” for two reasons,

That is with the statment “a crook” there is an issue of what you prepend it with. That is there is a mountain of difference between,

1, Are you
2, You are

An “enquiry” is the former a “statment” is the latter.

This leaves the determination of the “Directing mind” which boils down to are you using an “enquiry” to make a “statment”.

Thus the “behaviour they exhibit” made by the libellant becomes a “reasonability test” of the now famous “man on the Clapham Ombibus”. Obvious and egregious behavior by the libellant effectively negates the need for the test and would be grounds for the action by the libellant to be dismissed. Less so may require further enquiry, but in these days of “ID theft” and “gain from unwarented enquiry” the financial figures alone speak in the favour of a security concious mind, which takes the burden of proof for the person defending themselves against the libellant so low it would give grounds to consider the case for liable/slander actually a “nuisance case”. For which in the US I have been informed there is a Anti-SLAPP legislation based on first ammendnent rights in the US,

https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/

Which has a curious hook in it, for the libellant to have such a motion from the defendent struck, they would have to negate the “free speech” aspect, which can only be done by claiming the speach in question was indeed understood by them to be an “enquiry” and was therefore not a “statment” with the intent to harm.

It’s why back in the days of Super-Injunctions and the like, I was told that potential libellants in the US would get better results under the English judicial system and Mr Justice Tugendhat gained both a degree of fame and riabled notoriety.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2023 12:18 PM

@ Winter,

“Over time I have had some, online, discussions with neo-con/anarchist/libertarian people.”

You have my sympathies, though I caution “pick your anarchists with care” many are not as the popularist tropes make them out to be. In many ways it’s like the tropes about “communists” that belch out of certain types that near mindlessly frequent US less than fringe politics.

However,

“But over time I could summarize their ideas simply in the words of this beacon of deep thinking, M. Thatcher”

Do you pick that because you see the logical fallacy in her statement, of denying there is a society, then saying people must help their neighbours (such stupidities were rife in her many words)…

“Which means that these (pseudo-) libertarians had no concept of public health, at all.”

Or anything else of importance either for that matter. They were then, and still are now, a group of “not all there” types who believe that they, and they alone, are entitled, and the rest of us are undiserving of anything for disagreeing with their perverted views.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2023 1:25 PM

@ modem phonemes,

Re : FPGAs for C-v-P prisons.

“Would Bunnie Huang’s Precursor device let one experiment in hardware with your C-v-P ideas ?”

I’ve not seen sufficient information to say…

However I can tell you that my prototypes were made with PIC-Chips as the Prototype prisons and state machine hypervisors. Likewise so were the “jail doors” that acted as the “post box” MMU to Core RAM.

So you should be able to build the same with some modern SoCs used for the likes of hard drive controlers.

There are a couple of limitations with developing ALU and RISC CPU in FPGAs,

1, Number of usable gates.
2, Gate routing matrix depth.

Whilst you can get 1/4 million gate FPGA’s as others have found from SDR and other designs often there is considerable compromise on routing and gate usage and it’s not always obvious when you are going to “wall off” large numbers of gates due to routing with any particular device type.

Often the “tools” like non VHDL compilers will let you down and you have little choice but to “hand tape” which is both frustrating and time consuming. Just learning VHDL to the required level is enough to bend some peoples brains indefinately.

Ron Rivist “The R of RSA” has a few horror stories of developing tools for ASIC layout and other engineers in the 80’s with devices as simple as 20V10 PAL’s,

http://web.mit.edu/6.115/www/document/gal22v10.pdf

So it’s not a pool anyone can confidently put their toe in, though some “famous names” have tried to make it easier. Niklaus Wirth “the father of Pascal” being one, but for some reason the University he worked for has moved or deleted it.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2023 7:11 PM

@ Winter,

“It was Hayek meets Ayn Rand, not more.”

Grief, that’s the equivalent of dog turd a top a pizza…

An aquired taste the nobody should have a taste for ever.

I still think, after getting on for most of my life, that reading the fifty page diatribe in an otherwise realy bad Sifi story of Atlas Shruged was time that,

1, I shall never get back.
2, Was worse way worse than being a waste of time.

But… I must admit trying to makes sense of the male bovine excreta that is the canon of Hayek is likewise time that could have been better spent having my teeth ground down with a foot driven drill[1]…

At least his cousin could see reason in nonsense, which still makes sense to me[2]…

Of Hayek, the only thing that I found of real use was the arguments of “Dispersed knowledge” which can explain behaviour of entities with agency in the face of genuine uncertainty. It also is usefull when you consider witness “Points of View”(PoV) as an investigator.

No witness sees the whole event thus they have uncertainty in their PoV or truth. With N witnesses you actually have N+1 truths, the N PoVs of the witnesses and the +1 being the actual event truth that nobody saw. As an investigator you know that the witnesses must not be alowed to talk to each other as their PoVs will change and their truths with it. Also you know that witnesses may colaberate or collude to give false PoVs. You can on interviewing the withesses build the N subsets of knowledge from their PoV’s with a little luck all the points of the unseen +1 truth will be included across the N truths thus there will be no uncertainty. However two or more witnesses with what are effectively identical sub sets may well be colluding. You can use other witnesses sub sets to pull out what points conflict and thus are potentially false points. This enables you to remove potentially false information from your construction of the +1 set.

You do the same thing with inteligence reports to try and find the +1 that is the opponents actual state is, even in the face of potential or actual deception.

Dispersed knowledge has a flip side which is “Distributed knowledge”. That is an entity A knows a causal relationship such as C only has their coat if they are entering or leaving the work floor at the begining or end of the work shift. Entity B sees C with their coat heading towards the door vut ebtiry A does not. Neither A nor B know what the time is (such is shift work in a 24hour lit work floor), but with the knowledge of A and B shared, they will know it is shift end and time to leave themselves.

[1] Yes even post WWII in England some dentists still used “foot treadle” drills… When I was very young, an Australian dentist used such a device on me and snapped the drill in my tooth, I ran out with the drill still stuck in me all the way home and hid in the “coal shed” hours later in a hospital and under a gas general anesthetic –because I was still in terror/shock, it was removed. For some reason I have an intense dislike of nearly all dentists…

[2] Hayek’s cousin Wittgenstein, actuall did make reason and sense out of nonsense, the definition of which was nonsense in the cryptographic or information theoretical sense as in extraxting signals from noise. The old,

Send three and four pence I’m going to a dance

Is a form of such nonsense caused by sufficient loss of signal in noise and the human brain trying to make sense of it… (the actual message being “send reinforcments we are going to advance”). Wittgenstein correctly pointed out the structure of a sentance were like the hinges of a door and had to be firmly in place if the door was to function. But hinges alone serve no purpose. That is a correctly structured sentance does not of necessity convey actual information.