Friday Squid Blogging: Giggling Squid
Giggling Squid is a Thai chain in the UK.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Read my blog posting guidelines here.
Comments
ResearcherZero • June 23, 2023 5:41 PM
“The task was to divide material assets (in Ukraine),” he said.
“There was massive theft in the Donbas, but they wanted more.”
“The Defence Ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO,” Mr Prigozhin said in a video clip released on Telegram by his press service, calling the official version “a beautiful story”.
“The special operation was started for different reasons,” he said.
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-24/wagner-boss-says-moscows-war-in-ukraine-based-on-lies/102519130
“Two agendas are forming—one on the ground, the other on the president’s table,” he said.
Some observers have suggested Prigozhin might be speaking with the tacit approval of the Kremlin, which may be looking to shift blame for the war from Putin by scapegoating other figures such as Shoigu.
Prigozhin did not directly attack Putin in the video, instead claiming the president was being deceived by his generals and other figures around him. In reality though, Putin—not Shoigu—has taken the lead in making the claims around Donbas and de-Nazification the central justifications of the war, reciting them in his speech declaring his “Special Military Operation.”
‘https://abcnews.go.com/International/stunning-rebuke-putin-wagner-chief-russias-invasion-ukraine/story?id=100335756
vas pup • June 23, 2023 7:19 PM
How do surveillance planes spot ocean submersibles?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230621-titanic-sub-how-do-surveillance-planes-
detect-ocean-submersibles
“Hunting for submersibles is traditionally the exclusive job of some of the largest and most technologically-advanced aircraft in any air force. Often based on civilian
designs, these machines deploy a => suite of impressive-sounding sensors to locate
military submarines under the sea. It’s usually a cat-and-mouse game between aircraft and submarines that want to stay hidden. That’s not the case here.
The fact that these aerial hunters are packed with advanced new technology would seem to give them the advantage. Yet as the lost Titan sub shows, submersibles remain very difficult to find, especially at depths of 3.8km (12,400ft) where the wreck of the Titanic is found.
The aircraft heard the noise after dropping sonar buoys, which drifted on the surface, listening for sounds that nature would be unlikely to make. It picked up a regular banging noise at 30-minute intervals, something that experts suggest are a sign they are being made by human beings.
Acoustic noise travels far in water, so that is both good and bad news. You would need (at least) !!! three of those static buoys to be able to triangulate the sound source to get a position fix.”
The Lockheed P-3 Orion is also equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors, which detect tiny disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by metallic submarine hulls. If an aircraft equipped with the detectors flies over a large mass of metal within its detection range, then it will pick it up. The presence of a known wreckage of a large steel hulled vessel like the Titanic makes using this technique harder.
the P-3 is not the only aircraft involved in the search. Other planes scouring the
Atlantic include the C-130 Hercules and the relatively new Boeing P-8 Poseidon, known as the most advanced maritime patrol craft in the world.
Poseidon’s aircrew uses a grid pattern to work out where a submersible is not, and then closes in on where it might be. It does this by deploying one of the most effective ways of tracking a submarine: sonobuoy fields. Fired from a rotary launcher at a high altitude, air parachuted Multistatic Active Coherent (Mac) buoys generate multiple sonar pulses over time in order to last longer and extend their search range. The arrangement of buoys like these is the one of the most classified secrets of anti-submarine warfare. A single P-8 can deploy over 120 buoys.
!!!Along with these buoys, the Poseidon uses a whole suite of technology that includes its own acoustic sensor, synthetic aperture radar (Sar) to detect, classify and track surfaced submersibles and detect periscopes a long way off, an electro-optical/infrared turret that can identify submersible exhaust, Electronic Support Measure (ESM) as an electromagnetic sensor, particularly !!! useful in tracking the positions of radar
emitters, and even a hydrocarbon tracking system to “sniff” the presence of diesel
electric military submarines.
However, the Poseidon flies too high to use magnetic anomaly detection effectively, and instead UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) equipped with these detectors are being developed !!! to launch from its sonobuoy tubes.
Perhaps one of the Poseidon’s most important capabilities – and one that distinguishes it from the Orion – is the ability to work as a communications hub, a “node” as it were, at the center of a network of ships, sensor-equipped UAVs, and Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USV) that will in effect multiply its power.
!!!Sonar pulses, for example, can face interference from different temperature and salinity layers in the water. A submersible can be hidden under these. Magnetic detection technology tends to have short range – detecting only submersibles that are close to the surface and near to the aircraft’s position. And submersibles can also avoid detection by staying hidden in the “ambient water noise” of the ocean.”
SpaceLifeForm • June 23, 2023 8:31 PM
Re: SolarWinds
‘https://www.reuters.com/technology/solarwinds-executives-receive-wells-notice-us-sec-2023-06-23/
Clive Robinson • June 23, 2023 9:54 PM
@ vas pup,
“How do surveillance planes spot ocean submersibles?”
Back in the 1980’s it was with super secret SQUID, which were not the organic but quantum kind 😉
But… back then submersibles were made of mostly iron in the form of steel presure vessles a hunded or more foot long[1]. So even with anti-magnetic mine degausing they could still be picked up by the way they distorted the earths magnetic field and created “anomalies[2].
As I understand it this submersable was made with a very poor choice of composit involving carbon fiber and titanium which has an exceptionaly short life. But also does not effect the earths magnetic field as much as several hundred tons of refined iron or with a few pinches of chromium etc added.
[1] The problem with submarines, as it is with space craft and high altitude air craft is the squishy organic bits… If you think about it what you only need is a few pounds of warm fat that is the human brain. But to keep that alive and functioning it’s encased in around 200lb of body that needs the equivalent of a hundred watts of power continuously when at rest. To keep that alive and functioning, the body is surrounded by an environment that needs a couple or tons of equipment to support as a minimum. With also deppending on length of operation the body needs four pounds of food and a US gallon of fluid every 24hours as a minimum. As someone once rueful noted,
“It all adds up to one heck of a load of ballast.”
Which is why “AI for Drones” is a hot research subject, as is the design of the drones to put them in. Oh and in low power down mode on the bottom it would need not much more than a couple of LiPo’s like you have in laptops even though in power up 3-10kW would probably be needed for a “general purpose” AI alone… But the speed things are changing it could quickly get down to maybe the 30W used by a laptop etc.
[2] Apparently the mile or more passive sonar arrays towed by some subs also cause magnetic anomalies as the conductive cables move in the earths magnetic field they act like a generator causing magnetic fields of their own. Thus having a very acurate chart of the earths magnetic field in the area of operation would be important, such that the submarine could reduce it’s profile by running a course along the lines not across them.
Clive Robinson • June 23, 2023 10:57 PM
@ ResearcherZero, ALL,
With regards to the quote you give of,
“Security experts say CISA’s directive highlights the reality that cyberspies and ransomware gangs are making it increasingly risky for organizations to expose any devices to the public Internet,”
You can probably hear my hollow laugh where ever you are.
For quite some time now almost the first question I ask is,
“What is the business case for that computer to be extetnally connected?”
And almost always there is neither a business case, or a business case with good reasoning in it.
As long term readers of this blog will know I do not believe in “connectivity” without good cause, I believe in “Segregation, segregation, segregation”. Which puts me at odds with most “MBA Types”…
But even ICTsec types that talk the talk on air-gapping but have not the first clue on what’s actually needed in this day and age of deeply embedded communications in “chip sets” on consumer and commercial equipment.
It’s why I talk about “energy-gapping” and how to go about it in practical terms…
Just another example of,
“What you can read on this blog being eight years or more ahead”.
If you get a self proclaimed “Security expert” in, check what they know about basic physics, and then ask them about what SDR is and how it effects security… You might find yourself going through a lot of “experts”…
MarkH • June 23, 2023 11:05 PM
re: Undersea Casualty
Not a security matter, but it seems to implicate the integrity of an engineering process. I’ve read reports (not yet objectively confirmed) that:
• most of the hull was made from CFRP, with properties not suited to the application
• the hemispheric titanium “end caps” were bonded to the CFRP cylinder with some kind of cement
• the viewport — about 60 cm in diameter — was rated for 1500 m depth, whereas the operator claimed 4000 m for the overall vessel, and had taken it to 3800 m
• the designer/owner/victim was heard to say that the raw CFRP was obtained from Boeing, who was scrapping it because it had exceeded shelf life (Boeing says they never had business with OceanGate)
MarkH • June 23, 2023 11:11 PM
continued:
My whole career has been in and around product engineering. End users often don’t have the technical depth to evaluate whether a product can dependably function as claimed; even when they do, they don’t have the detailed knowledge of product design, or the time to absorb and analyze it.
The people who use the products of engineering, must generally rely on the integrity of the work done by designers.
To be an engineering designer is to be in a role where some people are going to (at least implicitly) repose their trust in your work. It is a position of serious responsibility.
Clive Robinson • June 24, 2023 12:20 AM
@ MarkH,
Re : Undersea Casualty
The important point to note was that it was not even an “engineering prototype”.
By all accounts I’ve seen it was never “tested and approved” as you would expect for any “passenger service vehicle” before being put into use.
Other accounts indicate there are no current drawings, circuits, enginering calculations held by the company nor I suspect anyone else.
As for the “carbon fiber” from the little I’ve played with it in the past I suspect it’s a totally inappropriate material for presure vessels that undergo regular preasure changes as it has some delamination issues, thus weakens on every major preasure change cycle.
As for the video of the “games controler” with glued on bits, and what,looked like rusting pipe as balast, not something that inspires confidence.
But there are other “interior attachments” it’s not clear how they were actually attached… I got the impression the illuminated over head hand hold was one designed to be “screwed into” RV’s.
Oh and one of the casualties, lived two turns down the road from me and I’d actually met him at the BISoc some years back and we chated radio and dishes. As well we’d nodded in passing in shops a couple of times (I’m easily recognisable[1]). He was just “an ordinary bloke” I’d no idea his family is apparently the wealthiest in Pakistan.
[1] It’s why I never put my “thinking hinky” abilities in spotting flaws in systems to “a life of crime”. Back when I was young the Police would have had to search a very wide area to find others to make it a “fair line up”. I think I’ve only met some one taller than me less than ten times in my life, and none of them had anything close to my build… That said for as long as I can remember, I’ve had people who I’ve never met come up and talk to me as though I was someone they saw around[2]… And, apart from size, I do know of two entirely unrelated people to me who even people I know quite well (parents-in-law) thought was me (One was “The Secretary of the British Electric Bike Society”).
[2] I’ve put it down to the fact that when they get within polite social distance, all they can realy see looking up is a double chin and nostril hair… Hence the reason I grew a beard…
lurker • June 24, 2023 12:22 AM
@MarkH
I understand CFRP can have good tensile strength for some applications. When I heard it was being used for this device, the query light went on: what is its compressive strength on repetitive cycles? For an example of failure to understand repetitive stress cycling, q.v. Comet airliner.
SpaceLifeForm • June 24, 2023 12:46 AM
Now that the sun is rising over GMT+3 the picture will become clearer.
MarkH • June 24, 2023 1:45 AM
@Clive, lurker:
I think you’re spot-on. I haven’t heard before of carbon fiber being used in such an application; reportedly, it’s both (comparatively) weak in compression, and liable to progressive failure under repeated overstress.
It does function as a pressure vessel in airplane fuselages, but there it works in tension, where CFRP excels … and the pressure is less than 0.1% of the claimed capacity of the annihilated submersible.
Clive Robinson • June 24, 2023 1:46 AM
@ lurker, MarkH, SpaceLifeForm,
Carbon fiber construction conceptually is not greatly disimilar to “Glass Reinforced Plastic”(GRP). Likewise like reinforced concrete or human bone.
They all tend to fail catastrophicaly with a tiny increase in strain. From Wikipedia,
“The fracture toughness of carbon fiber reinforced plastics is governed by the following mechanisms:
1) debonding between the carbon fiber and polymer matrix,
2) fiber pull-out, and
3) delamination between the CFRP sheets.Typical epoxy-based CFRPs exhibit virtually no plasticity, with less than 0.5% strain to failure.
Although CFRPs with epoxy have high strength and elastic modulus, the brittle fracture mechanics present unique challenges to engineers in failure detection since failure occurs catastrophically.”
As for delamination, what happens is dependent on the layering of the fibers, which can be a complex subject.
But think back to magic shows and the like where a magician holds a pack of cards lengthwise in a vice like grip in their hand. The pack bends then as the magician moves their fingers fractionally the cards fly out like a fountain.
Well all laminates usually have a matrix (glue epoxy etc) that if friable under stress will delaminate not just catastrophicaly but spectacularly.
But if I was to place a small bet on where things broke I would look at the cement between the carbon fiber and the titanium end pieces.
I can not think of any commercial cement to do this and I have looked when designing antenna systems. My concern was dishes have a very large sail area, but worse they also act like the edge of a wing thus generate lift away from the mount… The end result is they buffet alot which is why they are frequently built into “drum like structures”, that not just strengthan the dish, they also cut down on the buffeting.
To cut design costs and weight we were looking at pressing out dishes from thin sheet metal then gluing to a spiderweb reenforcing structure that brought it to an offset center mount for a standard 2″ or similar mounting pole. We did not find a cement that would survive the buffetting effect for very long so we had to go another way…
ResearcherZero • June 24, 2023 3:38 AM
Organizations that still utilize FortiNAC should apply these patches as soon as possible.
“Fortunately, not a lot of companies expose TCP ports 1050 or 5555 to the public Internet. However…”
‘https://frycos.github.io/vulns4free/2023/06/18/fortinac.html
ResearcherZero • June 24, 2023 3:50 AM
Prigozhin issued his first public address from the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, a city with a population of 1.1 million, which Wagner PMC claims to be fully in control.
Rostov-on-Don is a critical command and control membrane for the Russian army, and any threats to the MoD’s presence are likely to have ramifications on some critical aspects of the war effort. Rostov-on-Don houses both the headquarters of the SMD, whose 58th Combined Arms Army is currently decisively engaged in defensive operations against Ukrainian counteroffensives in southern Ukraine, and the command center for the Russian Joint Group of Forces in Ukraine as a whole.
‘https://www.ibtimes.co.in/mutiny-russia-live-updates-wagner-army-takes-over-rostov-860220
Footage on channels based in Rostov-on-Don showed armed men in military uniform skirting the regional police headquarters in the city on foot, as well as tanks positioned outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District.
Reuters confirmed the locations shown but could not determine when the footage was shot.
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-24/prigozhin-military-sites-in-rostov-on-don-under-wagner-control/102520100
SpaceLifeForm • June 24, 2023 4:27 AM
@ Clive, lurker, MarkH
I knew it had imploded. I said ‘may have’ to leave hope.
But, I knew. Physics.
People need to understand, there are no bodies to recover.
They were disintegrated into molecules in less than a millisecond.
It should not have been named Titan, but Darwin Award.
MarkH • June 24, 2023 8:57 AM
@Clive:
More than one submersible expert has worried about the bonding of titanium to CFRP.
At 3 tons per square inch, seawater can migrate into microscopic pores and fissures, and over time promote corrosive reactions.
It seems that virtually all deep submersibles are essentially spherical. OceanGate’s “passenger wagon” not only looked like a pipe bomb …
Clive Robinson • June 24, 2023 9:55 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : Titanic collapse
“I knew it had imploded.”
Initially my thoughts were based on experience of the design of “Remotely Operated Vehicles”(ROVs/Rovers)[1], that in this case are submersible. If you look back in this blog you will see “I have form” in this area and had discussions with @Wael about some of the issues to do with even small preasure changes on electrical, electronic and mechanical cables going through glands and the like especially in moving joints.
My thoughts on initially hearing the news was that it was a glanding or joint failure causing the reported loss of contact.
However it quickly became clear it was not a single “end systems” failure. That is it was not just comms failure but also one of navigation / propulsion which could be caused by a main power bus failure.
Also by this time I realised I had a connection with one of the people on board who also has a son of similar age to mine onboard with him. And I kind of switched from engineering dispassionate technical appraisal to more personal “fingers crossed thinking”.
But as an engineer you kind of always walk down a mental check list based on your experience. Then I started to here other things and my mind went,
“WTF they’re wrong surely?”
But when I saw that video clip that was an “all cards off the table moment”… You could clearly see there were no second or tertiary system backups or safety systems, not even a fire suppression or extinguishing systems.
Thus “catastrophic failure” which “intrinsically safe”(IS) and “Fail Safe” engineers spend most of their time trying to design out, mitigate, or both, was a very real and almost certain possibility.
That only left the question of which of the many posibilities it could be.
Hearing of the “Bolted in” imediately made me think of Apollo 1 and the fire that killed three astronauts on the pad. And could have been likely (have a look at what gases come out from batteries etc).
Then on hearing about carbon fiber and titanium used in the pressure vessel my thoughts turned to major structural failure in it’s many forms. Which that video showed with no internal “frames” or other support would almost have certainly resulted in a full and probably very sudden implosion.
It’s very difficult for most people to understand what happens in a sudden implosion. So they think of the reverse of explosion which it’s not and also people tend to think about explosions incorrectly as “blown to bits”. Which mostly is not the case, as the primary damage is by anisotropic effectively unidirectional not isotropic shock wave from a non near field or effectively distant point (think further than twice the largest object dimension facing the point). The major physical damage in explosions is “normally” by secondary effects such as the “rag-doll” effect where body parts get flung/torn off and “lifted shrapnel” where objects in the vicinity become projectiles swept up by the blast wave. These don’t happen “as the norm” in implosions unless the implosion causes an over preasure event which normalises by what can be seen as a secondary effect explosion.
[1] ROV is an ambiguous acronym, as it covers anything that has some form of physical movment capability. That is from “nano-mite” silicon engines upto the largest of unmaned platforms that can move. The only two criteria and they are not mandatory are,
1, Capable of directed physical action.
2, Not controled locally.
Which is somewhat open[2].
[2] The reason the criteria are not mandatory is in part because technology in the domain has been advancing probably more actively than any other. And that ROVs are proliferating into new areas rather more rapidly than most realise. Hence the criteria are loose because,
Firstly that ROVs can “go with the flow” whilst they do other physical actions, this is true of many “Down-hole” or “In-pipe” systems, as well as unconstrained systems such as buoys and ballons and most satellites or off world surface and more recently atmospheric vehicles (shout out to NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity).
Secondly ROV’s can be inautonomous, semiautonomous, or fully autonomous but their destination and way points are dictated by other external systems / operators. As such they currently do not have unconstrained independence of action thus act at a reduced level of external controled agency. Hobby drones are ROVs by definition, and mostly act semiautonomously, in that they not only automatically control their flight surfaces, they also move from way point to way point via a “directed automatic pilot”. That is they are “externaly navigated”, but will under certain circumstances will act fully autonomously. That is “fly home” either by reversing the course or by autonomously going via a more direct probably shorter course. Or just “set down” at the current position and in some cases activate a locator mechanism to aid in recovery…
vas pup • June 24, 2023 3:43 PM
@Clive said “Thus having a very accurate chart of the earths magnetic field in the area of operation would be important, such that the submarine could reduce it’s profile by running a course along the lines not across them.”
Very good point! Thank you, Clive.
cru5h • June 24, 2023 9:35 PM
EFF Now Has Tor Onions:
= Main Site:
‘http://iykpqm7jiradoeezzkhj7c4b33g4hbgfwelht2evxxeicbpjy44c7ead.onion/
= Certbot:
‘http://5yl6j7al5iwjn3kltayvumj5d25agnq4t6rznkvphossoqyzb3batwid.onion/
= Surveillance Self-Defense:
‘http://y7yea4pmqqtznb33qiugvysyn2bob5v62e4pvoadoibrwkq3tsddjeyd.onion/
MarkH • June 24, 2023 10:22 PM
@SpaceLifeForm:
I figure the energy at 212 megajoules, or a little more than 110 pounds of TNT. That’s pretty close to a U.S. military 250 pound aerial bomb. Optimally allocated among boreholes, miners could break up roughly 330 tons of rock using that quantity of explosive energy.
The time from rupture to the liquid-filled condition was between 2.5 and 13.4 msec, depending on the geometry of the break.
Even at that depth, the atmosphere inside would have occupied more than 13 liters, had it been contained. From wikipedia, about the Bathysphere:
Beebe later described what would have happened to him and Barton had they been inside the sphere on a dive during which it leaked. They would not have had time to drown: due to the immense pressure, “the first few drops of water would have shot through flesh and bone like steel bullets.”
lurker • June 25, 2023 1:06 AM
@MarkH, Clive, SLF, All
Another team, with nation state backing, approached design on the assumption that the crew must be inside a titanium sphere. It is only briefly shown, mostly in an artist’s mockup render, but the whole video is coy on details that might assist a competitor. There is an external shell built around the sphere, with tools, lights, propulsion units, &c, ending up looking like a made for TV submersible. The very few shots of the interior show equipment mounting, and insulation/padding panels.
‘https://youtu.be/XBkYFOIb_5s?t=510
Clive Robinson • June 25, 2023 7:04 AM
@ SpaceLifeForm, MarkH, ALL,
Re : Undersea location by explosion, and joining the dots on IC capability.
@MarkH in another comment mentiond a May 7 comment I made (but did not say which). Well I’d made several and I did not remember one that fit the bill so I reread them.
Of interst to this Titan Submersible comment thread building here would be this comment by me on May 7th,
Read my second footnote in it… It goes back to the “Lost Mercury 7 Capsual Recovery” and what became a surprise to the world at the time. With regards the “bomb in the capsual” the astronauts were all aware of but the public were not.
Now think it through, and start joining the dots…
Such a sub sea listening system too support the use of the device in the capsule as described would still be in use today (such systems don’t die untill something better replaces them, hence the 8inch drives in the nuclear launch chain).
Which means that if the Titan had catastropicly imploded with the force as @MarkH described like a 250lb Areial bomb, then part of the US “National Inteligence” knew –before even those tending to the Titan on the surface realised that communications had been lost– that there had been an implosion in that area with a high degree of precision.
The fact that the US Navy belatedly said that the knew it had catastrophically failed before wreakage was found, is an indicator that the detection system is still in place and still functioning effectively.
But the question now arises of,
“Did someone deliberately chose to withhold the information for a considerable period of time?”
And if so why becomes the root of several questions. Just one of which would be,
“Was it as effectively a ‘dry run’ to see what capabilities others were prepared to reveal for ‘humanitarian’ not ‘intelligence’ reasons?”
And no I’m not trying to start a conspiracy –though it’s inevitable others will– just the opposit.
Let’s see if a journalist picks up on it and makes a run with it…
Clive Robinson • June 25, 2023 11:38 AM
@ lurker, ALL,
Re : Stable or not under preasure.
“design[ed] on the assumption that the crew must be inside a titanium sphere.”
One of the issues in nature, science, engineering, etc is somethings are easy in one direction and chaotic to impossible in the other. In mathmatics we have the so far unproven notion of “One way functions” but in the physical world we see it all the time.
To most we either pull or we push with the idea one is the opposit of the other. They are not, only in very limited terms is tension the opposit of compression. Tension within material limits tends to stability, compression tends to instability, thus potentiallt chaotic behaviour as failure ensues.
We see this with a piece of string as an analogue to a one dimensional object in our three dimensional space and likewise a sheet of paper as a two dimensional object[1].
As an overly general notion to get compression/push to appear as the opposit to tension/pull we have to constrain the objects freedoms in the higher dimensions it otherwise lacks.
In any dimensional space a point is a valid starting point or focus, from which any second point is on a surface that is isotropicaly stable. Thus a circle in two dimensions and a sphere in three dimensions.
But there are other stable shapes such as closed conic sections that have both stability and more than one point of focus. It has been hypothesized that for any “n-body problem” there will be a stable state with an appropriate number of foci, but above n=2 chaotic instability is the norm not the exception.
To see why assume a preasure gradient from a single point or focus, a circle or sphere is a contour of equal preasure hence it is stable. This indicates that at all points on that surface the forces are at 180 degrees to each other. That is at all points tension is balanced by compression and importantly are balanced with respect to every other point on the surface and “integrate out” (an expression I hate).
Now consider two foci the contor is not defined by distance, but by a triangle of equal perimiter around the two foci. The shape of the two dimensional surface is actually a circle tilted by an angle –through the third dimension– defined by the distance between the two foci normally it is refered to as “eccentricity” of an elipse. To see this hold up a childs hoop at arms length so it is flat on to your eye, or zero degrees it forms a circle. Now as you tip one edge towards you and the opposite edge away, you see an elipse. Eventually you end up with a line when the hoop is at 90 degrees. If an observer looking along the axis of rotation sees a right angle triangle formed by the “unity circle” by using Pythagoras’ little formular the position of the two foci are almost trivially calculated. As long as the foci remain in that unity circle there will be a closed surface of stability. If not things get interesting in that the surface is open you can see this with any discussion on the basics of conic sections which are used as the first aproximation of all predictable non chaotic orbits.
Obviously when the surface is open it nolonger integrates thus compression and tension are nolonger balanced, and is where the fun or danger start depending on your point of view.
So a sphere is not the only surface you can use, the balanced “egg shape” of an elipse in three dimensions is also balanced by the perimiter of that triangle rotated around the axis.
Which brings into question a “tube” which is the equivalent of a circle projected out in the third dimension without change. Under tension this remains unconditionaly stable untill the point at which the material tensile strength is exceeded. The same is not true for compressiton it is only conditionaly stable to a point[2]. Where this point is, is dependent on the matierial strength. However as a rule of thumb if you put two equisized boxes around the foci that remains inside the elipse surface –ie unity circle– at all points it will be practically stable as long as the material deformation is constrained. In effect “box section” it. Where the longitudinal tension in the surface of the cylinder prevents the sideways compression exceading the stability limits of the material[2].
The Titan appeared to be in the video a cylinder with no apparent “box sectioning” via “frames” or similar. It was thus at best only conditionaly stable and thus subject to chaotic effects that would lead to catastrophic faliure if taken even fractionaly outside the conditional stability.
But as noted in a previous comment laminated objects degrade in strength with work. It is similar in gross effect to “work hardening” in that the material weakens untill failure becomes inevitable.
That failure occures in a chaotic way with the likes of a micro fracture creating a point strain above material capability that moves with increasing speed through the material. It is somewhat of an open question as to if there is a practical upper limit on such a failure velocity. Lets put it this way, the results of preasure explosions in preasure vessels where the internal preasure sufficiently exceeds the material capacity suggests not (hence practically you get a fragmentation effect).
The result of an implosion would be rather more chaotic than an explosion and prediction would be at best aproximate by the use of “hydro codes” which have helped develope “explosive lense” shaped charges.
Trying to model such events usually involves the use of complex moments software and not just skilled but experienced operators.
I have a feeling the desigbers of the Titan lacked such tools and skill sets, and were unaware of the workload degredation of flexed laminates.
So chaotic and catastrophic failure was in effect inevitable and thus unavoidable with the design used.
[1] Similar would apply to a three dimensional object in a four dimensional space, and so on but for the sake of sanity lets not go there…
[2] This is why a bicycle wheel works, the tension in the wires holds the hub at the focus of the rim. However the rim has insufficient material strength to support even a fraction of the weight of the rider, and the wires can not support even a fraction of that as a compressive load. However the wires “normal to gravity” under tension prevent the rim distorting thus the force from gravity is kept nearly in balance by the tension in the wires (you can again using Pythagoras’s little theorm of right angle triangles work out where all the forces and in what proportions go, thus ensure they stay within the material limits of tension in the wires and compression in the rim).
Phillip • June 25, 2023 11:49 AM
@ResearchZero:
A recent CISA order does bring to mind a professor’s advice. Firstly, to have an up-to-date hardcopy of network topology at the ready. Secondly, if any drop went unexplained, disconnect and wait for anybody to complain about being inconvenienced with any severed connection. Noteworthy: it may hurt one in certain cases, for sure. Politically? Slings and arrows. His advice would be to mind one’s p’s and q’s for what is definitely off-limits with documentation: “Please sign here; Thank you.”
Clive Robinson • June 25, 2023 1:29 PM
@ Bruce, ResearcherZero,
Funny you,should mention the “Giggling Squid” chain…
I’m sort of surounded by them…
There is a place called Wimbledon in South West London that @ResearcherZero mentioned just the other day… It’s kind of famous for some game called “Lawn Tennis, well there’s a Giggling Squid there.
Also I mention Kingston from time to time that has one of the oldest still in continuous use bridges and the Saxon coronation stone, well there’s one there.
Likewise Esher has one and another Race Course –Sandown– a little south of Hampton Court and it’s palace with historical indoor tennis court.
Apparently Epsom now has one as well that’s a market town below the apparently world famous Race Course where the Derby is held.
So yeah they are poping up like El Diablo Rojo on a moonlight night 😉
Ismar • June 25, 2023 1:35 PM
Millions of dollars in fines to punish online misinformation under new draft bill – ABC News
lurker • June 25, 2023 2:18 PM
Furby is back … claimed now to have no wifi, does not connect to the internet or other devices, but,
Safety Information :
WARNING: Small parts may be generated. [furby scat?] Not for children under 3 years.
MarkH • June 25, 2023 3:21 PM
@Clive:
My bad, I didn’t count how many 7 May comments you had contributed. The one you linked to, is the one I had in mind.
Perhaps because of my interest in strategic affairs, I’ve been aware of SOSUS (at some point, renamed to IUSS) for most of my life.
With typical budgetary extravagance, the U.S. created and maintains a vast array of undersea microphones, due to a prurient interest in Russian submarines and their whereabouts.
When I read that the implosion of Titan had been recorded, I just assumed that SOSUS was involved.
MarkH • June 25, 2023 4:09 PM
@Clive, re “Did someone deliberately chose to withhold the information for a considerable period of time?”
In a way, yes. Here’s my picture:
1] SOSUS is not set up as an alarm system, it records raw data which can be analyzed “offline.” The bang sound it detected might not have been distinctive enough to draw attention to itself … human activity makes the seas are VERY noisy.
2] The report sent to the Coast Guard was not framed as conclusive: the Navy wasn’t certain as to what happened. Coast Guard leadership didn’t want to call off — or distract the energies of — the search operation while the possibility of survival hadn’t been completely eliminated.
Persisting till they got definite confirmation was consistent with Coast Guard tradition.
MarkH • June 25, 2023 5:11 PM
I’ve read that Titan was the first ever deep ocean submersible to implode. Not so surprising: designers know the greatest peril they must guard against!
It would have been practical to test a comparatively short cylindrical section — of identical construction — through any number of pressure cycles. Not cheap, mind you, but practical.
An early Titan passenger (and submersibles expert) repeatedly heard what he called loud “cracking” sounds, and later emailed to Rush that they “sounded like a flaw/defect in one area being acted on by the tremendous pressures and being crushed/damaged” — just as Clive has explained.
[We don’t know that the cylinder failed first: it could have started with a seal between cylinder and end caps, or the window and the front end cap.]
lurker • June 25, 2023 5:21 PM
Twitter/Bitcoin scammer gets time:
Joseph James O’Connor, 24, was sentenced Friday in a New York federal court to five years in prison after pleading guilty in May to four counts of computer hacking, wire fraud and cyberstalking. O’Connor also agreed to forfeit at least $794,000 to the victims of his crimes.
‘https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/23/twitter-hacker-sentenced-prison/
lurker • June 25, 2023 5:31 PM
@Clive Robinson, MarkH
Interesting bio of OceanGate founder Stockton Rush,
Clive Robinson • June 25, 2023 10:31 PM
@ MarkH, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
“We don’t know that the cylinder failed first”
No we don’t and we may never do, such is the nature catastrophic implosions.
There are two ways to look at it and we have to keep them seperate,
1, Human
2, Technical
Overly briefly when such an implosion happens a micro fracture starts a runaway process that you could liken to a sink hole collapse. That is once it starts a very low preasure zone forms and in effect drags everything after it, till one of a number of eventualities. One where the preasures difference is lower is when the preasures equalise. Another is when there is a structural member like a frame stops the spread of material failure. Another is in effect a counter balancing explosion happens.
We know that preasure equalisation was improbable at the preasure differential at the depths being talked about. From videos available on-line it looks like there were no frames in the design so the spread would involve much if not all of the carbon fiber cylinder. It would be irespective of if it started at the ends with a failure in bonding to the titanium, or due to delamination within the carbon fiber. Onlyva micro structural analysis of much of the cylinder would show that and it might not be available…
Carbon fiber is in effect a “hydro-carbon” that is a fuel under appropriate conditions. Likewise as I’ve already mentioned batteries tend to output combustable gases. So you have the situation that you have a fuel oxidizer mix subject to a sudden preasure change. Depending on how old you are and the resources of the school you went to they might have demonstrated a “fire piston” which gave rise to “The Diesel Effect”[1]. The contents of the Titan cylinder were all “fuel” and the sudden preasure change more than sufficient to as @SpaceLifeForm has already observed on an earlier thread cause them bodies to nolonger exist, as they would have flash ignited in a millisecond or less causing the equivalent of a modest explosion.
From the human perspective, it is unlikely that any of those onboard would have known anything. Estimates say the implosion would have been a millisecond or two, not enough time for signals to travel from the senses to the brain which would have crushed and vapourised before the signals had left the sensor nerves. But even if signals had arived it takes the brain about 25mS to process and concious awarness would be aproaching five times that.
There is a saying in the military of,
“You don’t hear the shot that kills you”
Those onboard would not have been aware in anyway of the implosion that killed them. And even though the US Coastguard have said that during the recovery of debris of the Titan they will be considerate of any bodies they find, I suspect they already know the probability is very low for various reasons.
The big issue that will come up in the next few days is “technical v human” do we recover debris to find out what happened, or do we more simply “respect the dead” and leave things where they are as has been done with the Titanic it’s self.
My gut says “respect the dead” because even if we do find all the debris what are we actually going to do with it[2]?
What would we learn that is going to make a practical difference?
Next to nothing, and it will be in danger of starting a vitriolic witchhunt for lawyers to earn fortunes trying to “pin the blaim” etc. Something I doubt those close to those who died would want.
So let the dead rest in peace, and the pieces of the Titan be the markers to the end of their journy, so future visitors will know and be respectful of this tragedy in the centuries to come.
[1] The demonstration fire piston is usually a glass tube and ram rod, where a small piece of cotton wool spontaniously “flash ignites” and combusts compleatly. It was this acient tool from East Asia that Rudolph Diesel in the late 1800’s whilst still a student realised could be developed into an efficient engine using the Carnot Cycle. The Diesel engine is named after him is techbically a compression-ignition engine, in which a fuel is ignited by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to significant mechanical compression.
[2] If the pieces are brought up they will be “evidence” that has to be kept securely at considerable ongoing expense. In effect boxed up and gathering dust in storage. Eventually the evidence will be disposed of. There is a trend to “recover costs” gaining prevelence which means “evidence gets auctioned”… We’ve seen with Titanic Memorabilia what happens within the short period of less than a life time. I would not wish that on anyone’s loved ones, relatives, friends and colleagues. Thus they are best left where they are with “salvage rights” put in a perpetual trust.
Clive Robinson • June 26, 2023 11:45 AM
@ PaulBart, ALL,
“What of the chain of command? The signal is picked up by a device of the implosion. Now what.”
Technically the US SOSUS –or the UK part that covers the “Greenland Icelandic UK gaps”(GIUK-Gap)– or what it became, and is now called “The Integrated Undersea Surveillance System”(IUSS). Even though described as having a multi-faceted mission, was and still is a “tactical, operational, and stratigic defence and rescue system”.
It has a “Mission Statement” of,
“To support antisubmarine warfare command and tactical forces by detecting, classifying, and providing timely reporting of information on submarines and other contacts of interest; to provide command of Naval Ocean Processing Facilities (NOPFs), to include direct tactical control of associated Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) ships; to gather long term acoustic, oceanographic, and hydrographic information.”
Those “other contacts of interest” were amoungst others “downed aviators” using an explosive charge the same as was fitted to the Mercury Space Capsuals, I’ve mentioned before. Whilst that is now public knowledge it’s been repeatedly suggested the same applies to failed US etc submarines to rescue trapped submariners or just recover nuclear torpedoes, munitions and similar before others do[1].
It would be of very little use for a “tactical or operational defence/rescue” role that it clearly has, –see highlighted– if it took even a few hours let alone days to provide location and reporting data. Because survival time for downed aviators in northern waters is measured in fractions of an hour in winter and not much better for the rest of the year.
Part of the UK role “allegadly”, was to detect the noises of Russian IRBMs with nuclear capabilities or later “cruise missile” equivalents launched not just in the GIUK-Gap but other parts of the waters around the UK, Ireland and NW Europe doen as far as the Mediterranean, as part of a “multi picket-fence” layout “early warning system” so that nothing Russian “was beyond the pale”. As for the various forms of sea launched missiles their flight times are less than an hour some considerably so. So again a requirment for rapid analysis and reporting…
Especially at this current crises hightened time, as Russia is repeatedly talking about attacking not just to the East of Europe but especially the “anglo saxons” of the UK and US with nuclear weapons. The Russian Army mutiny of a couple of days ago will be seen by some as potentially the start of a “go down in flames” tactic by Putin or others there.
Suprisingly to many though SOSUS was conceived and initially designed back befor the nuclear age. And as a “primarily passive system for stealth” it has roots going back to WWI ASW in the UK with US interest starting with the continuing “Russian War” after WWI in the 1920’s,
https://www.csp.navy.mil/cus/About-IUSS/Origins-of-SOSUS/
Much however as with all Defence Intelligence systems in the US is still classified above most paygrades. To quote Wikipedia on SOSUS,
“Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was the original name for a submarine detection system based on passive sonar developed by the United States Navy to track Soviet submarines. The system’s true nature was classified with the name and acronym SOSUS classified as well.”
So with roles of “tactical defence” and “operational air, sea rescue” you can start to see why I have my doubts about why it took so long.
And as I’ve noted Journalists and similar could find a lot of soft red meat underbelly to chew on with little difficulty and put their own twist to it…
[1] (you might have noticed just how twitchy the US gets over what has been called “broken arrow” incidents and proliferation in general. Some would say with good reason due to the appaling record that is known,
https://interestingengineering.com/science/broken-arrows-the-worlds-lost-nuclear-weapons
modem phonemes • June 26, 2023 1:52 PM
“ American materials scientist and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery John B Goodenough died yesterday, according to reports. He was 100.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/26/john_goodenough_obit/
Phillip • June 26, 2023 2:09 PM
@Clive Robinson
Regarding Antisubmarine Warfare (or ASW), Navy “squids” refer to ASW as: “Awfully Slow Warfare”. I still get a kick out of it.
modem phonemes • June 26, 2023 2:26 PM
@ Philip @ Clive Robinson
ASW
In WWII, the best ASW operational practitioners were said to be geologists. They were better than other scientists because their whole training focused on drawing reasonable pictures from seriously incomplete data.
MarkH • June 26, 2023 3:58 PM
I can’t imagine that SOSUS was ever intended for search and rescue. For people needing rescue, there are distress beacons and satellites to track them!
When objects fall to the seafloor — even nuclear bombs — the fastest possible time to find and retrieve ranges from hours to months.
Presently, about 6 shipping containers fall overboard on an average day, plus God knows how many other heavy human artefacts. Implosion bangs may be quite routine.
We know USCG sat on the acoustic report — they said so. My guess is that they received it within a day or two of the implosion.
ResearcherZero • June 26, 2023 9:31 PM
An used port is a port is a port.
‘https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jun/14/2003241405/-1/-1/0/CSI_HARDEN_BMCS.PDF
–
‘https://news.yahoo.com/tech-flaw-lets-hackers-control-110030136.html
‘https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/more-than-100000-wireless-security-cameras-in-the-uk-at-risk-of-being-hacked-a0vVp2v8zNqx
reverse engineering firmware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHsqb2poGII
–
‘https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2022/3/16/abusing-arbitrary-file-deletes-to-escalate-privilege-and-other-great-tricks
–
‘https://eclypsium.com/blog/supply-chain-risk-from-gigabyte-app-center-backdoor/
ResearcherZero • June 26, 2023 9:54 PM
And an unused port is still a port.
–
TSPU: Russia’s Decentralized Censorship System
“Our study reveals pervasive deployment of TSPU devices close to end users that empowers the Russian government to achieve fine-grained control over thousands of privately-owned, distributed ISPs. Using this architecture, the Russian government can easily and effectively escalate its control over the free flow of information.”
‘https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3517745.3561461
Roskomnadzor has begun to use artificial neural networks to track Russians online, particularly searching for posts that insult Putin or call for protests.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-china-internet-censorship-collaboration/32350263.html
–
Gak visited Beryozikov hours before his death on June 14 and said later she noticed traces of electric shocks on his body. Police insist Beryozikov committed suicide, which his relatives call “a lie.”
‘https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-lawyer-flees-country-client-dies-custody/32476794.html
–
Yashin ends his letter with a plea to the Czech leader not to amplify Putin’s statements that Europe is the enemy and its leaders are Russophobes.
“Mr. President, you became an unwitting participant in a discussion I had with my cellmates…”
“I’m in Putin’s prison for these beliefs. Putin is drumming it into the heads of my fellow citizens that Europe is the enemy and its leaders are Russophobes. Please don’t help Putin convince Russians of this, and treat my people fairly.”
“Believe me — we are not a country of murderers. We are a country where murderers have seized power.”
“Best wishes,”
ResearcherZero • June 26, 2023 11:26 PM
$25M for your silence…
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-26/plutus-payroll-tax-scam-police-phone-taps-four-corners/102497494
oops…
“Plutus puts the blame for the overpayments on the Commonwealth Bank. But in The Register’s experience, banks tend to do exactly what they’re told. We therefore suspect that when Plutus hit Go on its delayed pay runs, the instructions were somehow awry.”
‘https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/14/plutus_payroll_finally_pays_up_and_gets_it_wrong_again/
lurker • June 27, 2023 2:23 AM
@ResearcherZero
Which port?
‘We encourage people who purchase any wireless camera product on eBay to take appropriate security precautions, in the same way they would with any smart home devices, online email or social media account.
Riiight, good luck with that …
Clive Robinson • June 27, 2023 2:58 AM
@ MarkH,
“I can’t imagine that SOSUS was ever intended for search and rescue.”
It certainly was used for that, read the link to it’s history.
As I’ve said more than a couple of times before, that’s what the small bomb in the Mercury Capsules was all about that made the astronauts so unhappy.
There was quite a discuss about it in the medial at the time the missing Mercury capsual was recovered and brought to the surface. Even the MSM talked about it,
“Bomb experts on board inspected an explosive navigation device that failed to go off when the spacecraft sank. As soon as the small bomb was removed and thrown overboard, the capsule was placed in a specially designed container filled with sea water to help preserve it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/jul/21/spaceexploration
So unless you can think of another reason for having that “navigation bomb” onboard, I’d take it as read not just in the Mercury Capsual case but in that “official history” as well…
Your choice, but there are other sources involving aircraft that carried nuclear devices because of what are sometimes called “Broken Arrow” incidents of which there were over thirty for the US alone during the 1950’s. Of which six of the “physics packages” are still unrecovered…
MarkH • June 27, 2023 5:31 AM
@Clive:
I’ve seen no report, that SOSUS was ever used for Search and Rescue.
I have very little information about the Mercury capsule location charge. The Guardian article seems to imply that it was a depth charge, applicable only to a sunk spacecraft.
Was it intended for recovery/salvage of the vehicle, and so not requiring urgent response?
Was it intended to help find an astronaut who had left a sinking capsule on his own, and so requiring immediate response?
Was it intended to be picked up by SOSUS, or by acoustic location equipment on astronaut recovery ships?
MarkH • June 27, 2023 5:37 AM
PS “Search and Rescue” means attempting to locate and save endangered persons who are, or might be, still alive.
As I already explained, even nuclear warheads in the ocean take a long time to recover. An instant-response system for their location isn’t a practical need.
To my understanding, there was no plan, provision, or even possibility for a live astronaut in a Mercury capsule on the sea floor — SAR not applicable.
Winter • June 27, 2023 5:43 AM
A warning from Ross Anderson for us all:
The Pre-play Attack in Real Life
‘https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2023/06/19/the-pre-play-attack-in-real-life/
Almost ten years ago, after we wrote a paper on the pre-play attack, we were contacted by a Scottish sailor who’d bought a drink in a bar in Las Ramblas in Barcelona for €33, and found the following morning that he’d been charged €33,000 instead. The bar had submitted ten transactions an hour apart for €3,300 each, and when we got the transaction logs it turned out that these transactions had been submitted through three different banks. What’s more, although the transactions came from the same terminal ID, they had different terminal characteristics. When the sailor’s lawyer pointed this out to Lloyds Bank, they grudgingly accepted that it had been technical fraud and refunded the money.
Without Ross Anderson as your advisor it might be difficult (to put it mildly) to get your money back.
Phillip • June 27, 2023 12:12 PM
@modem phonemes, @Clive Robinson
Re: ASW thread
Ah yes, recall the scene in Hunt for Red October where Technician 1st Class Ronald “Jonesy” Jones (when aboard U.S.S. Dallas) surmises how the magma displacement assessment by an onboard computer was actually Red October’s acoustic signature. Great stuff by author Tom Clancy and director John McTiernan. Lost count.
Petre Peter • June 27, 2023 1:26 PM
Just a quick note from man bc
Note: The values returned by the pseudo-random number generator with rand() and irand(E) are guaranteed to NOT be cryptographically
secure. This is a consequence of using a seeded pseudo-random number generator. However, they are guaranteed to be reproducible with
identical seed values. This means that the pseudo-random values from bc(1) should only be used where a reproducible stream of pseudo-
random numbers is ESSENTIAL. In any other case, use a non-seeded pseudo-random number generator.
vas pup • June 27, 2023 6:09 PM
How artificial intelligence is helping us talk to animals
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0fw36yv/how-artificial-intelligence-is-helping-us-
talk-to-animals
“For years, machine learning has been used to analyse human languages or decode ancient communication. Now scientists are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to decode animal languages, making two-way communication with another species more likely than ever before.”
I’m curious about decode dog’s language. Dogs are highly involved in many aspects of security.
vas pup • June 27, 2023 6:13 PM
Move over polyester, make way for spider silk
https://www.dw.com/en/move-over-polyester-make-way-for-spider-silk/video-65941985
“Spider silk is completely biodegradable, yet incredibly durable. For more than 20 years, scientists have been looking for a way to make spider silk on an industrial
scale. And it appears they’ve finally found it.”
Material is stronger than Kevlar – security angle.
Clive Robinson • June 27, 2023 7:55 PM
@ MarkH,
Re : SOSUS and S&R.
“I’ve seen no report, that SOSUS was ever used for Search and Rescue.”
I can only assume that is because you are too lazy to read the history link I provided that comes directly from the responsible organisation.
It says,
“A system for locating fliers downed at sea was one of the first applications to be considered. The system was SOFAR for SOund Fixing And Ranging. It consisted of three or more hydrophone configurations placed near the sound channel axis with sufficient horizontal separation to obtain an accurate triangulation fix on the signal from a small explosive charge released by the flier.”
So there you have it the official explanation “from the horses mouth”.
Do you think I make this sort of thing up for some reason?
I realy do not know why you so frequently chose to go of half cocked in my direction but you do for some reason, even when as in this case I’ve given you corroborating evidence before you do so…
You are not the only person who does this, I guess “it must be something that’s going around” for some reason.
@Winter noted just a day ago,
“My impression is that the fraudsters think no one will ever check.”
I know people question what I say they’ve been doing it for five decades atleast. Mostly because they don’t think or check things, they get shown to be wrong. Others read into it something I’ve not actually said, others just raise petty argument because they can. Oh and some because they live in some numpty fantasy world where they think I must be a windmill…
When people misunderstand what I’ve said fair enough. Because of past complaints about my fuller length posts these days I try to be more concise. But this causes problems because it raises the threshold on background knowledge. So I try to keep it at a level I would expect someone who has taken high school science to understand.
Which can be a little problematic when you are pointing out that a published paper has either errors or unsuportable assumptions in it.
Which reminds me there is that Stego paper that is unfortunately not what it could be that the AI Stego system @Bruce posted the other day is based on.
MarkH • June 27, 2023 8:05 PM
@Clive:
I deeply respect your prodigious knowledge, acute intelligence, and unshakeable honesty.
I read the page, for which you kindly provided a link, with attentive care. The next sentence, following the excerpt you just quoted:
Several SOFAR stations were established, but were never used as intended.
From the horse’s mouth.
Has any person in potential or actual danger or distress ever been sought out, or rescued, by means of SOSUS?
Maybe, I just haven’t seen reportage to that effect. I’m keeping my mind open, and welcome all evidence.
MarkH • June 27, 2023 8:36 PM
@Clive:
When we have “tugs of war” in these threads, my purpose is to find and illuminate truth. I don’t give a carp who gets there first — it’s not an ego trip.
When my assertions get challenged with information or perspectives new to me, I’m delighted. I’ve learned a lot from our dialogues.
I know my fallibility, and claim no personal authority.
Nobody should believe objective claims because I’m the one who made them! I try to furnish receipts, and change course when facts and logic show I was mistaken. That’s my policy, as a life-long “boy scientist.”
MarkH • June 27, 2023 9:00 PM
Tid-bits:
1] US Coast Guard will conduct an investigation at its highest level (Marine Board of Investigation), and authorities of other countries will also investigate.
2] My energy numbers (above) assumed 4000 m depth, impossible because the seafloor there is 3800 m … TNT equiv would be about 105 lb.
3] I haven’t found numbers, but reportedly the pieces of Titan are a considerable distance apart. Even with the energy of a powerful explosion, most objects have extreme drag in water, and don’t travel far laterally. The distance suggests that Titan was well above the seafloor when it imploded. Implosion energy varies proportionally with depth.
QRNG • June 27, 2023 9:39 PM
Found no evidence that anyone has posted that quantumbase dot com, (at Lancaster University
Department of Physics) is evidently marketing a true ‘QRNG’ based on quantum tunneling thru an RTD quantum well. Some of the funding sources give me pause. If this is really so affordable, how easy is it to duplicate on a breadboard? Thx.
Winter • June 28, 2023 1:29 AM
@vas pup
How artificial intelligence is helping us talk to animals
That has been doing the rounds in conferences for a few years now:
This is ICASSP 2019
“Segmentation, Classification, and Visualization of Orca Calls Using Deep Learning” [1]
‘http://www5.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/fileadmin/research/Publikationen/2019/Schroeter19-SCA.pdf
‘https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/talking-to-animals-with-ai-decoding-whale-language
I’m curious about decode dog’s language.
We know what dogs say 😉
‘https://screenrant.com/funniest-far-side-dog-comics/
[1] Fun fact, the research is from the University of Nürnberg, Germany. That’s far from the sea and even further from any orcas.
modem phonemes • June 28, 2023 2:57 AM
@ vas pup @ Winter
Re: barking up the wrong tree
Ues, but what we really want to know is what does the fox say.
Winter • June 28, 2023 3:39 AM
@modem
Ues, but what we really want to know is what does the fox say.
First animal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcUD_2ND98E
The meaning would be close to dog barks.
Clive Robinson • June 28, 2023 5:06 AM
@ QRNG,
“Some of the funding sources give me pause. If this is really so affordable, how easy is it to duplicate on a breadboard? Thx.”
It’s been near a half decade since I looked at them so they’ve been around for a while.
Consider though to still be in existance like all Uni Dept’s they need funding from somewhere but will be reliant on others to do “due dilligence” on those funds[1].
As for how easy is it to duplicate?
All diode junctions have quantum effects that act on the charges passing through them. Thus it’s level is determined by the “junction doping” (you can look this up). As it’s usually seen as an “unwanted noise source” doping is usually done in a way that helps minimize it.
The important thing to remember is that the “quantum noise” is just one of very many noise sources in a circuit. Designing low noise circuits is an analog electronics specialty.
You will find many semiconductor junctions being used as “noise diodes” and the Internet has thousands of basically very similar circuits. But the noise they produce is mostly not quantum noise but all the other sources of noise…
The last time I looked they were long on marketing and short on technical details… Now the site looks even more marketing. It talks of “Blockchain” in a way that suggests it’s more of a marketing buzz word than a real tangible product.
But one thing that does cause me to wince… Those “product lables” where the use of Q-rng supposadly makes things genuine…
Nope, the label “is not the thing” in the same way that the container the label is stuck to “is not the thing”.
All the information on the label attests to is that the label “might”, but is not guaranteed to be genuine. Because information is almost infinitely copyable so the info on one lable can be copied to another label…
It’s the same issue with “Identity Documents” and has been a known problem for a very long time. The last time the UK got close to getting a “National ID Card” it got shot down by of all people once head of MI5 Stella Rimington, who pointed out that “papers were not people” and there was no reliable way to link them together…
The same is even more so for information on product lables on containers that hold the product, thus are not twice removed but thrice removed…
[1] In the US and UK this has led to “Reputation washing” by certain people with questionable histories. That is people with questionable backgrounds but considerable wealth are trying to “buy a reputation” for “good deeds” by funding Uni Dept’s, charities, museums, etc. By using the supposed “trickledown effect”. This can backfire badly… When it does the senior university figures –who actually dictate if funding can be accepted or not as they take a big slice of it themselves– are actually the ones doing the “due diligance” then turn on, and blaim, the researchers at the bottom, who mostly are blaimless and just trying to keep staff employed (which is why they get targeted by reputation washers…). There is unfortunately the notion in the public eye that money from dirty hands is tainted, thus should not be accepted (except by politicians). The thing is how do you know if money is tainted? The answer is in reality you can’t because the taint is not physical it can not be measured by any scientific test[2]. It needs the equivallent of “insider knowledge / intelligence”. But when something does blow up the roaches scuttle for cover and it becomes a hot potato game and as in the finance industry, those who should be blaimed walk away. Whilst those who are as babes in the woods, are the ones that get eviscerated to “sait the Beast” of faux “public outrage” drumed up by the MSM and political interests…
[2] Fun fact… Those who have US currency in their wallets and pockets will probably test positive for cocaine… Put simply people snorting it with a rolled up US bank note actually leave some of it in the fibers of the note. When they pass the contaminated note to someone else they are in effect “distributing”. But… Cocaine is somewhat volatile, so if you put a contaminated note in a pocket or worse wallet/purse with uncontaminated notes the contamination spreads through the uncontaminated notes especially when warmed by body heat. The FBI used to use contamination of notes as circumstantial evidence to obtain convictions… Till research got published to show something like eight out of ten US bank notes were contaminated and would test positive using the testing the FBI were using… So if you have or have had US bank notes in your wallet in normall usage for a couple of weeks it almost certainly will test positive…
MarkH • June 28, 2023 5:14 AM
@Clive:
While looking for something else, I found some good SOFAR info. In wikipedia, (1) “Sofar bomb” (2nd footnote links to an excellent web page); and “Project Mercury” with a large diagram titled “Development of Earth landing system.”
My take:
• “SOFAR” means the concept and method, and is not limited to the fixed hydrophone arrays of the 1940s.
• Perhaps the only wide-area SOFAR network was in the northern Pacific Ocean.
• The first 3 manned Mercury missions had SOFAR bombs, after which the capability was deleted.
• It’s not clear how the bombs were meant to be deployed; I speculate that for safety reasons, the astronaut would command the bomb’s ejection if the helicopter was slow in arriving.
MarkH • June 28, 2023 5:26 AM
SOFAR, continued:
• Detection of Mercury SOFAR charges was expected to be by a recovery ship hydrophone; I haven’t yet seen a claim that fixed arrays were part of the crew recovery concept.
• SOSUS is distinct from the older SOFAR network. Maybe the SOFAR arrays were incorporated in SOSUS; probably they were supplanted by arrays optimized for tracking subs.
• The main relationship between SOFAR and SOSUS, is that the former was (by accident, not design) a pilot project for the latter.
… to the best of my understanding.
Clive Robinson • June 28, 2023 6:53 AM
@ modem phonems,
Re : What the Fox…
“but what we really want to know is what does the fox say.”
Hmm we are seeong a side of you…
Actually the ones in my garage tend to squeak more than bark.
For various reasons of ill health I’ve not really used my garage, and this year I discovered a family of foxes had moved in…
Now I’m quite fond of foxes and have been all my life, so I’m content to let then be untill they’ve “flown the nest” then it will be “clean-up” time.
However one of my neighbours was bemoaning the fact that foxes were around… They also complained when they found squirrels living in their roof, but have not put 2&2 together and stopped feeding birds (which atracts the squirrels more than birds).
Well I’ve a photo on my phone of one of the foxes in their garden which I showed to the neighbour… And guess what is hanging from it’s mouth… A freshly caught squirrel… I pointed out to the neighbor that the fox had done them a favour… As they “cost less than an exterminator” apparantly the “Karan” thinks I “don’t understand” which I shall chose to assume is a complement 😉
GregW • June 28, 2023 8:10 AM
(Weak) side-channel: Reconstructing objects in a room from reflections off eyes in photos:
Preprint: htt ps://world-from-eyes.github.io/
News article: htt ps://newatlas.com/technology/eye-reflection-3d-nerd
modem phonemes • June 28, 2023 9:58 AM
@ GregW
reflections off eyes in photos
This so totally doesn’t work for Marty Feldman 😉 .
modem phonemes • June 28, 2023 10:19 AM
“The research team, led by material scientist Shanyu Zhao and head of laboratory Wim Malfait, showed that by wrapping a drone in a heat-proof suit made of materials used in space, it gained the endurance necessary to survey dangerous fire situations before fire crews put their lives at risk.”
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/28/fire_resistant_drones/
Winter • June 28, 2023 10:38 AM
@modem phonemes, GregW
reflections off eyes in photos
AI to the rescue:
Nvidia Broadcast can now deepfake your eyes to make you look at the camera
‘https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/12/23552606/nvidia-broadcast-1-4-eye-contact-ai-generation-webcam
The Eye Contact feature relies on AI to simulate what your eyes would look like if you were looking at the camera instead of elsewhere.
Comments I saw indicate it is really spooky if you are in a meeting and everybody constantly stares at you.
lurker • June 28, 2023 1:59 PM
@MarkH
How big is a box?
Re. implosion energy, MSM report via local radio on the day implosion was imputed, said “about four boxes of dynamite.”
MarkH • June 28, 2023 3:36 PM
@lurker:
Hmmm … metric boxes, or Imperial?
Or perhaps “product sold by weight; contents may have settled.”
Militaries prefer TNT — much safer to handle.
vas pup • June 28, 2023 5:36 PM
Illusions are in the eye, not the mind
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230615183122.htm
“Numerous visual illusions are caused by limits in the way our eyes and visual neurones work — rather than more complex psychological processes, new research shows.
Researchers examined illusions in which an object’s surroundings affect the way we see its colour or pattern.
Scientists and philosophers have long debated whether these illusions are caused by neural processing in the eye and low-level visual centres in the brain, or involve higher-level mental processes such as context and prior knowledge.
“Our eyes send messages to the brain by making neurones fire faster or slower,” said Dr Troscianko, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
“However, there’s a limit to how quickly they can fire, and previous research hasn’t considered how the limit might affect the ways we see colour.”
The model combines this “limited bandwidth” with information on how humans perceive patterns at different scales, together with an assumption that our vision performs best when we are looking at natural scenes.”
vas pup • June 28, 2023 5:38 PM
Researchers want drivers to see clearly on the road
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230616161955.htm
“Every year, sun glare contributes to around 3,000 crashes in the United States. FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers are helping to mitigate this problem by examining what drivers are likely to do when faced with sun glare. Their work was published in Transportation Research Record.
They found that drivers were most likely to run red lights or stop signs, particularly on local roadways. They also tended to follow vehicles too closely in high-traffic areas.
=>In-vehicle image processing detectors may enhance eye-tracking accuracy and alert drivers to the presence of sun glare based on their facial expressions. By providing real-time information regarding glare conditions, navigation systems could recommend alternative routes to avoid areas that are prone to sun glare.
=>Non-automated solutions could also help. By installing anti-glare coatings on pavements, transportation planners can improve roads to enhance driver performance and reduce the hazards posed by sun glare during the daytime.”
Clive Robinson • June 28, 2023 7:18 PM
@ vas pup, ALL,
Re : Not in the rainbow.
With regards the quote,
“However, there’s a limit to how quickly they can fire, and previous research hasn’t considered how the limit might affect the ways we see colour.”
There are colours that do not exist yet our brain sees them (more so if they have names).
One colour that does not exist but is so common you will think I’m mad for saying it does not exist and that’s “brown”…
Look in the light spectrum and you won’t find it… What you will find however is dull/dirty orange, which is the frequencies that “brown” is. It becomes brown because of what you see it against.
Other colours are those comprised by two or more individual light frequencies in individual parts of the spectrum. We see these colours because we have three broad band frequency sensors in our eyes our brains get signals from two of the three then we see a colour that realy does not exist.
The fun starts with the non colour sensors in our eyes that gives us our low light or night vision. These fire based on over all intensity in the visual spectrum. You can have colours apparently shimmer or show speculation because of them.
The clasic example is very pure coherant light from the likes of a laser. When you see it on a white or grey through to black background your brain sees not the patch of light but a group of dots changing intensity we call speculation. It’s caused by “phase change” effects… In a very loose way it’s like seeing sunlight or moonlight reflected of the see, the phase of the light changes thus appears to change in intensity. I won’t go into the polarisation effects that cause it (because it’s not just dull and tedious to work through).
Also finding the right Unicode UTF-8 codes for the maths symbols takes for ever
So attempt to display sigma U-2211 ∑
Clive Robinson • June 28, 2023 7:40 PM
@ vas pup,
DO NOT TRY THIS AS IT CAN CAUSE EYE DAMAGE.
Occasionaly when we look at bright light then low light we get an after image in the inverse colour.
If you are say sitting at home in summer in a cool shady room and you stare out the window at the garden at say the lawn or flower beds, when you turn your head away and look at the low light wall you will see for a second or so the image of the garden in the inverse colour.
When I say DO NOT DO THIS i realy realy mean it, it’s dangerous.
Fake religion preachers etc can cause the unknowing to believe they are having visions at their hands.
They do this by getting the person to close their eyes and then the faker “lays their hands” on the persons head with their thumbs on the persons closed eyes. They shout out their mumbo jumbo and increase preasure on the eye. This causes the optical nerves to trigger thus the person sees lights and shapes flashing in their mind, that the faker encourages the person to think is a vision trying to form…
With a bit more mumbo jumbo the faker can get gullible people to pay money over and over to try and get those fake visions to make sense…
There are a whole load of other tricks with the eyes that were used during the Victorian era to fleece people… There are books you can find that explain not just the how and the what of them but also the why.
@MarkH
Detection of Mercury SOFAR charges was expected to be by a recovery ship hydrophone
Triangulation by a few ships surrounding the splash down area would certainly be a lot more accurate. Given the sparsity of the SOSUS stations and hence the long distances involved, I wonder if SOSUS could actually provide a more accurate location than what was known anyway.
Also given the secrecy surrounding SOSUS — even most flag officers did not know the origin of the intelligence it provided — it seems unlikely that it would be used for anything attracting as much public attention.
Clive Robinson • June 29, 2023 6:11 AM
@ FA, MarkH,
Re : Here we go again.
“t seems unlikely that it would be used for anything attracting as much public attention.”
Did it attract public attention at the time?
The system and it’s ability to triangulate over great distance was certainly known about during the late 1970’s and 1980’s not just in trade journals but in science based television programs.
But consider that the logic in your arguments fail to William of Ockham’s Razor.
Why would a small “depth charge” device be placed in a space craft, especially in a place where it would not destroy any confidential or secret equipment?
@Clive, @MarkH
Did it attract public attention at the time?
The Mercury missions certainly did.
The system and it’s ability to triangulate over great distance was certainly known about during the late 1970’s and 1980’s not just in trade journals but in science based television programs.
Mercury was in the early and mid 1960s. And I doubt very much that SOSUS could triangulate with the accuracy required to be useful in this case.
Why would a small “depth charge” device be placed in a space craft, especially in a place where it would not destroy any confidential or secret equipment?
Probably to locate it, just not by SOSUS. A few ships surrounding the splashdown area would be in a much better position to do it.
Clive Robinson • June 29, 2023 1:52 PM
@ FA,
“And I doubt very much”
Do not hide behind your assumptions as you often do, actually go do some checking for once.
Because you will find you’ve already guessed wrong…
lurker • June 29, 2023 3:50 PM
@vas pup
re. sun glare
A non-automated solution that is unlikely to find much favour, is to build cities where the dormitory suburbs are not to the west of the CBD.
modem phonemes • June 29, 2023 6:41 PM
@ vas pup
Re: blue and black, or white and gold
Researchers examined illusions in which an object’s surroundings affect the way we see its colour or pattern.
Scientists and philosophers have long debated whether these illusions are caused by neural processing in the eye and low-level visual centres in the brain, or involve higher-level mental processes such as context and prior knowledge.
It’s not really correct to term these effects illusions as is so often done. Grossberg in his lectures on vision also termed an illusion the eye interpolating continuous images from the regions disconnected by the blood vessels that run on top of the retina. These behaviors and effects are just aspects of the way that sense perception works to give true sensory knowledge. If these effects did not take place, the senses would have to be false in some degree. If one accepts at all an intermediary physical apparatus between the external world and sense knowledge in the knower, it is not reasonable to put ad hoc restrictions on it.
MarkH • June 30, 2023 2:41 AM
Titan Notes:
From David Pogue, a TV reporter who made one (relatively) shallow dive on Titan, via nymag.com:
• Rush told him that multiple CFRP specimens (I don’t know size or shape) had been tested at a university, and that they made lots of “warning sounds” about 1500 m before failure (in terms of test tank pressure).
• Accordingly, Titan was fitted with acoustic sensors, which Rush expected would provide an adequate failure warning margin.
• OceanGate operations appeared to reflect a substantial safety culture.
MarkH • June 30, 2023 2:53 AM
Titan Notes, 2:
• Retired USN sub captain Alfred McLaren offered a highly plausible explanation for the failure: the “pressure envelope” of Titan had 3 dissimilar materials: CFRP, titanium, and plexiglass. Not only do they have different temperature coefficients — worrisome enough — but also different elastic moduli; their dimensions change differently under compression.
• McLaren told Pogue, “you make repeated cycles in depth, of course you’re gonna work that seal loose.”
• Rush had built a pioneering airplane from fiberglass. Perhaps that led to overconfidence, in using fiber-reinforced plastic in another application where nobody had used it before.
Winter • June 30, 2023 3:16 AM
@MarkH
Accordingly, Titan was fitted with acoustic sensors, which Rush expected would provide an adequate failure warning margin.
That sounds not good. The “1500m before failure” is rather unsafe.
The acoustic sounds are a sign the construction is failing. It is just that it is failing slowly, or so you hope. The time the construction takes to collapse depends on the size of the pressure difference AND the size of the construction. If you test on “smaller” specimens and not to 400 atm, you could be in for a surprise.
I saw comments that the main point was that such submersibles have a limited number of “dives” before they fail. And the limited number could very well be 1. The advice was that OceanGate should have asked more money for their trips and use it to replace the submersible more often.
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 3:46 AM
‘https://twittercommunity.com/t/deprecation-of-legacy-access-tiers-in-the-twitter-api/196162/1
‘https://developer.twitter.com/en/updates/changelog
‘https://twittercommunity.com/t/get-2-users-id-following-is-now-broken/197526
Twitter’s recent decision under new owner Elon Musk to charge more than $500,000 annually for a once-free tool to analyze posts on the platform is hampering disinformation and war crimes research, and could slow rescue efforts during natural disasters, according to experts and nonprofit groups.
The change has left many policy shops, NGOs, independent researchers and students without access.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/20/twitter-policy-elon-musk-api/
EU fears that Twitter may not comply had become heightened, with one commissioner warning the company recently that a “wild west” operation would not be tolerated.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/23/twitter-agrees-to-comply-with-tough-eu-disinformation-laws
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 3:50 AM
“We have to be better.”
Aro encouraged journalists to keep investigating and producing stories — and to ensure those stories are “interesting enough to also reach those audiences who we might normally dismiss and who are turning to the Russian state media for information.”
If you look for Russian influence in your region, you will find it — and it is vital that journalists work to expose these propaganda networks and inform the public.
Even small nations that might not immediately think of themselves as a Russian target are susceptible to Russian influence and misinformation.
They operate in media comment sections and on social media platforms that are used internationally and they don’t pose as Russians.
‘https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/jessikka-aro-international-fact-checkers-discuss-combatting-russian-disinformation-campaigns-at-globalfact-10/
…the level of disinformation, including the promotion of Russia-owned state media and potentially doctored images, now being shared by Moscow’s official accounts, represents a paradigm shift in how Russia pushes its false narratives, according to two EU and U.S. officials.
‘https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-diplomats-disinformation-war-ukraine/
“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine surprised some in the West. But Russia’s president has been laying the groundwork for warfare for decades.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html
“Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today.
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo
–
“We are unprepared for it.”
The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age
‘https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2023-06/230628_Williams_NextGen_Reactions.pdf
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 3:59 AM
“It has emerged in the wake of the controversy that there is no security vetting for people hired as parliamentary assistants by TDs or Senators.”
‘https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/02/27/case-of-irish-russian-woman-in-australia-highlights-security-complacency/
“Ms Sologub had access to a wide network of technology companies, including those linked to the defence industry, through her work in Ireland.”
‘https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/02/28/irish-russian-woman-identified-as-security-threat-had-access-to-wide-network-of-tech-companiess/
“A decade-old spy ring whose goal was to infiltrate government policy-making circles for bosses in Moscow.”
‘https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30463563.html
All 10, who were later deported as part of a spy swap deal with Russia, admitted conspiring to act as unregistered foreign agents.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/russian-spies-may-have-used-six-irish-passports-1.662374
“Ireland is expelling a Russian diplomat over claims his country’s intelligence services counterfeited Irish passports.”
…the Russian government remained bullish over the incident, handing down awards to the 10 at a ceremony at the Kremlin.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12337897
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 4:00 AM
@ ALL,
Re : What price roaming charges in space?
Virgin 1st commercial space flight
Virgin Galactic successfully flew it’s first pasanger carrying space flight to “the edge of space” yesterday,
https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-first-commercial-mission-success
Hopefully this will be the start of many such flights, thus bringing the cost down. But at nearly 1/2million / bum-on-seat currently it’s not going to be for everyone (and no you don’t even get to call yourself an astronaut due to the rule changes).
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 4:13 AM
@ ALL,
Re : Jokes that become real.
We’ve all said or heard a disparaging comment of some pre-packaged foods having less tast/nutrition than the packet it came in…
Well somebody had to do it, they’ve made the packet edible,
https://newatlas.com/materials/bacterial-cellulose-creates-ecofriendly-edible-packaging-material/
What it will do for your “fiber needs” I’ve no idea, but the fact it contains Soya puts me right off.
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 4:51 AM
Yet another US company falls under GDPR spotlight
For some reason US Corps or more correctly their lawyers “do not get the continental view point” and assume they can get away with their behaviours by pretending they are not what they are (Data theft of EU Citizens PPI).
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/23/telesign_gdpr_complaint/?td=keepreading
I guess we will have to see how far this goes but various US Corps are repeate offenders, so I suspect it will not be long before the EU ups the anti in some way.
Winter • June 30, 2023 5:49 AM
@ResearcherZero
Re: Russian influence in your region, misinformation, and spying
We are told time and again that Russia has top of the class disinformation campaigns, political and journalistic influencing, and spies and black ops everywhere.
But we also see that they fail miserably when they try to do something in the limelight. Their information and opsec where it really matters, eg, Ukraine, is dismal.
That is the consequence of the fact that nothing works in Russia. The joke is now that Russia went from having the Second Strongest Army in the World (January 2022) to having the Second Strongest Army in Russia (June 2023).
Maybe the best information and the brightest operators cannot help you when you refuse to listen to what they say?
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 6:06 AM
Apple oppose UK Bill that brings in mass surveillance via the back door
As some may remember, Apple got it’s feathers not just singed but quite burned over “Think of the Children” type surveillance systems. Especially when people demonstrated that the system was weak and generated way to many “false positives” amoungst many other failings.
So they are telling the UK government it’s a bad idea (which it realy is…).
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/apple_online_safety_bill_opposition/
Also as I’ve indicated before it’s destined to fail as far as E2EE is concerned.
Secure and Deniable encryption can be done “by hand” with pencil and paper. A little tedious but beyond the reach of the “Surveillance Tyrants”.
Automating it with “software” can be done as I’ve previously described some time ago. Much more recently some researchers have shown that AI systems can do similar (all be it less securely but with greater bandwidth).
The proposed UK legislation is aimed at “service providers” not individual users. As such the “service providers” reach/view is only as far as the “connected communications device” not back further.
Which leaves both a legal and technical gap.
If you encrypt “off device” the Service provider can not reach back to the encryption process. All they can do is see the encrypted message and either block it or let ir pass.
I’ve previously shown it is possible to generate a message that is not just human readable, it is also not possible to say it is carrying another information channel within it.
Thus the service provider can not determine if there is encrypted information in the message or not.
If the service provider starts arbitarily blocking messages without proof they are treding into not just dangerous legal ground, they are also going to loose business as their reputation suffers.
Apple realised just about in time what sort of trouble was “comming down the pike” straight toward them, and what the consequences to them as a commercial entity with share holders was potentially going to be.
They’ve also realised that the US Government will not help them…
As those with long memories will remember back before the US “Crypto-Wars I” the FBI wanted desperatly to hold onto it’s unlawful “Hoover Policy” of unlawful surveillance. The FBI Director Louis Freeh realised that neither the US Public or Politicians would support such behaviours without reason. So he decided to create reason… He thus embarked on an all expenses paid by the US Tax Payer “Grand Tour” of Europe staying in the best hotels etc with a large entourage of servants of various types. His reason was to “glad hand” his way around European politicians and Law Enforcment seniors to try to convince them to implement draconian surveillance legislation… Knowing that the US would not go for such legislation first, he hoped that if Europe did he could spin it up and get US politicians to follow[1].
Well ‘Domestic Terrorism”, “The War on Terror” and “Security Theatre” has changed the thinking of US Politicians and a new “Industrial Military Complex”(MIC) has formed. Based on the massive flow of Taxpayer money into boondoggle type systems against non existant and in some cases manufactured threat, Politicians get “favours” in return via lobbyists and dark money funds. Worse some poliricians now see draconian surveillance on people as the way to go to enforce very minority interest group policy,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/27/post_dobbs_uterus_surveillance/
[1] Whilst there is adiquate proof of FBI Direcror Louis Freeh’s behaviour in this respect, some think that FBI’s hidden policy went further, much further. It’s been more than suggested that it involved a second prong with regards domestic terrorism. That is by quite deliberate inaction and in some cases action alow, forment, and create domestic terrorism. The use of supposed FBI CI’s to encorage some people and supply them with the means as a form of entrapment has been discussed in even the US MSM. And userprisingly it has come up yet again with the Dec37 behaviours of the FBI and the “Elephant Comment” by an FBI senior.
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 7:01 AM
@Winter
When there is opportunity to get away with it, it makes it a lot easier.
“Maguire told the inquiry he had received envelopes containing thousands of dollars in cash at his parliament office as part of a scheme for Chinese nationals to fraudulently acquire visas.”
The inquiry said Maguire sought to use his government office to “create a network between China and Australia and to make a commission in multiple ways”.
It said he misused his role as chairman of the New South Wales Parliament’s Asia Pacific Friendship Group to advance the commercial interests of a Chinese business association in South Pacific nations. He was also found to have monetised his position as a lawmaker to benefit a company, G8way, which sought to sell access to “high levels of government” in Australia.
The Australian arm of China’s largest property developer became his client after an introduction by the founder of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China at one of its meetings.
‘https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/former-premier-australias-new-south-wales-state-engaged-corrupt-conduct-inquiry-2023-06-29/
Daly alleges 20 per cent of the shares in Synergy 360 were suddenly transferred from his ex-wife to United Marketing, a firm controlled by Robert’s former business partner and political fundraiser John Margerison. Robert was Government Services Minister and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme from May 2019 to March 2021.
“David Milo told me that Stuart Robert directed Centrelink leases towards properties owned by one of Margerison’s companies, resulting in favourable terms such as high rents and long lease durations,” Daly said.
The challenge for any future investigator is the pattern of behaviour between Robert and Milo with Synergy 360 clients such as tech giants Infosys and Unisys. …a government review found in March that contracts linked to Synergy 360 and worth $374 million in taxpayer funds needed further investigation.
“The main objective of this arrangement was to secure Stuart Robert’s involvement and support in acquiring federal government contracts.”
“Stuart Robert’s political influence and connections within the government sector were deemed crucial in ensuring favourable outcomes.”
‘https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/consulting-firm-accused-of-plan-to-secretly-funnel-funds-to-stuart-robert-20230628-p5dk0p.html
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 7:04 AM
@Winter
For example…
“Sologub’s application to obtain a distinguished talent visa was signed by a South Australian government official based in London.”
“…the Irish woman is one of many Western business people, diplomats and officials who Russian spies cultivate to gain access to sensitive information.”
‘https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-never-was-a-spy-space-consultant-denies-she-s-a-national-security-risk-20230623-p5dj1l.html
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 7:10 AM
‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-30/wa-government-hwl-ebsworth-hack-alphv-ransomeware-gang-breach/102544166
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 7:12 AM
@ Winter, ResearcherZero, ALL,
Re : The messenger not the message.
“We are told time and again that Russia has top of the class disinformation campaigns, political and journalistic influencing, and spies and black ops everywhere.”
But who tells us this?
Every time it’s investigated it’s unsurprisingly found to be almost entirely untrue.
So the question arises of,
“Who gains by saying such things?”
During the Cold War it is known that US inteligence reports basically equated every Russian in Uniform as “Front Line Forces” of “High training and rediness” in effect “Poised to over run Euroupe in 48hours or less”.
US and NATO “in uniform” were counted very differently in such reports. Thus those that did not check would think from such reports that the West was virtually undefended, due to a massive “Capabilities Gap” (the same with nuclear weapons which is why it’s estimated that the US has getting on for 2/3rds of all such devices in it’s stockpile).
Thus we got the nonsense of things like Ronnie Ray-Guns “Starwars Project” allegadly first thought up by a group of drunk SciFi Writers on their “poker night”. Officially called the “Strategic Defence Initiative”(SDI) it was mainly compleate “lunacy let loose”.
There was horrendous gaffs and worse came to light, such as Politicians failure to understand basic number representation used in science.
One such that raised eyebrows even in journalists was a report that said a laser needed to produce a minimum energy of x.xx E12 joules and the best anyone had any idea how to produce was,y.yy E6. With a politician saying in effect “we’re half way there”…
If you remember back a little while ago Europe got a dose of radioactive materials all over it from a failed test at a Russian navy missile testing ground. Dubbed by part of the Western media as “Chernobyl with wings”,
As near as we can tell the Russian’s were trying to redo what the US had decided was way to dangerous to do back in the early 1960’s with “Project Pluto”,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
Basically use an unshielded nuclear reactor at near critical meltdown as the heat source for a hyperspeed ramjet engine. That also spewed out neutron radiation at such high levels that having one fly over head was effectively a death sentance…
So Russia sixty years behind and way more technically incompetent in effect “dropped the ball” as per normal… We still do not know “officially” if the Russian missile “crashed and burned”, “exploded in the air” or just caught fire/exploded on attempted launch. But on the ground or in the air either way most nuclear power stations and similar down wind of it right across Europe to the Atlantic Coast had their radiation alarm systems kick off big time… Not the first and certainly won’t be the last Russian nuclear environmental disaster to go trotting off around the globe…
So in many ways the Russian’s are more of a danger to themselves militarily than they are to anyone else.
Which is sad realy because there are a lot of very clever people in Russian doing a great deal with comparitively very little.
If the Russian leaders would just stop their rediculous “Strong man Dreams of destiny” and invest in what they are good at and use it to develop trade, they would get more wealth, influance and thus standing in the world… But as long as they go down their current chosen route, it gives “Prime Opportunity” for others to give “faux messages” by which they can profit greatly…
So “Messenger or Message” which is least honest?
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 7:16 AM
@Clive
It’s always funny until someone gets hurt.
–
How to build a proper incident response process including state of the art cyber security plus keeping data protection and privacy obligations close at heart.
‘https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn21-100-preach-it-don-t-breach-it-cyber-security-and-data-protection-as-partner-in-crime
‘https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn21-88-perimeter-security-is-dead-get-over-it-
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 7:30 AM
@ Winter, ALL,
Re : Flapping gums.
With regards our chat on another thread yesterday, and “bigging it up” / flexing vy criminals and wanabes, you might find this of interest,
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 7:51 AM
You go out for a spot of dinner, and then there is an explosion…
“Three teenagers, including two 14-year-old twins, were among the victims of the attack that wounded 61 other people.”
Discussing on air the missile strike that killed ten people in eastern Ukraine, Olga Skabeyeva, Russian state TV host said: “The missiles were aimed at Nato instructors and the strike’s objective was achieved.”
Russian spy who filmed pizza restaurant before missile strike caught.
‘https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kramatorsk-missle-attack-restaurant-afeae73466c0260a1ed3c355532f21c8
…in the past year, seven cases have come to light – involving Norway, Brazil, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Greece.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1580251/download
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1576151/download
Winter • June 30, 2023 8:01 AM
@Clive
So in many ways the Russian’s are more of a danger to themselves militarily than they are to anyone else.
You will remember the Russian top secret bleeding edge bioweapons research projects?
‘https://www.science.org/content/article/anthrax-genome-reveals-secrets-about-soviet-bioweapons-accident
‘https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170926-the-deadly-germ-warfare-island-abandoned-by-the-soviets
Which is sad realy because there are a lot of very clever people in Russian doing a great deal with comparitively very little.
Oh yeah, Russian scientists, mathematicians, and engineers could work wonders.
That is, unless they were integrated in the all devouring corrupt bureaucracy. Then they became like the Soviet industry whose output products were worth less than the resources used.
ResearcherZero • June 30, 2023 9:18 AM
Content farms have sprung up where low-paid humans churn out low-quality content to attract ad revenue.
‘https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/26/1075504/junk-websites-filled-with-ai-generated-text-are-pulling-in-money-from-programmatic-ads/
–
‘https://censys.io/identifying-cisa-bod-23-02-internet-exposed-networked-management-interfaces-with-censys/
–
“Regarding the global data security incident, Siemens Energy is among the targets. Based on the current analysis, no critical data has been compromised and our operations have not been affected. We took immediate action when we learned about the incident,” a Siemens spokesperson said in an email.
A Schneider spokesperson said that the company became aware of the vulnerability on May 30 and “promptly deployed available mitigations to secure data and infrastructure and have continued to monitor the situation closely.”
“Subsequently, on June 26th, 2023, Schneider Electric was made aware of a claim mentioning that we have been the victim of a cyber-attack relative to MOVEit vulnerabilities. Our cybersecurity team is currently investigating this claim as well,” the spokesperson said in an email.
‘https://cyberscoop.com/schnieder-electric-siemens-energy-moveit-cl0p/
On June 1, the UCLA IT security team found evidence of exploitation on May 28 by an unauthorized third-party to gain access to their MOVEit platform and “immediately activated its incident response procedures” patched the vulnerability and stepped up monitoring efforts for further malicious activity related to the vulnerability.
‘https://www.scmagazine.com/news/business-continuity/siemens-ucla-victims-moveit
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 12:22 PM
@ ALL,
Re: Was it a job lot of Amazon returns?
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/29/chinese_spy_balloon_crammed_with/
It appears that the “big red balloon” with a shiping crate sized gondola that US “hot guns” shot down with a way over priced “firework”, was actually stocked full of US sold and manufactured “Internet available cheapies”.
According to some anonymous source talking about an unreleased report.
Apparently a pile of 19 “Elephant droppings” are not getting with the Feebies program and are demanding all sorts of silly things… But amazingly the demands are with the benifit of be hind sight…
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 12:58 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,
Re : The gift that keeps giving…
It appears Intel are having real troubles negotiating “Sapphire Rapids” and getting the goods on stream,
The “Xeon Scalable” 4th generation processors arrived nearly two years behind schedule in January and has now been halted due to an unspecified fault in silicon for some of the mid sized core counts.
You can read a little more at,
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/30/buggy_sapphire_rapids_xeons/
Winter • June 30, 2023 1:46 PM
@Clive
It appears Intel are having real troubles negotiating “Sapphire Rapids” and getting the goods on stream,
Maybe too much emphasis in (re)branding old Atom and Pentium chips as Core 3&5 and locking down (=crippling) processor features in hardware for the hoi polloi.
If all your efforts are geared to extracting money from your CPU users by selling the minimum computing power possible, what is left to produce actually great hardware?
As I heard from a frequent customer (podcast host), AMD just tries to crank out the best chips they can. With AMD, you don’t need an updated 4D processor feature map every quarter. The person complained that every time he buys Intel hardware for his clients he has to check carefully whether the CPUs this year have the same features enabled/disabled as last year.
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 2:09 PM
Re : Titan parts photos.
As some may know parts have been recovered and brought ashore.
You can see photos of some of the larger parts in,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66056706
I would however draw peoples attention to the “equipment bay” that was effectively a cage in the tail.
Have a close look at it,
For what is guessed at being a deep depth implosion, there appears to be little or no damage you would expect to the casings. Nore is their any sign of an explosion that might have happened with hydrocarbons in the environment or sudden pressure change.
This gives rise to the possibility the hull did not fail at great depth as has been presupposed.
Which also might account for what some claim was a larger than expected debris field (very roughly the debris would form a cone as it decends thus the further it falls the wider the field).
I guess we are going to keep open minds and await further information.
JonKnowsNothing • June 30, 2023 5:14 PM
@Clive, All
re: Shade Tree Sub Mechanic
My personal speculation, and that is all it is: speculation, is that the situation may have been more similar to that of a jet plane when the high altitude seals fail (for any number of reasons). The seals failed early, within a few minutes there was no “life left” (1) and the machinery continued in whatever setting it was in. In jet cases, when it runs out of fuel or hits something that has greater altitude (mountain), is when the extreme damage is done. In the sub case, the machinery continued until the leakage built up a terminal equipment failure which shut down any still active components and then glided to a final destination(s) with resulting damage.
===
1) RL tl;dr
I had the sad fortune to watch a small plane fall out of the sky into the ocean. I could hear the engine sputter before I spotted the plane. It was and is a terrible sadness to have been too far to be of help and to know that even though boats where in the vicinity of the crash site and came quickly, 3 minutes was long past, by the time they got there. There were no survivors. The plane wreckage was hauled out a few days later.
I don’t think too many will forget when JFK Jr. plane went into the ocean with family on board. The days searching for the wreckage was THE topic of MSM. For those of us who are old enough to remember all the trials of that family; it was one more sorrow for the nation.
MarkH • June 30, 2023 8:23 PM
@Clive, re wreckage:
Venting a pressure vessel promptly relieves mechanical stress. Probably real (naval) submarines that failed under pressure look more intact than most would imagine.
If Titan’s rupture initiated at the seal of a Ti end-cap — whether or not this included progressive disintegration of the CFRP cylinder from the point of failure — the sea would charge toward the opposite end-cap at velocity proportional to depth (Bernoulli’s principle).
Simplistically, I visualize a cylindrical slug of water hurtling toward the opposite end-cap with speed at least half that of an airliner at cruise. The kinetic energy of that slug as it reaches the far end is the full hundredweight or so of TNT.
MarkH • June 30, 2023 10:44 PM
wreckage, 2:
Thanks to Clive for drawing attention to the article, and especially the condition of the equipment bay, part of a “tailcone” outside — and not connected to — the pressure vessel.
Dropping depth bombs is useful in anti-submarine warfare, because explosions propagate through liquids with great efficiency. A powerful explosion close to the equipment bay would perhaps have mangled it much more than the photo shows. What happened to Titan was surely an implosion, with different dynamics.
If the rupture was at the aft endcap, the tailcone would have been adjacent to a violent inrush of water, lasting perhaps 20 msec.
If the rupture was at the forward end, momentum would have knocked the aft endcap into the tail with terrific force. It’s not clear to me that either case would mangle the tailcone beyond recognition.
MarkH • June 30, 2023 10:59 PM
wreckage, 3:
Rupture depth remains unknown. Time for Titan to descend to 3800 m was reportedly a little more than 2 hours … say, 130 minutes.
Communication was reportedly “lost” about 105 minutes after descent started. Titan had a 15-minute automatic pinger, so perhaps the 105 minute ping was not detected.
If the loss of signal was due to Titan’s destruction, then its interpolated depth would have been between 2600 m (just after the last detected ping) and 3100 m.
Of course, we don’t know whether Rush identified some problem and had started ascent at some point.
The USCG investigation report will probably be quite thorough. I’m wondering what the missing plexiglass window might mean …
Clive Robinson • June 30, 2023 11:35 PM
@ MarkH, JonKnowsNothing,
“The kinetic energy of that slug as it reaches the far end is the full hundredweight or so of TNT.”
As I said look at the picture.
Those orange boxes are by the looks of it ABS or similar plastic with potentially polyisobutylene or polyisoprene gaskets[1] as you would expext in high IP rating cases/cabinets used for electrical work in “wet or dusty” environments but not for hazardous gas/vapour ExD (see British Standard BS EN 60079-1). They appear to be undamaged and free of cracking, crazing etc you would expect from a high mechanical stress.
If as you say “hundredweight or so of TNT” and the implied velocity of near incompressable water. Then they would as they are effectively weakly closed pressure vessles show visable signs of compression effects. Also the wiring harnesses appear “undisturbed” which is again inconsistant with the high kinetic effects you describe.
But at this time I would be cautious about making any assumptions as to just how deep the vessel was when it suffered the event that led to it’s catastrophic break up. In short what we see is anomalous to the first assumptions based on back ground information that it was an almost instant catastrophic failure at great depth and thus pressure. A part of which may hinge on the implied auto-pilot of the “lift-button” analogy given in the video. It is possible that the vessel had a partial fail and carried on descending automatically and started breaking up as it went.
As I said we will have to wait and see what further information becomes available.
[1] These types of material are frequently used for electrical equipment containers for higher “Ingress Protection”(IP) ratings (British Standard BS EN 60529). Because they don’t as such “melt” or have a “step phase change”. Instead they have a shape maintaining polymer “glass–liquid transition”. They are also used in “fiber matrix” composits but these containers superficially don’t look like they are long fiber or woven fiber though they could be short fiber (ABS-GF is now available for 3D printing where it has usefull properties – https://thefabmachines.com/product/glass-fiber-abs-gf-10/ ).
MarkH • July 1, 2023 2:04 AM
@Clive:
If the aft end-cap seal failed, about 5.3 cubic meters of water would rush in over roughly 20 msec; those equipment bay enclosures would have been about 2 m away from that. Might the mechanical effects of such an inrush be quite distinct from an explosion?
The equipment bay enclosures had repeatedly withstood about 400 atmospheres, and may have been rated for more than that.
If such enclosures were 100 m from a 330 kt fusion bomb detonation, they should survive the blast wave (but not the heat!) without visible damage.
Would overpressure from an implosion exceed equipment ratings? Anybody know how to do the overpressure math?
MarkH • July 1, 2023 5:11 AM
I’ve pondered the overpressure question further, taking “water hammer” as a point of reference.
It occurs to me that in the lengthwise-flooding scenario I visualize, the peak overpressure must occur at the moment when the far end-cap fails.
Accordingly, the intensity of overpressure would depend on the stress at which the far end blows out.
If the static pressure (due to depth) plus the peak overpressure did not exceed the capacity of the equipment bay enclosures, then their intact survival may be expected.
The far-end blowout pressure might not have been very great. The structure was designed against negative pressure, not positive.
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 6:56 AM
@ MarkH,
“The equipment bay enclosures had repeatedly withstood about 400 atmospheres, and may have been rated for more than that.”
Only if they were outside the main preasure vessel?
From what’s been said from before the incident I was left with the impression the equipment bay, batteries, control electronics etc was inside the main preasure vessel.
I think we need better drawings/information, but I remember one audio clip about what a former employee had said, was that the drawings and other information were not kept upto date or in some cases at all.
MarkH • July 1, 2023 7:24 AM
@Clive:
That BBC article identifies an “Iridium antenna”, and in an inset diagram locates that antenna atop the tailcone, beyond where the aft end-cap would have been.
The debris recovery photo shows the equipment partly nested within a white shell, which I take to be part of the tailcone fairing.
Accordingly, I interpret that equipment as having all resided outside the pressure vessel, and therefore necessarily at least 6 times as hard as a U.S. ICBM silo.
Perhaps I’ve mixed it all up … it sure would be helpful to see some drawings!
MarkH • July 1, 2023 7:50 AM
It’s a bit cartoonish, but gives a pretty good notion of how far the tailcone extended aft of the pressure vessel:
JonKnowsNothing • July 1, 2023 11:20 AM
@MarkH, @Clive, All
re: Dynamics of Catastrophic Sub Failures
A USA Nuclear Submarine sank unexpectedly in a catastrophic failure in 1963: USS Thresher (SSN-593).
It was news of the day and the “reviews” have been long in coming and often re-reviewed. It’s not every day the USA has a nuclear sub sink.
Much is known about the event, and WikiP has some good information with a timeline of the disaster.
It maybe of some use in current observations, because the time from first indication of problem to complete failure was very short.
===
ht tps://en.wikipedia.o r g/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)
- Thresher slowly dove deeper as she traveled in circles under Skylark – to remain within communications distance – pausing every 30 meters of depth to check the integrity of all systems. As Thresher neared her test depth, Skylark received garbled communications over underwater telephone indicating ” … minor difficulties, have positive up-angle, attempting to blow”, and then a final, even more garbled message that included the number “900”. When Skylark received no further communication, surface observers gradually realized a problem had occurred.
- 9:09am (first problem) – 9:13am – 9:17am – 9:18am (implosion)
(url fractured)
lurker • July 1, 2023 2:15 PM
@Clive Robinson, MarkH
Uninformed speculation follows: if the front viewport failed a jet of high velocity water would hit the inside of the aft endcap, which is “held in place” by incompressible water. There might be signs of impact on the inside of the aft end cap, but how much would this cap move? Likewise for a circumferential failure of the cfrp cylinder?
The analogy of conventional explosive force is distracting for implosion, which might be seen as a “negative” explosion.
Clive Robinson • July 1, 2023 5:10 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing,
Re : Thresher loss page,
In the Wiki page is a quote from the senior investigating officer Admiral Hyman Rickover,
“I believe the loss of the Thresher should not be viewed solely as the result of failure of a specific braze, weld, system or component, but rather should be considered a consequence of the philosophy of design, construction and inspection that has been permitted in our naval shipbuilding programs. I think it is important that we re-evaluate our present practices where, in the desire to make advancements, we may have forsaken the fundamentals of good engineering.“
Sixty years later those words are eerily prescient of what we believe currently is true of Oceangate and the Titan mini-sub.
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
ResearcherZero • June 23, 2023 5:30 PM
‘http://www.fortiguard.com/psirt/FG-IR-23-074
“Security experts say CISA’s directive highlights the reality that cyberspies and ransomware gangs are making it increasingly risky for organizations to expose any devices to the public Internet, because these groups have strong incentives to probe such devices for previously unknown security vulnerabilities.”
Gray said the security industry had been focused on building the next generation of remote access tools that are more security-hardened, but when the pandemic hit organizations scrambled to cobble together whatever they could.
“In the years leading up to the pandemic, the push towards identity-aware proxies and zero trust everything and moving away from this type of equipment was gradual, but it was happening,” Gray said. “And then COVID-19 hit and everybody had to go work from home, and there really was one option to get going quickly — which was to deploy VPN concentrators with enterprise features.”
‘https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/06/cisa-order-highlights-persistent-risk-at-network-edge/
“Sherman also laid out critical areas of focus for the department moving forward including the implementation of targeted zero-trust capabilities across the DOD enterprise by 2027.”
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3383253/defense-official-says-diverse-talent-pool-is-critical/
Further, in the set of entities selected for focused data exfiltration, shell scripts were uncovered that targeted email domains and users from ASEAN Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAs), as well as foreign trade offices and academic research organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In addition, the actors searched for email accounts belonging to individuals working for a government with political or strategic interest to the PRC at the same time that this victim government was participating in high-level, diplomatic meetings with other countries.
https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/barracuda-esg-exploited-globally