Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 5, 2024 8:04 PM

@ Bruce,

So your Squid has “Come of Age” congratulations to the proud father.

Just don’t loan the not so little one the keys to the car, as heaven alone knows where it will end up 😉

Clive Robinson • January 6, 2024 3:43 AM

@ ResearcherZero, JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

“As chief executive, she chose to fight lengthy and expensive legal battles against sub-postmasters seeking redress. She received a CBE for “services to the Post Office” in 2019.”

If you check her background you will find as I’ve mentioned before,

“She has serious religious convictions”

And apparently she believes God and the congregation etc have absolved her etc etc.

Such people especially when they get a taste for power are a danger to a great many of mostly innocent people. They pathologically view themselves as on “God’s Work” which is the little persons version of the “King Game”.

Unfortunately such people are fairly easily manipulated by their narcissism and I suspect that is what,

“The Post Office and Fujitsu “conspired to arrive at a position of mutual interest” and decided that it was better that some subpostmasters “were put on the rack rather than the Post Office collapse and a corporate’s reputation be ruined”.”

@ ALL,

Note that “Fujitsu” being a large international corporation have fingers in many pies around the world… Let’s just say as such you would want them to have “clean hands” but it’s not just the Horizon system that suggests they might be upto their elbows in the midden.

Clive Robinson • January 7, 2024 2:41 PM

@ ALL,

Re : Boeing New Year Blowout.

The start of the New Year has not been at all good for Boeing and lets be honest it’s ill fated 737 Max production in general.

Whilst it’s a version apparantly mostly sold only to US Airlines, it’s hard to see how it can not have “knock on effects”.

Whilst some news stories talk of an “unused emergancy door” others with photographs show it’s actually a big chunk of the cabin side with no door or similar being visable[1] as can be seen in this Reuters image,

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/5674/production/_132223122_81602d9cb3df876d092d23574b77fbd4e42a80c20_0_3024_40321500x2000.jpg.webp

This Suggests this is actually rather more of a factory structural manufacture issue than a customer maintenance issue, which is a subject that keeps comming up over Boeing’s Production of Max 737 aircraft,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67906367

This time the defect appears not to involve onboard flight systems (though this potential area[2] has yet to be rulled out).

If it involves other ground based Production Information Systems used to reduce labour and other costs is yet to be made public.

However due to Boeings more recent Max 737 issues and managments failure to be forthright etc, it’s not going to inspire confidence in the traveling public.

[1] It’s not entirely clear what “unused” means, some articles say that the airline concerned did not have an emergancy door fitted at that location, with hints it was to increase the number of seats. In that case it would be “unfitted” rather than “unused”.

[2] If the door was “unfitted” rather than fitted and unused, this does bring up the question of how this might have effected on board systems that would have fed into the systems pilots depend on for knowing if an aircraft is in a flight worthy state or not. As of yet I’ve not seen any information made public.

Clive Robinson • January 7, 2024 9:19 PM

@ &ers, ALL,

“Screens at Beirut airport hacked with anti-Hezbollah message”

The question is by who?

Beirut is in the capital and govetnment seat of independent soverign state which is the Lebanon.

As some will know a representative of the Elected Gaza Government attended a meeting which was attacked by a “precision attack”.

Several people including the representative of the Gaza Government were assassinated.

Most who are aware of the details have good reason to believe this was an illegal act of war by Israel.

This is contrary to international law and is a “War Crime” for which the most senior of people responsible can be tried and executed by hanging.

If it is as current evidence and belief by the investigating authoriries suggest Israel and the IDF, based on this it means that the current head of the Israeli Department for Defence / War Office at a minimum is now effectively an international war criminal.

The second largest group of soverign nations –after the UN– has backed South Africa in it’s petition to the International Court of Justice against Israel and it’s Government for Genocide and it is likely other Governments will follow.

Thus Israel is rapidly becoming if not already established as a “Pariah state” which makes it automatically subject to a whole slew of legal sanctions. Which is unfortinate for the US as that makes them “sanctions busters” and thus guilty of not just hypocrisy both politically and economically, but the associated knock on effects. Thus any entity trading with either Israel or the US may be in breach of certain international laws and treaties.

One such organisation for instance would be the largest supplier of semiconductors in the world which is Taiwan’s TSMC… Which has probably scared the proverbial brown stuff out of the Silicon Valley Corps that are dependent on that high end semiconductor supply chain and the US economy in turn is dependent on the Corps. The domino cascade effect has probably not gon unconsidered in various meeting rooms in Washington.

This consideration might be one of the reasons “The US state department” has for once actually pushed back against Israel publically and politically (theory of “being seen to be doing something” even if it’s at variance wirh reality).

Following ethnic cleansing stratagy proposals from Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir that Israel will start the expultion of Palestinians from Gaza as part of a “day after” scenario, the US reiterated that Gaza was Palistinian land on which they had the right to remain.

Now Wasgington has blinked, it will be interesting to see what China Taiwan’s very hostile neighbour does next… Especially after the issues of “China Fake News” in the run up to this weekends Taiwanese elections.

Also there is the story of spy incursions into North Korean “economic territory” just the other day that caused a North Korean response of some 200 or so shells.

North Korea launched a spy satellite back in November which has apparently upset not just South Korea but the US as well. Despite warnings the South retaliated and started sending in spy planes into the North’s “Economic Zone”. This in turn caused the North to reactivate “Border Guard Posts” and deploy mobile long range artillery including rocket systems. The South and US then held “joint excercises” these past few days and apparently incursions took place yet again. The day following the end of the excercises the North launching the artillery launch at the edge of their claimed “economic zone”.

Then it got “interesting”,

https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-kim-sister-artillery-firings-tensions-1dc36e05aa3f3ded72ff5650f291207c

Thus things are “hotting up” in the seas around China and the arse end of Russia (I’ll let others talk about the Indonesia / Australia area).

Clive Robinson • January 8, 2024 5:20 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter,

Re : Individual Rights.

“Foreigners by definition of being Not Citizens have no rights.”

Actually by definition of being humans they do have some very basic rights.

Yes they can be “turned away” by boarder guards etc. However once they are effectively “held” by the guards or others basic rights start to apply.

Whilst the US and others have for purely political / idelogical reasons tried to redefine what “held” means they are subject to laws that apply to all nation states.

They came about gradually and started as an imposed limit on the “Power of Kings” and their “Devine Rights”. That is early on basic human rights were seen as “God Given by a just God”. They have gone on to become seen as “inalienable fundamental rights” even more fundemental than religion.

In effect it was the realisation of the sanity of the self protection of the principle of,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Whilst it initially applied only to the “King and first estate” as seen in the Magna Carter over the intervining millennium the wisdom of them has become built into not just cultural norms and ethics but legislation effectively imposed as a “common good”.

Unfortunately we are seeing a resurgence of religious fundementalism where “appeal to deity” is happening. Some call it “White Christian Evangelism” others different things. However it apparently syems from a perversion of Eastern style Catholic Orthodoxy. But it is actually a reformulation of the “King Game” and the “God head” and “Divine Right”. As some are aware the previous US Vice President made it clear that he believed in his God before all others… and is fond of making what appears to be supporting quotes from the old testiment of the Bible etc.

Well he “cherry picks” tiny quotes and mixes and matches them together to suit his political and personal purpose as does gis wife and children. Which I think most would regard as something other than what he claims of following God and Christ but a “con-job”,

https://www.salon.com/2023/08/27/mike-pence-and-the-book-a-master-class-in-disingenuous-biblical-interpretation/

Whilst he has personally failed in his “strong man rehtoric” for now, he remains like unexploded ordinance and mines in the fields, a significant threat to many future generations. As he clearly does not believe in,

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

For all, but only a very select few.

Importantly those words form a well-known and oft quoted phrase. Which comes from the United States Declaration of Independence. As such it gives them as just three examples of the many unalienable rights which the Declaration claims have been given to all humans, and which governments are created to protect…

Clive Robinson • January 8, 2024 5:40 PM

@ aircraft technician,

“If the avionics reported pressurisation issues in the days before, that means that safety checks were working as required.”

Tells me two things,

1, You do not have a clue about what you are talking about.
2, Your proffessed view point is unsafe.

Thus my earlier doubts about you appear confirmed that,

“You are not an aircraft technician”

Which begs the question of why you are pretending to be so, when your lack of relevant knowledge is so easily observable.

Clive Robinson • January 9, 2024 2:50 AM

@ &ers,

“Storm already arrived?”

Storm Henk as the UK Met Office named it is now “so last week” and has “naffed orf’d” to Europe.

As they say “after the storm comes the depression” and with it a significant drop in temprature as NE winds blow down and snow and ice are supposadly comming. However just up the River Thames is a place called Oxford that has a University and now floods because for over 40years[1] “they’ve been talking but not doing” flood prevention. The result is apparently the sewers have discharged into the flood waters…

Yes it’s done some damage around the neighbourhood. One neighbour a little ways away lost their “patio roof” another has had several fence panels go down with the support “4 by 4” posts snapped like dry twigs.

I discovered by the sound of dripping I had several holes in the roof, where roof tiles had moved out of position… So up into the loft which is not to easy when neither of your legs work well enough for standing/walking let alone climbing ladders…

I’ve managed to slide the tiles back into place but a couple of them got broken lugs during the storm thus will just slide down again at some point. So I’m going to have to either go up the outside using ladders etc when it’s safe to do so with some strips of aluminium to make “hangers”. Or slide the tiles down again so I can put my hand out from the inside to put a couple of loops of PTFE coated copper wire or mono-filament around each one. Then slide them back up into place and tie them up in position to the baton[2]. Either way not even close to “safe to do” in the expected weather over the next week.

[1] I was going to move to Oxford some years ago as I’d been offered a rather nice job at a Nuclear Establishment to the East of it. However I did my “due diligance” and realised the only places I was likely to find a new house was on old farmland, some of which had once been “water meadows” or low lying farm land or “Otmoor” a flat marshy wasteland that even the British Army had given up on due to the fact the “water table” was sometimes high enough to eat off… As far as I’m aware they still have the rifle range there, where I used to practice. As part of the regimental shooting team we would spend two or three days at a time there. On one occasion a bleak winter week doing sniper training it got so damn cold I actually got more than dusted with snow and froze to the bl@@dy ground and had to be pulled free… As they say “My finest hour NOT” frost bite twixt the navel and nipple region is not a good look on anyone…

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

[2] As a temporary fix, I’m thinking about using “hot melt” glue to put a strap on the underside of the tile and slide that up over the baton. So I don’t have to do anything that might cause the tile to slide out and fall to the ground.

Clive Robinson • January 9, 2024 10:00 AM

@ &ers, ALL,

Re : Cyber Ops Ukraine v Russia.

Neither this latest attack by the Ukraine on a Moscow ISP or the preceding Russian attack on Kyivstar appear to do physical damage.

Thus service get restored within hours to maybe a month.

Thus Cyber Warfare appears more nuisance attacks than damage attacks.

The potential real harm is making user data available.

Because in theory it will enable databases to be built up of civilians such as the families of combatants.

Our host @Bruce has previously mentioned “Aspidistra” in Crowborough SE England that during WWII was used to do very effective “disinformation” campaigns against the soldiers and theor families back in Germany.

A big chunck of this was possible and made believable by the operators having access to lots of information about where people lived and who they were related to.

The “Black Propaganda” idea as implemented was the brain child of Sefton Delmer. It was perhaps the first use of general / open information sources as infomatic weaponary.

Being a physically large over weight man who was not exactly physically active, Sefton new that if he’d gone into the armed forces he would possibly have been of use to German soldiers as not much more than a couple of moments target practice. So he sort out the Inteligence Services through a man who would bring us “007” the author Ian Fleming.

Sefton Delmer’s story reads in some ways like that of an evil mastermind that Ian Fleming put in his books,

http://www.seftondelmer.co.uk

Clive Robinson • January 9, 2024 7:31 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter, ALL,

Re: JN1 Mutations transmission rate.

“JN1 is now 62% of the US cases of COVID.”

There may be a reason for this…as you note,

“Every business and hospital and clinic must buy their own supply. That supply sits on the shelf until someone buys it, steals it or it is under a recall order.”

Apparently it is the same for the vaccines, of which most given in the US are in no way designed with JN.1 in mind.

So whilst not exactly usless is certainly less than efficatious.

So the only real defences those in the US have is,

“Space, masks, and scrub-n-rub.”

In much of the US Space is not possible except in mechanical issolation. Masks are not just not socially accepted and from what I’ve been hearing apparently some police forces are implying the use of masks is against state law in public spaces. As for hand etc washing with mildly costic soaps and short chain alcohols, there are still not the fascilities to enable this such as handle free doors etc.

None of this is exactly rocket science but “profit first and foremost” short term thinking is destroying long term prospects.

Dead people neither work or spend, sick people can’t work and have high costs and don’t have spare money to put in the economy.

So short term “profit first” thinking is as I’ve indicated in the past is self defeating.

Expect this penny to start dropping, with the slightly smarter fiscally driven. However they won’t do the necessary or sensible things. But they will change the methods by which they extract short term profit, which usually involves creating a downward spiral…

People were a few years ago talking about moving to a “rent seeking” economy. Well as the old saying has it,

“You can not squeeze blood out of a stone if it does not have any.”

The same applys to fiscal resources. No income due to no jobs or being to sick/disabled to work, means you can not pay for lodgings, buy medical care, or even food. So paying rent for other things is likewise not possible.

I’ve seen figures of the rapidly increasing “car dwellers” who are under thirty or over fifty with those in between even with jobs barely able to put a roof over their head and food on the table for their family. As for saving for collage for children or pension for retirment, that is some kind of “Eldorado”[1] Dream.

The overall result will not be good, and history shows that various forms of civil unrest are likely if not required to force a turning point out of the economic and societal tail spin.

[1] See 1849 poem by Edgar Allan Poe writen at a time of his introspection if not depression shortly before he died. Poe is rrcognised as one of the first if not the first American Writer to try and earn a living by writing. Whilst his death is still a mystery it is now assumed it was not suicide, drugs or alcohol. Disease is these days more strongly suspected.

Clive Robinson • January 11, 2024 7:25 PM

@ MDK, ALL,

Re : One flew over the vipers nest.

I would like to have a “look see” unfortunately the site you provided a link to does “European Lockout” with the usual nonsense excuse they are working on it…

Which is ludicrous because I’m not in the “European Economic Area” where “EU Law” applies…

DuckDuck is now even less use than a “Chocolate Fire Guard” for which I 100% blaim the numpties at Micro$haft and their “AnalInserter”.

At a guess based on no info of the event, but based on previous UFO/Comet sightings.

I’d say “back illuminated contrails” as seen at sun up or sun down or around moon rise/set.

Look up a natural effect called “Noctilucent” clouds which are basically ice crystals at hights that very definately make them astronauts 😉

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

However like ordinary clouds they can look like many things, not just wooly sheep :-S

The same thing happens at way lower altitudes with ice, water, dust, and even some gasses like methane or evaporated jet / rocket fuels. As a SpaceX Falcon 9 take off photo from eight months ago shows,

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-space-jellyfish-was-spotted-over-the-southern-us-what-is-it-and-how-did-it-get-there

On several occasions when I was younger I’ve seen bright orange lines in the sky in early evening that were moving staryed narrow and expanded greately. On one occasion I had my telescope handy as I was going to later do some star gazing and wanted it to “drop to temprature” and got to see a jumbo jet some distance ahead.

Which as you will probably a very great disappointment to a nine year old who had thought it was their first comet.

However the above does not account for all you say… So there is more to explain away 0:)