Slate has a good summary here.
Category: Security
1961 Broken Arrow
1961 Broken Arrow when we almost lost North Carolina.
“Three of the four arming mechanisms on one of the bombs activated after it separated, causing it to execute many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as charging the firing capacitors and deploying of a 100-foot-diameter (30 m) parachute.”
(Rick Perry wanted to get rid of the DOE and, famously, had trouble remembering it existed and, now, he runs it).
Reading the Fifth Risk this Sunday morning — it is better than coffee at waking me up. It mentioned this … wow, wish it was fiction but it is real.
Witch Hess
According to:
During World War II, the British government planted astrological charts by Sybil Leek that convinced Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess to fly to Britian to instigate a peace treaty with some duke. Hess was captured and later tried in Nuremberg. He died in prison.
In current times, Hess style micro-targeting distortion personal belief scales to the entire population. In fact, this is precisely what Russian GRU did in the 2016 Presidential Election. However, domestically, the political parties themselves are doing this. Likely, business marketing departments are doing this or will be doing this.
All of this propaganda will come disguised as Social Media links to articles in news sources from all over the planet. For each of us targets, it is everywhere. The list of exploited human cognitive biases is long …
- Availability Bias – it’s everywhere, it must be true
- Confirmation Bias – I knew it all along
- Bandwagon Effect – we and all my friends on facebook believe it
- Belief Bias – I agree with the conclusion so it must be true
- Cheerleader Effect
- … just go through this list. I ran out of steam.
Take a microphone, an amplifier, and a speaker. Hold the microphone up to the speaker and hear the screech. Rewarding extreme beliefs that happen to provide an immediate benefit to the manipulator is a positive feedback loop. (In the long run, the manipulator is part of this feedback system). Really, this is not good.
The DC Cherry Tree Blossums
Bruce Schneier wrote:
Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms and Source Code in C
His monthly newsletter had this snippet precipitated by this blog post:
Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think we just won the Crypto War. A very important part of the US government is prioritizing security over surveillance.
An important quote from this blog post:
Democracies depend on civic infrastructure. These organizations, whether the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Council on Foreign Relations, or Sierra Club, serve as intermediaries between the people and those who govern, providing information and insight on a wide variety of issues.
Today, slashdot had a blurb on the stolen CIA CherryBlossom tool for compromising our home and small office routers. Slashdot summarizes the tool’s capabilities:
The tool can sniff, log, and redirect the user’s Internet traffic, open a VPN to the victim’s local network, execute actions based on predefined rules, alert operators when the victim becomes active, and more.
At best, to get the Senate to use Signal and, possibly, get our Intelligence agency putting a smidgen of focus on security, we had to suffer the subjugation of our ‘civic infrastructure’ to a foreign state. At worst, our ‘civic infrastructure’ is unrecoverable.
This is the subtle stuff. We should protect the thought-makers and messengers from distortion.
However, there are basic problems. For example, as Bruce Schneier and others have pointed out, we need machine printed, voter verified ballots.
I believe that there is a foundational issue. Stepping all the way back, the whole point of election process is to measure the will of the electorate. The whole point of government is governing. Our parties, elections, and politicians don’t do this for a whole host of reasons. Our primary process leading to 17 GOP candidates is a disaster. Our “increased transparency, everyone is covered but 23 Million people, all done out in the open in a closed room, thoughtfully with no thought, ACA replacement bill is a disaster.
As demonstrated in 2015 , 2016, and, now, in 2017, this mess is susceptible to easy and continuous manipulation by foreign entities.
Passwords
Here are things that require a password today:
Work Insurance site, Medical insurance site, Doctor’s site, Dentist’s site, Doctor’s secure email, NTTA (Toll) Authority, House Router, 5-7 computers, 3 tablets, 4 phones, TV, 2 google chromecast, 2 amazon fire boxes, cell phone site, facebook, twitter, snap chat, 10 email accounts, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Webkinz, Traxxas forum, other forums, Internet provider, Google voice, Voice box, NAS box, 3 cars, 2 apps for cars, cameras, Quad copter, ATM, bank website, etc., etc.
Here’s the list from 1978:
My Room