Tag Archives: Security

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Wake up, friends! Nothing’s secure! You need a plan.

I keep telling folks but they don’t listen. They think the internet is a delightful playground. Well, sorry, but if it’s online:

It’s going to get stolen

The internet was not designed for security. It was designed for openness. This is its structure at the base level. It’s hard coded. Like you’re hard coded to love puppies.

Don’t listen to people (Apple, Microsoft, anti-virus frauds) who swear they’re so smart you can’t get robbed. Such arrogance is foolish. It’s like somebody telling you they’re so smart they can reengineer the sun’s rays to cool instead of sear your flesh. It makes no sense. Sorry, but nobody can secure your data completely.

You need to think not in terms of what will happen if your data is stolen. You need to think in terms of what you’ll do when it is. I recommend this formula:

 

Item: What’s online

Threat: What can happen to that data

Recourse: What you or somebody else will do when your data is stolen

 

For instance:

 

Item: Your online financial account

Threat: Somebody takes your cash

Recourse: If you’re FDIC insured, you’ll be okay, if not, you’re potentially fucked

 

Item: Your cloud sexual pictures

Threat: Some creepy dude steals them and posts them online

Recourse: You could sue, but essentially you’ll have to deal with it

 

Item: Your credit card

Threat: Somebody takes your number and buys fancy jewels or hats

Recourse: Via your credit card company you get a new card, number, and the offender is flagged as fraud in the credit database

 

Item: Your precious bitcoins

Threat: Your bitcoins just became somebody else’s bitcoins by virtue of their actions

Recourse: You’re fucked

 

Item: Your degenerate, pointless blog

Threat: A bunch of grizzled lunatic alien exiles hijack your blog

Recourse: You meekly accept this outcome as reality

 

Item: Your shopping site account

Threat: Somebody steals your password

Recourse: You change your password

 

See how each of these has a different level of awfulness depending on the importance of the data at hand. There are also different mitigation options available to you on each area. Each piece of data you own online is unique. You need to think about each portion of your online life. How much risk are you willing to take?

If the risk of loss is too high for you to deal with? It needs to come offline.

Because I assure you, nobody can defend it. If somebody targets you, if somebody wants your data, they’re going to get it.

Plan accordingly.

internets

If they’d designed the internet to be secure, it would look absolutely nothing like it does today

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Do my charged internal sub-atomic particles count?

So apparently uncharged electronic devices are now as dangerous to modern air travel as a man-portable flamethrower? When did this happen? People have been carrying charged and uncharged devices onto aircraft for like fucking six decades. How is this now worthy of wasting ten more minutes in the security checkpoint?

So I’m just going to assume that if my personal molecules are somehow uncharged, that they’ll still let me board the aircraft. But I think, I guess, that this isn’t an issue because if my atoms were uncharged, that means I’m a bleached skeleton, right? I think?

You know I don’t claim to be the reincarnation of Sun Tzu, but I’m pretty sure nowhere in sound military strategy is it a good idea to broadcast to the enemy what you know about their weapon’s capabilities. I bet there’s a Yemeni informant who just got beheaded because they made him as the only guy able to pass this data to the CIA and he got burned. Gee, thanks USA government, that’ll really encourage folks to cash in on your magnanimous protection of trusted sources.

So in addition to not being Sun Tzu II, I’m also not an engineer. But I’m just going to go ahead and determine that they think if the device cannot turn on it’s because the device is a Trojan horse weapon with dynamite inside instead of your hipster iOS software. To which my question is if that’s true, then what’s all that explosive detection stuff for?

We’ve been led to believe that for over a decade our government masters/protectors can glean the presence of explosives from the inside of your shampoo bottle which you jammed all the way inside your running sneaker and then topped with your rolled sock.

This level of precision is why we subject seven year old girls to internal cavity searches, right? And now they’re admitting that the best they can do to detect an active explosive is if the damn thing doesn’t turn on? That otherwise somebody could take an explosive holding laptop right on by security? Really? That’s the best we’ve got? So does that mean that for the last decade all the explosive detecting gear was just a bunch of smoke and mirrors?

Which brings us to my next point. Is all of this security fetish shit just a bunch of smoke and mirrors? We’ve previously blogged about the lunacy of both sides picking the airways as a battleground, but this is just ridiculous. It’s going to reach the point where in order to check onboard an international flight they’ll require a sample of your blood and stool. But anybody can walk onto just about any high-speed train on the planet with the aforementioned flamethrower in a backpack and nobody’s going to bat an eye until the screaming starts.

Do you feel safe flying? Gee I sure hope so, after all the billions spent and time wasted. Would you feel any less safe if they didn’t read your DNA before you boarded? I bet you wouldn’t know the difference. Would the bad guys get one plane eventually? Sure, but that’s probably going to happen anyways, see previously mentioned explosive detection incompetence.

And in any case you’re about seventy times more likely to check out in a car accident. I recommend you accept that and get over it. In the meantime, we’re probably putting more resources into the TSA than on curing cancer.

[unintelligible mumbling] What? [unintelligible mumbling] Yeah, Wednesday night. Why? [unintelligible mumbling] Well, yeah, I guess I’ll make sure it’s charged before I leave. I need to make sure I’m not late getting aboard. I’m leaving so late, that there isn’t another flight later as a backup. [unintelligible snickering] So, okay, look, … [throws chair]

tsa-

This humble salaried bureaucrat hopes that terrorism lives forever

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It’s time for a new cause, and the applicable follow-up

We’re rather not surprised, or happy, that we called this from the start:

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/24/5837836/forgetting-nigerias-girls

So now that this pet cause has failed, perhaps we can get more support for our solution/pet cause, which was strangely not adopted by the world establishment: 

https://arcturusproject.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/want-to-keep-schoolgirls-safe-shoot-them-in-the-head/

bringbackourgirlstrend

Not an effective means to bring about change

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Things are returning to normal, but they shouldn’t

Nobody wants to live in a state of perpetual crisis; to get pounded every single day in the head with awful reality.  So Uncle Vlad has sounded rather charitable lately.  And so do his Western counterparts.  Now that the drama’s subsided, everybody wants to get back to normal.  Vlad’s backed Ukrainian elections, pulled some troops away, and didn’t resort to screaming like the lunatic he is when Prince Charles called him exactly what he is.

By the way, you have to applaud Charles for speaking the truth and the not backing down.  When you see how the three big men of British politics responded, you affirm quite a lot of who they really are:

Cameron:  The Prince… “…everyone is entitled to their private opinions.”

Clegg:  The Prince… “…free to express himself.”

Miliband:  The Prince… “…has got a point.”

Which is to confirm that Cameron remains the hack-fraud everybody thinks he is; Clegg is still a vacuum-sealed-lifeform-in-a-suit; and Miliband, for all his many, many faults is still a democrat at heart and has the admirable quality of telling everybody what he really thinks.  Even if telling everybody what he thinks usually gets him in trouble.

But it’s okay you tart Brits.  You’re not the only ones led by a walking corpse.  Monsieur Hollande still can’t bring himself to not sell amphibious assault ships to Vladimir.  Apparently because he says that once you sign contracts, they are sacred.  Oh, I get it.  So Vlad can violate international law and multiple signed treaties but the French will be damned if they break a single contract.  This is to say that Vlad could invade Poland and burn Warsaw to the ground.  But as long as it doesn’t lead to the loss of five-hundred union jobs in Saint-Nazaire, Hollande would respond, “Meh, [French shrug] what can you do?”

Vlad is not happy with Charles.  For once he almost seems to whine just a little.  He doesn’t like being compared to one of history’s greatest monsters.  But they’re essentially the same kind of guy.  Except that Vlad has a much lower body count and is in the end rather less successful in achieving his goals up front.  But Charles is right and both Vlad and Hitler see Europe the same way.  Unfortunately for us all, there’s no Churchill or de Gaulle waiting in the wings to turn things around.  And so this will go on and on.

Everybody in our blessed Western establishment governments and businesses want things to go back to normal.  The West needs Russia for gas, for oil, for cash, on Syria, Iran, Afghanistan transport links, nuclear proliferation, and about sixteen other major actions.  But to push Ukraine to the side and get back to normal in the pursuit of these goals misses the gravity of the damage Putin has recently wrought to the West and the world order it claims to represent.  This one you can’t let slide.

In two weeks Vlad shows up to the Normandy commemorations of 06 June.  Oh, yeah, if you didn’t know, Hollande has not withdrawn the invitation.  So in two weeks all the “leaders” of the West are going to stand side-by-side with a leader who’s just recently gone against everything those who fought at Normandy stood for.

They’re going to let him get away with it because they think they need him.  They require his Russia so they can get back to normal.  They might as well kidnap five Ukrainians off the street, take them to Sword Beach, and urinate on them atop an old Nazi coastal gun box.  And while they’re at it, walk over to the cemetery and spit on the graves of the fallen.  It’s the same as standing next to Putin after what’s happened.  It’s a disgrace.

9862553

“Well Vlad, you have to know, you’re a filthy Hitler shit.”

“Yeah, and what are you going to do about it, pig?!”

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Trust the gun wielding goon with your freedom, what could go wrong?

I have this idea of a bunch of drunk cavemen leaders discussing whether or not to establish an army to liquidate the residents of a neighboring cave. They vote to do it. Then the next morning the leaders all wake up to find the general they elected to command their new cave army has launched a coup. He beheads them all and then doesn’t attack the neighboring cave after all.

Who needs an army anyways? Well, I guess Ukraine, probably Vietnam, and all those Baltic states who will soon become Russian provinces while NATO discusses what minor tool of Putin to sanction. But mostly, I think the planet’s countries don’t need armies. Throughout history, most armies only battle their own people. I’m certain we’ve got more coups than wars on the books.

Why has Thailand needed an army since 1932? They’ve had twelve coups. But the only times it was really needed against say Imperial Japan or to hedge Communist Vietnam, they never really fought. So by my count the only battle the Thai army has ever truly engaged in was against its own people. Maybe the Thai should only have cops instead. It’d be safer that way.

But it was rather comical to see the fools at the US State Department twist their words in a manner befitting a hack of Putin. As they walked around whether or not the army’s actions earlier this week amounted to a coup. I guess thousands of guys on the city streets with machine-guns is a training exercise?

Whatever. Don’t be too hard on them. They’re interested in preserving US influence in Thailand, regardless of who’s in charge. We don’t possess a US State Department interested in supporting US values. That’s weak ass stuff. Imposing your values across the world by any means is for jerks like Putin who actually care about things.

But fortunately those seeking clarity of the situation when clarity already existed were nicely assisted by history’s latest caveman asshole: General Prayuth Chan-ocha, Self-Appointed Dictator & Overlord of the Thai People. When in doubt, as always, trust the guy who’s serious enough to put guns on the street.

But it’s okay, the US is on the case. Secretary Kerry has warned of “negative implications for the U.S.-Thai relationship”. Ah, I see. I once again refer Secretary Kerry to his outstanding performance with the Ukraine crisis and remind him that people generally look at what you’ve done to determine whether you’re a serious man. If I was the good general, would take any threat Kerry offers seriously?

One Shirt, Two Shirt, Red Shirt, Yellow Shirt, whatever. Both sides are at fault in why Thai governance has been a basket case for a decade. These guys make Africa’s best kleptocrats look like freaking masters of the human race. Hey, at least Mugabe can keep things somewhat moving, even if he’s still having folks beat in back alleys. I’m pretty sure Mugabe’s got less automatic weapons on the streets of Harare today than Bangkok does.

But you know who’s not going to improve Thailand’s situation? The army. So whatever their motives, they’ve now further sent their country into the drink. The good general says he’s there to “return peace and order to the country as soon as possible”. They all say that. Some of them might even mean it. Maybe the general actually means it? But even if he does, he clearly doesn’t know anything about history. If you know history, you can already call how well this one’s going to work out. Bet money on it.

normal street corner

Well, at least the guy on the right isn’t laying a pool of blood; I guess that’s something; I guess