08:35 – We’re down to a dozen or so finished biology kits in stock, so today I plan to do final assembly on 30 more. If the month-on-month trends compared to last year hold up, we should ship between 65 and 110 total kits in June, between 100 and 160 in July, between 160 and 260 in August, and between 115 and 190 in September, so we have our work cut out for us. At least those 12,000+ bottles and caps I ordered yesterday will be enough to get us started.
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
22 Comments and discussion on "Wednesday, 29 May 2013"
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It appears that China has hacked in to the F-35 project:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-29/reports-chinese-hackers-targeted-us/4719352
In a related article, they also stole the blueprints to the building for our domestic spies:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-27/asio-blueprints-stolen-in-major-hacking-operation/4715960
It appears that China has hacked in to the F-35 project:
Maybe they can get that nightmare built by a committee to work. Planes are highly specialized tools. Getting one plane to VTOL, be supersonic, be sneaky and have long range are just not compatible goals. The VTOL configuration alone is a nightmare.
That said, there is way too much stuff connected to the internet. Anyone who connects a pipeline, power plant, chemical plant, refinery, etc to the internet is a moron. Especially with read/write access.
I wonder what will happen to the cops in this story. Apparently you can’t stand on your own property without fear of being shot.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/05/28/police-shoot-kill-grandfather-while-responding-to-burglary-call/
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/
And Google is moving to 2048 bit keys:
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/462800/google_lengthen_ssl_encryption_keys_from_august/
And how do I get FireFox to remember my reply name and password for this website without adding some lame addon that won’t work after a few revisions?
Just move along, citizens, nothing to see here….move along now….
Anyone who connects a pipeline, power plant, chemical plant, refinery, etc to the internet is a moron.
You have to do more than that, as the Iranians found out – allowing a thumb drive to be connected to an isolated system can compromise it. (Search for STUXNET for details.) Powerplants and the like need to be handled the way things are done at NASA’s mission control. First, if possible, software to be installed is provided in source form, with compilation instructions and a description of the changes. It is loaded on a standalone system, changes found, compiled, and an executable produced. It’s taken to another standalone system and run. Finally, after approvals, it’s installed on the target system. MCC has a data feed to the outside world, but it’s outgoing only. I don’t know the details, but I think they have a single ethernet port that is nailed down to talk only to a single outside machine, and all packets coming in to MCC are passively inspected by a third system to be sure that they are only traffic control packets.
IIRC, the banking interchange system is on a separate network, and there are said to be several separate classified data networks.
There is enough dark fiber out there (or at least there used to be) that setting up a private internet that only powerplants talk to is feasible. Not a VPN on a public network, but a physically separate system. All the machines on the net would be secured and plugging in a thumb drive would get you fired. Patches for the software and the OS would be handled like MCC.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but one of my readers once commented that he worked at the NSA and that all of the USB ports on their systems were epoxied shut.
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but one of my readers once commented that he worked at the NSA and that all of the USB ports on their systems were epoxied shut.
Truth. NASA used to be one of my customers and getting them an software update was a exercise in futility.
And I read NSA as NASA. Sigh. Bad eyesight and bad brain.
That F-35 story is timely hereabouts; I keep seeing pro-F-35 stickers on vehicles in the area; the local “international” airport 30 miles south of us is one of the two airfields chosen to get them, thanks to our hardworking Senator Leahy, who must have been at odds with our other hardworking Senator Sanders on this issue but nary a spat in the media about it. However, there are people living adjacent to the airport now screaming a blue streak about it, because of the noise, etc, twice that, allegedly, of the current F-16s. What’s funny is that these people *bought* their houses next to the airport back in the day and are now fuming that military jets are there. Apparently thirty or forty houses have already been bought/seized through some variant of eminent domain and demolished accordingly, because the new jets will need longer runways.
These aircraft belong to the Vermont Air National Guard, a.k.a. the Green Mountain Boys, and there are pics of two of them online flying over Manhattan just minutes after the 9/11 attack there. One of the pilots’ dad was a ‘Nam fighter jock and his granddad was one in The Good War. They used to have one female pilot but I think she’s gone now, maybe now that the big wave is off to get them pencil-whipped through jet fighter school.
Anyway, they’re coming.
Anyone who thinks the 35 is too noisy ought to take a listen to a 22. Those things are a *lot* louder than the 15 they are replacing; we get to see them all the time here in Lower Alabama. But I’m sure that no one who might ever mean us harm is working on the technology to listen for a jet engine on a particular set of frequencies.
The 35’s are supposedly replacing the 16’s here, which are plenty noisy all by themselves, esp. when roaring overhead at tree-top level. I have zero sympathy for the people who bought houses right next to an international airport. None.
The only totally secure, unbreakable encryption method is the book code.
RBT wrote:
“I don’t know if it’s still the case, but one of my readers once commented that he worked at the NSA and that all of the USB ports on their systems were epoxied shut.”
That might have been the CIA. Or both.
I think the CIA is said to have seven networks, with increasing levels of security. And woe betide anyone who connects a computer to the wrong network.
I used to know a lot more about encryption, anonymous remailers and so forth, but completely lost interest five years ago. I heard end-to-end encryption was integral to IP6. Has anyone heard about that?
OFD wrote:
“…thanks to our hardworking Senator Leahy…”
Is that old fart still around? He was first elected when I was in high school 39 years ago.
The only totally secure, unbreakable encryption method is the book code.
I am sorry but I do not understand. I am familiar with Blowfish, Twofish and Public Key Cryptography (1024 bit). None of these are “the book code”.
Well, differentiating between codes and cyphers, I think the only unbreakable cypher is a one-time pad using truly random bits (such as the background noise from the Big Bang).
I actually started writing a novel years ago about someone who’d discovered an algorithm that made factoring the products of large prime numbers trivial, allowing him to decrypt essentially every encrypted military and commercial message, not to mention creating his own messages using other people’s keys.
Lynn wrote I am sorry but I do not understand. I am familiar with Blowfish, Twofish and Public Key Cryptography (1024 bit). None of these are “the book code”.
The “book code” that I was taught many MANY years ago in a school at a location that I dare not name was part of a course in “personal communication.” It involves sending an encrypted message to your intended recipient, who, like you, has in hand a commonly available hardbound book (a novel, a dictionary, the Bible, etc). You write your message in plain text, and then, using your copy of the book (which must contain your words), describe those words using page numbers, line numbers, word location in that line. So that the word “money” found on page 130, line 25, 13th word in would be encrypted as 1302513. There are some rules: Both books must be exactly the same edition, and same printing; page and line numbers must be unambiguous (Page 1 would probably be 001, line 1 would be 01, etc). There are other rules and conventions, but you get the idea. It’s quite a secure system, but not the only secure system. The use of a “one-time pad” (OTP) is even more secure. For an incomprehensible discussion of the OTP go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad. Class dismissed!
I attended CSSP back in the day in the mil. Sooper Secret school. Lifetime oath stuff. May mean something to other mil alumni. Couldn’t even say the name so we called it Can’t Say Shit Pal CSSP. You know based on this thread.
Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. “I wonder!” said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. “Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man’s reference is to a book. That is our point of departure.”
“A somewhat vague one.”
“Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my mind upon it, it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications have we as to this book?”
“None.”
“Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher message begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the cipher refers. So our book has already become a large book which is surely something gained. What other indications have we as to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2. What do you make of that, Watson?”
“Chapter the second, no doubt.”
“Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.”
“Column!” I cried.
“Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is not column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we begin to visualize a large book printed in double columns which are each of a considerable iength, since one of the words is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-third. Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?”
“I fear that we have.”
“Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation, my dear Watson — yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been an unusual one, he would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no difficulty in finding for myself. He had it — and he imagined that I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very common book.”
“What you say certainly sounds plausible.”
“So we have contracted our field of search to a large book, printed in double columns and in common use.”
“The Bible!” I cried triumphantly.
“Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough! Even if I accepted the compliment for myself I could hardly name any volume which would be less likely to iie at the elbow of one of Moriarty’s associates. Besides, the editions of Holy Writ are so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have the same pagination. This is clearly a book which is standardized. He knows for certain that his page 534 will exactly agree with my page 534.”
“But very few books would correspond with that.”
“Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down to standardized books which anyone may be supposed to possess.”
“Bradshaw!”
“There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for the same reason. What then is left?”
“An almanac!”
“Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not touched the spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of Whitaker’s Almanac. It is in common use. It has the requisite number of pages. It is in double column. Though reserved in its earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite garrulous towards the end.” He picked the volume from his desk. “Here is page 534, column two, a substantial block of print dealing, I perceive, with the trade and resources of British India. Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is ‘Mahratta.’ Not, I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one hundred and twenty-seven is ‘Government’; which at least makes sense, though somewhat irrelevant to ourselves and Professor Moriarty. Now let us try again. What does the Mahratta government do? Alas! the next word is ‘pig’s-bristles.’ We are undone, my good Watson! It is finished!”
He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy, staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from which he emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.
“We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!” he cried. “We are before our time, and suffer the usual penalties. Being the seventh of January, we have very properly laid in the new almanac. It is more than likely that Porlock took his message from the old one. No doubt he would have told us so had his letter of explanation been written. Now let us see what page 534 has in store for us. Number thirteen is ‘There,’ which is much more promising. Number one hundred and twenty-seven is ‘is’ — ‘There is’ ” — Holmes’s eyes were gleaming with excitement, and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the words — ” ‘danger.’ Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson. ‘There is danger — may — come — very — soon — one.’ Then we have the name ‘Douglas’ — ‘rich — country — now — at — Birlstone — House — Birlstone — confidence — is — pressing.’ There, Watson! What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the green-grocer had such a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for it.”
Excerpted from The Valley Of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915, and the first book edition was published in New York on 27 February 1915.
So no problem for Sherlock immediately able to count the words in series, sort of like a modern word-processor.
OFD devoured the entire Holmes canon as a teenager, and had previously seen all the Basil Rathbone versions at the local state college auditorium for 25 cents a pop in Bridgewater, MA, circa 1963-65. Later, all the Jeremy Brett versions, which we like better than the contemporary series on Netflix with Cumberbatch.
The book method is pretty insecure, and was even before computers.
Wanna try the Caesar Cipher? (smirk)