Category Archives: IT

December 23, 2020 · 05:46

When a scary dream is more

A lot of people have them, I do too, I just hd one and it scared me awake for some reason, and even now, one of the elements is already gone and my mind is fighting to hold onto the other thought, even though I am wide wake. It seems like the dreams are not giving up their secrets that easy, and it is a little bewildering. 

So here I am, in my dream, I meet a nice woman, she seems really nice, friendly and confused. She is confused as people are not calling her back and that is where this part is taking us, what we are not told. Changes that are a stage of what people think we should not need to know.

In this dream, I am learning that she has a 5G sim in her 4G phone, it seemingly works, but it only partially works, in the rear there are members of a nefarious organisation and they seemingly are aware that it would be possible to capture peoples hardware, autoforward their hardware and leave the owner unsuspected, a setting for large amounts of identity theft in 2023, as the bulk of our lives are going through a different device. You see, that thing you hold, that brick, that piece of plastic, it is not your mobile phone, not anymore. It has become your personal dat server and that is in this age a bit more powerful than you imagined and under 5G, taking a hold of finances and other means when you pump them through your mobile has consequences. So as I am pondering the dream, I see flares of the second dream. There I meet up with an old boss, he is wearing an old uniform jacket, like a bolero for men, shutting at the waist, the old Dutch uniform jacket of 1975-1980, some used to love them. The only thing I remember is that he had to remain aware in every room where the emergency exit was, it all went a blur after that, so here I am awake trying to figure out my delusions. So I started looking and through were several sources that are not worthy of mentioning, but Ericsson, with his setting gives us “The simple answer, under certain assumptions, is no. However, a complete answer is nevertheless trickier than just a yes or a no”, why can they not answer it: “Yes, if you have…. And no if you have the following situation”, why did I have to take notice of ‘a complete answer is nevertheless trickier’. 

And actually, their answer is surprisingly complete, and as I give you “While accessing the 5G system is one thing, the question we have is whether using the “new” security and privacy features of 5G requires a new kind of USIM other than Rel 99+ USIMs which could be used for 4G security. This is a valid question and something which we address below”, as well as “In 5G, subscription permanent identifier (SUPI) could be in two formats, one is the legacy format called international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) and another is the format newly adopted in 5G called network access identifier (NAI). Furthermore, 5G provides at least two methods of authentication and key agreement (AKA) for accessing the network. One such method, 5G AKA, is an evolution of the authentication method in 4G. Another, called EAP-AKA’, is a method now widely adopted in 5G for broader use of the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) framework”, which is interesting, I never knew any of this, I am literally learning this as I write the article, so why was the dream so unreal and partly scary? This is when I see “from the IdaM viewpoint, the Rel 99+ USIMs that could be used in 4G are still compatible with 5G, in that they can be used to authenticate and gain access to the 5G system. The main reason for this forward compatibility is the fact that there is no need for a new permanent security key shared between USIMs and the network”, as well as “5G has introduced significant privacy enhancements in terms of how permanent and temporary identifiers are used”, this optionally sets the stage for something really scary. What if the SolarWinds debacle is merely a test-run in getting some parts out there, optionally undetected? What if there is a run on copying all the data in some way because, as we see here ‘4G are still compatible with 5G’, I merely wonder what else is possible and why the dream scared me, more important, I knew nothing of this before now so how does my dream know? I have never seen an actual 5G sim before today, and as I see some of them, they are all vastly different, it also implies that the sim touches different points, in different cases, and I know that what I am seeing is marketing driven, but where is the reality? More important, what is the danger I dreamt of? If a person’s phone can be hijacked WITHOUT the owner knowing, what other dangers are their for their personal data servers? I worked on the IP to lower that danger, but it was merely a consumer driven IP, which aligned perfectly with something else, and here I am seeing that there is a danger, optionally merely a delusional one that is in the background, so I can pretty much kiss this night of sleep goodbye. 

Still, only 2 days left to get my groceries and most is done, but some parts I tend to leave to the last moment, that tends to be me. You see on the 24th many groceries start pricing down the stuff they cannot sell on the 25th for some reason and that is where my little profit is.

Still, my dreams seldom throw me to this degree and to be honest, when it comes to dreaming high tech and gorgeous women optionally scantily clothed, I still go for option two, even though I stopped being a teenager some time ago, well that’s me and for now I am considering something on branding for tomorrow, or the 25th, something happened and it puzzled me, but it is always a decent reason to dig into the matter and that I what I might do, yet for now, there was something on the dream that was more than delusional. It is not merely on what was done without our consent and knowledge, what happens when options like that become a larger stage of exploitation? What happens when EVERY sim is the first part of a tracker and 5G pushes us to allow for more, all whilst the evidence against us is legally not allowed to rely on data points to help prove our innocence? I will leave you to ponder on that element of the equation.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 22, 2020 · 02:57

Once more for the whiners

It started in 2018 when I wrote “A certain play performed by adjusting to the notion of stupid and short sighted whilst the captains of industry have been getting their A-game in gear and others never did. It is merely another stage of the impact of iterative exploitation and profit founding, that whilst Huawei, Google, Apple and Samsung are no longer going iterative, they are now making larger leaps over the next 5 years as they want the largest slice of 5G pie possible and in an iterative setting the others can catch up and that is where we see the clash, because these hardware jumps will also prevail in software and data jumps and some players are in no way ready to play that game”, there was a malleable situation that came to fruition 2 years later. I saw it coming, and whether it was Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Apple iCloud (that selfish title), one would reap the benefits. Of course there will always be the negative shouts (on how nut I am), yet less than one hours ago, we see Reuters give us ‘Aramco to bring Google Cloud services to Saudi Arabia’, a stage that was always going to happen and it serves my IP as well, so I merely have to wait, like a spider in the middle of his web. Two years of anticipation about to pay off massively. The article came as ‘Clueless to the end’ on that October 12th and now we get the setting where Microsoft and Apple are basically second to all. 

So as we now see “Aramco said Saudi Arabia is being added to the global network of Google Cloud Platform regions, as part of a strategic alliance agreement signed between the company and Google Cloud this month”, this also means that it can test apps in 5G at full speed in a national setting, implying that the advantage of Google makes more and more headway, this is not about the foresight of Google, it is for the most the lack of foresight to all the other players that scream that they are treated unfair and the large tech companies must be broken up, here we see a stage I foresaw 2 years ago, several people were all up in arms how I didn’t see it right, larger tech companies in a lack of action and here is the advantage that Google now has, and more importantly well deserved has.

So when we see the New York Times 21 hours ago and see in one part ‘The Antitrust Case Against Big Tech, Shaped by Tech Industry Exiles’, as well as “Regulators are relying on insiders like Dina Srinivasan, who left her digital ad job after concluding that “Facebook and Google were going to win and everybody else is going to lose.”” We see a stage of people in  stage of whatever (aka: lack of insight), this is further set in “before she became an antitrust scholar whose work laid the blueprint for a new wave of monopoly lawsuits against Big Tech, Dina Srinivasan was a digital advertising executive bored with her job and worried about the bleak outlook for the industry”, which is great, because as she was looking at the bleak prospect I came up with a new piece of IP for 5G, and it is something she could have thought of, but no she didn’t and now I have it (and she does not), so does it make me a genius and her average, or me creative and she a mere advantage seeker with no prospects to advance over, I would like to think it is one, but reality will probably set me in camp two. As such a larger stage is not merely the lack of foresight, it is a whole range of people in a stage of seeing what Google can come up with and how it fits their need for profit seeking, something that was decently clear in every attack on Google and its three tech accompli, a stage that the media milks but seemingly does not care to understand, but that is my take on the matter. As such, does Google matter, or was Google always the martyr? I think both, but the advantage seekers wanted google to suffer their non profits (they call them losses). Yet the stage is seen as per today that these players never looked beyond the length of their nose (we are excluding Pinocchio and Cyrano de Bergerac from consideration). Or in the language of Sergey Brin (Google’s own Papa Smurf), If we smurf what we smurf all the smurf, the smurf we smurf will be better than any other smurf.

So as we see (at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/technology/antitrust-case-google-facebook.html) “With no background in academia but an insider’s understanding of the digital ad world and a stack of economics books, she wrote a paper with a novel theory — that Facebook harmed consumers by extracting more and more personal data for using its free services”, no one is considering that whilst she had the advantage she was quiet, when the advantage went away she started to cry (well sort of) and now we see “she argued in another paper that Google’s monopoly in advertising technology allowed for the type of self-dealing and insider trading that would be illegal on Wall Street”, yes that is what the whiners say (as I put it with diplomatic eloquence), yet the truth is that there are two stages, what the people want, what WE seek and what advertisers push WHAT THEY THINK WE WANT, two very different settings and as they REFUSED to listen, because it was not a contribution to their bottom line, and as some of these digital weavers left things unsettled in 1995-1998 Google had an option and created a search system, one that simpleminded people could not conceive, in addition, in 1998-2000 the digital advertisement players sat on their hands, on their asses and kept on faltering, because their short sighted approach was making them rich and in 2000 Google Adwords came and changed it, they actually LISTENED to those who needed advertising and gave them options and choices, something the others never did, they had the conceited approach like the yellow pages and we merely had to shut up and pay the bill, Google Adwords gave options and choices and a massive way for us not to be taken advantage off, we only paid one cent more than the one before us, so if number 4 paid $0.37 for an advertisement, number three paid $0.38 (regardless of bid), number two paid $0.39 (regardless of bid) and number one, el jefe de advertencia paid $0.40 (regardless of bid), that as something the others NEVER offered.

So cry me a river, now Google Cloud is also in Saudi Arabia (via Aramco) and hopefully son my system will deploy for consumers and small businesses, all whilst the whiners say they are treated so unfair, I got an optional entire technology arm launched, so how we consider “they can articulate the specifics of what they worry about”, which they are allowed to do, but in that same time I came up with a new 5G technology, at that point, are the whiners really helping us, or stopping us from reaching innovative greatness, merely because they cannot fathom the options?

So whilst w might notice ‘The Facebook Antitrust Case Is a Vital First Step. But More Needs to Happen’ and accept words of a Smoking Gun, is there an actual progress by these whiners? Let’s not forget they were at the helm and let it slip, these executives were riding high and falling asleep whilst Chinese companies hungry for that much revenue are waking up and nipping at everyones heels. This might be a good thing, but those same whiners complaining about actual innovators is taking it one step too far, and as I am showing, that progress started to come in 2018, now that the Google Cloud is going there the others will wake up and wonder why they never thought of it. Well, I can tell you, it was the lack of vision that did not get you to Vision 2030, which was launched well over to years ago.

So there!

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 18, 2020 · 17:11

Not for minors

OK, this is not the most subtle article I have ever written, but at times subtle just doesn’t do the story any justice, it happens. So this is a question to parents “If you have a daughter between 22-32, and she looks like Laura Vandervoort, Olivia Wilde, or Alexina Graham. Can I please fuck the bejesus out of her vagina?” To be honest, I don’t really need to, but it has been a while, so there. 

Are we all awake now? So consider ‘Facebook and Apple are in a fight. Your browsing history is in the middle’ (at https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-apple-are-fight-your-browsing-history-middle-n1251612), apart from all the hackers getting access through Microsoft, we see another stage develop. The headline might not get you on board, so perhaps the by-line will “Facebook on Thursday ran its second full-page newspaper advertisement in as many days, attacking Apple’s plans to tell iPhone and iPad users when apps are tracking them online”, which implies that Facebook does NOT want you to know that apps are tracking your every move, and Apple does. It seems to me that Apple is in a stage to put awareness and security at the centre of your digital life, Facebook not so much. Now, I have no problems with Facebook keeping track of my actions ON FACEBOOK, but dos their ‘free’ service imply that they are allowed to do that anywhere I am? I believe that this is not the case and the money Facebook is getting is starting to feel tight around my digital profile, their actions had already made it important to delete Facebook software from my mobile phone (it was draining my battery), but the stage is larger and that is seen in the NBC News article (and a few others too).

So as the quote “Facebook on Thursday ran its second full-page newspaper advertisement in as many days, attacking Apple’s plans to tell iPhone and iPad users when apps are tracking them online” is given, how many of you are considering the following:

  1. A full page ad in the newspapers is pretty expensive.
  2. Facebook is seemingly untouched that multiple apps are following us.
  3. We are seemingly not allowed to know all the facts!

This is the big one “attacking Apple’s plans to tell iPhone and iPad users when apps are tracking them online”, so why are we not allowed to know what is being done to us, that we are being followed in a digital way and Facebook does not want us to be aware? This is where we see my (not so) subtle hint regarding your daughter and “fuck the bejesus out of her vagina”, how many fathers will be slightly less than enthusiastic? I get it, your little princess (your consenting and adult) little princess needs a knight on a white horse and always bring flowers and chocolates, have honourable intentions and to set your mind at ease keeps your daughter a virgin until the day she marries. It is not realistic, but parents are allowed to be overly protective of their princes and princesses. Yet Facebook seemingly does not want you to be in that park, they want you to be unaware of what is going on, and Apple drive it to the surface. So when we see “Apple is planning to roll out a new feature on its devices that will alert people when an app such as Facebook is trying to “track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites.” People will have options such as “Ask App not to Track” or “Allow.””, they did something really clever, if Microsoft (after they resolve all their hacks) does not follow suit, Microsoft stands to lose a massive slice of the consumer pie and that will not make them happy. I for the most am completely on the Apple side when we see “Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not”, I personally am realistic enough to see that Apple has an additional side to this, not sure what yet, but this is about a lot more than mere advertisements, I am however not too sure about what that is. When we see “Facebook uses data such as browsing history to show people ads they’re more likely to want to see, and to prove to marketers that its ads are working”, we need to realise that I would have no issues with any link opened within Facebook towards whatever we were going to in any advertisement. For example, if Facebook opens up a browser window, within Facebook and tracks the clicker, I would not completely be opposed to it, but Facebook realises that the data it I tracking is a much larger stage and I feel that this is not merely about “prove to marketers that its ads are working”, I believe that these trackers keep tabs on a lot more, keep tabs on what we do, where we do it and how we do it. I believe that it is a first step in the overly effective phishing attacks we face, Facebook might not be part to that, but I reckon the phishing industry got access to data that is not normally collected and I personally believe that Facebook is part of that problem, I also believe that this will turn from bad to worse with all the ‘via browser gaming apps’ we are currently being offered. I believe that these dedicated non console gaming ‘solutions’ will make things worse, it might be about money for players like Epic (Fortnite), but the data collected in this will cater to a much larger and optionally fairly darker player in this, I just haven’t found any direct evidence proving this, in my defence, I had no way of seeing the weakness that SolarWinds introduced. It does not surprise me, because there is always someone smarter and any firm that has a revenue and a cost issue will find a cheaper way, opening the door for all the nefarious characters surfing the life of IoT, there was never any doubt in this.

And in this, it was for them NEVER directly about the money, in this look at the ‘victims’:
The US Treasury Department, The US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), The Department of Health’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), The US Department of State, The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) (also disclosed today), The US Department of Energy (DOE) (also disclosed today), Three US states (also disclosed today), City of Austin (also disclosed today) (source: ZDNET). It was about the information, the stage of a more complete fingerprint of people and administrations. It gives the worry, but it also gives the stage where we can see that Apple has a point and we need to protect ourselves, because players like Microsoft will not (no matter what they claim). In this I name Microsoft, but they are not alone, anyone skating around margins of cost are potential data leaks and that list is a hell of a lot larger than any of us (including me) thinks it is.

So whilst we look and admire the models, actors and actresses and we imagine whatever we imagine, consider that they are not a realistic path, a desirable one, but not a realistic one and that is the opening that organised crime needs to claimingly give you ‘access’ to what you desire whilst taking your data. It is the oldest game in the book, all wars Arte based on deception and you need to wake up, the moment your data is captures and categorised you are no longer considered an interesting party, you are sold and they move onto the next target. So whilst you get trivialised, consider that Apple has a plan, but whatever they plan, it seems you are better off on that side, than the one Facebook is planning. When was the last time that you were better off staying in the dark on what happens to your data, on what happens when others keep tabs on you?

And in this consider “Facebook is making a last-ditch effort to persuade Apple to back off or compromise with industry standard-setters.With offline ads in newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the social networking company is trying to rally to its side the millions of small businesses who buy ads on Facebook and Instagram”, so in that quote where do we see any consideration on the people or us as the consumers? When we see “millions of small businesses who buy ads on Facebook and Instagram” where is the consideration that they should have for the customers who walk into their business? When you get in any shop what do you hear? How can I be of service? Or do you hear: What do you want? I let you consider that whilst you consider the position Facebook needs to have and consider that non digital advertisement never kept track of what other newspapers you were reading. 

We seemingly forgot that there is a price for the presence of IoT, Apple is making us aware of that. I am not silly enough that Apple is holier than though, but at least they created the awareness and the greed driven players are not looking too good today, are they?

1 Comment

Filed under IT, Law, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 17, 2020 · 21:51

Thanks for the support

We all have to say thanks, I in this case to the BBC, they were just able to give support to two issues that I put out in the open over a year ago (too tired to find these articles, they are at least a year old and it is 33 degrees Celsius at present (at 21:30), The first is the lacking approach to Common Cyber Sense within the US Administration, I found that failing in the Pentagon in 2018, I found Cisco routers still carrying the password Cisco123 in at least two sensitive areas and there was the use and abuse of non secured USB sticks in more than two sensitive places and on top of all that, the US ends up with an idiot in the White House relying on a password like MAGA2020, how bad do things need to get? I agree that the man Victor Gevers did everything right, including alerting the proper players, but this is a much larger problem. So when we see “The president’s account, which has 89 million followers, is now secure. But Twitter has refused to answer direct questions from BBC News, including whether the account had extra security or logs that would have shown an unknown login”, the quote forgets to give a larger part, you see, this was all on the user, when the user is thick as molasses and equally stupid, can we blame Twitter? And this now also reflects back to ‘6 simple questions’, which I released on February 3rd 2020, there we see the simple setting that the Daily Mail, the Daily Mail of all sources that there was a way to infect accounts yet no way to establish by who or how. It gets us back to the original question ‘Where is the evidence that Saudi Arabia infected ANY phones?’, a question that FTI Consulting and the United Nation essay writers can not inform us. It shows a much larger lack of cyber security and proper cyber defences, all whilst these so called investigators are happy to accuse whomever is a political and not a true target, is that too much?

I ended that article with question 6 ‘Why on earth is the UN involved in an alleged Criminal investigation where so much information is missing?’, now we see a new page turned, can any criminal investigation hold any water when the users are that thick? MAGA2020, really?

So when we consider “Mr Gevers also claimed he and other security researchers had logged in to Mr Trump’s Twitter account in 2016 using a password – “yourefired” – linked to another of his social-network accounts in a previous data breach”, in all this the need to employ Common Cyber Sense is a situation that becomes more and more essential and we need to catch on quicker than we are, because it is people like that who will claim things against Russia and China, whilst letting their security services in at their leisure because they cannot be bothered with Common Cyber Sense. 

As I see it, President Trump will optionally get two additional Christmas cards this year, one from 76B Khoroshevskoe Highway, the other from 14 Dongchangan Avenue, Dongcheng District, Beijing. Both will be stating “Thanks for the support”, what a lovely way to end a presidency and probably the first time that a US President gets a Christmas card from both locations.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 16, 2020 · 04:41

A political stage of nowhere

Less than an hour ago the BBC gave us ‘EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech’, apart from the discriminatory nature of the stage, are they doing anything else than merely fuelling their own gravy train? Consider the news from last July, there we were given ‘Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned’, a case that started in 2016, had Apple and the government of Ireland in a twist, when you consider “The Irish government – which had also appealed against the ruling – said it had “always been clear” Apple received no special treatment”, I am on the fence, and in this the European Commission wasted 4 years in going nowhere, in the light of that revelation, can we even trust the approach the EU has? When we look at the first option, we see ‘Online harms law to let regulator block apps in UK’, this means an almost immediate blocking of Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and a few more. Local laws have been ‘accomodating’ to large corporations for such a long time, that social media is caught in the middle (and yes they benefitted too), so they re now pushing for changes that end privacy, because that is a conclusion. If we hunt down the perpetrators, we need to coat the materials in identity revealing codes, in addition, the EU government will have to adjust laws to make the poster responsible for what they post and that will lead to all kinds of privacy adjustments (that does not worry me), yet when insurance companies will use that setting to see transgressions on social media and they demand adjustment by handing over the posted evidence, how long until people like Margrethe Vestager start realising that they were clueless from the start? The BBC article gives us “The law would give local officials a way to ask Airbnb and other apps to hand over information or remove listings”, which now puts some players on the dark-web and the chaos (and organised crime involvement) merely increases. For example, when we see “not use data gathered via their main service to launch a product that will compete with other established businesses”, how will that be proven and tested? By handing all data over to the government? How many frivolous cases will that grave train launch? How is it impossible to stop advantage seekers a stage where they use Margrethe Vestager and her gang of idiots to do the bidding of (optionally) organised crime?

Even though I spoke of the Accountability Act, a legal direction that could thwart a few issues from the start in June 2012, 8 years later and this group is hardly even on the track of resolving anything, only to get their grubby greedy fingers on data, the new currency. And in this, the tech companies have their own games to play as Facebook shows with “Apple controls an entire ecosystem from device to app store and apps, and uses this power to harm developers and consumers, as well as large platforms like Facebook”, what Apple does, IBM did for decades, what Apple does Microsoft did for decades, so where is that train station? So even as we see “And they may influence other regulators – in the US and elsewhere – which are also planning to introduce new restrictions of their own” we also need to realise that after a decade, the local and EU laws have done little to nothing to hold the poster of information to criminal account, it seems to me a massive oversight. And in all this there is no view that the EU will wisen up any day soon. 

So as I see it, this will soon become a political stage that goes nowhere and in all this these layers merely want their fingers on the data, the currency that they do not have. How is that in any way acceptable?

Oh and when we see the blocking of apps and localisation, how long until people find an alternative? An alternative that the EU, the UK and the US have no insight over? Will they block apps that interact with data centres in China, Saudi Arabia and optionally other locations too? I raised it in other ways in ‘There is more beneath the sand’ in 2019 as well as some issues in 2018, a setting that was almost two years ago, as such is it not amazing that we see a shortsighted approach to this issue, whilst I gave the option EIGHT YEARS AGO and the laws are still not ready? They are ready to get the data from Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, as such when the trial goes wrong, hw will these people be compensated for the loss of uniquely owned data, data that they collected over the decades? Will the stupid people (Margrethe Vestager et al) compensate per kilobyte? How about $25,000,000 per kilobyte? Perhaps we should double that? What will be the price and in this, we should demand that Margrethe Vestager and her teams will be criminally liable for those losses, or will the gravy train decide that it is a little too complex to hold one station to order, and let face it, that gravy train has 27 stops to make, all with their own local needs, their local incomes and their local digital wannabe’s.

When a setting like that goes nowhere, you better believe that there is someone behind the curtain pulling strings for their own enriching needs, that is how it always has been, as such, let me give you the smallest example from January 2020, there we see “‘DIGITAL CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE’ CONFERENCE”, with the nice quote “The e-Evidence Project led by the European Commission, DG Justice and Consumers, provides for the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System that manages the European Investigation Order/Mutual Legal Assistance procedures/instruments (e-Forms, business logic, statistics, log, etc.) on European level. The Reference Implementation Portal is the front-end portal of the e-Evidence Digital Exchange System and is also provided by the EC”, yet this is only step one. In all this we can also include the EC (at https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/cybercrime/e-evidence_en), where we see: “However, present-day solutions too often prove unsatisfactory, bringing investigations to a halt”, I get it, you will say, will this not resolve it? Well, consider “provide legal certainty for businesses and service providers: whereas today law enforcement authorities often depend on the good will of service providers to hand them the evidence they need, in the future, applying the same rules for access to all service providers will improve legal certainty and clarity”, in this we need to look in detail at ‘provide legal certainty’, which at present under privacy laws is a no-no, and the poster cannot be identified and cannot (and will not) be held to account. As well as ‘applying the same rules for access to all service providers’, still the poster remains out of reach and the local and EU laws have done NOTHING for over a decade to change that, as such, when we consider this, why should Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft suffer the consequences, in addition we see the absence of IBM, why is that? Does it not have data collection software, it has data centres, it has cloud solutions, so why are they absent?

And in light of earlier this year, as we were told ‘Google starts appeal against £2bn shopping fine’, how will that end? The law remains untested in too many aspects, in this the entire data stage is way too soon and in that the blowback will be enormous, all whilst the EU (UK too) is unable to do anything about data driven organised crime, other than blame state operators Russia and China, consider the Sony Hack of 2011, I was with the point of view by Kurt Stammberger (before I even knew about Kurt Stammberger), North Korea lacks infrastructure and a whole deed of other parts. I also questioned the data, like “former hacker Hector Monsegur, who once hacked into Sony, explained to CBS News that exfiltrating one or one hundred terabytes of data “without anyone noticing” would have taken months or years, not weeks”, I even considered an applied use of the Cisco routers at Sony to do just that, all issues that North Korea just could not do and in that environment, when we see these levels of doubt and when we get “After a private briefing lasting three hours, the FBI formally rejected Norse’s alternative assessment”, which might be valid, but when we see a setting where it takes three hours to get the FBI up to speed, can we even trust the EU to have a clue? Even their own former director of German Intelligence, gave us recently that they did not fully comprehend Huawei 5G equipment, and they will investigate the data owners, al before the posters of the messages are properly dealt with? I think not!

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 16, 2020 · 03:02

Within the mind

Within the mind there is a setting we forget, it is pondering, we ponder thins, we always do, at times not ever conscious or frontally aware, but we do. It is a part of us and my part would not let the previous story ‘Intent or Not?’ started something that would not let go, most likely to the stage of my youth, in this, my idea of DECCA gave me another optional idea. Consider any map, as such the map I drew has no features, it has however has three DECCA options and the clever station uses one signal of each to create a 4th option. So the three stations 1, 2, 3 create a new option, there would be the optional advantage of internal checks, as such it is harder to decipher how the data is concluded, there is also the need to find a larger amount of numbers to optionally hack, but how? 

The idea is to create an offset, of all the 9 stations, each in different ways to create a new set of locations, optionally an offset the size of the circle, giving is A2, B2 and C2. It is hard to see the precise location, and if the offset is done, it needs to be the offset of the circle, and all three need to receive the same offset, the station is to create a second location that fits within the application of error towards the home and new DECCA configuration. My mind sees part of the solution, but I do not completely get what I see. If we change the signal according to one, we should change them equally to all, it gives (for now) the setting that the target could not be hit but in this configuration, the best we can hope for I that the missile hits somewhere in the circle, the close to the rim, the more accurate the missile was, but can we direct it exactly in the way we want it? If so, the three coloured circles would set the optional new location, if so, it will be in the area of the intersections where blue and red, or green and red connect, optionally in the space between the two, as such there is some way to guide the missile away from harm if a GOLIS approach is used in these missiles. If the missiles is using GOLIS DECCA, there remains two problems, how to find what and which one they use and second how to offset the received signal. Yet as I see it these are seperate matters, what matters is that I am (again) awake and my mind will not stop pondering. Perhaps this idea is merely between my ears and it would never work in real life, but one can only wonder where innovation drives us towards, it is not always a reachable destination, we can only hope it is.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Military, Science

Tagged as

December 15, 2020 · 00:52

Stage light or lime light?

This morning I had to mull things over. I saw ‘Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails – sources’ (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-treasury-exclsuive/suspected-russian-hackers-spied-on-u-s-treasury-emails-sources-idUKKBN28N0PG), I saw the news early this morning, but the stage was not clear. You would think that when you see a title like this, the stage is pretty clear, is it not? But in all this, two sentences were out, or perhaps they were off was more apt in this line of consideration. 

The first sentence that waved like a hammer and sickle flag was “according to people familiar with the matter”, this was not some official brief by the FBI or the DHS, it was some anonymous setting and as that nations current president is mad as a hatter (or in possession of less common sense then the Court Jester entertaining Reniero Zeno) gives rise to worry. Now, let be clear, I am not stating that this isn’t happening. Consider “but three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major U.S. cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts”, so now it is not from one source, but one journo has access to ALL THREE? Then there is (the secnd one) “cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds”, which also affects the military, and in this, we grb back to the earlier statement “they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, really? Military integrity is in play and you think that none of the Defence intelligence groups, or cyber command is invited? Then we get the end which gives us “The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press”, that and the consideration (not fact) that “Hackers broke into the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months”, consider that and set the light towards a transgression on the Microsoft Azure cloud that makes their cloud useless, or turns it into a public domain Bulletin board, something EVERY industrial wants to hear. You think that this was not out in force and Microsoft was on every channel on the PLANET explaining to the people that there was no cause for alarm? All this and some Christopher Bing has three sources? Anyone else concerned with the quality of news? And the last line giving us ‘because they were not allowed to speak to the press’ did it for me. 

Is this a ploy to avoid the limelight, or make sure that the stage lights are pointing somewhere else? Now, I reckon that the Russian government is forever trying to get its fingers on all kinds of hush hush details, the CIA does pretty much the same thing, yet in this we see “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state”, what evidence is there? This is important, because it could well be organised crime or a super rich singular player who wants the low-down on deals that syphon his or her money more efficiently and that has been done before as well. In this the entire approach is one of chaos, even if the chaos seems organised. The fact that it was allegedly possible to “Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months” with the mention of Microsoft 365 and the news was limited to one person at Reuters? That and the fact that it as seemingly ‘months’ is a larger cause for concern, the fact that this was going on for well over a week and not every Christmas light would shine brightly red at 2624 NE University Village St, Seattle, WA 98105, United States is a first, the fact that not every siren is blasting on EVERY Microsoft 365 and Azure data centre is a second. But no, we get “there was a breach at one of its agencies and that they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, yes because dimensionality in alarms and corporate dangers are passed on forever to the FBI in such a blasé way.

So I have several issues on the matter and in all this I can in all honesty not determine whether the light shining is a limelight to give visibility to someone else, or a stage light to make the people look to the left all whilst the people on the right are running off the stage, hoping no one will notice. It can be either or both, but the picture they are painting for us does not make sense and lust like that Italian dude (read: doge), the 45th no less, had his own battles to fight (mostly with Genoa), it was set in one quarter, but had underlying conditions (like Michael VIII Palaiologos) and in this certain nobility members profited greatly, I wonder why that never got properly investigated. And as such I do not oppose the pointing fingers at the Kremlin, but doing so before we see “the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate” deliver a finished report is a little fast, so fast even McDonalds cannot compete. All whilst cybercrime has a much larger reach to a great deal many more people and still Microsoft remains silent. 

There is a bright light over yonder, yet what it is used for, I cannot tell.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Military, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 12, 2020 · 04:05

Yay discrimination!

Yup, that has to go down like a kick in the head, does it not? But that was the thought I had when I was confronted with the BBC article ‘Mastercard severs links with pornography site’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55267311), now personally I do not care about Pornhub. I don’t think I have ever been there, honestly. I am not anti or against porn, in Europe it was available on nearly every corner and a lot of it for free, as such I got over that need decades ago. So, whatever, I (for the most) do not care, but I hate hypocrisy, I hate it with a passion. So when I see “Mastercard says it is ending the use of its cards on the pornography platform Pornhub after a review confirmed the presence of unlawful content”, yup, it is an option they can take, but at the same time they are setting themselves up for a court case regarding discrimination by Pornhub. You see, when we consider “Members of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority are being used as forced labor in factories far from the so-called reeducation camps that have held them for years in Xinjiang, according to an extensive new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank founded by Australia’s government” (source: Quartz), if I remember my law lessons, slave labour is illegal, is it not? 

As such, how many Nike shops were banned by Mastercard as well? How many Apple Stores are not able to process Mastercard? The New York Post (25th July) gave us ‘Nike should quit lecturing on social justice — and atone for using slave labor in China’, where was Mastercard at that point? Oh and according to ABC VISA is doing the same thing and for both I see no actions on Nike, Apple and a few others, like fashion stores that have been involved in ‘Aussie fashion retailers accused of driving poverty in Bangladesh with cut-throat pricing in new Oxfam report’, this came from Nine News 3 weeks ago regarding an Oxfam report, so where were VISA and Mastercard barring “Some of the biggest Australian fast fashion brands” in this? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, I say. But it seems that hypocrisy is high with the financial institutions. Now, I am not stating that Pornhub is innocent, even as we are told “A New York Times investigation accused the site of being “infested” with child-abuse and rape-related videos”, it calls for investigation and pressure, but the voice of Mastercard and VISA stating some holier than though barring, all whilst they have no issue processing slave labour goods is a bit much, even for me.

So when we get “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof named it in his New York Times article, saying he “didn’t see why search engines, banks or credit-card companies” should “bolster” Pornhub”, I am willing to initially side against Pornhub on matters and when we see a name like Nicholas Kristof, we all want to see where and how he got the data he used, fair is fair, yet in this, I see the actions by VISA and Mastercard as a BS approach towards the limelight. Especially when we see reports of Oxfam and several others on the other issues. But I reckon that these two card companies will hide behind the ‘too complicated an issue’ and will continue as usual, but as I see it, they are discriminating foundations and if Pornhub wants to extract a billion in losses from these two, I would be able to live with it, but it does not take them off the hook. Even if we are told “Pornhub, which has denied the claims”, I would want to look into the evidence of Nicholas Kristof, I have had my doubts on journalists several times, but this is a Pulitzer Prize winner, they tend to remain well above board, in this Pornhub is the lesser trustworthy of the two on a mere glance, and I state that speculatively, I have not seen the evidence and I hope that Nicholas Kristof will hand over that evidence to the press on a much larger stage. Yet, we need to see Pornhub like a much less puritan version of YouTube, or Facebook (me thinks), as such they facilitate automated distribution, just like social media, but they too need to look into matters to a much deeper degree, if I believe that social media must do this, then players like Pornhub must too, and if there are criminal issues, they need to be dealt with and fast. We cannot say for sure what is criminal and what is fake criminal and the track is not an easy one, a source (Tweaktown) gave us in December 2018 “Pornhub saw 4.79 million videos uploaded in 2018, with 147GB per second”, this might not be as much as YouTube, but it cannot be too far off and a place like Pornhub does not have the infrastructure that Google has (my speculated view), as such there is every chance that criminal activities will pass the filters and not be seen until it is much too late, and yes, something needs to be done, but we can do without the hypocritical BS that VISA and Mastercard are giving us, if anything Pornhub needs the funds to upgrade their hardware on detection, investigation and reporting, that’s how I see it.

You know, this article might have the most use of the letters pee, ohh, arr, enn ever. Oh Joy! Well, time to enjoy Saturday with a strong cup of coffee and a sandwich.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 7, 2020 · 20:46

Not just a shotgun

It comes back to an old jab I heard somewhere “You get more done with a shotgun and a kind word, then merely with a kind word”, it is true. The bulk of all people require external motivation. Arab News gave me an update yesterday and I was actually a little surprised. 

I had expected that Saudi Arabia had well above the basic needs there, but it seems I was wrong. The article (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1773046/business-economy) gives us ‘Experts warn businesses in Saudi Arabia to ramp up their cybersecurity’, which is fair enough, but that opens up a whole range of other issues as well. Remember the accusations handed against the KSA (specifically their Crown Prince), I dealt in part with it in ‘Evidence? Why?’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/01/24/evidence-why/), consider that it was Julius Caesar who taught its armies (now known as Esercito Italiano) “The first rule of war is to install your defences against enemy retaliation”, he did that 2073 years, 4 months and 15 days ago (roughly). So as the Arab News gives us “As Saudi companies become more technologically advanced, cybersecurity experts have warned of a general lack of awareness about industry best practices and are worried that businesses are not adequately protecting their systems”, we see an implied lack of cybersecurity, as to what stage is there a lack all whilst the teams of the Crown Prince were accused of attacking Jeff Bezos? I hd a few doubts when I read the article, I have a hell of a lot more now. The added “95 percent of businesses in the Kingdom last year were the victim of a cyberattack” give rise to additional questions and in all this, when we see the American goods that the KSA is acquiring, no one asked or looked into the cybersecurity issues there? I wonder why?

There is a lot more in the article It starts with “85 percent of Saudi respondents said that they had witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of attacks over the past two year” and it gets to me a lot bigger when we consider that Cisco is lending  hand in the KSA (at https://www.cisco.com/web/ME/sa/netversity/whatis.html). 

So where does the shotgun come in? Well, it doesn’t directly, but when Americans see ‘shotgun’ they tend to take notice. Indirectly, when we consider the activities of Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, and a few others in the KSA, no one raised the issue of cybersecurity? I have no reason to doubt Arab News, but there is a larger setting and it does not add up. You see the quote “Al-Jaber applauds the new government improvements being implemented by the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) and the new Saudi Cybersecurity strategy, and recommends that those concerned brush up on their cybersecurity protocols to ensure that they are being protected”, you see ‘cybersecurity protocols’ is something to some, but a partial solution to others, there is version control, OS update and upgrade protocols, investigation into software solutions and apps, it is nice to know that the KSA has the fastest 5G in the world, but if that is not met with correct cyber protocols, it merely means that more and more data goes somewhere else, the question is where it goes. 

And this gets us back to another piece of evidence, it was given to us in the Financial Times on January 22nd 2020. There we see “The forensic analysis of Mr Bezos’s phone could not ascertain what alleged spyware was used. However, the report said: “It is believed that the compromise was likely facilitated by malicious tools procured by [Saud] al-Qahtani””, the imbalance of cybersecurity and cybertools is way too high, especially when we consider “forensic analysis of Mr Bezos’s phone could not ascertain what alleged spyware was used”, in light of the overall stage of cyber imbalance of the KSA, this statement (at https://www.ft.com/content/83dcdf74-3c9b-11ea-a01a-bae547046735) is equally a consideration for additional questions. As such, the questions I had almost a year ago are now roosting and giving birth to additional questions. That is beside the questions I have on conversations that others should have had with decision makers of the KSA on Saudi cyber security. Do you not agree?

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Military, Science

December 5, 2020 · 22:18

Add one more

This started a week ago when I wrote ‘8 missed opportunities’, I had been pondering a few issues and I was wondering whether it was a fair call what I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/28/8-missed-opportunities/), and whilst I was pondering that, my mind being slightly preoccupied with “The Aeneid of Virgil”, I suddenly had this brain twist for an idea that might work on the Apple Arcade, the Google Stadia and the Amazon Luna. I named the game ‘Kick the Arcade’, a game optionally 2 players online (in co-op), a side scrolling game, not unlike Streets of Rage (SEGA Megadrive), but there is a difference, this game grows over time. An idea that the game has 20 levels, every 5 levels a boss and in each set of 5 levels an arcade, where one machine can be kicked (hence the title) and you can free the hero in that machine. At that point, you unlock the hero and after defeating that boss of these levels you can switch to one of the unlocked hero’s and continue the fight on those levels with different enemies. I was thinking of one little complication. When someone joins you that person can only select one of the unlocked hero’s and at that point, it might be your levels, but the enemies are the ones of the second player hero, it would be a whole new level of challenges. Consider all these great side scrolling levels, Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Green beret, Ghosts n Goblins, Golden Axe and the list goes on, there is still the issue whether the IP is locked, yet this idea basically washed over me in minutes, so what is keeping them making new games? Yes, Google Stadia at present has an interesting list of games, but lets face it Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2014), Hitman (2016), Destiny 2 (2017), they have originals, but they need more originals, a console is defined by what others do not have, not what others ALSO have. And this is happening whilst 7 announced titles are apparently no longer coming, so if Google is all about being googly, be Googly!

Set yourself apart, because no matter how the presentation looks, there is every chance that most people will not be able to tell the difference between Apple Arcade, Amazon Luna and Google Stadia, when that happens, there is every indication that Apple would win by default, is that truly what we want?

I am not stating that Apple is bad, but I expected more from the out of the box thinkers (aka people at Google). No wonder I have the 5G IP that Google does not have, ah well, such is life. 

Even as we see ‘opinions’ like “Google’s Stadia was always going to fail, but a new report claims that the issue isn’t missing features or a tiny game library. It’s Google. … “Google didn’t offer them enough money, and they don’t trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term” and here we see two parts the important part ‘they don’t trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term’, it is the long term part, yes it is a fair call, but it comes with the dependancy on others to fill your chest with treasures, the selfish corporate settings we see all over the place gives a clear signal, they bring something that is exclusive and unique, or you are forever in a stage where you are not the first focal point. We have seen this a few times over (Bethesda anyone?), and as such the fickle state that Google tends to be on at present is partially forced upon them (corona viral distribution and change) and part from within, they are spread too thin and they are in too many places, as such Tracker smurf (Sundar Pichai) is optionally losing oversight, or he is too many places too often, take your pick. But the critique offered is not all empty. I do not care too much for ‘Google didn’t offer them enough money’, either there was no real commitment on the $$$ price or someone didn’t negotiate too well, no matter what the reason is, I find it lacks focus. As I see it, the old games would be an optional saviour, 1-2 dozen games rewired in better graphics, optional additional sides to the game and the stage is soon a different one, but does Google have the drive? The idea that ‘the long term’ would optionally translate into Google ending third in a three man race (with Apple and Amazon), it is the one outcome I would never have seen coming and perhaps that is also what Jeff Bezos is expecting with the Amazon Luna, the idea that he ends ahead of Google must be absolutely intoxicating to him. 

So in the end, I didn’t merely added one more idea, I have added a setting where Google is not leading the waves and that is a little weird, but if that what the googly people have decided on, that is how it will be, and if they do not want that one part, they will see other parts see a reduced setting soon enough as well. Consider the people expecting top notch from Google, when they take their market to Amazon the game changes and I would never have expected that to happen, yet that is what we face, a setting that is no longer imaginative, something that comes with anticipating expectations, options that are offered away from one and towards a player that started as an online bookshop. I will be honest, I never saw that coming a year ago, but that stage is now getting a little bit too real. For if the Googly people turn down the innovations, what else will they abandon?

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,