Monday: Buckle up, Buttercup

After my Go-Team-Yay-Space post yesterday, it’s time for a Monday morning reality check. Going to Mars will not be a panacea to our ills, as this darkly humorous animated short, Fired on Mars by Nick and Nate, shows. On the other hand, SpaceX’s Elon Musk offers an upside while acknowledging the inherent risk of space travel and colonization: “If you’re going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice.”

Certainly beats an undiginified extinction by drowning on earth, eh?

We may not be leaving the planet today, but you’d best buckle up anyhow. This week’s going to be a doozy.

Brexit, Brexit, Brexit
Say that in your best Jan Brady voice — Brexit will suck all the oxygen out of this week’s market news. I’m afraid to look at the stock market at all because of it. Euronews has a roundup on the topic (though I warn you, it’s poorly formatted — keep scrolling down the page and increase print size). I’m not posting any other UK-based links here now because it’s quite obvious each media outlet has a position and their coverage reflects it. Most blatantly obvious are those owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Newsgroup, which has prompted some angry murmurs about an Aussie living in the U.S. telling the UK what to do.

Disturbing: Mexico’s federal police fire on teachers’ protest rally
I say disturbing for two reasons: first, that a democratic government’s federal would fire on protesters supporting the CNTE teachers’ union and actively deny it happened is appalling, and second, that its neighbor’s media would ignore that it happened. Teachers and supporters have been rallying in the state of Oaxaca, protesting the government’s education reform plan, characterized by some as neoliberal. It was clear from the outset that the government was in no mood to listen, given the number of riot police in place. The protests followed the detention/disappearance days earlier by police of CNTE union leaders Francisco Manuel Villalobos Ricardez and Ruben Nuñez. Conditions degraded over the course of the day, with federal police firing upon protesters. Early accounts claimed six were killed, of which one may have been a journalist and two teacher trainees. President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government at first denied there was any violence, and then later claimed the Associated Press’ photos of the violence were false. There were enough social media reports documenting the violence on the ground to neutralize the government’s claim — and thank goodness for social media, or the U.S. would have heard very little if anything about this conflict. Not exactly the fiesta of democracy President Nieto promised when he took office in 2012. For more current information about the conflict, follow hashtags #Nochixtlan (district) and #Oaxaca in Twitter; already the death count is disputed as some claim more than eight died after yesterday’s attack by police on protesters.

It’s extremely important to remember the protesters’ anger and frustration are not merely about the ENP government’s reform plan. The 43 young men who disappeared in 2014 and are believed dead were students at a teachers’ college; the federal police have been implicated in the disappearance of these students. To date, the mass disappearance of these students has not been fully accounted for. Imagine the furor if such a mass disappearance were to happen in the U.S.

Cyber, cyber, cyber
LOL sorry, I’m on a Brady Bunch jag. Forgot to remind you last Tuesday was Patch Tuesday — make sure you’ve updated your Win-based systems if you do so manually. Can’t hurt to check all your other non-Win devices, too.

• Adobe Flash zero day patch a higher priority than Microsoft’s monthly patch (TechTarget) — Again, if you manually patch, get to this one ASAP. I’m a manual Adobe patcher myself; I don’t automate patching because I want to know exactly how often Adobe must patch their products. It’s annoyingly often.
• This is your brain on drugs: Too-smart identity thief busted (ABC3340-Birmingham) — Can’t tell if the drugs ate his intelligence, or if they deluded this dude. Read this, it’s like a bad episode of COPS mashed up with Monty Python.
• SmartTVs not so smart, held ransom by Flocker (TrendLabs) — Leap of ransomware to Android smartTVs perfectly exemplifies the danger of connecting things to the internet. Interesting how this one deactivates based on select country locations. Yet another opportunity to sell protection software, too, as you’ll note in the article.

Your recommended long read: Apple’s Differential Privacy
Crytography expert Matthew Green reviews Apple’s announcement this past week regarding development of “differential privacy,” which Apple defined as:

Starting with iOS 10, Apple is using Differential Privacy technology to help discover the usage patterns of a large number of users without compromising individual privacy. To obscure an individual’s identity, Differential Privacy adds mathematical noise to a small sample of the individual’s usage pattern. As more people share the same pattern, general patterns begin to emerge, which can inform and enhance the user experience. In iOS 10, this technology will help improve QuickType and emoji suggestions, Spotlight deep link suggestions and Lookup Hints in Notes.

This is worth your time to read as differential privacy suggests new approaches to meeting the needs of marketers while preserving the privacy of consumers applying algorithmic solutions. Read it now before this stuff gets really convoluted.

Check your safety harness from time to time. Catch you tomorrow!

Thursday Not-Morning: Stupid

Jeepers. I need hip waders. There is just so damned much stupid over the last 24 hours. It’s a veritable flood.

The Future is here, and it’s stupid

• Law firm “hires” first artificially intelligent lawyer (Futurism) — Oh how nice. Treat human misery like a fungible commodity by using IBM’s AI ‘lawyer’ Ross to process bankruptcies. Want to bet it’s cheaper to hire paralegals to do the work Ross does? Want to bet Baker & Hostetler’s Ross will be replaced by a competing internet-based firm processing bankruptcies even more inexpensively? Hey Congress: doesn’t it say something to you about the number and kind of bankruptcies when a ‘robot’ can process them?
• Facial recognition expected to be $6 billion by 2020 (Curatti) — No invasion of privacy issues there, nor any security risks whatsoever. No chance at all two or more people have the same facial characteristics in terms of dimension.
• Chinese tech company prepares for future where our consciousness lives forever in a computer (Bloomberg) — This is really creepy, and yet very much possible in the near-term future. If AI can nearly reproduce you from your social media, why can’t it replicate your consciousness?

The Past remains, and it’s stupid, too

• Staffing company Portico sent home a receptionist for not wearing high heels (BBC) — A petition emerged in response, asking Parliament to outlaw such policies; 100,000 signatures mustered overnight. They’ve reversed their position today after a furor arose about their policy requiring women to wear 2-4 inch high heels on the job at a PriceWaterhouse Cooper facility. PwC says it’s not their policy. Come on now — it’s 2016, not 1956. It’s just plain stupid to ask workers of a specific gender to wear attire for looks — attire which causes discomfort and is not recommended by doctors.
• Belgian beer company changes iconic American brand name to pander to voters (AdAge) — Take one of the oldest and most recognized U.S. brands on which hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to entrench an immigrant’s name into the American psyche. Then remove it and replace it with the country’s name for six months. My gods, the stupid on this one. Fortunately a West Michigan brewer is taking advantage of this opportunity with ‘Murica! I could use one right about now.
• Some SAP accounting software users attacked because they screwed up in 2010 (The Register) — Talk about time travel. I’m sure there’s some folks who’d like to go back to 2010 and execute that security patch correctly this time before hackers smite their business to smithereens.

The Present’s no gift

• Don’t feed the sea turtles (Scientific American) — Surprise! When tourists feed junk food to sea turtles, the turtles’ health mirrors that of humans fed the same crap.
• Study: Ransomware cybercriminals provide better, faster service than internet service providers (Nature) — Not even a rational comparison next to Comcast. Seems like there’s a market opportunity here; if crooks held a machine hostage AND offered a PC tune-up, would PC owners happily fork over cash? Hmm.
• Marijuana use during pregnancy increases risk for pre-term birth (ScienceDaily) — What a surprise that a psychoactive drug combined with toxic by-products from smoking a plant product might have negative effects on pregnancy.

Ugh. Hope tomorrow is kinder to us. See you in the morning!

Monday Morning: Brittle

The Emperor’s Palace was the most splendid in the world, all made of priceless porcelain, but so brittle and delicate that you had to take great care how you touched it. …

— excerpt, The Nightingale from The Yellow Fair Book by Andrew Lang

Last week I’d observed that Apple’s stock value had fallen by ~7% after its financial report was released. The conventional wisdom is that the devaluation was driven by Apple’s first under-performing quarter of iPhone sales, indicating weaker demand for iPhones going forward. Commenter Ian remarked that Apple’s business model is “brittle.” This perspective ignores the meltdown across the entire stock global market caused by China’s currency devaluation, disproportionately impacting China’s consumption habits. It also ignores great untapped or under-served markets across other continents yet to be developed.

But more importantly, this “wisdom” misses a much bigger story, which chip and PC manufacturers have also reflected in their sales. The video above, now already two years old, explains very neatly that we have fully turned a corner on devices: our smartphones are and have been replacing our desktops.

Granted, most folks don’t go through the hassle of purchasing HDMI+USB connectors to attach larger displays along with keyboards. They continue to work on their phones as much as possible, passing content to and from cloud storage when they need to work from a keyboard attached to a PC. But as desktops and their attached monitors age, they are replaced in a way that supports smartphones as our main computing devices — flatscreen monitors, USB keyboards and mice, more powerful small-footprint external storage.

And ever increasing software-as-a-service (SaaS) combined with cloud storage.

Apple’s business model isn’t and hasn’t been just iPhones. Not since the debut of the iPod in October 2001 has Apple’s business model been solely focused on devices and the operating system required to drive them. Heck, not since the debut of iTunes in January 2001 has that been true.

Is there a finite limit to iPhones’ market? Yeah. Same for competing Android-driven devices. But is Apple’s business just iPhones? Not if iTunes — a SaaS application — is an indicator. As of 2014, there were ~66 million iPhones in the U.S., compared to ~800 million iTunes users. And Apple’s current SaaS offerings have exploded over time; the Apple store offers millions of apps created by more than nine million registered developers.

At least nine million registered developers. That number alone should tell you something about the real business model.

iPhones are a delivery mechanism, as are Android-based phones. The video embedded above shows just how powerful Android mobile devices can be, and the shift long underway is not based on Apple’s platform alone. If any business model is brittle right now, it’s desktop computing and any software businesses that rely solely on desktops. How does that change your worldview about the economy and cybersecurity? Did anyone even notice how little news was generated about the FBI accessing the San Bernardino shooter’s PCs? Was that simply because of the locked Apple iOS account, or was it in part because the case mirrored society’s shift to computing and communications on mobile devices?

File under ‘Stupid Michigan Legislators‘: Life sentences for automotive hackers?
Hey. Maybe you jackasses in Michigan’s state senate ought to deal with the permanent poisoning of nearly 8000 children in Flint before doing something really stupid like making one specific kind of hacking a felony worthy of a life sentence. And maybe you ought to do a little more homework on hacking — it’s incredibly stupid to charge a criminal with a life sentence for a crime as simple as entry permitted by wide-open unlocked doors. Are we going to allocate state money to chase hackers who may not even be in this country? Are we going to pony up funds for social media monitoring to catch hackers talking about breaching wide-open cars? Will this law deter citizen white hats who identify automakers’ vulnerabilities? File this mess, too, under ‘Idiotic Wastes of Taxpayers’ Money Along with Bathroom Legislation by Bigots‘. This kind of stuff makes me wonder why any smart people still live in this state.

File this, too, under ‘Stupid Michigan Legislators‘: Lansing Board of Water and Light hit by ransomware
Guess where the first ransomware attack on a U.S. utility happened? Do I need to spell it out how ridiculous it looks for the electric and water utility for the state’s capitol city to be attacked by ransomware while the state’s legislature is worrying about who’s using the right bathroom? Maybe you jackasses in Lansing ought to look at funding assessment and security improvements for ALL the state’s utilities, including both water safety and electricity continuity.

Venezuela changes clocks to reduce electricity consumption
Drought-stricken Venezuela already reduced its work week a month ago to reduce electricity demand. Now the country has bumped its clocks forward by 30 minutes to make more use of cooler early hour during daylight. The country has also instituted rolling blackouts to cutback on electricity. Cue the right-wing pundits claiming socialism has failed — except that socialism has absolutely nothing to do with a lack of rainfall to fill reservoirs.

Coca Cola suing for water as India’s drought deepens
This is a strong piece, worth a read: Whose Water Is It Anyway?

After a long battle, the UN declared in 2010 that clean water was a fundamental right of all citizens. Easier said than done. The essential, alarming question has become, ‘Who does the groundwater belong to?’ Coca Cola is still fighting a case in Kerala where the farmers rebelled against them for using groundwater for their bottling plants. The paddy fields for miles around dried up as water for Coke or the company’s branded bottled water was extracted and transported to richer urban consumers.

Who did that groundwater belong to? Who do our rivers belong to? To the rich and powerful who can afford the resources to draw water in huge quantities for their industries. Or pollute the rivers with effluent from their industries. Or transport water over huge distances at huge expense to turn it into profit in urban areas.

Justus Rosenberg: One of Hannah Arendt’s rescuers
Ed Walker brought this piece to my attention, a profile of 95-year-old Justus Rosenberg featured in this weekend’s New York Times. I love the last two grafs especially; Miriam Davenport characterized Rosenberg as “a nice, intelligent youngster with no family, no money, no influence, no hope, no fascinating past,” yet he was among those who “…were a symbol of sorts, to me, in those days […] Everyone was moving Heaven and earth to save famous men, anti-fascist intellectuals, etc.” Rosenberg was a superhero without a cape.

That’s our week started. See you tomorrow morning!

See you tomorrow morning!

Thursday Morning: Taboo You

Still on spring break around here. If I was legit on a road trip some place warm right now, you’d find me lounging in the sun, sipping fruity cocktails at all hours, listening to some cheesy exotica like this Arthur Lyman piece I’ve shared here.

Though horribly appropriative and colonialist, it’s hard not to like exotica for its in-your-face corniness. I think my favorite remains Martin Denny’s Quiet Village. It brings back memories from the early 1960s, when life was pretty simple.

Let’s have a mai tai for breakfast and get on with our day.

Urgent: Increasing number of hospitals held ransom
Last month it was just one hospital — Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid out bitcoin ransom.

Last week it was three — two Prime Healthcare Management hospitals in California and a Methodist Hospital in Kentucky held hostage.

Now, an entire chain of hospitals has been attacked by ransomware, this time affecting the servers of 10 related facilities in Maryland and Washington DC. The FBI is involved in the case. Is this simple extortion or terrorism? The patients diverted from the facilities to other hospitals’ emergency rooms probably don’t care which it is — this latest attack interfered with getting care as quickly as possible. Let’s hope none of the diverted patients, or those already admitted into the MedStar Union Memorial Hospital chain, have been directly injured by ransomware’s impact on the system.

The MedStar cases spawns many questions:

• Was any patient’s physical health care negatively affected by the ransomware attack?
• Given the risks to human health, why aren’t hospitals better prepared against ransomware?
• Have hospitals across the country treated ransomware as a potential HIPAA violation?
• Was MedStar targeted because of its proximity to Washington DC?
• Was Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center targeted because its owner, CHA Medical Center, is South Korean?
• Were any patients being treated at MedStar also affected by the OPM data breach, or other health insurance data breaches?
• How much will ransomware affect U.S. healthcare costs this year and next?

Bet you can think of a couple more questions, too, maybe more than a couple after reading this:

Hospitals are considered critical infrastructure, but unless patient data is impacted there is no requirement to disclose such hackings even if operations are disrupted.

Computer security of the hospital industry is generally regarded as poor, and the federal Health and Human Services Department regularly publishes a list of health care providers that have been hacked with patient information stolen. The agency said Monday it was aware of the MedStar incident.

Apple iPhone cases emerge
After the San Bernardino #AppleVsFBI case, more law enforcement investigations relying on iPhones are surfacing in the media.

• L.A. police crack open iPhone with fingerprints obtained under warrant (Forbes);
• FBI will assist county prosecutor in Arkansas with iPhone belonging to alleged teen killer (Los Angeles Times); the method may be the same hack used on the San Bernardino phone, which was supposed to be a one-off (Network World);
• ACLU found 63 other cases in which FBI used All Writs Act to obtain iPhone/Android smartphone data from Apple and Google (The Register).

Stupid stuff

• In spite of screwing up not once but twice by releasing its racist, obnoxious Tay AI chatbot, Microsoft tripled down on a future full of chatbots you can build yourself with their tools. (Ars Technica) — Ugh. The stupid…
• UK’s Ministry of Defense awarded funding to Massive Analytics for work on “Artificial precognition and decision-making support for persistent surveillance-based tactical support” (Gov.UK) — OMG Precog in warfare. Human-free drone attacks. What could go wrong?
• Rich white guys queue up outside Tesla dealerships for days waiting to pre-order the new Tesla 3 (Vancity Buzz) — Vancouver, Sydney, probably other places I’m too arsed to bother with, because rich white guys.

That’s quite enough. Back to pretending I’m lying under a cerulean sky, baking my tuchis, cold drink in hand.

Wednesday Morning: Wicked Weary World

Let's have a brunch-time salute to Belgium, which produced this fine young artist Loic Nottet. Too bad there's not much well-produced content in YouTube yet by this youngster. He has incredible upper range reach with great potential because of the power behind his voice. Hope to hear more by him soon; he's a sweet antidote to bitter wickedness.

All in the family
Hope you've read Marcy's piece already this morning on the relevance of nuclear family units to terrorism. In addition to suicide bombers El Bakraoui brothers Marcy mentioned, it's worth examining the other links between the November 13 attacks in Paris and the attacks in Belgium yesterday. Note the familial relationships and their first-degree network:

Brahim Abdelslam -- older brother of Salah, blew himself up in Paris during the November 15 attacks. (Dead) Salah Abdelslam -- captured last Friday March 18, has admitted he 'had planned to target Brussels.' His location was flagged by an unusual number of pizzas delivered to an apartment where power and water had been shut off. (In custody)

Abaid Aberkan -- characterized as a relation of the Abdelslams, carried Brahim's casket at the funeral last week. (NOT a terror suspect Edit: Le Monde indicates Aberkan was arrested during Friday's raid, but name spelled 'Abid.') (In custody) Aberkan's mother -- renter/owner of Molenbeek apartment in which Salah was hiding when captured last week. (NOT a terror suspect)

Mohamed Belkaid -- killed in a raid last Tuesday at an apartment in Forest district; Salah fled the apartment. (Dead)

Mohamed Abrini -- A childhood friend and neighbor of Salah, his younger brother Suleymane died fighting in an Islamist militia under the direction of Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Abaaoud, the leader of the Paris attacks, died on November 18 during a police raid. Abrini had traveled with both of the Abdelslam brothers the week before the attacks in Paris. He is now on the run and sought in relation to yesterday's attack. (Suspect)

Najim Laachraoui -- traveled with Salah and Belkaid last September, under the name Soufiane Kayal. His DNA was found in three different locations: on explosives in Paris, and at two other hide-outs used by attackers. He is now sought in relation to yesterday's attack. (Suspect)

Though we'll hear arguments for increased internet surveillance, it's easy to see that traditional police work could identify a terrorist network of family and friends in the same way members of an organized crime syndicate centered around a family are revealed. (Sources for the above: The Guardian and The Australian)

Other stuff going on...

• 'Flash Crash' trader to be extradited to the U.S., rule British judges (France24)
• Sextortionist Michael Ford, who ran a criminal enterprise from his work computer while employed at U.S. embassy, sentenced to four years and nine months in prison (Ars Technica) -- BoingBoing notes the hypocrisy of a government demanding backdoors while failing to note such a massive misuse of its own network.
• Another hospital held hostage by ransomware, this time in Kentucky (Krebs on Security) -- STOP OPENING LINKS IN EMAIL at work, for starters. Isolating email systems from all other networked operations would be better.
• 24 car models by 19 automakers vulnerable to keyless entry hack (WIRED--mind the ad-block hate) -- Mostly foreign models affected due to the radio frequency used.

Better luck tomorrow, gang. See you in the morning.