Is World War III being waged right now?

You know how they say people are usually always fighting the "last war" and that that's also why they usually lose? News out this morning tells of a "State actor seen behind 'enormous' wave of cyber attacks" BOSTON (Reuters) - Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world. Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China. The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises. The thing is, if we are in the midst of WWIII, we won't know until after someone's conquered. Sobering thought, no? Link: http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-ever-series-cyber-attacks-uncovered-u-n-040749882.html

Reasons why you don't call for the end of the world, you irresponsible chucklehead

Sure, it's one thing if you're a fool and "there's no fool like an old fool" but there's a great deal to be said for being responsible and going off half-cocked, even if you think it's for your god and whatever you think salvation is.

This is some of what this Harold Camping's handiwork did last week, with his call of the end of the world:

A California woman named Lyn Benedetto was one of millions who heard Camping's message, and became concerned that her daughters would suffer terribly in the coming apocalypse. She allegedly forced her daughters, 11 and 14, to lie on a bed and then cut their throats with a box cutter. She then tried to kill herself, though police arrested Benedetto and all three survived.

Others were not so lucky. An elderly man in Taiwan reportedly killed himself on May 5 ahead of the Rapture by jumping out of a building. He had heard that doomsday was imminent, and had taken recent earthquakes and tsunamis as early warning signs.

There were other unconfirmed reports of doomsday-related suicides around the world as well.

But what does "Mr. Apocalypse" do instead of clamming up and making sure the world never sees or hears from him again?

He calls for another end of the world this October.

Someone needs to tell this old fool to shut up.

Isn't that what wives are for?

Link to original post:  Failed doomsday prediction has real deadly consequences

Related stories:

• When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope
• Doomsdays Past & Present (Infographic)

Computer warfare?

There is an excellent, fairly all-encompassing article in this week's New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh about "cyber war" and what it it and is not and the recent history of it all.

It brings up so many points.

Did you know that the country's first "Cyber Czar", so to speak, is a graduate of--ulp--the online "University of Phoenix"?  Yow.  It's old news, too, that he was far from the President's first pick for the job.  Get this--he came to the job from his position as head of security at e-bay.

Yikes.

Not to belittle the man or his capabilities since I don't know him but here you go:

In theory, the fight over whether the Pentagon or civilian agencies should be in charge of cyber security should be mediated by President Obama’s coördinator for cyber security, Howard Schmidt—the cyber czar. But Schmidt has done little to assert his authority. He has no independent budget control and in a crisis would be at the mercy of those with more assets, such as General Alexander. He was not the Administration’s first choice for the cyber-czar job—reportedly, several people turned it down. The Pentagon adviser on information warfare, in an e-mail that described the lack of an over-all policy and the “cyber-pillage” of intellectual property, added the sort of dismissive comment that I heard from others: “It’s ironic that all this goes on under the nose of our first cyber President. . . . Maybe he should have picked a cyber czar with more than a mail-order degree.” (Schmidt’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees are from the University of Phoenix.)

And here's an issue:
The Department of Homeland Security recently signed a memorandum with the Pentagon that gives the military authority to operate inside the United States in case of cyber attack.

The Department of Homeland Security just handed over the country in times of computer attack, to the military, just like that.

That's bad enough, since it puts the military in control of the country, but who decides if we're "under attack"? 

What really becomes apparent is that any future "cyber attack" or "cyber war" should not and cannot be looked on through any prism of our past experience, it would seem.  Most countries and people go into the "next war" or next conflict, assuming it will be like the past, as is so commonly known.  This kind of attack would certainly take us into realms we've absolutely never experienced.

The good things?

For one, the article points out that the openness of the web creates lots of safeguards--like between power grids across the country, for example. 

Additionally, an attack meant for one computer can go elsewhere quickly and attack things it isn't meant to--again, due to that openness--as we recently found with the Stuxnet virus. 

Third, it's not like the Chinese, for instance, would necessarily want our system--our country--to "go down" since they own us, Wall Street and all.  Most all of the world is in this together.

Here's a shocker, to me:  A retired four-star Navy admiral, who spent much of his career in signals intelligence, said that Russia, France, Israel, and Taiwan conduct the most cyber espionage against the U.S. “I’ve looked at the extraordinary amount of Russian and Chinese cyber activity,” he told me, “and I am hard put to it to sort out how much is planning for warfare and how much is for economic purposes.”


Israel?  Our "ally"?  Spying on us?  And that much?  The country who wouldn't exist, but for the US?

And Taiwan??  Who we're supposed to defend, if they were attacked by China?  Nice.

It's not a complete surprise but it does get me some.

Finally, then, there is this:
Jeffrey Carr, a Seattle-based consultant on cyber issues, looked into state and non-state cyber espionage throughout the recent conflicts in Estonia and Georgia. Carr, too, said he was skeptical that China or Russia would mount a cyber-war attack against the United States. “It’s not in their interest to hurt the country that is feeding them money,” he said.

Hopefully that can be the good news out of all this--we're all in this together.

Maybe that's what can and will save us. 

Humankind will have "learned" something after all.



But then, there's always the anarchic terrorists who don't operate by rules.

Or sanity.

Link to original post: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/01/101101fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=1

Update on Stuxnet malware

From The New York Times today: The malware, known as Stuxnet, was discovered in mid July, at least several months after its creation, by VirusBlokAda, a Belarussian computer security company that was alerted by a customer. I thought that interesting--that a Belarussion computer security company was first alerted to it. Then there's a little more educated guess than what I wrote earlier, of just what Stuxnet is designed to do: Exactly what Stuxnet might command industrial equipment to do still isn’t known. But malware experts say it could have been designed to trigger such Hollywood-style bedlam as overloaded turbines, exploding pipelines and nuclear centrifuges spinning so fast that they break. Stuxnet’s remarkable sophistication has surprised many security professionals. Its authors had detailed knowledge of Siemens’ software and where its security weaknesses are. They discovered and used four unknown security flaws in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. And they masked their attack with the aid of sensitive intellectual property stolen from two hardware companies, Realtek and JMicron, which are located in the same office park in Taiwan. “It’s impossible this was created by some teenager in his basement,” Mr. Chien said. “The amount of resources and man hours to put this together,” he said, show “it has to be something that was state originated.” Once again, the ubiquity of Microsoft proves itself a great disadvantage and makes it far more likely one's computer would be attacked. It seems clear more computers will have to get off Microsoft, I should think, with this kind of ultra-sophisticated attack developing. Also, that this malware seems likely to have been created by a government is a fascinating, complicated and rather diabolical detail, too. It will be more fascinating to see how this develops. Link to original post: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/malware-hits-computerized-industrial-equipment/?th&emc=th

What we--the US--are really good at

Okay, so in the last few months, I've put up different evaluations of nations about "best places to live", as determined by Forbes Magazine and others and now here's one from Business Week. It tells of what nations have the most millionaires. And this, of course, is what the US is really good at. Yes, we're at the top for creating millionaires. Yippee. Sure, there should be good ways for smart, hard-working people to achieve, excel and get ahead in the commerical world and lots of millionaires could be just fine, sure. What's bad and unfair and wrong and inappropriate is when the wealthy class gets big and then bigger and bigger, while the middle class is shrinking and the lowest classes are rising. That's a recipe for disaster and defeat for a country. And it's, statistically, where we've been headed. Link to original story: http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109838/countries-with-the-most-millionaires?mod=career-work

China vs. the US: Who's going to win this?

Recently, the US and China have been sparring a bit.

We recently made a 6.4 billion dollar military arms sale to Taiwan which, of course, upset the mainland. That always gets them going.

Then we recently increased our tariffs on their steel and tires.

Higher tariffs on anyone is never well-received, naturally.

This week we also found that President Obama is going to meet with the Dalai Lama , personally, finally, too.

The President can't back down from this meeting, frankly, because he had already put it off at least once, just before he went to China. If he were to put it off now, again, he would look soft on China, it's perceived and he'd be seen as giving in to pressure on them.

Anyway, they aren't liking this meeting.

All this on top of the fact that China is our biggest lender.

Most people would say they "own us."

It seems to point out that China may have already won any contest we're in against each other.

We hope that's not the case but we're so intertwined and, as I said, we owe them so many billions and trillions of dollars of our debt, how can we really fight them in any arena, without shooting ourselves in a proverbial foot? How do you fight your banker?

The banker always wins.

The banker is in control.

Remember the cynical--but true--"golden rule"?

"He who has the gold, makes the rules."

Food for thought.

On the one hand, we can hardly afford to upset them.

On the other, we can't be seen as weak and/or giving in to them, even if they are our financial masters.

This is going to be a tough relationship to handle for some time to come.

(Unless China's economy collapses).