Category: Comment on News | Page 8

March 5, 2014

Distributed Denial of Service: Growing and Biting Harder

Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Out of Control

DDOS attacks have surpassed automated defenses, says Prolexic, a firm specializing in online security. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/05/us-cyber-ddos-idUSBREA240XZ20140305

Last month Cloudfare, another firm specializing in online security, faced its biggest DDOS threat ever. http://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-behind-a-400gbps-ntp-amplification-ddos-attack That attack rose 30 percent higher in power than the largest attack in recorded history.

Stories of destroying Mt. Gox and crippling Bitcoin rapidly have risen to the status of mythology. http://techland.time.com/2014/03/03/what-happened-to-mt-gox/ In Europe, Spamhaus news of their DDOS attack hit across the continent. http://gigaom.com/2014/02/11/record-breaking-ddos-attack-struck-on-monday-according-to-reports/ New names of victims like Namecheap reach headlines daily. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57619235-83/namecheap-targeted-in-monumental-ddos-attack/

What causes most DDOS attacks? It’s not bad weather. http://www.ponemon.org/blog/live-threat-intelligence-impact-report-2013 Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com argue that warring nations, crime, and similar dark forces cannot account for all of the cyber carnage.

One especially nasty source of the worst recent attacks is wireless printers. You heard right. Wifi connected printers paired with bots intent on emitting millions of data requests offer the latest in DDOS tech. The software can be purchased cheaply by college kids for school projects. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238833/Printers_routers_used_as_bots_in_DDoS_attacks

No matter what causes the attacks, some firms like Black Lotus make big money protecting against them. http://www.blacklotus.net/ddos-protection-firm-selects-telx-cloud-connection-center

So what should you and I do? One expert who focuses on cyber threats, Alexander Klimburg from the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, is on loan to Harvard University to research an answer to this question. His answer so far: “It’s very hard to know what to do.” http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/2690/alexander_klimburg.html

Any opinions out there? Aside from staying offline and shutting down your online business, will cyber bullies reign for the foreseeable future?

March 5, 2014

UN Human Rights Council Blames Security Council For Syrian Civil War

UN Human Rights Claim Security Council Is Bad Cop

The United Nations human rights advocates and investigators point their finger at both commanders on the ground and the Security Council, to blame all of them for the misery in Syria. In other more direct words, Security Council, you’re the cop on the world beat, and you suck! http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/05/us-syria-crisis-warcrimes-idUSBREA240RP20140305

Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com go further to say that the UN seems useless as the world’s policeman, and maybe the idea was doomed from its beginning.

Easy targets for the International Criminal Court (ICC), where so-called “rules of war” (RoW) supposedly provide the logic for prosecutions, spring up on the battlefield sooner than victory, if the UN human rights sympathizers can be believed. The commanders of troops make tactical decisions in the context of broader strategic interests, so the beginning point for identifying RoW violations might appear to the uninitiated to be the battlefield. Wrong!

As Rules of Engagement (ROE) spring from theater and national strategy to comply with RoW, ground commanders focused on those ROE seek to fulfill strategic orders from superiors by mechanical execution of battle plans far from the decisions about RoW. Most ground commanders only vaguely recall hearing of RoW, and they clearly do not consider them when complying with their orders. The only perpetrators of RoW end up, historically, as the defeated decision-makers behind the front; victorious decision-makers in contrast retire to comfortable estates with shiny medals on their chests. To prosecute the order-obeying field commanders misses the point of ICC’s jurisdiction and reason for existence under the Rome Statute of 2002 (by which the ICC was formed).

So the UN human rights criticism of the UN Security Council for being a bad cop, for shirking responsibility to send bad field commanders and their generals to the ICC, seems premature, to put it mildly. No one has clearly won or lost the war in Syria yet.

Nonetheless, one salient point offered in the bluster rings profoundly true. Paulo Pinheiro, a Brazilian RoW expert employed by the UN human rights bureau, charges not only field commanders and their generals with crimes but also “states which transfer weapons to ..” Syria. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/PaulSergioPinheiro.aspx Does he mean the members of the Security Council, including, for example, the USA, Russia, China, France, or Great Britain? Does he mean that all the fighters in Syria will act as spoiled, violent children no matter what, so if they can find bigger, better guns, rockets, bombs, they will most certainly use them, and there is no meaningful way to stop such children except to stop giving them their preferred weapons? Does he mean that those in charge of the UN, when all is said and done, are the cause of the chaos they seek to control?

As noted, maybe the UN was doomed from its beginning.

March 4, 2014

Chevron Beats Ecuador in Manhattan Court But Is Permafrost Oil Next?

Chevron Wins Over Ecuadorian Injustice, But Should Oil Drillers Be Encouraged?

Today US Federal District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, NY, USA, ruled that the 2011 decision by an Ecuadorian court was obtained with fraud and therefore is unenforceable. Chevron plans to expand South American drilling as well as other exploration world wide now that the $9.5 B judgment and property seizure has been overruled. The Ecuadorian forces pushing for the judgment against the big oil producer argued that ground contamination by Texaco, now part of Chevron, of the Amazon rainforest justified seizure of all Chevron drilling assets and a hefty fine. Today’s judgment means those assets will be released to permit continued Chevron drilling and exploration. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-04/ecuador-judgment-against-chevron-ruled-a-fraud-by-u-s-.html

Contrast Chevron’s South American success with discoveries of a 30,000 year old virus by Aix-Marseille University (AMU) researchers in Siberia. Due to melting permafrost in Siberia, a 98-foot-deep permafrost sample was extracted near the East Siberia Sea. In the sample scientists discovered a large, never before studied virus that affects amoebas. While the newly named Pithovirus Sibericum virus poses no known risk to humans, the same cannot be stated by Jean-Michel Claverie, a bio-informatics researcher and co-author of the AMU study, about other pathogens found in permafrost samples. Claverie and other scientists argue that with increased oil drilling in newly thawed permafrost areas, unknown pathogens will be released that may introduce diseases against which humans have no defenses. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ancient-virus-resurrected-after-30000-years-scientists-say/

Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com point out that risks from rising sea levels will displace hundreds of millions of people well before pathogens possibly released from permafrost reach civilization to cause health risks. So the greater risks on which scientists and governments should focus concern global warming impact on coastal cities, not permafrost oil drilling.

What do you think? Are oil developers unleashing Pandora’s box of horrors, or will millions drown before they have a chance to get sick from new pathogens? Or should we instead watch how the US court system seems to overrule courts from other nations such as Ecuador with impunity to favor big oil interests?

March 4, 2014

Facebook To Buy Drone-maker Titan Aerospace for $60 M

Facebook Weaponization with Drones? http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/04/us-facebook-titan-idUSBREA231KB20140304

Today Facebook announced its ambition to purchase Titan Aerospace (TA) for $60 M. And what’s the connection between social networking and drones, the specialty of TA? According to Facebook board member Asher Delung, who confirmed unauthorized leaks about the plan, the drones fit with Facebook’s efforts to spread social networking technology across the world to places without wireless Internet connectivity. http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/03/facebook-in-talks-to-acquire-drone-maker-titan-aerospace/

Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com wonder aloud how private drones crossing Chinese, Korean, or Iranian airspace might be received. Will Facebook be perceived as a US surveillance puppet by hyper-defensive military forces? Will conservative Muslim or other religious groups find the cultural implications of Facebook acts of war against their religions?

Some social scientists argue that actions to change culture underlie war. http://archive.cyark.org/heritage-at-risk-acts-of-human-aggression-blog So, could Facebook’s planned drone broadcasts to promote social connectivity become a Western weapon of cultural destruction? What do you think?

March 3, 2014

2 or 3 Moves Ahead? Gates Advises Obama on Ukraine-Russia Action

Look 2 or 3 Moves Out, Gates Advises Obama on Ukraine-Russia Tensions

When the US Secretary of Defense, an acknowledged expert on Russian politics from a CIA perspective, advises US President Obama to look two or three moves out, as he just did today, one must wonder what the US is truly up to in the face of mounting tensions as Russian tanks and troops gather just east of Crimea. http://news.yahoo.com/obama-must-carefully-calibrate-russia-response-rhetoric-gates-014117221–sector.html

Of course the path looks treacherous, no matter which turns the US takes. A major reason for such danger arises from the fact that the US has no real business intervening in those tensions in the first place. The Ukraine-Russia tensions have a long history, older in some ways than the US as a nation, so no westerner, but especially the US, has either military power or moral credibility to act in the region. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/03/ukraine-crisis-putin-idUSL6N0LZ0QK20140303

At least Gates realizes that Russian Prime Minister Putin holds huge power on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine, partly because Russia maintains a large, mostly modern military force but also because a significant portion of the Ukraine population identifies with a Russian heritage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine and http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/03/ukraine-crisis-gas-idUSL6N0M00ZR20140303

If Obama needs to be told to look a few moves out, Obama seems to have lost any contest with Russia before it begins, say analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com. What do you think? Does the US have any legitimate role in the Ukraine-Russia theater? What real interests does the US have there? Why would the US risk confrontation with Russia after seeking for the past five years to find some friendly balance between the two giants’ domains?

March 1, 2014

Who Can We Blame, Asks Mt. Gox

From the beginning of Mt. Gox, claims have run rampant that tracing Bitcoin transactions offers more transparency than any other currency. Oh yeah? So who would be named in a criminal complaint for the hack attack that stole half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoins at Mt. Gox? Answer: We don’t know. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/us-bitcoin-mtgox-bankruptcy-idUSBREA1R0FX20140228

So, instead of pushing a criminal complaint, Mt. Gox will be hit with civil law suits, meaning suits for money, by frustrated investors who want their money back. One class action suit in Illinois by investor Greg Greene for consumer fraud, negligence, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty exemplifies what will be coming next week and after. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/illinois-man-files-class-action-lawsuit-against-bitcoin-exchange-mtgox/

The obvious technical question: Why can’t the hack attack at Mt. Gox be traced? That’s what Japanese, US, and other investigators want to know. http://gigaom.com/2014/02/27/us-and-japan-authorities-probe-bitcoin-attacks-as-leak-blogger-claims-theres-no-buyer-for-mtgox/

And the rest of us want to know the answer to that question, too. So stay tuned. Analysts at http://hamiltonfinanceservices.com forecast a full slate of reports about just what happened and who did it as the investigations unfold. If you have insights, particularly about how it might have been done, people want to know your thoughts.

February 28, 2014

School May Silence Free Political Speech of Students At School, Says Court

Imminent Violence Justifies Halting Political Speech on School Campus?

The US Federal Court of Appeals ruled today that students wearing shirts showing the American flag were properly silenced when high school officials perceived imminent safety risks and demanded that the students leave or turn the shirts inside out to cover the flag. http://patdollard.com/2014/02/9th-u-s-circuit-court-of-appeals-rules-california-school-can-ban-u-s-flag-shirts-during-phony-holiday-cinco-de-mayo/

The setting: Cinco de Mayo celebrations in southern San Francisco, at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hills where hundreds celebrated their Latino heritage. The silenced students: Members of the student body wearing t-shirts that displayed the US flag. The questioned conduct: School officials demanded that the flag wearing students either leave the event or reverse their t-shirts to cover the US flag. The justification offered: Violent histories of gang confrontations in the community arising from pro- and anti-Latino groups led school officials to believe that students wearing US flag shirts to the Latino celebration would cause immediate violent protests and confrontations. http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/02/27/11-17858.pdf

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/us-usa-court-tshirts-california-idUSBREA1R06R20140228

William Becker, attorney for the students who were silenced, vows to appeal to the US Supreme court, asserting that the right to free political speech was sacrificed in the face of speculations about violence that should have been controllable by law enforcement and school authorities at the gathering. http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25240543/american-flag-removal-order-justified-u-s-court

Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com say the Supreme Court appeal won’t likely make it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedures_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

Nonetheless, the right to free political speech has been upheld by that court in unlikely appeals before. In the Cohen case, for example, a man convicted of wearing a t-shirt with the words “F___ the draft” (see footnote for the blank spot appearing after the letter ‘F’) to a 1971 protest, when the draft rose to high levels of violent controversy, had his conviction over-tuned by the US Supreme Court precisely because political speech deserves exceptional protection under the US Constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California

The difference in today’s case: Four of the five boys elected to go home when threatened with arrest by school officials, and the fifth boy reversed his t-shirt to remain at the celebration. No one was arrested for wearing the shirts. If instead they had remained and been arrested for wearing the provocative t-shirts, the US Supreme Court might be compelled to hear the appeal, based on the Cohen case. Even then, since school officials appear to have special authority on campus, they still could have been justified.

If you were deciding, should the appeal of the boys be heard by the US Supreme Court? Under what circumstances should political speech be silenced in the US? Should school officials have greater powers over free speech on campus than law enforcement has in the community?

Footnote: The original term used on the t-shirt of Leonard Cohen was the acronym commonly formed from the word posted on early American stockades for persons convicted of adultery, as they then defined adultery. Those words were: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. You can probably figure out the acronym on your own. I deleted the acronymic expression at the request of Vivaldi censors who declined to publish this post unless the historically accurate term was either deleted or obfuscated. Hence, I have offered this obfuscatory footnote.

February 28, 2014

200 Times Stronger Glass Made With Laser Etching

Nacre: Chalk Made Strong by Mollusks Gives Science Idea for Cracked Strong Glass

Most of us have dropped a glass container only to have it crack and shatter. Now, taking a tip from nature, scientists have devised a way to slightly crack glass to make it 200 times stronger than normal. http://txchnologist.com/post/78023821702/glass-gets-stronger-by-cracking-it?

Some mollusks with their nacre, pearly inner shell, demonstrate to scientists how it is done. They use common chalk, a substance that normally flakes and cracks into dust. By setting tiny bits of chalk in offset rows, mollusks known for mother-of-pearl inner linings create a substance 3,000 times tougher than natural chalk. Applying this lesson, scientists put micro-cracks in glass to create glass far stronger than uncracked glass. http://barthelat-lab.mcgill.ca/research.html

McGill University’s biometric materials lab announced today its discovery of both the nacre offset chalk blocks and how lasers that make tiny cracks in glass can strengthen naturally occurring substances. http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/glass-bends-doesn’t-break-232559

To me, this seems like a metaphor for how people with fissures from life may become stronger.

hamilton.jerry

February 28, 2014

Mt. Gox Bankruptcy Filed Over Bitcoin Hack

Today Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in Japan, where its headquarters stand. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/sns-mt-gox-bankruptcy-bitcoins-20140228,0,3681597.story

A hack attack took over 750,000 coins from Mt. Gox accounts, worth nearly half a billion US dollars on the currency markets. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/mt-gox-files-for-bankruptcy/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Mark Karpeles, CEO of Mt. Gox, in his public apology, blames “weaknesses in the system” for the loss by his currency exchange business. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/28/us-bitcoin-mtgox-bankruptcy-idUSBREA1R0FX20140228

Mt. Gox has historically been the largest trader of Bitcoin, although other currency exchanges similar to that of Mt. Gox also continue trading in that cryptocoin and others. http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/mt-gox-files-for-bankruptcy/

Analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com say that while Bitcoin continues to be traded, the long term effects on NewCoin technology suddenly seem cloudy, and risks of buying or selling Bitcoins and similar digital currencies may freeze all NewCoin markets in the near future.

Those with no risk and no investments in digital currencies seem apathetic, but those hoping to find financial security in the new technology may have lost life savings. What about you? Have you lost anything in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy? Or how about your experience with digital currency trading in general? Any good experiences out there, or has everyone suffered bad experience?

February 27, 2014

Senator Kelly Ayotte for VP in US?

Ayotte Supporters’ Hopes for VP Candidate Are On the Rise

In the US, national politics takes center stage this year, and New Hampshire primaries will lead off, so their own Senator, Kelly Ayotte, has risen to the top of the VP candidate list already. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/27/the-gop-already-has-a-2016-front-runner-for-vice-president.html

Is it too soon for you, as it is for me, to discuss US national politics? As a news junky, most political news seems low on the list of fun topics for me. But here’s what catches my attention today: Senator Kelly Ayotte actually seems like one worth hearing as a counter to Hillary’s apparently inevitable clime to the rostrum.

At http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com, the time is ripe to strategize about the next round of US national politics if you take such politics seriously. What do you think? Too early, or a good time to think of some attractive alternatives to old political personalities?

hamilton.jerry