double secrets – Page 5 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Fake-fake-fakes

[Edited to add: this, I wrote a month+ ago, and has of course since been ‘repeated’ over and over, e.g., through the poor Swedes not knowing what hit them…]

Not quite like this, but troublesome: The information explosion brought to us by the Internet, has finally come to the brink of its feared state of drowning-till-death the Truth, under Fake. Where nothing, literally nothing, can be believed anymore, nor can anything be refuted as fake once the humans’ limited context view cannot discard everything that seems legit or on the border of it, for lack of irrefutable, foundational truths that would raise the plausibility to sufficient levels.
On the contrary, the logical-positivists’ traps / blind spots would kick in. We get unprovable ‘double secrets’ and ditto ‘double falsehoods’ (“We didn’t hack the elections”) — so finally, we reach Socrates’ ideal ..!!

The Elysion at last, like:

[Now that’s E Pluribus Unum; Noto oh no it’s reluctantly-unified DunEdin…]

Secret Health

The year hasn’t started in earnest, and already we’re swamped in news about the over-easy hackability in and/or frequent leakage of medical data from the Care sector — haha we aren’t swamped but rather, quite ignore the news because either one cannot do anything about it (but complain) or it’s too embarrassing …
Also, it turns out that people are more reluctant to share medical data (info) with their practitioner(s) when they are less secure about the secrecy of it; the very reason there’s such a thing as medical professional code of secrecy (doctor/patient confidentiality) and now, leading to worse care (quality, cost) then if proper secrecy wouldn’t be in doubt.

So, either you medical/care expert have professional pride to provide the best medical care and hence implement proper infosec measures (from ISMS to crypto-details) and chastise your managerial staaf for not doing it properly — or you try to wing it, don’t secure properly hence don’t provide maximal care, and should be banned.

And:

[A good health figure; Barça]

Cozy versus Anti-cozy

Once more reaching back to last Wednesday’s post: Opposing sides may have to recognise the very existence of the other one.

When anti-bureaucracy force battle the eternal struggle against complacency et al., they better take into account that 60% of people (any mass), is of Type B, and hence will diligently work 9-to-5 and not complain too much. And, by their majority and no moral objection to hence realised mob rule, will (try to) encapsulate the Other 40% Type A’s. Whereas if all the Type A’s were contra their nature to band together in some loose-form cooperation, this could very easily deteriorate into B big time.
And, in a world that’s overly complex, even when subsets of the complexity may be institutionalised, B may be the only feasible organisational form — IF one’d want to organise it all. Which one would, if out of fear typical of the 60% …

So we’ll sine-weave from side to side, and:

[The displaced after Romans’ Franks primordial fear of disappearance leading to ultra-centralism as core quality of the (leading socio-cultural-economic elites of) the nation, sometimes leads to something pleasing the eye; e.g., La Défense Paris]

DoS Internals

No, no typo. Not DOS Internals or so. Rather, internal DoS attacks.

Are they tractable? [Uhh, that may sound like they’d be positive things to be able to do — sorry, just hinting at “technical feasibility” here]

Yes they are. Stuxnet was the prime example. Something similar would be tractable once one is (somewhat) on the inside, I guess. Like, an APT exploring the internal networks for topology, infecting routers along the way, and then blowing them up all, all at once, with megazillion tons of traffic, internally generated. Denying (internal) network services to all. Or even bricking routers with e.g., flash-ROM attacks. Feasible.

The same, with surreptitious tweaks of kernel scheduling processes, Stux style. Or, there, too, diving deep into and under the virtualisation layers and bricking the core BOISsen and other Level 0 / 1 server software. Overflowing disks with random data (be sure to buffer tons, so restarts / re-mounts will not help too easily).

Hmmm, once one starts thinking about it, the possibilities are huge. Maybe some nationstate party/ies has some arsenal out there in the wild already. Think yesterday’s post; on its own or in combo with Elections, whose interests where?

Oh whatever … plus:

[A hole in your servers’/routers’ “floatation” capabilities will sink your infra; Baltimore]

Did / Did Not (Know Who Did)

Anyone still have an overview of where we (?) stand qua attribution of “cyber” attacks [ #ditchcyber, of course ] ..?? Apart from this…

There’s so much development in attribution with or without proof, e.g., about hacking elections in some outer corner of the world’s population; was it truly hacks, was it some nation state, was it some scapegoat hackster, was it all a set-up, where are Wikileaks, Anonymous, [fill in your favourite Four Horsemen party and colour the pictures] … the possibilities are endless.

But there are indeed flashes like this and this, which spark some controversy whilst blurring the overall picture. And we’d want unblurred pics of hotel room showers oh wait not I.
And what with all the tools out there (remember, the FBI’s stash stolen and now on fire sale for 99% off the previous list price, right?), planting others’ fingerprints and DNA, so to speak (no, literally ..!), and have pictures and videos even that are near-indistinguishable from proof; what evidence if any is still admissible in courts? None …!? So, what attribution …!?

When others talk about “controlling the cyber battlefield” (no, not the FBI but the extraterritorial agency), isn’t there a protracted “cyber” [ #ditchcyber ] world war under way already ..? Just not as hot as the previous one, more like the Cold one, schlepping on ..?

Just accept all Peace For Our Time‘s … and:

[The SocMed approach: Look! Moose babies!]

Two's a Charming Bureaucratic Voilence

First, two (yes) quotes:

To put it crudely: it is not so much that bureaucratic procedures are inherently stupid, or even that they tend to produce behaviour that they themselves define as stupid — though they do do that — but rather, that they are invariably ways of managing social situations that are already stupid because they are founded on structural voilence. (p.57) [ Where structural voilence is … look it up in your sociology study’s notes. Implicit or even explicit threats with disciplinary boards (however pastiche) and ostracism certainly gives you the right idea; ed. ]

At the same time, if one accepts Jean Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity. (pp. 80-81) [ Emphasis mine; ed. ]

This being from Graeber’s Utopia of Rules of course.

Now, apply this to the obviously receptive [what is the opposite side from ‘applicable’?] situation at some petty association that aggrandised itself and use the introduction of ‘quality control’ — not over itself but over parts of its member base — in a criminal way [since the legal and (self- and external) regulatory arguments were and are simply invalid, and procedures at points illegal outright] to force them into obedience to Kafkaesk procedures that wouldn’t and still don’t apply to those in power at the association. Gollum “the ring is mine!”.

My point being the conclusion of infantile stupidity. Charming for its tragicomedy. A disaster at many fronts for those affected by it…

Oh well:

[To swat a completely imagined fly; Edinburgh]

Electing Coke

Haven’t seen too many comparisons between Coke’s notorious botched A/B testing New Coke on the one hand, and the oh so similar (are they) recent US elections on the other.
If any of you would have a pointer to such an analysis, I’d be glad to hear.

That’s all. And:

[Which side you’d choose ..? Who cares about you / your choice ..? Zuid-As Amsterdam]

Four horsemen, with a badge

Now that ‘our failproof heroes of integrity’ (one of those five words is correct) have gained the right to hack and exploit each and every users’ device in their battle (huh) against the four horsemen, each, all and every proof of misconduct of however grave or minor import that anyone would conduct using any such ‘cyber’ device would not hold in court because no-one can prove it was the general user / suspect (sic) that put the data onto there or used it and the police would be implicated as well but cannot prove satisfactory it wasn’t them.

Obliterating any chance of ever proving actual foul horsemen…

But hey, they seem to have wanted that. For a reason? E.g., the above suspects were in majority already among the pursuers ..?

Why would I care… and:

[Your ‘straight’ thinking…; Zuid-As Amsterdam]

Oops, there it is! (now you don’t, see it)

Suddenly, there it is, almost as if it’s something new … Malware using stego, as if it might still surprise anyone whereas of course there already was this, and this, and this and this.

What next? Even smarter ad blockers ..? Will not work, as the latter are only in use with the smarter part of the bunch. And smarter ad blockers will be installed by even fewer, as the pay-off is less visible (timely enough).

No, what’s next is first an armageddon [Warning: cultural notion; propose to use the more profound Ragnarök] — of which the result hopefully … is that ads will be marginalised. A great many a socmed platform (looking at you, $FB and other (sic) unicorns) may (signifying possibility and hope) go asunder as ads are their value period

Then, hopefully, Yggdrasil will grow again. E.g., with truly egalitarian platforms; truly global (though that aspect may not have been sunk in the great flood) and free, meaning that also, the trolls can be captured and ring-fenced and not destroy some or many or the platforms / -ideas.

How philosophical one can get in dreams/dreaming, how far off today is the better-than-today’s-should-have-been.

Plus:

[All sorts of meta-info (‘nothing to protect here just move on’/ Í can see you but you can’t see me’ et al); Segovia or what was it]

Rejoice, you the Puzzled

Unless you were doing stuff on Nocial Media (see tomorrow — never mind, I’m not one for linear Time), you may have missed or noticed (same) the release of a facsimile of one of the most veritable puzzles of the ages (Western world), in this here thing, which is posted here. Yeah, that’s how hyperlinks work, I kno, I kno.

So, now you the puzzlers AKA crytographers around the globe, may swoop down in even larger numbers than before, to crack the thing. Or, probably, not. And you knew about this whole thing.

Question: (Why | _ ) hasn’t already some Watson-class ~~frigate~~ AI tool (literally certainly not figuratively) been set loose on this ..? Lack of purpose? Of would it be a good ‘Turing test’ of sorts, if we test the capabilitites (learning/analysis time ..!?) of any AI tool, by the time it would take to make mincemeat out of the Manuscript — Duh-tch for tearing apart. Any attempt after the first successful, would need to be instructed not to find the solution out there on the ‘net, obviously (?) …

One may hope, may one not? And:

[Found it! This is what the Manu is about!!]