From bike design to security design

You recall my posts from a couple of days ago (various), and here, and have studied the underlying Dutch Granny Bike Theory (as here), while not being put off by the lack (?) of design when taking a concrete view here.
You may also recall discussions, forever returning as long as security (control) design existed even when not (yet) as a separate subject, that users’ Desire Paths (exepelainifyed here) would inevitably be catered for or one would find continual resistance until failure — with opposition from the Yes But Users Should Be Made Aware Of Sensitivity Of Their Dealing With Commensurate (Linearly Appropriate) Security Hindrance side; things are hard for a reason and one should make things as simple as possible but not simpler. [Yeah, I know that’s a reformulation of Ockam’s Razor for simpletons outside of science and having dropped the scientific precision of O and of application to science where it’s valid and the second part is often lost by and on the most simpletons of all short of politicians which are in a league of their own.]

I feel there may be a world a.k.a. whole field of science, to be developed (sic) regarding this. Or at least, let’s drop the pretension of simpleness of cost/benefit calculations that are a long way on the very, very wrong side of but not simpler.
Anyone have pointers to some applicable science in this field?

Oh, and:
DSCN3655[Applicable to security design: “You understand it when you get it” © Johan Cruyff; Toronto]

One extra for Two AI tipping point(er)s

To add, to the post below of a month ago.
This here piece, on how AI software is now writing (better) AI software. Still in its infancy, but if you recall the Singularity praise (terroristic future), you see how fast this can get out of hand. Do you?

The old bits:

You may have misread that title.

It’s about tips, being pointers, two to papers that give such a nice overview of the year ahead in AI-and-ethics (mostly) research. Like, this and this. With, of course, subsequent linkage to many other useful stuff that you’d almost miss even if you’d pay attention.

Be ware of quite a number of follow-up posts, that will delve into all sorts of issue listed in the papers, and will quiz or puzzle you depending on whether you did pay attention or not. OK, you’ll be puzzled, right?

And:
DSCN1441[Self-learned AI question could be: “Why?” but to be honest and demonstrating some issues, that’s completely besides the point; Toronto]

Hoog op Flut! Alweer, inclusief Laag op Nut

Onderstaande, alweer, nog steeds… Inclusief de toevoeging (sic; aan deze tekst) dat een en ander (of gewoon een) stevig wordt verergerd qua domweg (sic) On-gezond, door een stellend gebrek aan (NB) voldoende groente — reden? hooguit dat de Cock geen idee heeft hoe hij (…) daarmee moet omgaan terwijl dat bij de basics hoort, toch? Dan maar volgemieterd met nog een pak ..:

Kan de gezamenlijke restaurantwereld in NL nou eens ophouden met die nonsens van “Hoog Op Smaak” en gewoon toegeven dat er door iedere gang een AKZO-jaaromzet zout gaat omdat de ingrediënten zó goedkoop moesten dat er geen enkele smaak aan zat ..?

[Edited to add: Nog erger als koks gaan beweren niet zo veel zout toe te voegen maar de smaak ‘umami’ maken. Een emmer MSG erbij gooien bedoelen ze dan. De betekenis en vertaling van ‘umami’ was tot voor kort ‘van alles veel’. Toch vreemd, dat we sinds de Romeinen vissaus kennen, vol van ‘umami’-glutamaten en afgeleiden, maar dat we nooit een woord ervoor hadden, of het als smaak bestempelden. Maar ja, het tikt vele receptoren aan hè? Dus het kan geen variant zijn van een van de vier basissmaken ..? Net als marsepein een aparte smaak is tenslotte, want naast heel veel zoet zit er ook een klein beetje andere smaak bij dus zoet op zich is marsepein niet ..?? Iemand een uitleg waar ‘basis’ voor staat in basissmaken ..?
En dat zout en ‘umami’ zo’n beetje hetzelfde effect hebben … Inderdaad, ze hebben beide het effect van smaakkoppoetsing door papillenactivering. Nou en?
Door met wat er al stond; lees aldaar dus MSG als :]

Heel triest om te zien dat ook vele ‘sterren’koks et al., zich er zo consequent aan bezondigen. Goede ingrediënten hebben geen volle Dode Zee / chemiefabriek nodig om smaakvol te zijn. Die sterren zijn ze echt niet waard. Tot nu toe slechts zegge 1 (schrijve: één) (ja ik weet het, zucht) Michelin-ster tegengekomen (i.e., geproefd) die de ster ook echt waard was. De rest (t/m 3*!): Nee hoor; effectbejag met een over de hele dichtgepletterde poging tot ‘umami’ door alle eigenheid aan smaak van de ingrediënten weg te poetsen met 3651 vrachtwagenladingen natriumchloride. Waar waren die sterren ook alweer voor? Toch niet alleen om ze als zodanig te voelen, waar de zon nooit schijnt, na beschikbaarstelling aan de keurmeesters van die bandenleverancier? Want het keukenproduct … oh zo vaak middelmatig, zeer middelmatig. Er is ook een neveneffect

Dit soort proletarische vervoosde degeneratie-decadentie staat natuurlijk naast natuurlijk een flink aantal niet-sterrententen die het begrepen hebben ‘maar daardoor geen ster halen’. Die gewoon weten hoe je de kwaliteit van ingrediënten kan halen zonder die te vernietigen, door te beginnen met goede ingrediënten en die geen geweld aan te doen. Als de (on)geachte cliëntèle dat niet proeft: Pech. Move over. Ga maar naar de Schotse keten, daar pep je de boel maar op met ketchup en mayo. Dá’s pas smaak, toch …!?

Zout kan je er niet uit halen, wel erin als je aan tafel zo nodig moet laten blijken te grof te zijn voor finesse.

Enfin, zo kan ik nog wel doorgaan. Rest, voor nu:
DSC_0217
[Sombertjes; hoog daarboven, op de schouders/berg, een ruïne, beneden rest een zoete kledder (gemiddeld); Ribeauvillé]

Automobiles, (trains,) Planes

What a disaster it would be if all those (self-driving, or augmented-driving as they are today already) cars could be taken over by some madman or unrelatedly hacker … One could remotely steer a car off the road! One could remotely steer a whole bunch of cars within some area / country (?) off the road in a broadcast … With pre-emptively having disabled manual override, of course. [Though, noted before, the ability to do so would on the human side deteriorate very quickly as it wouldn’t be needed to be seriously trained/experienced (anymore).]

Yes, that’s bad. How is this same idea, but applied to current-day planes ..? Where about-all is automated, and users get more and more access hence control (think that one through; qua nothing’s 100% secure) to still but what do you know limited zone(s) of plane networks, e.g., re on-board wifi. The known-to-be-stellar-secure wifi.
Of course, this would be suicide — or airport-proximity (from just outside the fence) runway-DoS …; but not all seem to care about the sacrifice… on the contrary. And don’t come with the argument of having to know systems to break in / run amok. Some had gone through the effort of going through a pilot’s training, right? And here, one can be a passenger and do recce from business class, and/or deliver and C&C from there.

I love my old-style car / driving … and:
Photo15
[Warped, but quite safe from hacking… Somewhere upstate WI]

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:

hC467CB09

[The SocMed approach: Look! Moose babies!]

Walking away from your desk

This, re yesterday’s post that was in some vincinity (though with quite some distance to spare…) of ranting about bureaucratic stupidity being a pleonasm.
By means of a pic, with:

  • A Bureacrat certainly designed this. The ejection seat would to a bureaucrat mean the danger of you escaping from the post you were supposed to hold no matter what — since in the bureacratic only thinkable scenario, nothing would ever happen or you’re unfortunate collateral loss but hey, the System continues to perform.
  • For all others (the handful, the few good men), the ejection seat is apparently surrounded by just that danger, and to be used to escape from from that immediate and urgent, life-threatening danger of death by utter boredom, by sitting still. Noting that the rig that the sign is on, invariably is one made for dangerous action, not for danger evasion… Ships are safe in harbour but that’s not what ships are for; kites [your check] so much, much less so!

Which side are you on; the sit-stillers’ or the Action Men’s ..?
danger-eject-svg

Two AI tipping point(er)s

You may have misread that title.

It’s about tips, being pointers, two to papers that give such a nice overview of the year ahead in AI-and-ethics (mostly) research. Like, this and this. With, of course, subsequent linkage to many other useful stuff that you’d almost miss even if you’d pay attention.

Be ware of quite a number of follow-up posts, that will delve into all sorts of issue listed in the papers, and will quiz or puzzle you depending on wether you did pay attention or not. OK, you’ll be puzzled, right?

And:
DSCN1441
[Self-learned AI question could be: “Why?” but to be honest and demonstrating some issues, that’s completely besides the point; Toronto]

17 views

Just a tip: 2017 will be all about Augmented Reality. Maybe not VR, or is that a mere intermediate-phase subset. But AR.

When M$ adds some capabilities to WW10 (the platform, or binary),the ground swell (or is it an undercurrent, undertow?) is sure to grow.

So, Be Prepared, to see innovation in business software after the years of stale(mate) in ‘ERP’; no more database-system-usersystem stacking, but a mountain of data with lean and mean engines at/on the top now extended with AR to doddle around — and maybe … do something useful. All of business IT will dwindle in significance, so much less users as simple one-screwturn assembly line workers (to be (sic) replaced by robots anyway), but something-large-and-vague and payful, agile top users in the cloud atop. Top users only, be best and bright (self-declared), the shiny, überemployees, the stars. Huh. How’d they get there, be experienced enough, not be hindered by any wisdom … ? How they’d get so blinkered, conceited, presumptuous etc.? How’d they not get caught in the emperor’s new clothes?

I’ve been instructed (not) to be more positive, to not apply debit where debit is absolutely due… So, how can we turn today’s silo’d work into creative, innovative, flexible functions of tomorrow [and the day after; best wishes ;-] ..?

Plus:
20150311_122327_HDR[1]

[Your yacht may be a piece of art, but still…; Zuid-As Amsterdam (it was)]

Oh… Yes but still, now it’s true:

[Edited to add:

]

Retrofitting IoT Security

Pitch before I did the idea that for a while be with us will Legacy IoT be, here.
But what about stubbing around it? Developing cheap and easy (necessary since/for backwards compatible, by definition) security solutions that can be plugged onto old IoT stuff.
What ya’reckon, are we too far gone with old IoT and economically-having to keep that alive, or is there sufficiently much more recent stuff to attempt such a thing (and ring-fence the real cr.p)..?

I’m not completely sure how one would approach this thing, technically, but cannot imagine that there aren’t solution models around like, potentially, some form of hardened (lean and mean and armour-coated) enterprise IoT bus thing, possibly with security zones, et al., similar to the obvious and hopefully ubiquitous separation of office automation (why isn’t SAP dead yet? This, some time ago. Oh, might be useful to set up separate mandates to ‘run’ factories yes, which was its original purpose, right; what did E-R-P stand for ..?) from Process Automation, and within the latter, Supervisory Control from operational (close-in) control, engineering-wise, but then with subsets for safe/unsafe hardware.
The isolation stubs could then act as gatekeepers between zones, between potentially-safe and the legacy-most-probably-unsafe.

Though I suspect that the ‘zones’ will have to ‘air’gap at many network layers, including towards the physical end of OSI — meaning that higher up, the connection will have wider gaps, not less why is this so often overlooked ..?

On a separate end note: Where are the wares that should have followed the scares, i.e., we have had a couple of years (yes) now of IoT scares; have the vendors truly stepped in or was it just window dressing e.g., dole out some monitoring tools and good luck with it..?

Progress… and:
DSCN1834
[See? Engineering is beautiful; Brussels]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord