Internet of Things – Page 2 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

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!]

Errors of Your / Machine Learning

Any progress on the front of Machine Learning, i.e., the comparison with how/what humans learn from various teaching formats, and how machines are better at rote learning et al, and how does the perfection of machines learning facts, reflect on what is data processing, what is intelligence, and what is wisdom ..? Where the latter is the area in which of course re retreat ever more, but without the foundation of a life long of learning and experience ..?

[Intermission: Anyone out there still holding on to the ‘you only learn from experience, which is making errors and surviving’? What was so many years of school all about; you’re still no further with calculus than 1+1 equals something more than one — the max you can learn from ‘ experience’ … How did you ‘experience’ History, Science ..? Apparently, there’s quite a base of facts to learn, even (or more?? contra The Shallows) in times of Google. Or, you’ll be the doofus that can not (sic) learn to be intelligent nor wise, and will make any and all rookie mistakes in all situations everywhere, over and over again.
Seems like the base of learning, grows steadily — exponentially…]

Notwithstanding the road (path) to wisdom is through experience … which would ever less be available when machines start to take over the simple, the foundations (qua operationality of work-as-labour), and then the next stage, etc. (since none will be experienced enough to succeed pensionados that still have that subsequent level of understanding). Leaving the abstract thinkers ever more loose in the sky. Hey that’s what’s happening with accountancy, if the industry doesn’t move fast. And will happen everywhere.

But back to the main point: Has Watson-class learning (AlphaGo/Deepmind/Brain (sic), … no not Siri you m.r.n) learned us anything about learning, and/or have we changed learning since machines took over parts of rote learning? Have we changed our view on learing, intelligence, wisdom?

To the disappointed, apologies go; nothing here on how machine learning could lead to the unethics of Computer Says No… Too much of a mer à boire qua research — see here.

Plus:

[Steep, to enlightenment; Girona]

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:

[See? Engineering is beautiful; Brussels]

WindTalker

Right. So we have a side channel attack where your hand movements over your mobile, when typing in your key, will interfere with WiFi signal patterns in a detectable, traceable way thus revealing your key. Like this (PDF).
Would this, on a second trend note, destroy or obviate even more the need for, Active Access Control ..?

Plus:

[Mock-up for fabrics not mockery of your security; Stedelijk Amsterdam]

The legacy of TDoS

So, we have the first little probes of TDoS attacks (DoS-by-IoT). ‘Refrigereddon’.
As if that wasn’t predictable, very much predictable, and predicted.
[Edited to add: And analysed correctly, as here.]

Predicted it was. What now? Because if we don’t change course, we’ll achieve ever worse infra. Yes, security can be baked into new products — that will be somewhat even more expensive so will not swarm the market — but for backward compatibility in all the chains out there already, cannot be relied upon plus there’s tons of legacy equipment out there already (see: Healthcare, and: Utilities). Even when introducing new, fully securable stuff, we’re heading into a future where the Legacy issue will grow for a long time and much worse than it already is, before (need to be) huge pressure will bring the problem down.

So… What to do ..? Well, at least get the fundamentals right, which so far we haven’t. Like this, and this and this and here plus here (after the intermission) and there…

Would anyone have an idea how to get this right, starting today, and all-in all-out..?

Plus:

[IRL art will Always trump online stuff… (?); at home]

Teh business, does it exist ..?

On purpose, teh. Plus a spoiler: No.

Though this is a tell-tale sign your infosec program, of whatever kind, will #fail, wholesale.
’cause If you can’t specify all stakeholders, at their various levels of detail required, beyond swiping them up under the ‘the business’ nomen, Then you might as well call it ‘teh’ business, as you are vague to the point of irrelevance, as you will be regarded by ‘the business’ and since that’s where 99.9% of your security sits (including budget holders…), fugeddabout effectiveness.
Endif. No Else.

So, stop using ‘the business’ as a stopgap designation for your lack of understanding of the infosec problems that you claimed you could tackle hence you demonstrate to know no thing about the swamp of root causes to the problems that you said to go solve.
You n00b.

Oh well…:

[Some specific business; Madrid]

Data Classinocation

I was studying this ‘old’ idea of mine of drafting some form of impact-based criteria for data sensitivity when, along with a couple of fundamental logical errors in some of the most formally adopted (incl legal) standards and laws, I suddenly realised:

In these times of easily provable easy de-anonymisation of even the most protective homomorphic encryption multiplied with the ease of de-anonymisation throught data correlation of even the most innocent data points, all even the most innocent data points/elements must (not should) be classified at the highest sensitivity levels so why classifiy data ..!?

This may not be a popular point, but that doesn’t make it less true.
In similar vein, in European context where one is only to process data in the first place if (big if) there is no alternative and one can process for the Original intent and purpose only,

To prevent data from unauthorised disclosure internally or externally, without tight need-to-know/need-to-use IAM implementation, one already does too little; with, enough.

That’s right; ‘internal use only’ is waaay too sloppy hence illegal — it breaks the legal requirement for due (sic) protection, and if the use of data is, ‘by negligence’ not changing a thing here, let possible, the European privacy directive (and its currently active precursors) do not allow you to even have the data. This may be a stretch but is still understandable and valid once you take the effort to think it through a bit.
Maybe also not too popular.

Needless to say that both points will not be understood the least by all the ‘privacy officer’ types that have rote learned the laws and regulations, but have no experience/clue how to actually use those in practice and just wave legal ‘arguments’ (quod non) around as if that their (song and) dance is the end purpose of the organisation but cannot answer even the most simple questions re allowablity of some data/processing with anything that logically or linguistically approaches clarity. [Note the ‘or’ is a logical one, not the sometimes interpreted xor that the too-simpletons (incl ‘privacy officers’) interpret but don’t know exists.]

OK. So far, no good. Plus:

[Not a fortress, nor a real maze once you see the structure; Valencia]

Comedy crashers

No capers, frankly no comedy either, when some of the most respected in the field are concerned about pervasive probing of whole countries in one go. As here.

Probably, the same is pulled off on smaller countries as well; the infra doesn’t distinguish, but the protection budgets probably are much smaller, so a proof of concept might be interesting. Though this may trigger better protection in the larger country/countries, if done ‘right’ the attack(s) may be class break kind of things not so easily protected against in the first place.
And for now, the smaller countries probed, will have even smaller budgets and capabilities to even detect the probing all together / in the first place. Interesting …

But maybe budgets are better spent on all the other actual risks out there, like: ..?

[Suddenly (of course !!) turned up at the Joinville château; Haut-Marne]

Dronecatcher ..?

Was tinkering with ideas to get rid of drones around / over high-risk sites, e.g., critical infra (sites).

You know, like the radiant type of energy production.
Where drones pose a somewhat new but pesky risk. The newness, of course being not much of it when all sorts of attack with either plain vanilla or modified-to-autopilot RC controlled planes (possibly built in one’s garage) were around already and would hardly need any (suspicious) infra to take off and do their nefarious thing.
Though the proliferation of the new heli-style drones somehow raised the frequency/chance side of the risk equation. And, maybe, the ease of modding for sufficient tech capabilities of the kind you’d not want a.k.a. payload weights.

So, apart from the sudden realization that in times past, recent included, little did we know of the defenses surrounding critical infra against the classical winged type drones, we have the question: What now ..?

There seem to be two solutions required:
1. How to detect a drone, possibly rogue
1.5. How to handle false positives/negatives
2. How to down it.
Because I don’t color inside the lines only.

The first, might be feasible with some mini-/micro-installations of e.g., phased array radar in scan and track modes.
The second… My favorite would be a healthy dose of rounds, e.g., like a couple of full-on Goalkeepers around your install. Or have the lamo version of only (cross-?)beaming the GPS around your target out of the sky, or lasering it beyond melting point. These latter two might be the more difficult ones, qua aim/range specifity needed. But the former will probably not fly too well with overzealous environs freaks [note: not against the reasonable ones]. Oh well, we’ll just throw up some net structure when the threat is imminent — quick reloads available ..??

And there’s still the issue of not shooting two birds with(out) one drone. I.e., how to ensure you’re not offing all sparrows in a cloud, and miss the single drone’let that disturbed the birdies in the first place. Well, Why should I come up with the lame side-solutions ..?

Also:

[The unexpected, but disastrous scenario…]

ChainWASP

… With all the blockchain app(lication)s, in all senses, sizes and seriousnesses if that is a word, growing (expo of course) everywhere,
wouldn’t it be time to think about some form of OWASP-style programming quality upgrading initiative,

now that the ‘chain world is still young, hasn’t yet encountered its full-blown sobering-up trust crash through sloppy implementation. But, with Ethereum‘ and others’ efforts to spread the API / Word (no, no, not the linear-text app…) as fast and far and wide as possible, chances of such a sloppy implem leading to distrust in the whole concept, may rise significantly.

Which might, possibly, hypothetically, be mitigated by an early adoption of … central … Oh No! control mechanism of e.g., code reviews by trusted (huh?) third parties (swarms!) where the code might still remain proprietary and copyrighted.
Or at least, the very least, have some enforceable set of coding quality standards. Is that too much asked …??

I know; that’s a Yes. So I’ll leave you with the thought of a better near-future, and:

[Horizontal until compile-time errors made adjustments necessary (pic); beautiful concept — other than Clean Code, actually executed to marvelous effect]