Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts

Friday, August 12, 2016

All You Need to Know About Hacking

As the FBI is investigating a possible damage to the Democratic Party following what is widely believed to be a Russian hacking attempt on the the Democratic National Committee’s computers, I am investigating an unusual "interest" in my blog  -  in Russia. Several times in the past year or so, the statistics page on my blog showed a disproportionate number of "views" from Russia, at one point 700 in a week.  At first I thought: wow, these people really like culture, because that's mostly what I write about. But after the DNC hacking scandal, I paid a little more attention, and noticed that the most targeted blogs were the most popular ones, not the latest ones. So I suspected hacking. Really, why would anyone in Russia be interested in my review of the Santa Fe summer opera program from two years ago? Or even in my opinion on Philip Glass?  I do not write about Russia or any topic that might be of particular interest to the Russians.  So the question is what could they be looking for?
Greg Virgin, President & CEO of Redjack,
Network Security Company
I got some light on the issue from local network security expert Greg Virgin (anyone surprised he looks so young?) who analyzed my blog and found, among other things, that I was getting hits from Iraq, which never showed up in my traffic-sources page, and that "22% of the US connections are legitimate, the rest are illegitimate."

Greg explained that "illegitimate" doesn’t mean it's hacking, but that it is not legitimate search engine activity. "People spamming your site. You couldn’t imagine what your inbox would look like if you didn’t have the built-in spam blocking you get from most mail providers."

Hmmm.... so hacking is what we need to worry about, spamming not so much.  More answers from Virgin: 


1. Why do people hack ? 
The popular phrase coined more than 15 years ago is “for fun and profit.”

On the “good” side, there is a community of people who do it just for fun, another for research and development and “white hats” who do it so they can report vulnerabilities to individuals and organizations before they are exploited.

Then you have your “black hat” hackers who use hacking in criminal endeavors. This is usually who people are talking about when they discuss hackers. This group takes quite a few forms, from organized crime, nation states, organizations like Anonymous, and people working alone. They tend to make their $ off of extortion and theft of data. Most common is corporate espionage and identity theft.

2. What are some of the most egregious examples of successful hacking?
I am very concerned wit the fraud campaigns aimed at our elderly population. Both the fraud and the population are growing. I have met an FBI agent who does nothing but chase criminals around the world who are doing this to our parents and grandparents.

Typically these are spam campaigns that play off of personal information and the victim’s lack of understanding of technology. An email is sent, usually based on information openly harvested from the Internet, claiming to be a family member needing help, requesting a visit to a site or a payment. These are incredibly successful campaigns and aren’t getting enough attention.

I don’t have a lot of data to cite because the data isn’t being published too widely. I trust my sources though.

3. Who are the hackers?
Well, there is a big community of white hat “ethical hackers” out there doing research and following the rules. Then you’ve got your “gray hats” doing the same thing the white hats are doing only they are openly publishing people’s private vulnerabilities publicly or taking control of a jeep because they think it’s funny.

Then you’ve got your individuals who are, most likely, trying to steal credit card numbers or site credentials and sell them. Or otherwise profit from them.

Then you’ve got your organized groups:

“Hactivists” - Groups like Anonymous trying to affect social change (which is often very misguided)
Organized crime groups - there are some famous ones in Eastern Europe
Intelligence agencies - US, Russia, China are very prominent right now

4. What countries have the most hackers and why?
I don’t think we can say who has the most hackers. Historically, attacks are launched from China, Russia, Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as US Universities. This is because they are large and powerful networks built on government funds without a whole lot of attention to security or hygiene.

5. Are various Facebook games part of hacking? I am talking about various quizzes, such as Which country should you live in, What were you in your previous life, What nationality you look like, and similar.

Those are more about ad revenues than anything else. Historically, you don’t want to be clicking around pornographic sites without really good security. There are other “shady” parts of the Internet where you can get your browser hacked. For the most part, our paranoia about sharing personal information with sites like those are actually overblown. Sites that mine your personal information for profit, like Google, aren’t directly exploiting you. I’m still against a lot of that activity though.

Everyone should remove flash from their browser and use Firefox or Chrome.

6. How can you tell if your Facebook, Google, e-mail, Twitter or any other account is hacked?
That’s really tough. Typically someone finds out for us. Check your accounts for unusual activity I guess...

7. What can you do to prevent it?
Sign up for 2-factor authentication on every site you login to, and maybe stop using the ones that don’t support it.  See https://twofactorauth.org

If you get a text message confirmation when you try to sign into your Facebook from a computer you don’t usually use, you’re doing it right.

Greg Virgin is the founder and president of Redjack, a network security company providing analyses and solutions for protecting your internet space, based in Silver Spring, Maryland. More at   http://www.redjack.com


At Las Vegas annual hacking conference (August 4-7) hundreds of vendors hawked products to those worried about being hacked


While I am still digesting the basic information, the news on hacking developments are cropping up by the hour:

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/oh-good-new-hack-can-unlock-100-million-volkswagens/

http://www.businessinsider.com/hacking-conferences-paranoia-2016-8

I am trying not to get paranoid or I won't be able to do Christmas shopping online.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Fortress Europe Getting Militarized

When I revisited Rome in 2006, I was disappointed to find that once wide open St. Peter's Square could only be accessed through metal detectors, at least during the pope's general weekly audience. I could not imagine it would become worse. But it has. The video news packages I have worked on this week about security measures in Rome, Paris, Brussels and other European cities all show the same scenes of heavily armed police and soldiers, patrolling major streets and landmarks. 

Apart from the quality of the picture and different uniforms, one could be watching footage from World War Two Europe. Officials in Brussels are shutting down schools, public transport and some businesses due to "serious and imminent" threat of terrorist attacks in more than one place.


Soldiers and police squads are combing Belgium's capital for suspects, lurking behind every corner. Officials are warning citizens to avoid crowds while promising to defeat terror. France has intensified its bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria as did Russia. Hillary Clinton said the United States must lead the fight against ISIS - "not to contain it, but defeat it." In this country as elsewhere politicians want to close the doors to Syrian migrants as a way of protecting the country from terrorist attacks.

About a year or so ago, I took an online course on terrorism offered by the University of Leiden. One of the things I remember best from that course is a plethora of facts and findings showing the disconnect between politicians and scientists regarding terrorism. For example, according to the scientifically collected data, more people have been killed in Africa, Asia and the Middle East by terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab and Boko Haram than in the combined attacks in Europe and the United States since September 11, 2001. One could add that
more people in the United States are murdered each year in mass killings or "ordinary" homicides than have ever been killed by terrorists.  

Yet, as the Dutch academics pointed out, more money has been invested in the ramped up security, including new agencies in the developed countries than in those most hurt by terrorism. The Leiden scholars also pointed out that these efforts have not made the world a safer place. They suggested that the money would be better spent on financing centers to research terrorism, especially in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa,  the Middle East and other regions most endangered by violent groups. But most helpful of all, the online course suggested, would be for politicians to consult with scientists on the matter. ( I am not so sure when I see how some of our politicians reject scientific findings on climate change).

From what I can tell, this is not just the view of a bunch of liberal European scholars. Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown University here in Washington, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy: "If we want to reduce the long-term risk of terrorism — and reduce its ability to twist Western societies into unrecognizable caricatures of themselves — we need to stop viewing terrorism as shocking and aberrational, and instead recognize it as ongoing problem to be managed, rather than “defeated.” "


Years ago, I interviewed Mark Juergensmeyer, the author of what is now a standard textbook on the subject, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. He noted an increase of violent terrorist attacks since the 1990s and said they are committed by people who see the world as being in some sort of "cosmic war." During the Cold War, he said, the world was divided into the communist East and non-communist West, with the Third World balancing in between. But after its end, "the rise of geopolitics and of a global economic system, although in some way unites everybody, it also disrupts traditional societies and gives a sense of uncertainty to people who feel that they are not a part of the new world."

According to Juergensmeyer, those who feel disenfranchised, especially  younger people, commit acts of violence or join terrorist groups whose leaders employ religious images of the divine struggle against evil in the service of their worldly political battles. The barbaric acts that seem senseless to most of the world, are what he calls "performance violence," designed to engage the world in the war, quite unlike the kind of terrorism associated with left-wing Marxist movements that was more strategic and had a more practical goal.

According to that analogy, a world leader who declares war against terror, would appear to be falling into the terrorists' trap. Many Europeans seem to think so. A German friend e-mailed me, "It's crazy. Total overreaction - like after 9/11. I thought the Europeans wouldn't do such a thing but apparently yes. And Hollande - like Bush - is of course internally weak and unpopular and now tries to exploit it to boost his image and electoral chances. It's terrible."

Pope Francis has refused to succumb to the terrorist strategy. In his address to the faithful on Sunday he stressed that the doors to the church will not be closed under any circumstances.

Ordinary citizens also have displayed more sang-froid after the Paris attacks than their leaders. Many said they were concerned, but won't allow fear to control their lives, and a video of a Parisian father telling his son "they might have guns, but we have flowers" went viral online. 


Of course, no political leader can ignore the terror threat, and short-term security measures are in order.  In the long term, I am inclined to believe in my grandmother's maxim "better to prevent than to cure " (a disease). 

What have we done all these years to predict, let alone prevent, the march of al-Baghdadi's forces from Syria into Iraq early last year? The sweeping victories by well armed and well trained fighters were a huge surprise to the general public who had never heard of ISIS. But sociologists, scholars, authors, even film makers have been giving us hints for years - decades - of what the future may bring. I mentioned Kureishi's movie "My Son, the Fanatic" in one of my previous blogs. 

Why is it that political leaders cannot read the writing on the wall when a lot of ordinary citizens can? Politicians react and over-react to compensate for the lack of timely action at a great cost to their nations, and it's just what the terrorists want. ISIS is now a household name in every corner of the world, partly due to their own propaganda, and partly due to the attention they are getting from the media and the political leaderships.

As Brooks and others point out, the best way to reduce the benefits terrorists reap from the world's attention is to stop overreacting. History shows that terrorism cannot be defeated by arms, and that safety measures work only until attackers figure out a way to circumvent them.  Even if you destroy one terrorist group, another one will crop up. But a lot can be done to prevent any new wave of violence by foreseeing it.  Closer cooperation between scholars and politicians might help produce a more
successful final outcome in the so-called war on terror.

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Furter reading:
An academic study from 2004

http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/WyattBrownNY04meeting.pdf  

Recent article from The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos/?printpage=true

Sunday, June 28, 2015

A Letter From Costa Rica

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail addressed to a Rick, forwarded by my friend Dan Rupli. The e-mail seemed to be sent from Costa Rica, a country which impressed me with its beauty and tranquility during last year's visit. Since I do not know this Rick, but I do know that Dan was buying property in Costa Rica, I was not sure if it was spam or not and so I checked with Dan in a separate mail. He confirmed being the sender and agreed that I can post his letter on my blog.  The content was not what I expected and it may surprise you too.

From:  Dan Rupli
 Tuesday,  June 16, 2015

Subject:  To my new friend Rick, with gratitude and admiration

I am watching the magical cloud formations at 5,000 feet altitude at the entrance to Mt. Chirripo Nabetional Park in South Central Costa Rica. Chirripo reaches a height of 12,000 feet, which is Colorado Rocky class and is the tallest mountain in Costa Rica.

I am staying with my wife and a close friend in a small jungle house that I am about to purchase, which is bordered by two wild cascading rivers which join at the property after tumbling out of Chirripo and rushing South toward magnificent Pacific beaches about 45 minutes South of here.

Sitting here on the patio after a wonderful breakfast with good Costa Rican coffee listening to the river sounds all around makes me feel like I am in a kind of Eden with birds, butterflies, flowers, and hummingbirds dancing all around me. I have had the good fortune to travel extensively around the world, but this small magical place in the cloud forests of the Talamanca Mountains, populated by “the happiest people on earth” is the most wonderful place I have ever been.


Costa Rica could forest
You would be right to conclude that this ought to be the source of almost unlimited joy at the moment, but I am of this world, with a blessed life experience, and I must vent some deeply felt feelings that were unleashed by a chance encounter with a Vietnam veteran that I have befriended since my arrival. Please indulge me.

Like many of my generation, my life was shaped by giant and consequential events; the Civil Rights Movement, the advent of Rock and Roll music, the multiple assassinations of great leaders who chartered my own course and beliefs, and the war in Vietnam.

Two days ago I met a man of my age named Rick who spent his early years in Utah, before enlisting as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Rick is a gentle soul and a chain smoker who, like me has been married more than once, and who recently met and married a newly widowed Tica lady who is appropriately known as Gabby. They are in the process of putting together a tourist business here locally. Over lunch, Rick and I talked about politics, particularly the unfolding mess in the Middle East. We both drew parallels with the current experience to the horrors of our involvement in Vietnam.

It is not my purpose to discuss the President’s Middle East foreign policy. I happen to believe that he and John Kerry are right to focus on obtaining a workable nuclear weapons ban treaty with Iran, and if that doesn’t meet the approval of the thug who is running Israel at the moment, or the ultra cruel and corrupt Saudi Royal Family, then I think that Obama may have it just about right.

But this morning I focus my rage on the Chicken Hawks who engineered through lies, deception, and cooked intelligence our very presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. These right wing cowards, creeps and criminals have names: Bush(W), Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others. The common thread that binds each of these “armchair patriots” to one another like perps chained together after a drug raid is that all of them favored and promoted the war in Vietnam, and all of them did everything they could to duck service in that war. George W. Bush actually deserted his National Guard unit for over a year to get out of serving after the considerable cost to tax payers for his training as a pilot. Of course he was never prosecuted for desertion because of his father’s extensive connections. Dick Cheney received no less than seven deferments while hiding under his bed from service in the war, like Bush and the others.


Costa Rica, Arenal area













I have experienced a certain guilt in not having served in Vietnam like many of my friends, but early on I supported the idea of trying to “defend the South Vietnamese people from their marauding Communist neighbors from the North.” I even tried without success to join the Marines in order to avenge the death of a close high school buddy of mine who was an early casualty of that bogus War, But I was prevented from enlisting because I was married with a child.

Today those same draft dodging Chicken Hawks who let less fortunate people fight and die in a war that the cowards supported and never served in are harping about the Administration’s “weakness and lack of resolve” in a tangled Middle Eastern morass that is entirely of their own creation. To date those Middle Eastern wars have lasted beyond a decade, cost the lives of thousands of Americans - the flower of a generation, cost trillions of dollars in national treasure, and resulted in the death and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of native innocents, and they show no sign of winding down. And still the Chicken Hawks continue to put complete hypocrisy on display without a tiny shred of shame attached to it.

This narrative seeks to tie the same culprits with their “lapel pin patriotism” to both the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, but most importantly it is a tribute to my new friend Rick whose suffering and sacrifice for a questionable cause goes way beyond ordinary military service.

Rick was landing his helicopter in a “hot zone in the jungle” to pick up wounded soldiers on a hot and sunny day during the height of the Vietnam War. When he landed he said that the jungle was so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. After loading the wounded, he lifted the chopper with its precious cargo up to the bright sunshine above the treetops. At that moment he said that his entire life went into a kind of slow motion as he saw the flash of a rocket tearing toward him from the jungle floor. He banked the helicopter violently to the right. The rocket missed the main body of the helicopter but severed the main rotor from the rest of the vehicle. The copter didn’t have far to fall back into the darkness of the jungle, and Rick’s only thought was to not die in a fire, so he leapt into the treetops and fell to the ground as the helicopter exploded nearby into a fireball of human anguish. Rick was severely injured by the fall, but instinctively rose to his feet “running like hell” in total darkness and in no particular direction until he ran into a tree breaking out all of his front teeth. At the same time he heard the sound of an automatic weapon and felt three bullets enter his body - one under his left eye, the second under his left armpit exiting his neck, and the third hitting him square in the sternum. He remembers hearing a loud buzzing sound in his head before passing out. When he awoke he was being dragged by a GI through the jungle who had mercifully administered large amounts of morphine to this fallen soldier. Rick was medivacked shortly afterwards, not fully knowing whether he wanted to survive the events that laid him so low.

It took Rick over a year of intensive care to partially recover from his hideous wounds, which continue to cause him great physical and emotional pain to this day.

Costa Rica, Samara beach












My reaction to Rick's story on all that has transpired in those last couple of days in Vietnam: if there is a Creator, may God bless you Rick, not just for your service but for your suffering and sacrifice for someone else’s hollow patriotism and terrible errors in judgment. And may God damn you George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and all the other creeps and scoundrels who visited havoc and suffering on so many people of different generations by supporting, lying us into, and promoting endless wars for profit in the name of National honor and patriotism. You are all war criminals and worse, each of you have earned a place in the history of infamy.

I met Rick again today for coffee and very little was spoken between us. Our first conversation had taken a lot out of both of us, and I don’t think that either of us had the energy to continue it.

We sat there and marveled at the rapidly changing cloud patterns, the incredible sunbursts that punctuated a gentle rain and the beauty that totally surrounded us in this precious little piece of mountain paradise. Here we were, two aging men of different backgrounds and experience, one a casualty of war, seeking only to find peace, order, justice, and happiness in a world that continues, after all these years, to be turned totally upside down by the folly of false patriots.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Muslim Communities: U.S. vs. Europe

Islamic State militants are waging a war of terror in an effort to create a state stretching from northern Syria into Iraq.  According to the latest CIA estimate there could now be more than 31,000 of them.  A growing number of foreign fighters from Europe, the United States and elsewhere are joining IS ranks. 

The Soufan group, an international security consulting firm, estimates that about 700 are from France, 800 from Russia, almost 300 from Britain and about 100 from the United States.  According to these figures, the number of American Muslims answering the call to jihad seems relatively small.  Some analysts say this is because American Muslims are generally more integrated in local society than their counterparts in Europe.

Two recent studies, one funded by the German government, found that the majority of Muslims believe that Islamic Sharia law should take precedence over the secular constitutions and laws of their European host countries.

“There is a new wall rising in the city of Berlin,” wrote German author and sociologist Peter Schneider a few years ago in reaction to the murder of a young Turkish girl by her own brother. The girl had "shamed" her family by leaving a husband they forced her to marry. Schneider said that the majority of Berliners have not crossed the invisible barrier separating the affluent central and northern districts of the city from the suburbs housing some 300-thousand Muslims.

Germany has more than three-and-a-half million Muslims, 70 percent of whom are Turks and Kurds. They started arriving in the 1950s and helped fuel the country’s post-war economic boom. They were called “Gastarbeiter”, or guest workers, because they were expected to eventually return to their home countries. But most of them stayed and were joined by their families. Their children and often grandchildren were born in Germany. France, Italy and Scandinavian countries also have growing Muslim populations. 


James Zogby
James Zogby, President of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, says Germany and many other European societies still consider generations of immigrants as temporary laborers.

“They may have come as guest workers, but today they are stake holders, " said Zogby. "They are fundamentally tied to the countries they are in. There is no way that they are not going to be there. The host countries need them. They have sunk roots deep into the country, but they have been alienated.”


Since World War II, Muslims have settled in many parts of Western Europe -- some in search of a better living, others to flee the post-colonial disorder or ethnic violence in their home countries. Although circumstances vary from country to country, European societies for years have been reluctant to embrace newcomers from different cultures.

According to Zogby, it is much easier for Muslims to become Americans.

“The process of naturalization is much more accessible to immigrants, but also the process of becoming American means more than just getting citizenship. It means that you also get a new identity. You also get an attachment to a new culture. You also get a new sense of who you are and, in the process, the idea of being American changes because all of us become different. We are today a different America than we were a hundred years ago.”

An American today can be portrayed as Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American, or a woman wearing a head scarf. "This was not a case a century ago," noted Zogby. "But images of French, German or Italian citizens have changed little to reflect growing immigrant populations."

Leena El-Ali, program director for the non-profit conflict resolution group Search for Common Ground, said many Muslim immigrants have come to the United States in search of higher education. And many of them came independently, she said.

“In other words, a son would come and soon afterwards perhaps a sister would follow, then a father, than a mother, etc. But the point of entry, to a large extent, was education. [They came] in a search of higher education, a better education. And then they would stay. In Europe, perhaps because it’s a lot closer to the Middle East in particular, they [i.e., the Muslims] tend to be entire families who emigrated. So you find in France that you have entire North African families. You have in the UK entire families, Middle Eastern, but particularly Indian subcontinent Asians: Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis. In Germany you find entire Turkish families, and so on.”

Observers note that most American Muslims, especially those born in the United States, are successful businessmen, scholars, professionals or highly skilled workers. And most are integrated into mainstream society. In contrast, few Turks in Germany, Moroccans in France or Pakistanis in Britain, for example, have progressed beyond low-skilled jobs. When unemployment rises, it does so at a higher rate for immigrants and their children who often live in, what many observers call, immigrant ghettos.

Young Muslims without prospects for the future are easy pray to radicals offering a religious explanation for their misery and jihad as a way out of it.  Some of them end up performing atrocities for Islamic State. 

Islam is the third largest religion in the United States. The exact number of adherents is a matter of debate because the U.S. Census does not include a question about religious affiliation.  Estimated figures range between about 4 million and 8 million.  About half a million of these Muslims are of foreign origin.  

Sulayman Nyang, Professor of Islam and African studies at Howard University in Washington, warns that new waves of poor and uneducated Muslim refugees in some U.S. cities are beginning to live in similar circumstances as their counterparts in Europe. 

 “One thing that is happening to the American-Muslim community is that the gradual increase in the number of refugees from Afghanistan, Somalia and other places, is beginning to dilute the solidity of the Muslim economic presence in America,” said Nyang.

Sociologists warn that poor education, poverty, unemployment and a sense of alienation could turn some Muslims in the United States away from mainstream society, and efforts must be made to prevent that from happening. 

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Further reading:

Peter Morici: Terrorism is inspired and financed by the failings of the global economy

http://www.theglobalist.com/isis-blame-germany-and-china/