Message From Michael 
September 7, 2010
ATTACK FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT
AMERICA’S MOST WANTED CYBER ATTACKER
THE MULTI-MEDIA HUMANITARIAN
COCKTAIL CHATTER – PORN AND NIRVANA
ATTACK FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT: Military and civilian Internet Networks in the U.S. are “probed thousands of times and scanned millions of times”… every day. Not only that, but “adversaries” have acquired “thousands of files” from the Internet Networks of the U.S., its Allies and its industry partners, including weapons blueprints, operational plans and surveillance data. Sounds like the rantings of some paranoid cyber-survivalist, doesn’t it? Actually the source of these statements is the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, William J. Lynn III, writing in Foreign Relations, the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations which bills itself as a non-partisan, independent think tank. Lynn says the U.S. military’s global communications comprise more than 15,000 networks, with 7 Million computing devices maintained by 90,000 people at hundreds of locations in dozens of countries. Yet, he says, “a dozen determined computer programmers” could threaten that whole network. And that’s what makes the war in “cyberspace” even scarier than the military’s traditional defense objectives of “air, sea and land.” Heck, we thought it was scary when ‘outer space’ was added to the military objectives. It no longer takes an expensive Stealth fighter or aircraft carrier to attack the U.S. Add to that the fact that a missile comes with a “return address”; a computer virus does not, so you’re not sure who attacked you. Plus, he says, because the Internet was designed to be collaborative, expandable and innovative, the issues of security and identity management were low priorities, so that means offense has the upper hand. Just to make it even more complicated for U.S. security, he notes that the military commands are dependent on “civilian infrastructures” (universities and contractors) that are also subject to attack. And to make it even more complicated still, a cyber-attack on power grids, transportation networks or financial systems could be as devastating as an attack on military targets. As an added twist, “rogue code” can be written into software as it is being developed or “kill switches” and “hidden backdoors” can be written into computer chips as they are being made.
That is why, he says, it’s so important to develop a cyber defense that crosses military and civilian lines as well as national and corporate boundaries. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA, (Yes, the people who brought you the Internet) is developing something called the National Cyber Range, which in essence will allow the military to do combat exercises in cyberspace just like they do with ships and planes. The agency recently awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Meanwhile NATO has just released its NATO 2020 which address the cyber security issue as well as others which, as the Brookings Institute puts it in their analysis, recognizes that “in an increasingly globalized world… security threats are often unconventional in nature and transnational in scope.”
The funny factoid that Lynn cites that isn’t so funny is that it takes the Pentagon 81 months to make a new computer system operational after it is first funded. Based on Moore’s Law on the growth of computing power, that means by the time the system is delivered, it is four generations behind the state of the art. And to add yet another twist to all this, Lynn makes the point that the U.S. has only 4.5% of the World population, and with mammoth-population countries like China and India training more and more computer proficient scientists, just amassing trained cyber-professionals is not enough.
AMERICA’S MOST WANTED CYBER-ATTACKER: And probably fair to say, most unheard of. At least by me. Remember those ‘dozen determined programmers’ mentioned earlier? Well, Gary McKinnon, is one of them. The U.S. government has been trying for eight years to convince the U.K. government to turn over the Scottish man who American officials say hacked into 97 military and NASA computers. McKinnon, meanwhile, admits he hacked into the computers but says he was only looking for evidence that the U.S. was covering up information about UFO’s and “free energy suppression” which is a conspiracy theory/belief that special interest groups (aka oil companies) are suppressing technology that would reshape current methods of generating electricity. McKinnon’s case actually came up recently in the meeting between President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. The new Prime Minister has called for a re-examination of the U.K.’s extradition policy and, in particular, the U.S.’s extradition request which has been argued all the way to the House of Lords. Until that news conference, probably most Americans had never heard of McKinnon, and most probably still haven’t although it has gotten extensive coverage overseas. U.S. officials say that, among other things, McKinnon deleted U.S. Navy weapons logs and did $800,000 worth of damage. Website freegary.org.uk says McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s disease, should be tried in a British court. I should note that although, as always, I have gone to multiple sources for this story, I should credit Clark Boyd, technology correspondent for The World, for getting my attention on this. As a footnote to this, McKinnon was found out because he forgot the time difference between the U.K. and U.S. and started running a computer in the U.S. while the user was sitting in front of it – watching his cursor move.
THE MULTI-MEDIA HUMANITARIAN: His name is David Kobia, and Technology Review recently named him its humanitarian of the year for the development of Ushahidi – “software that helps populations cope with crises.” Regular readers of the message will remember this being first mentioned as a tool to map the violence occurring after the presidential election in Kobia’s native Kenya using reports from ordinary people. As tough as that was, the huge test for Ushahidi (which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili) came with the crisis in Haiti which, as the citation notes, tracked “reports of human misery on a vast scale” – 25,000 text messages and 4.5 Million Twitters in one month. Kobia is one of Technology Review’s 35 – innovators under the age of 35. Others include Avi Muchnik who created Aviary, a cloud-based multi-media editing software that allows you to do everything from tweak a photograph to compose a complex multitrack musical arrangement. David Karp created Tumblr, “a platform that keeps bloggers blogging” Kati London created Area/Code which teaches “real world skills through games.” Anyway, you get the idea. You can see the full list of not-so-whipper whippersnappers at http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: A Czechoslovakian-based antivirus company says the idea that pornographic sites are more infected than other sites is not true. The company, Avast, says that for every adult domain they found infected, there were 99 other domains with “legitimate content” that were also infected. Website thenewnewinternet.com cites, for example, an Avast search in the U.K., which showed there were more infected domains with the word “London” in them than there were with the word “sex.” The CTO of the company was quick to add in the report that “we are not recommending people to start searching for erotic content.”
The incoming college class of 2014 was born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage. The annual analysis of the mindset of the incoming students by Beloit College was created by two professors there to remind faculty of dated references such as the fact that these students have never written in cursive and never twisted a coiled handset wire around their wrist while talking on the phone. For them, Russia has never aimed nukes at the U.S., but China has always been an economic threat. Clint Eastwood has always been a director. Woody Allen has always been with Soon-Yi Previn. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis, but Leno and Letterman have always traded insults on late night TV. American companies have always done business in Vietnam, and Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. Korean cars have always been on American highways, and Honda has always been a major competitor at the Indianapolis 500. Food has always been irradiated and toothpaste tubes have always stood on their caps. And Nirvana has always been on the classic oldies station. The full list of 75 items can be found at the Beloit.edu/ mindset website.
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