Why Terrorists haven’t attacked the US yet

Funny report from the Onion, via Thoughts of a Technocrat Blog.   Clears up alot of wonder.

After 5 Years In U.S., Terrorist Cell Too Complacent To Carry Out Attack

SAN CLEMENTE, CA—Five years after settling in southern California and trying to blend into American society, a six-man terrorist cell connected to the militant Islamist organization Army of Martyrs has reportedly grown too complacent to conduct its suicide mission, an attack on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Enlarge Image Three of the six terrorists spend an afternoon together watching an America’s Next Top Model marathon.

According to cell leader and boat owner Jameel al-Sharif, the potentially devastating operation, which involves breaching the station’s reactor core and triggering a meltdown that could rival the Chernobyl disaster, “can wait.”

“We remain wholly committed to the destruction of America, the Great Satan,” al-Sharif said. “But now is not a good time for us. The season finale of Lost was such a cliff- hanger that we have to at least catch the first episode of the new season. After that, though, death to the infidels.”

“Probably,” added al-Sharif, who noted that his nearly $6,000 in credit-card debt from recent purchases of a 52-inch HDTV and a backyard gas grill prevents him from buying needed materials for the attack.

Though the members of the cell said that they “live only to spill the blood of crusaders who oppress Muslims,” they cited additional reasons for the delay, including an unexpired free Netflix trial and nagging lower-back pain.

“I think I’m entitled to a little time to fully enjoy the in-dash MP3 adapter and heads-up display that Allah, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to provide me with,” munitions expert Mohammed Akram said of the 2006 Mercury Mariner that is intended to be used as a car bomb during the attack. “Also, I have nine months left on the lease. But after that, I am more than willing to load it with explosives and go to my glory in its all-leather interior and heated seats.”

Cell member Sayyid al-Tantawi, a Cairo-born former physics professor who was able to obtain employment at San Onofre as a reactor technician, once routinely worked 18-hour days so he could secretly obtain security codes and detailed schematics of the facility. But since his promotion to senior project manager last November, al-Tantawi has grown accustomed to perks such as higher pay, mandatory vacation time, delegation of responsibilities, and long lunches with other managers.

“Don’t get me wrong, I totally wish swift and painful death to all American pigs, especially that jerk [general manager] Dave [Landis],” al-Tantawi said. “But I’m no longer the new guy—why bust my ass all day long anymore? When I get home after a day at work, I don’t savor staying up all night designing dirty-bomb triggering mechanisms like I did when I first got here. Sometimes I just want to pop in a CD by that soulful infidel Chris Daughtry and relax.”

Al-Tantawi added that due to the sedentary nature of his job, he would have to “lose a few pounds, Allah willing” before being able to fulfill his most challenging task: infiltrating the reactor’s spent fuel storage area and draining its coolant, thereby triggering a fire and releasing radioactive material.

Indeed, general preparedness appears to be the cell’s greatest stumbling block.

“Five a.m. is when the facility is most vulnerable to attack, when the morning shift security personnel replace the overnight crew,” said Adib Dhakwan, the cell’s second-in-command. “Unfortunately, Starbucks doesn’t open until six, and I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have that first cup of coffee, forget it.”

Despite the terrorists’ successful assimilation into American society, the FBI has been monitoring the activities of the “San Clemente Six” since late 2005. According to declassified intelligence documents, the cell’s status was recently downgraded to “low risk,” due in part to a near absence of cell phone chatter to parties other than Moviefone, and last month’s online purchase of a hammock.

Heart Hacking

Is it possible for someone to hack your heart’s pacemaker?   According to the Medical Device Security Center, it sure is…

Report excerpt:

“As part of our research we evaluated the security and privacy properties of a common ICD.   We investigate whether a malicious party could create his or her own equipment capable of wirelessly communicating with this ICD.

Using our own equipment (an antenna, radio hardware, and a PC), we found that someone could violate the privacy of patient information and medical telemetry. The ICD wirelessly transmits patient information and telemetry without observable encryption. The adversary’s computer could intercept wireless signals from the ICD and learn information including: the patient’s name, the patient’s medical history, the patient’s date of birth, and so on.

Using our own equipment (an antenna, radio hardware, and a PC), we found that someone could also turn off or modify therapy settings stored on the ICD. Such a person could render the ICD incapable of responding to dangerous cardiac events. A malicious person could also make the ICD deliver a shock that could induce ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal arrhythmia.”

In addition to medical devices, under experiment are drug monitoring and delivery systems via implanted chips.  Gizomodo reported on this in their article “Implanted Microchip Will Monitor your Health, Deliver Drugs from under your Skin.”

I suppose it would be possible to manipulate the amount of drugs released via similar methodology if one were to intercept the chip.

Seems to me that these devices should have encryption built in.  What are they thinking?   Or maybe that’s extra….

The Foolishness of Crowds

How wise have the crowds been at predicting and mitigating the economic meltdown? Some have questioned whether or not this is yet another case of “Intelligence failure.” Crowds can be just plain dumb sometimes.  (Think of sheep.)

In James Surowiecki’s book, “The Wisdom of Crowds…,” he argues that collectively small groups of people should exhibit more intelligence than a lone individual. But he presupposes that everyone in the group is actually thinking. Group think, where everyone tends to agree because of emotion or peer pressure, is a big problem and not only can erase the benefit of the group, but also can make it more difficult for the dissenter(s) to be heard because of increased peer pressure.

So how do you mitigate this problem? Several years ago I visited an exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. When Reagan was trying to make a difficult decision be brought in his top advisors and laid out the problem. He then asked his advisors to cast their opinions on what to do. But one detail, they had to share their opinion with the President privately. Nobody else saw it. After collecting all the opinions, which were cast individually and without peer pressure or group think, the President made his own decision.

It takes guts to stand on your own line, and sometimes you’ll get dumped on, but you just might save a life, or a fortune.

“Hey Dude, that’s my Cactus!”

Feds to use computer chips to foil cactus thieves

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN – 2 days ago

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Anyone thinking of swiping a stately saguaro cactus from the desert could soon be hauling off more than just a giant plant.

National Park Service officials plan to imbed microchips in Arizona’s signature plant to protect them from thieves who rip them from the desert to sell them to landscapers, nurseries and homeowners.

The primary objective is deterrence, but the chips also will aid in tracking down and identifying stolen saguaros, said Bob Love, chief ranger at southern Arizona’s Saguaro National Park.  Read full article…

Palin Hacker Indicted-Hacking still illegal

News:  It’s still illegal to break into someone else’s computer files even if you can.  News article link

It’s not possible for the average bear to keep up with the myriad of exploits available to hackers.

• Ryan Naraine at Zero Day shows a video of cross-site scripting exploits where hackers can take control of your camera and microphone.
• Adam Shah’s post at PC World points out the unpleasant consequences of being victimized by wardrivers.   What’s that?  Hackers who exploit unsecured wireless networks by driving around and looking for them using wireless recievers.   Seems poor Mr. Kenneth Haywood, a US Executive working in Mumbai, was hacked by terrorists so they could use his network to send their bombing intentions.   Mr. Haywood has been cleared of any wrong doing and now the Indian Gov’t has issued a warning to secure wireless networks.   If it wasn’t Mr. Haywood, it would have been someone else.

Come on now…how is it possible for your mother to secure her computer and network against the evolving threats and exploits?

I’m glad to hear that it’s still illegal to break in even if you know how.

Search for phrases within videos

Google labs has some pretty cool stuff in the works.   You can search for key phrases or words that were spoken within the video.   It appears that Google has input mainly the political speeches into its lab for demo purposes to start.  You can try it out by searching for key words from last night’s debate between Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden.

Try it out here: Google labs Audio

The Power of Virtual Teams

Excellent example on how the power of small motivated teams can serve as the antidote to the ills plaguing bloated beauracracies.

Hat tip to IntelFusion.

Matt Burton: “Set Your Analysts Free.”

Great post by Matthew Burton on the value of Open Source. He underscores my own inspiration for Project Grey Goose when he writes about the phenomenal but ultimately tragic Jim Gray rescue effort last year:

Freedom: The Jim Gray Rescue Effort

The Web is fast and free: fast, in the sense that you can make things happen overnight; and free, in the sense that you don’t need the boss’s permission to implement new ideas. This was no more apparent than in the case of Jim Gray.

Jim Gray was a database pioneer based in San Francisco. He disappeared while sailing in the Bay area last January. He was never found.

But his friends, many of whom were Silicon Valley magnates, did their best to try. One of these friends retasked DigitalGlobe imagery satellites to shoot fresh photos over 3,500 of sea. The result was 1400 gigantic images. So coders automatically split the images up into 560,000 smaller ones that could be easily reviewed; someone else contributed a computer program that automatically sharpened all of the images.

Now that they had over a half million pictures, they needed a way to solicit volunteers to look at them. Amazon.com already had a ready-made solution, so the images were posted on a special page that let virtual volunteers cull through these images in search of Gray’s sailboat. 12,000 volunteers reviewed all 560,000 images three times each.

All of that happened in three days. They didn’t find Gray’s sailboat. But it was the largest search party in history, on top of being simply amazing.

The Web’s speed and freedom made it possible. Had this job been given to an organization with a closed network, this never would have happened.

What about your organization’s intranet? Could your IT team split up those images into easy-to-consume portions? Could they write a script that automatically sharpened all 560,000 images? Could they create a tool that lets the rest of your workforce review the images from their own desks? Could your servers handle the load? And could all of that be accomplished in three days? In order to do that, you need to have the technical talent on hand.

Once you have the talent, those people need permission to work freely and create solutions on the fly. Do they have that permission? Or would your org have to submit justification statements, get contract managers to approve personnel reassignments, and run each line of code past the infosec people before finally getting something live?

On the Web, if you have an idea, you just do it. This is a philosophy and capability the Intelligence Community (and any large, data-driven organization) should keep in mind if it wants to fully exploit its data. Analysts will always have too much information to process and too little time in which to do it (and focusing the “open source intelligence” conversation on culling Web content contributes to that problem). To have any hope, they need an IT and bureaucratic infrastructure that will accommodate improvised solutions.

Again: if you want to make the most of open source, get an open network that lets analysts contribute their own material. Put all of your analysts onto one large network instead of letting them work on lots of small ones. Hire some developers and familiarize them with the analysts’ information problems. Then, set them free and let them experiment.

ISP Privacy Policies?

From Techdirt’s Mike Masnick:

Most People Don’t Realize Their ISPs Are Already Spying On Them

“We recently wrote about how you should probably be more nervous about the data your ISP is collecting rather than what Google is collecting, because your ISP has access to a lot more data, and the data it has isn’t data that you chose to give, as in the case of Google. Plus, ISPs have a long history of selling that data. Now, a new study is showing that most people have no idea that their ISPs track and sell their data…”

Full article here

Time to check your privacy terms?

Data Mining Dangers?

The Economist.com recently posted an article on Data Mining in Government agencies.

“Electronic snooping by the state may safeguard liberty—and also threaten it” Link here.

Most of the information about us is created and maintained not in the Government sector, but in the private sector.  Commercial transactions (grocery store purchases, credit cards, travel bookings, etc.) are collected, mined, and often sold to 3rd parties.  It’s a good and healthy exercise to ensure our Gov’t is following the rules when collecting information, but shouldn’t we hold commercial companies accountable too?