1
"Your tail hook isn't down! Come around and try again."
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Fri Oct 5 14:27:16 2018 (v29Tn)
2
Hmm, if it keeps circling in the same area, how about dumping a tanker full of red food coloring into its path? That way the Earth can have its own Great Red Spot...
Posted by: Siergen at Sat Oct 6 16:00:01 2018 (IAebY)
3
Have to watch out for TD 14, now forming in the gulf.
Posted by: jon spencer at Sun Oct 7 07:37:50 2018 (6SO50)
When I hit "publish" everything went wonky, but this time....THIS TIME when I got that sinking feeling that comes from a post taking too long to publish....THIS TIME I block selected the whole post and copied. And I did so the instant before I got the 504 code.
And then I pasted it into word.
And now...the blog is back up and the post is below and doesn't have to be rewritten.
1
The server was getting hit hard again by web crawlers and I needed to restart the application. Bad timing. Glad you managed to grab a copy.
I'm going to start getting things migrated over the the new server this weekend, and also see what I can do about rate-limiting these guys.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 21:12:35 2018 (PiXy!)
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Oh BTW Pixy did you get my message regarding Pi?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Oct 4 21:29:08 2018 (3bBAK)
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Yes. I could see the Pi though, so I was slightly confused.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 22:33:14 2018 (PiXy!)
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Hmmm...It may be a mac issue, because the symbol I'm looking at doesn't look like Pi it looks like an arch.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Oct 5 08:22:19 2018 (3bBAK)
5
Oh... The Pi symbol I'm used to is actually some type of cursive.
I had literally never seen it written correctly in any textbook.
Well....sorry for wasting your time.
I'll just crawl under this convenient rock.
Help! I'm working for morons!
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Oct 5 08:42:29 2018 (3bBAK)
6
I edit all posts in a text file, without exception. So, in theory, I can re-create any of my blogs, given enough scripting. In practice, I was too lazy to write a program to do it. I started on one when Ani-nouto was down, but abandoned it as soon as the server came back.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Oct 8 20:22:57 2018 (LZ7Bg)
Are we Surprised? No. (UPDATED)
Are we terrified concerned?
Yes.
It appears that there has been a hack involving at least 30 companies, as well as the D.O.D and C.I.A.
Worse, it's a hardware issue.
Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.
One can assume that this is NOT an isolated incident. This is probably one of many, and one can infer that very little is now beyond the reach of the CCP. On a global level, it is very likely that all those Chinese funded infrastructure projects in Oceana, Latin America, Africa and South Asia are riddled with similar, and perhaps more hard to detect bugs, possibly embedded into the very structures of the facillities.
Pretty much every technical advancement made by compromised companies as well as state and military secrets can now be assumed to be in China's possession.
This doesn't mean they know them all yet. The sheer quantity of data that China must now have to sift through is daunting, and to be useful needs to be looked at by people who have enough knowledge in the given subject matter and sufficient imagination to be able to recognize something's merits. Encryption is a further obstacle. However, they probably have at least as big an edge on our Military as we had over the Japanese and German's after breaking or acquiring their respective codes in WW2.
This turn of events should not be the least bit surprising given that our self anointed aristocracy has off-shored much of our electronics manufacture to China (because slave labor is so cheap). Well, as we learned from Google & Facebook, if one finds something exceedingly cheap, one might well be the product.
Of course, knowing is the first step to fixing, so it should be pretty straightforward to correct this right?
Fixing this is beyond daunting. The expense of pulling out all the old circuit boards is going to be phenomenal and replacing them is subject to the same issue. The complexities of the global supply chain means that tracking down not just the manufacturers, but subcontractors, will be next to impossible.
Going forward, we may need to have some blockchain certification for all our electronic components, certainly for D.O.D. related applications. This is a sufficient breach of trust with sufficiently troubling ramifications that it ought to remove some of the opposition to restrictions on imports from the Middle Kingdom.
If oughts were dollars though we would have no debt.
This is outside my ballywick, so I eagerly look forward to the perspectives of commenters on this mess.
Now. Answer the following question. Did you read Pixy's post?
No: Go back and read it.
Yes: Proceed.
I found the story credible because I already have concerns about China and spying. That something like this could be done seems completely plausible.
However, all other sources I've looked at since posting this have been either rewritten versions of, or link back to, the Bloomberg article with no additional info. The Bloomberg article is anonymously sourced.
One thing I had not fully grokked, but Pixy mentions extensively, is how LONG this story has been in development.
To Wit: The following excerpt from the article on the nuts and bolts of the alleged hack sounds plausible to me, partly because it comports with my limited understanding of how these systems work, but mainly because the words, Dilithium, turbo-encabulator, and Midichloreans do not appear anywhere in it.
Officials familiar with the investigation say the primary role of implants such as these is to open doors that other attackers can go through. "Hardware attacks are about access,†as one former senior official puts it. In simplified terms, the implants on Supermicro hardware manipulated the core operating instructions that tell the server what to do as data move across a motherboard, two people familiar with the chips’ operation say. This happened at a crucial moment, as small bits of the operating system were being stored in the board’s temporary memory en route to the server’s central processor, the CPU. The implant was placed on the board in a way that allowed it to effectively edit this information queue, injecting its own code or altering the order of the instructions the CPU was meant to follow. Deviously small changes could create disastrous effects.
Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device’s operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.
This system could let the attackers alter how the device functioned, line by line, however they wanted, leaving no one the wiser.
In the comments, Pixy (who, again, does IT for a living) seemed spectacularly unimpressed with the plausibility of this scenario.
Over at Medium, one of those linked to in Pixy's piece on the subject has objections , but they are mostly about how on earth this would have been detected, as it would have been an insanely comprehensive audit to detect this. However, he closes with this...
For me, Bloomberg’s article could go either way. The logic of backdooring the BMC makes a lot of sense. Whether it happened in this case — given all the categorical denials — I have no idea.
I will go so far as to say that I think something along these lines is likely to happen at some point, however, if this story does turn out to be bunk then Bloomberg will, via the cry wolf effect will have facilitated the very thing they pretended to report on.
This story is looking sketchy, but for now, we await more info....
1
I'll see what I can find, but a couple of thoughts:
1. If the network is secure, this doesn't matter. If the server can't make unauthorised connections to the internet, that's it.
2. There's a limited amount of functionality you can put on a chip that size. A keylogger, sure. Which is great if you want to hack laptops, but servers don't have keyboards. Snooping on a 100GbE connection? No chance.
3. The companies named - including the victims - have very explicitly denied it.
4. The sources are anonymous.
5. The chief selling point for the story is Bloomberg's credibility.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 20:17:55 2018 (PiXy!)
Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg’s story relating to Apple.
To translate: Bloomberg is full of shit.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 20:21:57 2018 (PiXy!)
Well...I can't let all those keystrokes go to waste, so I'll resort to special pleading.
Everyone denying it has considerable incentive to do so. If this were true this could be their end.
Special Pleading Ends:
The sheer capacity issues of the chip were something I hadn't the expertise to consider, though the logistics of sifting through the Yotabits of data are daunting on their own.
I am concerned, perhaps unwarrantedly so, about back doors and such in our millitary IT, C4i, and fire control hardware.
On the Gripping hand...
Gell Mann Amnesia Effect.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Oct 4 21:26:59 2018 (3bBAK)
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Yeah, it's being taken seriously and independent researchers are looking into it. Too soon for confirmation or disconfirmation yet.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 22:34:10 2018 (PiXy!)
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Though one researcher I follow simply responded with a GIF of Bloomberg getting egg on its face, so there's a fair bit of skepticism.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 22:35:13 2018 (PiXy!)
As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government.
Apple
On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, "hardware manipulations†or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server. Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident. We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Oct 5 03:35:48 2018 (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Oct 5 21:23:53 2018 (PiXy!)
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Actually, for the story to be developed for a long time is a good thing, IMHO. I remember how National Enquirer developed John Edwards story. It dragged on for months before they ambushed him in the hotel lobby. They had anonymous sources. This prompted people to share what they knew. Finally, they managed to buy photos of Edwards holding his love child. And even that was not enough for most, so they had to stage the operation to get him. I'm sure Bloomberg marshalled resources in a similar fashion.
As for the chip being small, puleeeeeeeeeeeze. The important part is what trace on the mobo it taps, and the power consumption in doing so. I think it probably goes into an I2C EEPROM that boots one of stupid Intel controllers.
So, my bet is it's almost certainly true.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sat Oct 6 18:33:40 2018 (LZ7Bg)
Devil's Advocate here, but comparing Bloomberg's coverage of the nano-spychip vis-a-vis the National Enquirer's coverage of John Edwards' affair not of state is not quite an apples to apples comparison.
The love affairs of a politician with someone who is not his or her significant other is something that most newspapers and periodicals would be suited to cover. That is the kind of story the gossip pages are for - except that the subject in question would make it to the front page.
Bloomberg's coverage of cyber-warfare, on the other hand, causes one to wonder if they know what they are talking about. Have they demonstrated they are well-equipped to report a cyber-warfare story?
Or are they pulling a Stephen Glass on us?
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Oct 7 21:46:22 2018 (2ZW6Y)
So...someone was opening a brothel in Houston, cleverly cutting down on payroll and getting around local vice laws by replacing their...er...customer service professionals with animatronic Tengas.
Houston is now safe from the shame of being at the forefront of the newest manifestation of the oldest profession.
As someone with a functional amygdala who understands that sex doll time shares are as close to objectively disgusting as something as subjective as disgusting can be...
...and perhaps problematic in other ways...
...let me say that this is why we need smaller, less intrusive government. I'm not completely opposed to zoning laws, but this is not a hog farm or an antimatter containment facillity in a downtown, it wasn't going to be oppressing anyone or depriving them of their rights. It was going to be a business making somebody money, making somebody happy and contributing to the tax base of the city to pay for things Houston might need like...flood control. But now, because someone couldn't stand that something they didn't like would be happening behind closed doors, well, a small business never got off the ground.
I further note that Houston's regulatory dragnet seems to have applied to magical maids with glasses as well...at least at the time of writing.
1
The funny thing is this - Houston has very little in the way of zoning restrictions to begin with. Not just "better than California", but a genuine low-regulation outlier.
I wouldn't worry about the magical girls. Houston's mayor has done Naruto cosplay before...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu Oct 4 00:36:29 2018 (v29Tn)
2
The subject matter of that picture was explored by Fritz Leiber in The Silver Eggheads all the way back in - hey, it's available on Kindle! That's been out of print since forever!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 10:35:26 2018 (PiXy!)
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When I hear the phrase "sex doll brothel", for some reason it sounds like "Thomas the Tank Engine porn". You know, just a bunch of sad engineers pulling a train.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Oct 4 15:19:33 2018 (tgyIO)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Oct 4 19:12:06 2018 (PiXy!)
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Sorry, I was busy putting in job applications. For Quality Control Inspector, of course.
Gotta be sorry for the folks applying for the "Sanitation Engineer" jobs.
Posted by: Ubu at Thu Oct 11 12:52:06 2018 (SlLGE)
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Well, they certainly won't have much use for Human Relations. I'm not sure about applying for the IT job, though; "Okay, exactly what were you doing when it crashed. No, not when it went down."
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Oct 11 21:45:59 2018 (tgyIO)
1
Did you notice the choppiness at the beginning, in a couple of places? Looks like a few frames were dropped.
I saw that in the same scenes in the first trailer a while back.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Oct 3 10:20:16 2018 (Q/JG2)
2
This looks better than the last five live-action Marvel movies put together.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Oct 3 10:54:33 2018 (tgyIO)
1
Yes, the world's greatest deliberative body is indeed taking up the definition of the 'word' boof.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Mon Oct 1 21:55:25 2018 (Q7Wqc)
2
This post was my first exposure to the word, and its current context. I was 12/13 in 1982, and I never heard that word then, despite having some crude friends then and in subsequent years. I DO recall not being clear on what certain lyrics meant ("she's tight" does not mean, as I thought at the time, that she was flat-chested, ie "tight" across the chest). I can easily see a young Kavanaugh not being familiar with a particular definition of a given slang term.
That said, in a sane world the mindless ramblings embodied in HS yearbooks would have no relevance in Supreme Court nominations, and women who can't remember any details about a given event which supposedly occurred 36 years ago, and which all her "witnesses" declare didn't happen at all, would likewise be disregarded.
Alas, that's not the world in which we live.
Posted by: jabrwok at Tue Oct 2 08:18:01 2018 (BlRin)
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!