Ged Carroll

Category: security | 保衛 | 정보 보안 | 情報セキュリティー

According to Wikipedia security can be defined:

Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).

Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.

Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.

  • Copycats + more things

    Copycats everywhere: Hong Kong designers of popular Covid-19 mask holders dismayed by flood of fakes | South China Morning Post – Chinese businesses don’t just rip off the west and other countries, but are copycats even of Hong Kong Chinese products as well. In this respect the copyrights resemble the early 19th century industrialist in the US who were inveterate copycats themselves. Charles Dickens saw is own books copied in the US without his permission and affected American writers who found their works published by copycats abroad.

    Fascinating reading that shows Trump’s appeal is broader and more complex than racism and bigotry – South Vietnam’s Flags at the Capitol Riot – Asia Sentinel – its presence signifies support of a group for Trump – in this case, support from a sizable number of Vietnamese Americans. Their biggest and most apparent reason is that Trump was the best-suited and toughest person to stand up against China, whose expansionist and imperial designs have harmed Vietnam in recent decades. In their view, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is bent on territorial and other forms of gains and control vis-à-vis a largely impotent Vietnamese government. Anti-Chinese and/or anti-CCP sentiments are hardly exclusive to first- and 1.5-generation Vietnamese Americans. These sentiments are shared among groups as different as Chinese dissidents and immigrants from the Philippines. Surveys have indicated that similar to Vietnamese Americans, a lot of Filipino immigrants have supported and voted for Trump. In fact, Trumpism has been stronger in Vietnam during the last few years than it is in the diaspora. Even though I haven’t seen surveys or studies about Vietnam, anecdotal evidence suggests that it has been overwhelming

    How Brexit killed London’s EU stock trading — Quartz – some think the EU is almost certain to target the UK’s euro-derivatives clearing business. Whereas stock trading of EU company shares is a minor prize, the multi-trillion-dollar swaps market is about much more than just bragging rights. Handling such a titanic amount of derivatives is lucrative and brings with it an ecosystem of skilled jobs and financial expertise

    Dior reunites with Shawn Stüssy for a Chinese New Year collection | Input – continued blending of streetwear and luxury

    One of the best histories that I have read of the streetwear label Stüssy. It only misses out Shawn Stüssy’s second life in streetwear with S/Double – Stüssy | The Journal | MR PORTER  – the rarely mentioned record of the International Stüssy tribe has a hiphop track on one side and reggae on the other. It is pressed in France and the hiphop sides definitely sounds like Ronin Records FORCE n KZee. Ronin Records was part owned by International Stüssy Tribe member Alex Turnbull. I hadn’t realised that this had been put together for the first IST meeting in Tokyo. Many streetwear brands that have come along later have been copycats of Shawn Stüssy’s collaging aesthetic, cultural sampling and even the business model. Look at the way Nigo built up a less formal tribe around A Bathing Ape from Pharrell Williams to James Lavelle. Or the way Supreme took Shawn Stüssy’s cultural sampling to a new level. Rather that reinterpreting it like Stüssy had done with the Chanel logo homage or the repeating logo (a la Gucci or MCM); Supreme copycats Louis Vuitton, then collaborates with them 17 years later.

    China’s home appliance manufacturers left cursing export orders as costs rise, profits vanish amid yuan rally 

    China Technology – Big boots. – Radio Free Mobile – I think that regulatory interference at Alibaba may result in a fine or two but nothing that is going to fundamentally damage the company. Ant Group is another matter, and the mooted restructuring may substantially diminish the value of this company to both Jack Ma and Alibaba with the real value accruing to a new state-owned enterprise. 
    Hence, when looking at Alibaba, I am inclined to look at a scenario where the company pays a fine of $1-2bn but continues to operate as before and one where Ant Financial is worth $0 to Alibaba     – and this FT article adds weight to this viewpoint – Beijing orders Chinese media to censor coverage of Alibaba probe 

    OnlyFans Leaks: Leaked OnlyFans on NSFW ThotHub Target Sex Workers | Mel Magazine – guessing that this won’t end well for some of them

    BBC’s Everyman series was usually focused on religious and tangential products, so this episode was a bit more unusual when it looked at rave culture.

    Advertising & Marketing Trends that will dominate 2021 

    China tried to punish European states for Huawei bans by adding eleventh-hour rule to EU investment deal | South China Morning Post – interesting but unsurprising, also worthwhile considering in conjunction with China hits back at foreign sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals | South China Morning Post 

    Flipper Zero — Tamagochi for Hackers by Flipper Devices Inc. — Kickstarter – wireless signal and protocol sniffer hacking tool in a small easily carried gadget

    Age-positive image library launched to tackle negative stereotypes of later life | Centre for Ageing Better 

    Chinese investor buys controlling stake in AMI -Fashion Network – The strategic investment marks the latest Paris runway brand to have been acquired by a Chinese investor, following the acquisition of Lanvin by Fosun International in September 2005. Sequoia Capital China is a venture capital firm based in Beijing, which has taken stakes in over 600 companies since being founded – including JD.com, Alibaba, Meituan and Wanda Cinemas – though not in any noted fashion brand. I find it fascinating that Sandhill Road stalwart Sequoia Capital is moving investment from technology to a fashion play. Not only that, but that it has happened in its Chinese business that is focusing on the ‘new’ Silicon Valley companies in China

    Prospering in the pandemic: 2020’s top 100 companies | Financial Times 

    Putting the bed to bed // THE FUTON 

    Hong Kong Arrests Are Next Big Test Since National Security Law – Bloomberg – Hong Kong’s authorities insist they are acting to prevent chaos. Opposition figures wanted to plunge the city into an “abyss” and create “mutual destruction,” Secretary for Security John Lee told a briefing. While the process to force the chief executive’s resignation is set out in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s de facto constitution, the national security law forbids “seriously interfering in, disrupting, or undermining the performance of duties and functions” of the government. Irrespective of this apparent contradiction, the root of Hong Kong’s political dysfunction lies in the government’s lack of democratic legitimacy. The opposition activists could not threaten such action if they did not have popular support; indeed, their program aimed to increase pressure for a more democratic system, as promised in the Basic Law – more explanation from the South China Morning Post’s Inkstone – The primary election that resulted in Hong Kong’s national security mass arrests – Inkstone 

    China’s Communist Party targets Chinese abroad to rally support | South China Morning Post – that would promote views of Chinese diaspora as fifth columnists. I don’t think that its a smart move, but instead a desperate move. Presumably Chinese political theorists think that multiculturalism will give them air cover for policy manipulation in other countries.

  • Ikea Symfonisk speaker and other things that caught my eye this week

    A great YouTube teardown of the Ikea Symfonisk bookshelf speaker. The speaker works with a Sonos equipped home and was designed in conjunction with Sonos. The Symfonisk bookshelf speaker is part of a range. They’re built for convenience rather than high fidelity.

    Don’t expect it to last long after its warranty is over. The Sonos product design on which it’s based doesn’t deserve the premium that has been put on it historically. The Symfonisk looks like a low quality product which exists to help Ikea and Sonos cross-sell and upsell consumers on other products.

    The Trump supporters protest ‘Stop the Steal ‘looked to an outsider like an absurdist performative art performance that went wrong with criminal damage and five dead at the time of writing.

    https://twitter.com/dublonothing/status/1347078502412009476

    If like me, you were left wondering what just happened? And then asking yourself what on earth is QAnon? Bellingcat has you covered.

    At the moment American politicians are calling it a coup attempt and asking for the participants to be locked up and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I get it. What the politicians are failing to do is come up with the better, more attractive belief system than QAnon. I think that’s a problem. It’s why over 25 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the far right is stronger than ever.

    Jailing participants creates as many problems as it solves. It provides martyrs to a cause, like McVeigh became. But not jailing them says that their conduct is within the realm of respectability. As for a better idea, you could do worse than look at the Depolarization Project.

    https://flic.kr/p/2kq2rjM
    Protestors out side the Governors residence in St Pauls, Minnesota as part of the Stop The Steal protests / coup attempt.

    Drum and Bass seems to be having a renaissance, with it getting more prominence in the likes of Mixmag and elsewhere. A great example is this recent guest mix by Carl Cox for Edible Beats.

    Sony’s Trinitron was a byword for the best quality TV experience when CRTs ruled display technology. This history of the technology shows Sony at its engineering best for decades.

  • Knowledge economy + more things

    How does the UK rank as a knowledge economy? – Soft Machines – The big story is the huge rise of China, and in this context, inevitable that the rest of the world’s share of the advanced economy has fallen. But the UK’s fall is larger than competitors (-46%, cf -19% for the USA and -13% for rest of EU) – the definition of knowledge economy used in the research doesn’t play to the UK’s strengths in areas like financial services, education, legal services, accounting services and advertising. But there is no denying the overall pattern, that the UK failed to make the knowledge economy work for it in the same way that China, the US or the EU have managed to do over the last decade

    Do You Want to Buy Less Stuff? Three People Tell Us How – The New York Times – a few things about this. Ms Chai has a lot of nice things, it would be harder to do this if you were starting off with Ikea furnishing for instance

    Cultural institutions in crisis | Financial Times – Financial losses from Covid-19 are not the only challenges museums face. Well before the pandemic, environmental and social activists were holding western institutions vigorously to account. Museums were already struggling with issues of diversity — both in staffing and, more importantly, in representation in their collections — the status of objects in those collections and calls for restitution. The situation is further complicated by criticism of many traditional sources of philanthropic funding and ongoing concern for the environment. The Black Lives Matter movement and other world events put a renewed spotlight on racism, illuminating the “white gaze” of western institutions. Even as museums scrambled to promise that change was afoot, they found themselves ensnared in further criticism. “Did our lives matter when you STOLE ALL OUR THINGS?” retorted writer Stephanie Yeboah when Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, tweeted solidarity for Black Lives Matter (paywall)

    As Understanding of Russian Hacking Grows, So Does Alarm – The New York Times – By staging their attacks from servers inside the United States, in some cases using computers in the same town or city as their victims, according to FireEye, the Russians took advantage of limits on the National Security Agency’s authority. Congress has not given the agency or homeland security any authority to enter or defend private sector networks. It was on these networks that S.V.R. operatives were less careful, leaving clues about their intrusions that FireEye was ultimately able to find. By inserting themselves into the SolarWinds’ Orion update and using custom tools, they also avoided tripping the alarms of the “Einstein” detection system that homeland security deployed across government agencies to catch known malware, and the so-called C.D.M. program that was explicitly devised to alert agencies to suspicious activity (paywall)

    Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery – The New York Times – the jobs lost were low wages compared to the knowledge workers who benefited from home working with increased savings

    Tesla blasts ‘ridiculously fabricated’ report raising quality concerns at Shanghai plant – giga sweatshop is quite a catchy sound bite

    The way we train AI is fundamentally flawed | MIT Technology Review 

    Why 2021 will be a bumper year for M&A | Vogue Business – the big three trends for M&A in 2021: conglomerates looking for an opportunity to consolidate, luxury brands stepping up vertical integration by investing in distressed parts of their supply chain, and a focus on investment in digital expertise and the APAC region. – more luxury related content here.

  • CD ROM history + more news

    CD ROM reflections

    How “God Makes God” is a 1993 CD ROM about probability, game theory, genetic algorithms, and evolutionary strategies | Boing Boing – I remember having my mind blown by this CD ROM at college. It reminded me of Jostein Gaarder’s book Sophie’s World in terms of its approach to making philosophy entertaining and accessible. I remember reading Sophie’s World around the same time as having played How God Makes God. There was something about HyperCard and the CD ROM authoring tools that followed. Amidst all the brochureware there were creators who drove extraordinary media projects, most notably for me was the game Myst, which I don’t think has been bettered. I suspect part of it was the excitement of new ‘hyper-media’, the limitations of the tools (though 640MB storage at the time seemed vast when I was using an Apple PowerBook 165 with 4MB of RAM and an 80MB hard drive at the time) and the media economics of the time. CD-ROM authoring tools were becoming more sophisticated. CD manufacturing plants were proliferating, lowering the cost per CD ROM disk and CD recordable drives were relatively affordable in the price range of $10,000 – $20,000. Still eye wateringly expensive, but this was a vast improvement from just two years before and allowed for better prototyping, small production runs and testing across devices.

    Design

    3D printed IKEA hack experiences by Uppgradera on Etsy – really interesting aspects to the designs

    Ethics

    Instacart Is a Parasite and a Sham | The New Republic – The gig economy company, like many of its peers, has seen business skyrocket during the pandemic—while exploiting workers and even failing to turn a profit. That last bit reminds me a lot of the first generation dot com companies who tried to break through the wall of economics and succeed by moving at internet speed. This time they seem to have supplemented the usual ‘throw money at it’ approach with a lack of morality

    Ideas

    How Claude Shannon’s Information Theory Invented the Future | Quanta Magazine – the idea of binary encrypted signals

    Innovation

    Activist Firm Urges Intel to ‘Explore Alternatives’ to Manufacturing Its Own Chips – ExtremeTech – there are national security issues with this. I suspect this is just an opening salvo by Dan Loeb

    Regulators tell Jack Ma’s Ant Group to rectify five problems – the five areas included: Ant’s inadequate governance; regulatory negligence; unlawful profit-seeking; monopolistic practices and; infringement of consumer rights, said China’s central bank vice governor Pan Gongsheng.

    China orders Ant Group to rein in unfettered expansion as regulators put up fences around financial risks | South China Morning Post – Ant must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations, the People’s Bank of China’s deputy governor Pan Gongsheng said in a statement on Sunday.

    Luxury

    From TikTok to Depop: Fashion’s new trend funnel | Vogue Business – trends like leather, feathers, neutrals or hot pinks, were relatively easy to follow: the trend funnel moved from runway to rack, with some help from popular culture along the way. This year, Gen Z users on TikTok and Depop jumpstarted a new trend funnel, quickly giving rise to aesthetics like “cottagecore” and “dark academia”, influencing young shoppers’s purchases. “If one of your favourite [TikTok] creators changes their aesthetic due to a particular trend, a whole style can be born out of it,” says Yazmin How, TikTok’s content lead. “The fashion industry is no longer the only voice directing the new season’s trends. People are tapping into TikTok to see what emerging styles are ‘in’ and what previously popular trends are coming back around.” TikTok trends manifest into purchases on Depop, where 90 per cent of users are Gen Z. In step with the rise of the cottagecore trend on TikTok, search for the term on Depop rose 900 per cent between March to August, when it reached its peak. Greater connectivity and increased time at home has boosted the amount of these consumer-led movements, and brands whose aesthetics fit the trends are benefiting, like LoveShackFancy, who specialises in the prairie dresses and gingham blouses associated with cottagecore’s countryside aesthetic – reminds me a bit of the Harajuku trends from the past 30 years. Culture and the trends that come out of it, are now massively parallel in nature

    Online

    FarmVille Once Took Over Facebook. Now Everything Is FarmVille. – The New York Times – legacy is in growth hacking techniques used to make it popular in the first place

    Why Bella Poarch’s “M to the B” video was the top TikTok of 2020 – Vox – TikTok automates the mix of all these topics, going farther than any other platform to mimic the human editor.” At the same time, he says, it’s also “an eternal channel flip, and the flip is the point: there is no settled point of interes t to land on. Nothing is meant to sustain your attention.” The result, he argues, is what essentially amounts to “soft censorship,” or a feed that becomes as “glossy, appealing, and homogenous as possible rather than the truest reflection of either reality or a user’s desires.” How did a perfectly average competitive dancer become the No. 1 internet celebrity in the world? Why did half a billion people watch Poarch’s face bob up and down? Because these two women are the logical endpoint of the world’s most powerful entertainment algorithm: young people centering their conventional attractiveness in easily repeatable formats

    Retailing

    Amazon and the Rise of the Retail “Sniffer” Algorithm | The Fashion Law – the “sniffer algorithm” – or better yet, “one or more” sniffer algorithms that not only sniff out topics that a speaker is potentially interested in but that also “attempt to identify trigger words in the voice content, which can indicate a level of interest of the user.” For example, as Amazon’s patent application states, “A keyword that is repeated multiple times in a conversation might be given assigned a higher priority than other keywords, tagged with a priority tag.” At the same time, “a keyword following a ‘strong’ trigger word, such as ‘love’ might be given a higher priority or weighting than for an intermediate trigger word such as ‘purchased.’” – when does assistance become creepy?

    Security

    NSO used real people’s location data to pitch its contact-tracing tech, researchers say | TechCrunch – and here is the original report on which the article is based Nso Group’s Breach Of Private Data With ‘fleming’, A Covid-19 Contact-tracing Software ← Forensic Architecture 

    Insecure wheels: Police turn to car data to destroy suspects’ alibis | NBC News – investigators have realized that automobiles — particularly newer models — can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles’ computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place

    Web of no web

    Tencent backs Chinese healthcare portal DXY in $500M round | TechCrunch – China has done a lot of work to move towards telemedicine and technology augmented health. Tencent’s WeChat was used by local governments for their COVID certificates, tracking and tracing applications. More Tencent related content here.

  • Private sector control + more things

    China’s Xi Ramps Up Control of Private Sector. ‘We Have No Choice but to Follow the Party.’ – WSJ – In some cases, it is taking charge entirely of companies it regards as undisciplined, absorbing them into state-owned enterprises. – Push driven by a concern over the private sector business owners being unpredictable and not trusted. They think a centrally planned complex economy is the way forward; with the private sector playing a subservient role at best. This view has been strengthened by the state engineered swift recovery from COVID-19. I presume that they consider that China’s place in global supply chains, big data and machine learning will solve a lot of the problems that bedevilled previous centralised economic planning systems like what happened in the Soviet Union. More economics related content here.

    Party Committees See Rising Prevalence in Private Sector | Marco Polo – China clamping down on private sector

    Google AMP gets a shock to its system as advisor quits, lawsuit claims foul play • The Register 

    Quick Thoughts on the Russia Hack – Lawfare  – interesting post on the SolarWind hack based attacks

    North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2020 Billings – Semiconductor Digest – this looks good in terms of world economic growth

    China-Europe Trade Forum Canceled After China Sought to Bar Critics – WSJ – Officials familiar with the exchange say the two people Beijing wanted to exclude from this year’s virtual event were Reinhard Bütikofer, the European Parliament’s chairman of the EU-China caucus who has publicly criticized Beijing over Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uighur minority; and Mikko Huotari, the head of Merics, a German think tank critical of the Chinese Communist Party. – China is depriving itself of unvarnished information about how it is viewed. A recipe for miscalculation in policymaking. Mainland Chinese contacts fail to understand why they don’t seem to have friendly relations with other nations anymore, despite Chinese achievements

    Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise | WIRED – Steven Levy explains Erdal Arikan’s breakthrough in information theory well. What’s interesting is how the west has abandoned long term research projects. Arikan took 20 years for his breakthrough. In an American university you wouldn’t get, or maintain tenure doing that

    ‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area | South China Morning Post – ‘Made in Hong Kong’ prestige provides springboard for retailers Watsons, Sa Sa to find success in Greater Bay Area. Well-known Hong Kong retailers are aggressively expanding in the bay area, where the prestige of their brands makes them a hit with mainland consumers. The city’s retail sector has been devastated by the coronavirus keeping deep-pocketed mainland tourists away – if true, I don’t seeing it being a defensible differentiation in the medium to long term

    MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube | Financial Times – Porn pioneered elements of the global online advertising industry such as targeted advertising, pay-per-click and email marketing and is today a substantial part of the internet economy

    Gen Z: the rising power in Chinese market and their 7 digital lifestyles – ChoZan – not the greatest guide to life stage trends in China