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Cyberinfrastructure Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: Click Here to Kill Everybody

Click Here to Kill Everybody, Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier. He is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project. He is also an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org.

Click Here to Kill Everybody Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier

Consequently, Bruce details many key issues in computer security that require the leadership and legislative pen of Congress. I certainly could not have picked a better time to read this book. My review is certainly just scratching the surface of his book. Bruce has communicated a much needed story for every consumer.

Above all, consider the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the 2016 attacks upon our voting infrastructure, or even China’s digital espionage stealing almost every aspect of American innovation.

Do you think the internet is still growing in size? It is not the number of people, but rather the millions of new devices that pose increased risks. Therefore Bruce is calling for policies to protect these devices, knows as the Internet of Things (IoT). Examples of cyber attacks upon automobiles, electric and nuclear plants, medical devices and even airplanes is certainly proof that we are at greater risk.

A different era of industrial controls

Above all, cyber risk originates from different time in history. Besides, in the 1950s did consumers in South America have access to the internet? Any talented programmer in South America had no means to hack conventional hydroelectric dam controllers. However, today this is a reality. So then, the programmatic controls for any damn in American could not have envisioned this threat:

former National Cybersecurity Center director Rod Beckstrom summarized it this way: (1) anything connected to the Internet can be hacked; (2) everything is being connected to the Internet; (3) as a result, everything is becoming vulnerable.
p. 27

At the same time, we really don’t have to look forward, but rather back at the innovations created in the 1950s and 1960s that launched the connected internet.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Reading Technology

HBO’s The Perfect Weapon

In 2020 HBO released the documentary The Perfect Weapon based upon the best-selling book by David Sanger a New York Times national security correspondent. The book was a fantastic review of cyber attacks conducted by Russia, China and other countries deemed hostile to the US and the West. Accordingly, this documentary reveals how cyber war began. This is certainly the primary strategy today for nation state attacks. This documentary is also available on Amazon Prime.

Stuxnet, known as the cyber attack “Olympic Games” was an original US/Israel joint cyber attack. The concern was understanding the risk to a nuclear war in the Middle East in supporting Israel’s defense. The Bush Administration chose to invoke a new type of warfare.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth. Nicole covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. Certainly this is one of the more anticipated books addressing a new cyber arms race. More than ever before, it is imperative to understand how a global market for Zero Day exploits began and today how it is certainly tipping the scales.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends The Cyberweapons Arms Race

Quite frankly, Nicole’s reporting will stun readers. This book will also surprise long time IT professionals.

As it seems so often in life, by chance, a ‘stumbling’ idea took hold. Initially a company in 2003 began buying exploits from hackers for as little as $75. Fast forward to today, a good iOS zero day commands over $3 million dollars.

Nicole begins her reporting role at the NYTimes by reviewing secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden and Glen Greenwald.

This of course revealing the illegal spying on American citizens by the Bush Administration. At the same time, this project was tapping phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Guardian obtained copies via Greenwald who passed a copy to the NYTimes. This proved to be her introduction to the cyber world.

In addition, Nicole retells the hard lessons from Soviet spying (actually from within the US embassy) in Moscow back in the 1950s. This reveals a good baseline to today’s advanced attacks including the resources and dedication necessary to carry them out.

Cyber weapons for Board rooms

Chapter One’s Closet of Secrets is certainly mandatory reading for organizational leaders. It will become very apparent that organizations must reconsider their outdated understanding of information security. One cannot walk away from this book ignoring an often repeated message: your organization has already been hacked, or your organization does not yet realize it has been hacked. Thus, Nicole makes the case in her interviews with hackers that every computer, phone, network, or storage drive has been compromised.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Google Network Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: Surveillance Valley

Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine. This book is an amazing and enlightening deep dive into the history of the US military-driven internet. Google and Facebook have become today the major players of a corporate DARPA.

Surveillance Valley

The message of Surveillance Valley is twofold: the US military has held the key, foundational role of today’s internet. After all, ARPANet, the initial ‘internet’ went into production in 1966.

The second message is the evolution of counterinsurgency from signals intelligence to Google Chrome. This will surprise many. This can be a very interesting read for our times.

At first glance this story is about Google and law enforcement surveillance within the City of Oakland. Yet, Yasha takes the reader all the way back to the Vietnam War. For instance, he lays the foundation for today’s internet to Project AGILE, an early clandestine effort to aid the French to recolonize Indochina after World War II. Likewise we did not learn from their failures.

This highly secret project launched under Truman as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and rebranded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Those early cyclical electronic counterinsurgency efforts in the mid-1950s failed.

In other words, the opening chapters actually provide a very detailed history lesson regarding Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Data harvesting, aka “counterinsurgency” was flourishing in the Cold War. The impact of Sputnik and French defeats in Vietnam drove counterinsurgency efforts.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Google Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff rocked Silicon Valley and beyond. Shoshana is Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana has delivered a critically important book not to be missed. This is a “once in a decade book” that digs deep into digital surveillance by Google and Facebook.

So, before you ask about recent US Senate votes to continue warrantless access to your internet search and browser history, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are harvesting just about all of your personal data.

So, the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ is new for many who only recently see this term added to our societal lexicon. The ability for Google and Facebook to simply take your data, mash it up, and sell it (without your knowledge) may indeed surprise many. But the depth of their reach Shoshana reveals may shock you.

You may not yet realize how Google and Facebook have already tuned their artificial intelligence platforms to data mining you even deeper than you may realize. Actually, think you with nothing to hide? Think again.

Google and Facebook lead in data harvesting

There is a common understanding that ‘free’ is just that. A ‘free’ email account and ‘free’ social media platforms? Nothing short of a lie. And the misdirection that ‘you become the product’ is no longer accurate. Shoshana refocuses this misdirection to convey Google and Facebook have so much of your private data, they now simply harvest your daily input toward their behavioral capitalism.

For Google this data mining includes all products and services including the acquired Nest thermostat. This is not new by the way. The LA Times reported back in May 2008 a plan by Charter to track customer web habits. These messages remind me of 2009’s The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain.

How Google Maps harvested your personal data

Today the question is not how, but rather how much you use and rely upon Google Maps. When Google’s StreetView cars drove past your house (and mine) taking photographs — their cars had surveillance tools that downloaded your home’s WiFi payload data.

Wait, what? Oh yes, they did.
As a result, Attorneys General from 38 states sued Google. 12 other countries, mainly from Europe also sued.

So, just how sensitive was the data collected by Maps? Technical experts in Canada, France, and the Netherlands discovered that StreetView’s data harvesting included:

names
telephone numbers
credit card information
passwords (Yes Google harvested your passwords)
e-mails (full text)
chat transcripts
dating site data
pornography site data
browsing behavior
medical data
location data

In addition, Shoshana reveals how Google, forced to concede that it had intercepted and stored “payload data” the personal information grabbed from unencrypted Wi-Fi transmissions. In some instances your entire email message, URLs and passwords were harvested.

John Hanke, Vice President for Google Maps previously directed Keyhole, a CIA-satellite mapping company. After Google purchased Keyhole, Hanke directed the upgrade of Google Earth. The full 25 page legal filing for your reading pleasure: In the Matter of Google, Inc.: Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture, File No.: EB-10-IH-4055, NAL/Acct. No.: 201232080020, FRNs: 0010119691, 0014720239, Federal Communications Commission, April 13, 2012, 12–13.