Category: Globalization

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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 It will become very apparent that organizations must reconsider their outdated understanding of information security.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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Latest Read: Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria. We are certainly living through a transformational period of human history. So, is the pandemic’s aftermath within American control? Regrettably this is unquestionably not a pressing American issue. Yet Fareed offers simple plain advice via a global historical lens.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Firstly, this is not another book about the pandemic. Fareed is focusing on how the global economy is shifting. COVID-19 is unquestionably light years from the 1918 flu pandemic’s impact on our economy.

Indeed America found itself confronting a truly horrific event in an analog world. Today’s impact is certainly global on a digital internet.

Secondly, he is addressing a post-pandemic world. Fareed sees common sense lessons from the 1916 flu pandemic. Can one even imagine responding to COVID during a world war?

America was just entering Europe’s battlefields as the great flu pandemic was also ravaging our country. On the contrary, today’s digital wars with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are aggressively playing out on internet-based battlefields. Yet, America’s initial response to COVID began presenting new challenges:

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the Irish commentator Fintan O’Toole wrote in April 2020. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

Page 192

COVID-19 is accelerating our responses to contain the spread. Fareed identifies key issues that are changing the fate of humanity as we learn of incredible infection rates across both emerging and third world countries.

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Latest Read: Thank You for Being Late

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Tom Friedman. This is just one of his many books that I have read. And from time to time he reflects upon his best sellers: Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded. All focus on the impact of globalization.

thank you for being late

Looking back it can be confusing to see why Tom stopped writing books at exactly the precise moment the world changed. The year was 2007 and some very significant events developed. Call it The World is Flat v4.0, when behavior capitalism began.

Consider the introductions of the iPhone, Hadoop and GitHub. Add the launch of Twitter and Facebook. Then Google’s purchase of YouTube should provide the clearest indication of how rapidly technology changed the internet.

Don’t forget Amazon released the Kindle while Airbnb was launched. IBM also launched Watson and Intel launched new non-silicon microchips.

As Tom suggests in his last example, DNA sequencing may have been the most overlooked. The price dropped from $100 million in 2001 to only $1,000 in that magic year of 2007.

So how is anyone supposed to know what all that meant to them 13 years ago? I think many family and friends would say Hadoop and GitHub are names of their pets.

This book is perfect for many, including my family and friends who do not see technology changes coming so quickly. Nor are they used to the fast pace of change. This is where Tom explains very well, for a wide audience where the world is at today. He gives you in this book the permission to slow down and reflect…

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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.

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Zoom out (wider)

Zoom video conferencing has no role on a college campus. The pandemic, as noted previously pushed many colleges to deploy a video conferencing solution under a less than workable timeframe.

Fair to suggest no risk assessment was completed. Some colleges hold a campus-wide license agreement while smaller schools have more limited host deployments.

Colleges need only review their mission and organizational goals to confirm a change from Zoom is needed. Many colleges have adopted strong mission and vision language to promote student learning and inclusiveness.

Truly accepting your College’s mission, vision and language is essential to understanding why Zoom violates their lives. Many do not seem to care or understand the true security and privacy vulnerabilities.

My initial post just scratched the surface. The cool factor juicing up your background image may in fact be more important than security and privacy of students.

Yea, its a videoconferencing app and during a pandemic — how bad can it be?

Enter hate groups

In addition to the racist Zoombombing at California State University Long Beach in late March, hate groups have begun hacking Zoom meetings.

As widely reported Jewish groups, teachers and families are being Zoombombed by white supremacists. The Verge reported White supremacists are targeting Jewish groups on Zoom

University of Colorado Bolder:
An online biology lecture was hijacked and anti-semitic messages were displayed. One professor is Jewish. A news article by Colorado public radio addressed this source: a student enrolled in the class posted the lecture’s Zoom ID number to reddit, an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Hate groups then entered the Zoom meeting.

University of Washington:
Students, instructors face threats and hateful speech as Zoom meetings get ‘bombed’

Binghampton University:
Racist interruptions affect Zoom classes at BU

Arizona State University and The University of Southern California:
‘Zoombombing’ Attacks Disrupt Classes Online Zoom classes were disrupted by individuals spewing racist, misogynistic or vulgar content.

University of Texas:
Virtual meeting of black UT students interrupted with racist slurs, students say

Just imagine a racist zoombombing during your next online class, campus event, Dean’s meeting, or public art performance. And the damage to your College brand becomes front and center in a social media world.

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