<![CDATA[[SecurityRatty] tag: superpowers]]> http://securityratty.com/tag/superpowers Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:23:00 +0000 iRatty Engine http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Squadron of Justice: protecting the digital realms for America]]> http://securityratty.com/article/1497dd2cd0a3d03d5451e6c2ea545426 http://securityratty.com/article/1497dd2cd0a3d03d5451e6c2ea545426 Squadron_of_justice

A team of superheroes known as "the Squadron of Justice" protect America with their awesomeness and superpowers!

Finally, a team of heroes has decided to defend all that is good and just on our networks. It's not anymore Marty Roesch of Snorting fame, it's not Markus Ranum, it's not Thomas Ptacek, it's not me either.

It's the Squadron of Justice.  Stay tuned.

]]> Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:53:17 +0000 squadron justice anymore marty roesch thomas ptacek stay tuned protect america markus ranum team fame Squadron of Justice: protecting the digital realms for America <![CDATA[Lithuania Attacked by Russian Hacktivists, 300 Sites Defaced]]> http://securityratty.com/article/2d3be07cf61adc6c866a5aad79d898ed http://securityratty.com/article/2d3be07cf61adc6c866a5aad79d898ed
Last week's mass defacement of over 300 Lithuanian sites hosted on the same ISP, an upcoming attack that was largely anticipated due to the on purposely escalated online tensions out of Lithuan's accepted legislation banning communist symbols across the counry, once again demonstrates information warfare building capabilities in action.

Moreover, the attack is again relying on common prerequisites for a successful information warfare campaign, used in the Russia vs Estonia cyberattack last year. These very same Internet PSYOPS tactics ensure the success of the information warfare as a whole :

- start publicly justifying upcoming attacks based on nationalism sentions, which in a bandwidth empowered (botnets) collectivist society ensures a decent degree of cyber mobilization. In Lithuania's case, the discussions across web forums were on purposely escalated to the point where "if you don't take action, you're not loyal to your country"

-  the media as the battleground for winning the hears and minds of the bandwidth empowered botnet masters, and position the insult against loyal nationalists next to the daily basis, thereby putting the nationalists in a "stand by" mode prompting them to take actions and to break even. In Estonia's case for instance, news broadcasts of the riots on the streets were on purposely broadcast as often as possible, mostly emphasizing on the nationalist sentiments within the crowds

- prioritizing the attack targets, distributing the targets list and ensuring the coordination in terms of the exact time and data for the attacks to take place is something that didn't happen in the public domain for the mass defacement of Lithuanian sites, the way it happened in the Estonia attack

- utilizing a people's information warfare tactic known as the malicious culture of participation, when everyone's consciously contributing bandwidth to be used/abused by those coordinating the attacks

Also, it's important to point out that by the time they announced their ambitions to attack Lithuania and other countries such as Latvia, Ukraine, and again Estonian sites, they literally put these countries in a "stay tune" mode. Here's a translated statement :

"All the hackers of the country have decided to unite, to counter the impudent actions of Western superpowers. We are fed up with NATO's encroachment on our motherland, we have had enough of Ukrainian politicians who have forgotten their nation and only think about their own interests. And we are fed up with Estonian government institutions that blatantly re-write history and support fascism," says the appeal that is being circulated on Russian Internet forums."

But why did they signalled their intentions, compared to keeping them quiet and attack Lithuania surprisingly? Another relevant use of PSYOPS, namely the biased exclusiveness and keeping a non-existent status bar for the upcoming attacks. And since they can launch a coordinated attack at the country at any time without warning about it, this warning was aiming to cause confusion prompting country officials to make public statements that could later on be analyzed and a better attack strategy formed on the basis of what they said they've done to ensure the attacks don't succeed.

If they did launch DDoS attacks compared to defacing over 300 sites hosted on a single ISP, and had warned about the upcoming attacks about a week earlier, successfully shutting down the country's Internet infrastructure would have achieved a double effect, since they did warn them about the attacks, and despite that  they countries couldn't prepate to fight back even though fighting back was futile right from the very beginning.

At least, that's the level of confidence they've build into capabilities.

Related posts:
Right Wing Israeli Hackers Deface Hamas's Site
Monetizing Web Site Defacements
Pro-Serbian Hacktivists Attacking Albanian Web Sites
The Rise of Kosovo Defacement Groups
A Commercial Web Site Defacement Tool
Phishing Tactics Evolving
Web Site Defacement Groups Going Phishing
Hacktivism Tensions
Hacktivism Tensions - Israel vs Palestine Cyberwars
Mass Defacement by Turkish Hacktivists
Overperforming Turkish Hacktivists
]]> Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:19:13 +0000 lithuania attack lithuania surprisingly estonia estonia attack sites attack attack strategy attacks based attacks Lithuania Attacked by Russian Hacktivists, 300 Sites Defaced <![CDATA[A new world order of computing - an analogy of Microsoft and the US]]> http://securityratty.com/article/692acf4994a1a8ca41ae493b2363a578 http://securityratty.com/article/692acf4994a1a8ca41ae493b2363a578

A couple of weeks ago Parag Khanna had an article in the NY Sunday Times Magazine called "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony". I thought this was one of the most important and enlightening articles I have read in years.  For me it crystallized up my own thoughts about what is going on in the crazy world we all live in. The gist of the article is that over the first decade of the 21st century we have seen a fundamental shift in the distribution of power in the world.  While we were busy fighting a crusade, the so called peace dividend of the post-cold war "new world order" never materialized and the unipolar American hegemony that was going to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the world never materialized.  Instead we find ourselves increasingly in a multi-polar world with two budding new superpowers (could Europe and China really be new?) - the European Union and China, competing very successfully, filling the vacuum we have left in many parts of the world.  There has been no lessening of violence or new golden age of mankind. Instead it seems like more of the same old, with the peoples of the world vying for more and more scarce resources.  The only thing for sure is certainly we are all interconnected economically more than ever.  This presents its own unique challenges and strategies. Who knows how the rest of this century will play out and whether or not it will be another "American Century" or not.  My blog is also not the right forum to explore my feelings on this topic either.

However, while reading an article in InfoWorld by Galen Gruman today on whether it is "Time to dump Windows", I was struck by the parallels (no pun intended with the Mac VM program which enables so much Mac adoption) between Microsoft and the US.  Like the US, about 10 or 15 years ago Microsoft was officially declared a monopoly.  It was the one true superpower of IT. Yeah, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy could tweak Bill's nose and drive fast cars, boats and planes, but lets face it they were midgets compared to the Redmond giants.  Microsoft rolled over competition like Lotus, Wordperfect and Netscape the way we did Mexico in the US-Mexican war. They even invested in Apple to prop them up as a potential rival like the US did in setting up banana republics. By the late 90's did anyone in the mainstream dare to speak out in public about Microsoft being potentially vulnerable and competing with them? Quite the contrary, companies who found out that Microsoft was entering their space would roll over and die.  I didn't think I would live to see in my lifetime so much talk of Microsoft being a dinosaur and not able to compete.

But as I wrote about last week, it seems articles like Grumans are the topic du jour. It is quite fashionable to say that Microsoft's time as the undisputed alpha dog may be drawing to a close.  They are under attack via the SaaS/Web 2.0 space from Google (and who knows what a Google dominated world looks like, it could be the frying pan to the fryer), their OS monopoly is being eroded like a bite out of the apple everday by shiny silver laptops and sleek wide screen monitors.  On the server front, Linux continues to capture share. The specter of thin clients running some java based non-windows OS still hangs out there.  The list goes on and on.

So is it the sunset of the American dynasty and Microsofts?  I think not.  As I wrote earlier, rumors of their demise are pre-mature. Yes, all things change and one company or country (or political party or sports team for that matter) cannot dominate forever.  But just because viable competitors come to the fore, does not mean that great companies or countries shrivel up and die.  In fact good competition can drive these old dogs to learn new tricks and become greater than ever.  I for one would not vote against either Microsoft or the US in the coming years continuing their pre-eminent positions in the world.

]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:24:05 +0000 world microsoft crazy world multi-polar world ago microsoft century 21st century drive fast cars unipolar american hegemony A new world order of computing - an analogy of Microsoft and the US <![CDATA[A new world order of computing - an analogy of Microsoft and the US]]> http://securityratty.com/article/d0937e020303cdef1a5e1057d91a3627 http://securityratty.com/article/d0937e020303cdef1a5e1057d91a3627

A couple of weeks ago Parag Khanna had an article in the NY Sunday Times Magazine called "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony". I thought this was one of the most important and enlightening articles I have read in years.  For me it crystallized up my own thoughts about what is going on in the crazy world we all live in. The gist of the article is that over the first decade of the 21st century we have seen a fundamental shift in the distribution of power in the world.  While we were busy fighting a crusade, the so called peace dividend of the post-cold war "new world order" never materialized and the unipolar American hegemony that was going to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the world never materialized.  Instead we find ourselves increasingly in a multi-polar world with two budding new superpowers (could Europe and China really be new?) - the European Union and China, competing very successfully, filling the vacuum we have left in many parts of the world.  There has been no lessening of violence or new golden age of mankind. Instead it seems like more of the same old, with the peoples of the world vying for more and more scarce resources.  The only thing for sure is certainly we are all interconnected economically more than ever.  This presents its own unique challenges and strategies. Who knows how the rest of this century will play out and whether or not it will be another "American Century" or not.  My blog is also not the right forum to explore my feelings on this topic either.

However, while reading an article in InfoWorld by Galen Gruman today on whether it is "Time to dump Windows", I was struck by the parallels (no pun intended with the Mac VM program which enables so much Mac adoption) between Microsoft and the US.  Like the US, about 10 or 15 years ago Microsoft was officially declared a monopoly.  It was the one true superpower of IT. Yeah, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy could tweak Bill's nose and drive fast cars, boats and planes, but lets face it they were midgets compared to the Redmond giants.  Microsoft rolled over competition like Lotus, Wordperfect and Netscape the way we did Mexico in the US-Mexican war. They even invested in Apple to prop them up as a potential rival like the US did in setting up banana republics. By the late 90's did anyone in the mainstream dare to speak out in public about Microsoft being potentially vulnerable and competing with them? Quite the contrary, companies who found out that Microsoft was entering their space would roll over and die.  I didn't think I would live to see in my lifetime so much talk of Microsoft being a dinosaur and not able to compete.

But as I wrote about last week, it seems articles like Grumans are the topic du jour. It is quite fashionable to say that Microsoft's time as the undisputed alpha dog may be drawing to a close.  They are under attack via the SaaS/Web 2.0 space from Google (and who knows what a Google dominated world looks like, it could be the frying pan to the fryer), their OS monopoly is being eroded like a bite out of the apple everday by shiny silver laptops and sleek wide screen monitors.  On the server front, Linux continues to capture share. The specter of thin clients running some java based non-windows OS still hangs out there.  The list goes on and on.

So is it the sunset of the American dynasty and Microsofts?  I think not.  As I wrote earlier, rumors of their demise are pre-mature. Yes, all things change and one company or country (or political party or sports team for that matter) cannot dominate forever.  But just because viable competitors come to the fore, does not mean that great companies or countries shrivel up and die.  In fact good competition can drive these old dogs to learn new tricks and become greater than ever.  I for one would not vote against either Microsoft or the US in the coming years continuing their pre-eminent positions in the world.

]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:27:32 +0000 world microsoft crazy world multi-polar world ago microsoft century 21st century drive fast cars unipolar american hegemony A new world order of computing - an analogy of Microsoft and the US <![CDATA[What If It Happened in 1979?]]> http://securityratty.com/article/6c088d7370ef78b086a5e4b16018a2eb http://securityratty.com/article/6c088d7370ef78b086a5e4b16018a2eb fun read," but there is a limit. I was about to say "hey, fun read!" but then thought better of it. So read "Timeline 9: "The Big D" - what if "the mid-east war escalated and the tensions between the superpowers grew. March 17, 1979 nuclear war broke out: Egyptian missiles with Soviet warheads struck against Israel ..." (read it) This is indeed one of the most detailed and enlightening "alternative future" scenarios that I've seen.
About me: http://www.chuvakin.org
]]> Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:23:00 +0000 soviet warheads struck mid-east war fun egyptian missiles alternative future nuclear war superpowers hey tensions What If It Happened in 1979?