It's summertime, and the living is easy. Or, in the case of this week's podcast, the living dead, who are not, as they say, resting easy. Instead, in the latest example of "give-them-some-money-and-scientists-will-study-ANYTHING," we have a paper from a team at the University of Ottawa entitled: "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection." Fair enough. Now, before you roll your eyes (into the back of your head), know this: the Ottawa crew really does feel that this research can teach us something about the spread of infectious diseases. And maybe about eating brains. Who knows? One thing I do know -- a lot of you out there in WTP land love zombies, so there was no way I was going to leave it out of episode 255.
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And now, back to your regularly scheduled podcast. On the more serious side, this week we take a look at botnets, those nasty groups of computers that are co-opted by criminals, and then spew out viruses and worms and spam. Yuck. Cyrus Farivar reports on some new research into how to stop botnets.
Unfortunately, the solution might require creating, essentially, "good guy" botnets. And that, I'm afraid, creates all kinds of ethical and legal challenges.
Then, since Cyrus is across all this stuff, we keep him around to talk about some new research from a Vermont-based outfit called The U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. Cyrus checks in with Scott Borg, chief economist there at USCCU, on a report that's just come out looking at last year's cyber-spat between Russia and Georgia. Sorry, I can't actually give you a copy of the report. Visit the website for details.
Next up, the British steam-powered car that's out to break the land speed record. We hear from driver Donald Wales. they're hoping to get this sweet ride (powered by 12 boilers, mind you) up to 130MPH and beyond. Wow. Right now, the team is at Edwards Air Force Base here in the United States, fighting the heat, broken boilers and punctured tires. Get the latest on the effort here.
What makes for a beautiful mix? Flamenco, hip-hop, and Creative Commons of course. Cody Canyon and Gnotes lay some Gnawledge on you. You have to love it when the Internet helps a plan, and a free album, come together. Did I mention the album is free? Download it here.
This is Gary McKinnon, and I've been following his strange story for the past three years. Just after September 11, 2001, McKinnon, who was an unemployed computer professional living in London, started hacking into poorly protected US government computer systems. The US government, in its grand jury indictment, alleges McKinnon illegally accessed nearly 100 different computers over a period of more than a year. The indictment also claims that McKinnon's actions caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, and left critical US computer systems vulnerable. All this, of course, just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when security was of the utmost concern. I first covered the McKinnon story in WTP 102, and then again in WTP 204. McKinnon has admitted hacking into US government systems, but he's always maintained that it was not with malicious intent. He claims he was looking for evidence of UFOs and pollution free energy systems, information on which he believes the American government is hiding. McKinnon, his family, and his lawyers have maintained through the years that Gary should be tried in the United Kingdom, as that is where he was when he was doing the hacking. The US government feels differently, arguing that the damage done was to systems and computers in the United States. For three years, US federal prosecutors have been trying to extradite McKinnon. Meanwhile, McKinnon's been fighting that extradition through every legal means as his disposal.
Last year, McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a kind of autism. His lawyers made one last appeal to the High Court, arguing that Gary might become psychotic or suicidal if forced to stand trial in the United States. Today, that court rejected that claim, and Gary moved one step closer to extradition. That's our top story for WTP 252. Right click here to download and take the podcast with you, or click on the player below.
We also take a look at some new technologies the US military is employing in its counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan. And we have a two-part look at the rise of Pirate Parties across the globe. We end with a look at how one young Japanese student wants to run an Obama-style Internet campaign in the upcoming elections, but is being thwarted by decades-old campaign laws.
The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 249) starts off with updates on two stories we've been following closely in recent weeks, Iran and China. First, an update on the use of social media tools in the wake of post-election violence in Iran. Twitter might be enabling the flow on information into and out of the country, but can you trust what you're reading? Cyrus Farivar explores that question. Also, the Chinese delay a plan to require every PC sold in China to come loaded with a piece of Internet-filtering software called Green Dam, Youth Escort. Human rights groups have criticized the software, and so too have security experts who say it's so full of holes that hackers could turn China into one huge zombie computer network.
Oh, that cute little cuddly bunny! Surely he or she wouldn't want to control what you're allowed to see online, right? Well, this is a screenshot from a little piece of Windows software called Green Dam Youth Escort. As of July 1, everyWindows PC sold in China will have to have this piece of software installed on it. According to Chinese officials, the software is designed to protect Chinese youth from "pornography and violent content" online. In the past, that's generally been a smokescreen for a major new push to curtail Internet freedom in China. As China web-watcher Rebecca McKinnon notes in this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 246): "[Green Dam Youth Escort] takes censorship down to the level of the individual computer." But already there are reports that the software is vulnerable to hack attacks.
Some weeks it is very hard to pull out one story from the Technology Podcast to feature front and center on the blog. After all, this week we run a wide tech gamut, featuring everything from writer Evgeny Morozov talking about the so-called "Twitter Revolution" in Moldova to Urban Pac-Man on the streets of Lyon, France. But for my money, the worthiest little story this week is about a solar oven, or "cooker" as the Brits would call it. It's called the Kyoto Box, and it recently took first prize for "green ideas" in a competition run by an organization called Forum for the Future. Solar ovens, which use sunlight to cook food or boil water, are not a new idea. But the Kyoto Box may be a game-changer because...well, they've kept the cost down by making it of cardboard. Yep, cardboard. We have an interview with the Kenya-based inventor of the Kyoto Box, Jon Bohmer. He tells us that he feels widespead use of the Kyoto Box would cut down on the burning of wood and other fossil fuels in resource-deprived parts of the world. Advantages: no carcinogenic wood smoke to be inhaled, or to contribute to global warming. Disadvantage: can cardboard really work as a cooker without catching on fire? Ah....listen in to find out.
There are also a couple of interesting, and potentially scary, security-related items in this week's podcast. We hear about the growing cyber-threats to America's electricity grid, and also about how extremist groups are using US servers to host their websites.
At the end, we lighten things up a bit. Jerome Burg is a retired teacher living in northern California. For more than 35 years, he taught high school English and tried to avoid chaperoning dances by also teaching technology to the school's journalism students. Then, a few years back, he was at Google headquarters learning about Google Earth, and it hit him: why not use Google Earth's different tools to help "three-dimensionalize" great works of literature? You know, add pictures, notes, geographical details, etc. Yeah, not bad, is it? And that's how Burg came to create GoogleLitTrips was born. The site recently won the 2008 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education.
Oh, and just because you know you secretly just HAVE to see this...video from Urban Pac-Man in Lyon, France:
This week's edition of The World's Technology Podcast (WTP 238) leads with a story on two recent reports concerning China and the Internet. The first, as you can see from graphic, is called Tracking GhostNet. It was researched and written by an outfit called the Information Warfare Monitor. This is a complementary effort to something I've written about before on the blog: the OpenNet Initiative(ONI). The people behind ONI started the Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) to do more extensive looks at what happens when nations, companies, and other entities go on the cyber-offensive. In this case, GhostNet refers to a massive south and south-east Asian cyber-espionage ring discovered by IWM researchers. More than 1,000 computers in more than 100 countries were targeted. And not just any computers. We're talking embassies, diplomatic missions, human rights groups and the like. And while it looks like Chinese computers were involved, you'll hear how hard (and illegal) it is to prove the Chinese government is behind it (something Beijing whole-heartedly denies). We have an extended interview with Ronald Deibert, one of the principal investigators on the project.
The other report is, admittedly, only partly about China and the Internet. The US-based rights group Freedom House has spent the last two years running a pilot project to monitor and gauge to overall level of Internet freedom in some 15 countries, ranging from Cuba to South Africa, from the United Kingdom to Iran. The result is Freedom on the Net. It ties into the story above because, perhaps not surprisingly, China earns a "not free" ranking from Freedom House when it comes to what the Chinese people can and can't access, what they can and can't say, online. I speak with Karin Karlekar, managing editor of the Freedom on the Net project.
As promised, we also have the second half of our interview Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution. You can read more about that from last week's post. At the end of the interview, I have some questions for him about Wikipedia and its history of being blocked, and now unblocked (at least most of it) in China.
And we end with a segment dedicated to all you Do-It-Yourself tech lovers out there. Make Magazine's been running Maker Faire since 2006. The Faires are true celebrations of personal creativity and craftiness: a solar-powered chariot pulled by an Arnold Schwarzenegger robot, anyone? Now, the party has moved across the big pond, to Britain. Listen in to hear how Maker Faire tranlates into Geordie (it was held in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) and all those other lovely dialects of the Queen's English. Good fun!
Also, big thanks to all you Twitter and Facebook followers who put shame aside and sent in your selections for the "What was the first song/album/band I listened to on a Sony Walkman?" question. The soundtrack to this week's podcast, for better of worse, is yours.
In last week's podcast (WTP 229), we featured an in-depth look at Google. We asked, where could the "do no evil" crowd be headed to next? This week, Technology Podcast 230 gives you a couple of answers. First underwater, courtesy of Google Ocean, which is part of the latest release of Google Earth. Finally, there seems to be some realization that the vast majority of the Earth's surface is covered with water. We'll get an assessment Google Ocean from Carl Safina, of the Blue Ocean Institute. And, just because it's still the middle of winter here in Boston, why not take a tour of the Mediterranean?
Most of the reaction to Google Ocean has been positive. But another Google product that just came out recently has some privacy advocates in a tizzy. It's called Google Latitude. You can put it on your computer or your mobile phone, and it allows you to share your location, with anyone, anywhere in the world. Now Google claims that the user has complete control over what location information is or isn't shared, and with whom. But Simon Davies of Privacy International doesn't buy it, and he tells us his reasons why on the podcast.
Also, the kind folks over at the BBC's Digital Planet program rang me up to ask me about a blogger who has recently taken up residence in Washington. You may have heard of him -- Barack Obama? Yes, the White House website features a "blog" of sorts now, although fans of Mr. Obama's more personal tone during the campaign may be a bit disappointed. It's part and parcel of what happens when the desire to reach out digitally meets the reality of governing in a place like Washington. Or at least that seems to be what I told Digital Planet. We'll have an excerpt on WTP 230.
And we check-in with freelancer and author Cyrus Farivar, who tells us about Estonia's bid to use some of its homegrown high-tech (Skype, anyone?) to help keep costs low at local hotels in the face of a growing global recession. Cyrus' forthcoming book, The Internet of Elsewhere, includes a chapter on Estonia, or E-stonia as the budding tech hub of the Baltic has branded itself. So, will free Skype calls from hotel rooms in Tallinn be enough to lure back the British bachelor party crowd? Listen in.
Estonia also figures into one other story on this week's podcast. You may remember that back in 2007, some fairly nasty cyberattacks took place in Estonia. The Estonians blamed the Russians, and the Russian government denied it. To date, only one ethnic Russian hacker in Estonia has been arrested in connection with the attacks. But the attacks so crippled Estonia's computer systems that NATO took note. The organization has made cyberdefense a priority, and has even opened a special unit at its headquarters outside of Brussels to deal with it. We get a behind-the-scenes look at ops there, courtesy of BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner.
And we end with a super-secret hidden track...an update on a story we've covered before. Yep, it's the Skycar, and it's making its way over the Sahara desert en route to Timbuktu in Mali. We check in with expedition leader Neil Laughton.
As always, we like to remind you that you can subscibe to The World's Technology Podcast via RSS, and via iTunes. You can also find us via internet radio aggregator services such as radiotime. Of course, if you'd like to sample before you subscribe, you can simply play episdode 230 below.
The Associated Press is running an interesting item today. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) says the Federal Bureau of Investigation has found that some of the Congressman's computers have been compromised. Well, more than compromised. "Hacked," in the media-tainted meaning (follow the previous link and read how we've tainted it), by "sources working out of China."
Wolf, who believes he was targeted because of he often attacks what he calls China's "abysmal human rights record," said that four of his government computers were hacked. The FBI is giving no details about what information these "sources working out of China" might have been able to access. Wolf, in an interview with the AP, claimed that similar incidents have occurred in the past, and that those attacks too originated in China.
Wolf today said the hacks started in August 2006, but that unnamed sources inside the government have asked him not to speak about it.
And he went on to speculate a bit: "If it's been done in the House, don't you think that they're doing the same thing in the Senate?"
The problem there is the "they're." Who is the "they?" The Chinese People's Liberation Army? Young Chinese hot-shot hackers who either a) are doing this for nationalistic reasons, or b) being paid by the Chinese government, or c) both? Or could it be someone outside of China who is simply using Chinese computers to launch attacks?
Experts say that even with serious sleuthing skills, it's hard to track down the real perpetrators of these kinds of attacks. To give you an idea of how complicated this can get, and quickly, take a listen to this radio piece I did a while back on purported Chinese hack attacks against Darfur activist groups.
All of this is going on at the same time the FBI is investigating another incident involving the Chinese and computers. This incident involves a laptop that Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez took with him on a trip to China. U.S. authorities think the Chinese might have copied the contents of that laptop, and used the information to tap into Commerce Department computers. It's a charge that the Chinese flatly deny.
It's certainly not the first time the Chinese have been accused of
targeting American government computers. Back in September, U.S.
officials accused the People's Liberation Army of hacking Pentagon computers.
For his part, Representative Wolf was to call for Congressional hearings into these matters, and to introduce a resolution that would "help ensure protection for all House computers and information systems."
Update: Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) claims his computer systems were hacked into in 2006 and 2007 as well. Here's a radio piece I did that moves the original post forward a bit. My favorite part -- when the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman says, "China is a developing country...do you really think we have this kind of advanced technology?" Priceless.
The notion that someone out there -- criminals, terrorists, nation states, disgruntled insiders -- may try to bring down critical US infrastructure via cyber-attack is hotly contested in the defense and homeland security communities. Some, like former Bush administration adviser Richard Clarke, has long argued that an Internet Pearl Harbor might be closer then we think. Here's an excerpt from a 2003 interview that Clarke gave PBS's Frontline program, for an episode entitled CYBERWAR!
Others have a more nuanced view. Bruce Schneier wrote an essay on the concept of cyberwar back in 2005. Here are some good paragraphs:
"Cyberwar is asymmetric, and can be a guerrilla attack. Unlike
conventional military offensives involving divisions of men and
supplies, cyberattacks are carried out by a few trained operatives. In
this way, cyberattacks can be part of a guerrilla warfare campaign.
Cyberattacks also make effective surprise attacks. For years we've
heard dire warnings of an "electronic Pearl Harbor." These are largely
hyperbole today. I discuss this more in that previous Crypto-Gram essay
on cyberterrorism, but right now the infrastructure just isn't
sufficiently vulnerable in that way.
Cyberattacks do not necessarily have an obvious origin. Unlike other
forms of warfare, misdirection is more likely a feature of a
cyberattack. It's possible to have damage being done, but not know
where it's coming from. This is a significant difference; there's
something terrifying about not knowing your opponent -- or knowing it,
and then being wrong. Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, we did not know
who attacked us?
Cyberwar is a moving target. In the previous paragraph, I said that
today the risks of an electronic Pearl Harbor are unfounded. That's
true; but this, like all other aspects of cyberspace, is continually
changing. Technological improvements affect everyone, including
cyberattack mechanisms. And the Internet is becoming critical to more
of our infrastructure, making cyberattacks more attractive. There will
be a time in the future, perhaps not too far into the future, when a
surprise cyberattack becomes a realistic threat."
I bring all of this up because yesterday the Government Accountability Office released a report on the potential network vulnerabilities at the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies power to some 9 million Americans. The TVA is responsible for more than 50 power-producing facilities in the United States. Here's a bit from the highlights, or lowlights:
And it went on...
The report came out the same day that the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity and Science and Technology convened a hearing to, well, hear from the people in charge of keeping America's electrical grid safe.
In short, officials conceded "some risk" that a cyberattack could cause a significant power disruption. Here's a snippet of the opening statement of Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC:
Kelliher also tried to assure Congress that "substantial progress" has been made in addressing concerns over vulnerabilities in the computer networks which protect the power grid.
The entire hearing is available for viewing here. The testimony is here. You may have to supply your own candles to read it...
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