Target Stores took a tremendous hit when hackers broke into company computers and stole the identities and credit card numbers of zillions of customers. Certainly I will think twice before shopping at Target.
Little has been released about how they did it. But it appears the bad guys infected the "point of sale" equipment (jargon for cash register). The malware skimmed off the credit card info right at the scanner, before it was encrypted.
Question: How do you infect a cash register with malware? Needless to say just about everything electronic has a microprocessor inside these days. They work off programs stored in memory. Understand that computer memory, random access memory (RAM) is volatile. When the power goes off, it forgets everything. An infection cannot survive living in RAM. It must work its way into non-volatile storage. In the good old days, devices like cash registers kept their programs in Programmable Read Only Memory, PROMS for short. PROMS were cheap and very dependable and best of all, they could not be written in circuit. Only special test equipment, PROM programmers, could write into PROMS. The only way to change programs burned into PROM was for a tech to open the device casework, remove the old PROM and insert a new PROM. You ain't going to pull off that stunt over the Internet. I suppose the bad guys could have infiltrated Target after closing hours (does Target ever close?) and rework all the cash registers. Does not sound likely to me.
And, technology moves on. They invented the Electrically Eraseable PROM, EEPROM which can be reprogrammed in circuit. Production loved them. They used to buy blank PROMS, keep them in the stockroom, program batches of them, get the programmed ones stuffed into boards as opposed to blank ones. Blank PROMs look just like programmed PROMS after all. And make sure the right version of the program is in the PROM. With EEPROMs all these possibilities of error go away. Just stuff the board and solder it, then program the EEPROM in circuit. And with EEPROMS we now have the possibility of changing the program in the cash register without laying a hand on it. Assuming the cash register make was stupid enough to allow reprogramming of his product in the field. There are plenty of ways to disable the programming capability before you ship the product.
Presumable the bad guys infected Target's central computers, the ones in finance and the stockroom that talk to the cash registers and total up dollar volume of sales and keep track of inventory so they can reorder product as it sells out. And somehow the central computers infected the cash registers, by sending new programming out over the wire to the checkout counters. Had Target been more security minded they would not have allowed the central computers to talk to the cash registers. Just listening is enough to make the system work.
I assume the Target people are hard at work securing things. I haven't heard that they had succeeded yet.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
The Russians are coming
To Ukraine it looks like. Ukraine in undergoing a revolution/civil war. The Russians are mobilizing their army. They call it "exercises" but it's mobilization, the troops are out in the field moving around, and it only takes a telephone call to send them over the border into Ukraine. The Russians look upon Ukraine as historically Russian territory. If it weren't for the strong and lasting reaction to a Ukraine Anschluss in Europe and America, they would have done it by now. Putin surely thinks Ukraine will fall into his lap, without international repercussions if he just plays a waiting game. So the troops stay in Russia for the time being. But that could change anytime. The Ukrainians have gotta be really worried, or perhaps scared to death, with the Russian army mobilized on their border.
Do we really need PreK?
Pre Kindergarten education for four year olds. Obama and DeBlasio have been plumping for it, calling for new taxes to pay for it. Question: Does PreK education to any good? Or are the kids just too young to get anything out of it? Head Start, the federal preK program started by JFK, doesn't seem to do much good. Studies show that any difference between Head Start kids and other kids is pretty much gone by third grade. Parents do find that PreK solves the daycare problem nicely, but that's about it.
Way back when, I have wonderful memories of playing out of doors with the Center St gang when I was 4 and 5. Having to start school when I was 6 was a downer. Playing with the gang beat sitting at a desk any day. Do we have to coop kids up in school so young?
Way back when, I have wonderful memories of playing out of doors with the Center St gang when I was 4 and 5. Having to start school when I was 6 was a downer. Playing with the gang beat sitting at a desk any day. Do we have to coop kids up in school so young?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Climate Change. What can't it do?
Cold and snowy winters, climate change. Drought in the US southwest, more climate change. Rain and flooding in Britain, climate change. Hot and sticky summers , climate change, Arctic ice cap melting out, climate change. Arctic ice cap freezing over, climate change.
Climate change is like bacon, it's good with everything. They used to call it Global Warming, except the Goddard Institute of Space Studies data shows world temps stopped rising about 1990 or 1991. So they changed over to calling it climate change. No matter what happens it's change. No hope, just evil change.
Call every bit of bad weather around the world climate change and of course it's evil and needs to be fought.
Oh yes, and they can tax the heat, tax the electricity, subsidize battery powered cars, raise the price of gasoline, demand real cars get 50 mpg, close down electric power plants, and attempt to force us back to a Hiawatha life style.
Climate change is like bacon, it's good with everything. They used to call it Global Warming, except the Goddard Institute of Space Studies data shows world temps stopped rising about 1990 or 1991. So they changed over to calling it climate change. No matter what happens it's change. No hope, just evil change.
Call every bit of bad weather around the world climate change and of course it's evil and needs to be fought.
Oh yes, and they can tax the heat, tax the electricity, subsidize battery powered cars, raise the price of gasoline, demand real cars get 50 mpg, close down electric power plants, and attempt to force us back to a Hiawatha life style.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Helicopter falls out of the sky
Happened last November 29th in Glasgow, Scotland. A police helicopter suffered twin engine failures, both engines quit, and the chopper fell onto the roof of a pub. All three crewmen and seven patrons of the pub were killed. Must have been quite a scene, crowded pub, everyone hoisting beer mugs, and suddenly a helicopter busts thru the ceiling and crashes on the bar.
Accident investigation hasn't found anything useful. Twin engine aircraft are not supposed to have both engines fail. That's why there are two of 'em. There was 5-6 gallons of fuel left in the tanks, enough to 10-15 minutes of flight. Nothing wrong was found in either engine. No radio distress calls were made. The main and tail rotors had stopped turning by the time the helo hit the roof. No evidence of an autorotation to a safe landing. The chopper was just flying along, both engines stop, and it falls like a brick. No one knows why.
Accident investigation hasn't found anything useful. Twin engine aircraft are not supposed to have both engines fail. That's why there are two of 'em. There was 5-6 gallons of fuel left in the tanks, enough to 10-15 minutes of flight. Nothing wrong was found in either engine. No radio distress calls were made. The main and tail rotors had stopped turning by the time the helo hit the roof. No evidence of an autorotation to a safe landing. The chopper was just flying along, both engines stop, and it falls like a brick. No one knows why.
So how big a US Army do we need?
First let look at what we might need the Army to do. How about defending Israel from invasion? How about doing regime change on Iran rather than allowing them to go nuclear? How about staving off an invasion of South Korea? Or, in the aftermath of a second Korean War, doing regime change in Pyongyang? How about intervening in some armpit in Africa to prevent another genocide? How about cleaning out pirate bases in Somalia? How about intervention in the Balkans, or some East European armpit?
I'm not saying that we ought to do any of these things, but I do think America needs the capability, just in case. So what does it take to do the job? We did Iraq with 140,000 troops deployed in country. It would take more to deal with North Korea. Let's say we need 200,000 soldiers on active duty, with maybe that many again in the reserves. Modern war is quick, you gotta run what you brung. There is not time to enlist and train troops, the war is over before that happens.
Obama wants to cut the army down to 450,000 men. Sounds like enough? Dunno. The 140,000 soldiers sent to Iraq were all combat troops, infantry, tankers, gunners. Historically, the US Army has a ratio of tooth to tail of about 9 to1. For every combat soldier carrying weapons in the face of the enemy there are nine support troops driving supply trucks, manning depots, cooking, doing paperwork, fixing jeeps, building schools and bridges, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Based on past experience, a 450,000 man US Army might contain only 45,000 real soldiers, which clearly ain't enough.
In actual fact, American troops have plenty of experience in every line of work. Men capable of fighting on the front line, are capable of doing pretty much anything else that might be needed. I suggest that a lot of the specialists behind the lines could be re trained as infantry and sent to the front. Regular units can do much of the work now done by specialists. If we could get the ratio of tooth to tail down to maybe 2 to 1, then maybe 450,000 men might be enough.
I'm not saying that we ought to do any of these things, but I do think America needs the capability, just in case. So what does it take to do the job? We did Iraq with 140,000 troops deployed in country. It would take more to deal with North Korea. Let's say we need 200,000 soldiers on active duty, with maybe that many again in the reserves. Modern war is quick, you gotta run what you brung. There is not time to enlist and train troops, the war is over before that happens.
Obama wants to cut the army down to 450,000 men. Sounds like enough? Dunno. The 140,000 soldiers sent to Iraq were all combat troops, infantry, tankers, gunners. Historically, the US Army has a ratio of tooth to tail of about 9 to1. For every combat soldier carrying weapons in the face of the enemy there are nine support troops driving supply trucks, manning depots, cooking, doing paperwork, fixing jeeps, building schools and bridges, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Based on past experience, a 450,000 man US Army might contain only 45,000 real soldiers, which clearly ain't enough.
In actual fact, American troops have plenty of experience in every line of work. Men capable of fighting on the front line, are capable of doing pretty much anything else that might be needed. I suggest that a lot of the specialists behind the lines could be re trained as infantry and sent to the front. Regular units can do much of the work now done by specialists. If we could get the ratio of tooth to tail down to maybe 2 to 1, then maybe 450,000 men might be enough.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Mars has rivers
A lot of rivers. We put a photo recon satellite, the Mars Global Surveyor, into orbit around Mars in 1997. It carried wonderful cameras that returned zillions of sharp clear photographs of the Martian surface. The best of the pictures are collected in a softback book "A travelers guide to Mars", William K. Hartmann. Thumbing thru this book, the dried up river beds are striking, and there are lot of 'em. There is no question that they are rivers, even to my layman's eye they really look like rivers. You can see deltas at the end of them where they flowed into ancient Martian seas. Shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Some of them flowed recently (like within the last 10 million years). You can tell by counting meteor craters. Old (going back to the formation of Mars) land is wall to wall craters. New land, recent lava flows, has fewer craters, partly because they have had less time to accumulate meteor hits, and partly because the meteor hit rate has dropped off in more recent times. The plentiful meteors at the time of solar system formation got swept up by planets over time. Some of the rivers have no craters at all, which makes them very recent.
The unanswered question is, where did the water come from, and where did it go? We have found a few dozen meteorites on Earth that we believe came from Mars. Some have been dated back to 4500 megayears (pretty much the formation of Mars) and some to as recently as 167 megayears. All of them had been soaked in liquid water at some time in their past, as evidenced by deposits of water borne minerals in cracks and crevices. So there was a lot of water on Mars, as recently as the youngest meteorites. We think the water is still there, soaked into the soil and frozen.
We think Mars has been cold, and short on atmosphere, as it is today, for the last 3000 megayears. So how did the water to form river beds as recently as 10 megayears ago come from? No good answer has been proposed as of yet. We think there is plenty of water frozen in the Martian soil, but how did it melt and flow on the surface? No one knows.
We now think that Mars had open water, seas and rivers from the beginning, say 4500 megayears ago, until perhaps 3000 megayears ago. That gives 1500 megayears for some kind of life to evolve in Martian seas. Perhaps some such life still exists somewhere on Mars.
Some of them flowed recently (like within the last 10 million years). You can tell by counting meteor craters. Old (going back to the formation of Mars) land is wall to wall craters. New land, recent lava flows, has fewer craters, partly because they have had less time to accumulate meteor hits, and partly because the meteor hit rate has dropped off in more recent times. The plentiful meteors at the time of solar system formation got swept up by planets over time. Some of the rivers have no craters at all, which makes them very recent.
The unanswered question is, where did the water come from, and where did it go? We have found a few dozen meteorites on Earth that we believe came from Mars. Some have been dated back to 4500 megayears (pretty much the formation of Mars) and some to as recently as 167 megayears. All of them had been soaked in liquid water at some time in their past, as evidenced by deposits of water borne minerals in cracks and crevices. So there was a lot of water on Mars, as recently as the youngest meteorites. We think the water is still there, soaked into the soil and frozen.
We think Mars has been cold, and short on atmosphere, as it is today, for the last 3000 megayears. So how did the water to form river beds as recently as 10 megayears ago come from? No good answer has been proposed as of yet. We think there is plenty of water frozen in the Martian soil, but how did it melt and flow on the surface? No one knows.
We now think that Mars had open water, seas and rivers from the beginning, say 4500 megayears ago, until perhaps 3000 megayears ago. That gives 1500 megayears for some kind of life to evolve in Martian seas. Perhaps some such life still exists somewhere on Mars.
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