[H]undreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of... security cameras and other devices have been infected with a fairly simple program that guessed at their factory-set passwords — often “admin” or “12345” or even, yes, “password” — and, once inside, turned them into an army of simple robots. Each one was commanded, at a coordinated time, to bombard a small company in Manchester, N.H., called Dyn DNS with messages that overloaded its circuits....But "the internet of things" sounds so cute. All the cute stuff will be rallied by... whoever it is out there issuing commands.
[I]t is not clear in the United States who is supposed to be protecting [the Internet]. The network does not belong to the government — or really to anyone...
The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to provide the baseline of internet defense for the United States.... The F.B.I. investigates breaches, but that takes time....
Most of the devices have been hooked up to the web over the past few years with little concern for security. Cheap parts, some coming from Chinese suppliers, have weak or no password protections, and it is not obvious how to change those passwords....
Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area.
Posts
147 comments:
The solution is obviously for nice guys to infect the devices first.
DHS. That would be Jeh Johnson. The National Security Advisor is Susan Rice. Both asleep at the switch. Both have failed. But Trump says he is going to sue those lyin' women!
What the Hell kind of name is "Jeh" anyways?
The internet of things is insanely stupid.
Wait until you see the internet of spirits.
Here are the 10 most common passwords used on devices connected to the Internet:
password
123456
12345678
1234
qwerty
12345
dragon
pussy
baseball
football
http://www.passwordrandom.com/most-popular-passwords
There is no fix for consumers who refuse to take the most elementary security precautions, such as choosing a password that's something personal that they can easily remember but no one else can easily guess.
Just like there is no fix for drivers who won't install any security devices in their car and even leave the doors open and the keys in the ignition when they park it.
In the last four years, my credit cards have been hacked four times, an average of once per year. None of those were my fault. Each time, either a business got hacked or the credit card company itself did.
Tragedy of the commons. Hillary will fix it if there's hard cash in it for her.
I don't want my refrigerator directing terrorists to my kitchen.
But this is a clown story, as in Creepy Clowns 2016.
Actually, Hillary's fixing skills lie outside of math, science and technology.
PUSSY!?!?!? That god damned Donald Trump, how many devices does he own?
Opportunity for yet another government program, device registration plus annual fee, not to mention enormous staff and requisite SWAT team.
"Wipe it? With what? A rag?"
"Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area." Sarcasm, I know but -- her experience tells her ignorance is an excuse, and law-breaking goes unpunished if you're a Dem, and the American people don't care anymore that foreigners exploit our lack of security, and everything comes down to a political calculation about personal power advantage, screw anything and anyone else.
Best line of the voting machine salesman:
"And you can see real time voting totals from your phone"
I'm seeing tens of Millions in donations to the Clinton Foundation from the Internet of everything companies. Bill and Chelsea are going to be making so many speeches. And then, Hillary will "fix" things.
Internet security is way past what the oldsters can handle, and they're the ones buying all he dumb internet appliances.
Just one more reason to round them up into FEMA camps, once Hillary takes their guns.
Hacking is not law breaking if a foreign country does it.
In the last four years, my credit cards have been hacked four times, an average of once per year. None of those were my fault. Each time, either a business got hacked or the credit card company itself did.
Use virtual credit card numbers. If your card doesn't offer the service, change cards.
You log in and ask for a numher, with dollar and time limits, and use that number for the online transaction. Once it's used, only that same business can use the number again. So it's worthless to steal even if they're hacked.
David Begley said...
DHS. That would be Jeh Johnson. The National Security Advisor is Susan Rice. Both asleep at the switch. Both have failed.
The internet is a classic example of the government conceding control of technology that they developed in order to allow the private sector to commercialize that technology and make massive profits. Yet, when something goes wrong it's the governments fault? I call BS. Someone made those devices, someone sold those devices and someone installed them. None of those someones was the government.
Virtual credit card numbers don't work well with Amazon though, because they keep changing what the business name is depending on what division charges it and whim.
commercialize that technology and make massive profits.
They don't make massive profits. They have competitors that will steal their business if they try for massive profits.
The benefit goes to the consumer, not the business, unless the business can get the government to keep competitors out. Hillary is an expert on that, at least. Hillary gets money, and the business gets, as you say, massive profits in return.
"What the Hell kind of name is "Jeh" anyways?"
Sounds Canadian.
The return on investment goes to zero as time goes on, in any business that's unregulated and hence unprotected. Economic fact.
The only slight edge for the existing business is that he's already sunk startup costs and so has a slight advantage over a new competitor, once the profits go to unattractive. The new competitor sees it's not very attractive and goes somewhere else.
rhhardin said...
They don't make massive profits. They have competitors that will steal their business if they try for massive profits.
Google, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba are all effective monopolies.
There's no such thing as The Cloud; just Other People's Computers.
For the right fee, Hillary will get them tracked down and droned. Got to find one positive thing about having a criminal in the White House.
Girl with the Pony Tail on the Treadmill:
I was doing my routine on the treadmill yesterday when I noticed this guy across the room. Got a weird vibe.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
He was trying to be sly, but I realized he had his phone out, and he was filming me.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Psycho.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Like I don't know what he's going to do with THAT when he gets home.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Sick.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Then I realize: that's creepy enough as it is, but -- I don't know -- what if he put that on the internet?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
There could be people all over the world right now, staring at my ass as I'm running.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
Maybe there's an entire web community out there that shares video of girls working out at the gym. Ew.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I don't even want to know what the comments are.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
What if one of them tries to find me? Like some creepy Russian dude? With all those weird Russian tattoos?
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
All of a sudden I'm in the trunk of some guy's car. That shit happens.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
It's probably all right.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
It was just one creep. That's all.
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
My ass IS looking good right now...
(pony-tail swish, pony-tail swish)
I am Laslo.
Blogger Mark said..."Internet security is way past what the oldsters can handle, and they're the ones buying all he dumb internet appliances."
I doubt that. You have any data to back that up?
"What the Hell kind of name is "Jeh" anyways?"
Pronounced Jay
ARM
It is the job of the government to protect us. Defense. Gun makers make money but that doesn't mean the government is relieved of defending us from our enemies.
Surely you jest.
Or is that, Shirley you gest.
David Begley said...
It is the job of the government to protect us. Defense. Gun makers make money but that doesn't mean the government is relieved of defending us from our enemies.
To do this adequately would require massive regulatory intervention on the part of the government. Is that what you advocating? Wouldn't it be more consistent with market principles to place blame where blame lies, on the lazy, stupid and incompetent commercial interests involved?
ARM
What are you suggesting? Does it involve patents? I know that the PTAB is killing patents at a record pace.
ARM being obtuse.
the government conceding control of technology that they developed in order to allow the private sector to commercialize that technology and make massive profits.
Do you really think the government that can't design a web site that works, developed all the technology ?
I know, you are going to claim all this was invented by DARPA.
FTP, the original protocol was written by Abhay Bhusan in INdia.
TCP/IP was written by Vint Cerf and Bob Khan and they did work for ARPANET, but government has had very little to do with the internet since.
I know you are opposed to profits but try to be a little more realistic.
Google, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba are all effective monopolies.
The first two do it by providing spectacular service, though for political searches it pays to vary the provider. There are competitors.
Nobody buys groceries through Amazon except for one-offs. It's too expensive.
Paper ballots marked with indelible ink.
Why would Homeland Security stop this, they probably instigated it as a black flag operation. 24 to 48 hours after the dems and media accuse the Russians of hacking our elections this happens. Christ, this administration lies about everything else.
"Blogger stlcdr said..."There's no such thing as The Cloud; just Other People's Computers."
Yep.
We are slowly starting to look for a car to replace our 18 year old one. The car I looked at yesterday had all these "features" you could run from your phone. Remote start, remote heat control, door locks.
No, No, No, No, No!!!
How does someone find out what the most common passwords are? I thought that was a secret.
Maybe it's "123whatthefuckareyoulookingatbitch".
Michael K said...
government has had very little to do with the internet since.
Au contraire, every aspect of internet function, up to and including the first successful browser, Mosaic, was developed by support from government research agencies. Take the blinders off. Extreme partisanship is not a successful way to view the world.
We're at an income level we could buy a "luxury" car, but we're going to have to go downscale (which is just fine with me) just to avoid all the crap.
SukieTawdry suggests:Paper ballots marked with indelible ink.
Sounds crazy but it just might work!
A nation like Somalia probably has the most secure infrastructure now days. The reason why probably puts us at a great disadvantage to our enemies, and our allies share our vulnerabilities.
"Extreme partisanship is not a successful way to view the world."
et tu quoque.
Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area.
@Meade, please tell me that your lady-love was being sarcastic.
The idea that large companies, espcially monopolies, are separate from government and free of it's influence and control is only valuable as a point of misinformation and deflection. They are regulated, but regulations can be waived, and most of that control is used to strengthen them and their monopolies in cooperation with the government.
A billions baby trials is the solution. It's always the solution. It will "retire" the unmanaged and insecure network cells.
"Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area."
Of course she will. She will put as many small innovators out of business as possible and entrench the wealthy tech interests. It is what democrats do.
I think there are a lot of internet-connected things that the consumer doesn't even think about as a privacy interest. The consumer just doesn't care. Do you know which of your things are connecting to the internet and would you know how to change the password or bother to learn?
If there is a mastermind out there bent on world domination or general chaos, like in the Bond films, I think they may actually pull it off with internet technology where space weapons have failed them. The Agent 007 we need now should have a pocket protector and I suppose an old dusty condom in his wallet.
bagoh20 said...
The idea that large companies, espcially monopolies, are separate from government and free of it's influence and control is only valuable as a point of misinformation and deflection.
This statement seems to be an attempt at "misinformation and deflection". The companies involved in the internet of things have primarily been relatively small startups.
the government conceding control of technology that they developed in order to allow the private sector to commercialize that technology and make massive profits
It is this abstraction of people, men and women, boys and girls, and babies, too, that has justified the Left's abortion fields of the 20th and 21st centuries.
n.n said...
It is this abstraction of people, men and women, boys and girls, and babies, too, that has justified the Left's abortion fields of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Is there any discussion where abortion cannot be used for purposes of moral preening?
Deflection? No, deflection is supporting the concept that the State can run our lives better than we can, but then blaming failure of the State on the private sector.
Someone upthread nailed it: National Defense. That's the government's portfolio, and they have failed miserably. Starting with Obama and Biden's reckless threats directed at Putin. He called their bluff, and they cowered back to their corners like little yipyap doggies.
On the bright side, the Left's capture of America won't last long. They will taken down by Russia or China. Why? Because they live in these fantasy narratives that don't survive when forced into reality. Because they never take responsibility for their failed policies, which means they never learn from their mistakes.
The Internet of Things and self-driving cars are mostly features consumers don't want and only add to the cost. Think of fins on cars.
"Do you know which of your things are connecting to the internet ...?"
Yes. I won't buy internet connected things unless there is a compeeling need (like this iPad).
"where abortion cannot be used for purposes of moral preening"
Hah. Millions of babies murdered.
"Is their any discussion where the Holocaust cannot be used for moral preening" said the Nazi to the Jew...
Relax..much ado about folks' yoga pics.
Do you know which of your things are connecting to the internet and would you know how to change the password or bother to learn?
(1) Pretty sure. This computer has an encrypted hard drive and is password protected.
(2) I bother to learn and actually change the passwords.
"This statement seems to be an attempt at "misinformation and deflection". The companies involved in the internet of things have primarily been relatively small startups. "
My statement was in response to your implied statement that companies like Google and Facebook are separate from the government.
As to the laziness or incompetence of the private sector, it is not generally what their customers are paying them for. Therefore it is not their job until customers demand it, or the company's leaders envision them doing so. The government's laziness and incompetence is a direct failure at their core purpose and the reason we give them power and funding.
If there is a mastermind out there bent on world domination or general chaos, like in the Bond films
Hacker movies are the most fun to watch. At the moment very fast typing and assembler interpreted core dumps are the favorite memes.
Somebody should do a list of them.
The villain starting the chaos by punching a large button SAVE with the cursor arrow is the most fun of all.
Everyone should vote for Trump. Then, every Hillary vote will be evidence of fraud.
ARM,
you are right that Google/Facebook/Amazon make a lot of money from the internet.
You are wrong, in that Google/Facebook/Amazon are not the companies making Internet-of-Things devices with bad security and easy-to-guess default passwords.
I think you're confusing two large categories.
Category A is companies that use the Internet economy to make a lot of money off of data that is about you, and what you like. (Google, Facebook, and Amazon).
Category B is companies that makes low-security items that most users connect to the Internet (wirelessly, or plugged in) in a way that allows cyber-criminals to use them as source-of-attack.
The companies in Category B make lots of profits on their new hardware, until a competitor makes the same thing for cheap. They they race to the cheapest-to-manufacture version.
"This statement seems to be an attempt at "misinformation and deflection". The companies involved in the internet of things have primarily been relatively small startups. "
This is why it is successful.
But democrats are trying to fix this problem in the usual ways to bring the internet back into the fold. They especially hate disruptive technologies.
Better that we turn administration of the internet over to an international body, right? Obama has take the first step already.
Has anybody noticed power outages getting very rare and short? The power company is putting remotely controlled switches in the lines (where manual padlocked switches were) to arrange rerouting around damage, so they fix it remotely very fast before the crew even gets there, unless you're in an unlucky spot close to the damage.
I wonder if the switches are on the internet.
The power company started reading my meter remotely, which I think means a truck drives by and transmits a query and receives a reply, but it's just radio.
If trees were on the internet, they could strike back.
"The power company started reading my meter remotely, which I think means a truck drives by and transmits a query and receives a reply, but it's just radio"
And you know what? The signal is almost assurdly not encrypted. Which means if someone wants to know if you're on vacation, all they have to do is check your power usage.
Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area.
No, she has years of experience taking millions of ordinary web-connected people — many of them highly insecure — and turning them to vicious purposes.
"...self-driving cars are mostly features consumers don't want and only add to the cost."
Oh, I'd pay double or even more for a self-driving car if it could be legally used on the roads, even if it was slightly more dangerous than my own driving. It would probably be cheaper than what I'm paying now to both own a car and also pay a slightly more dangerous Uber driver to drive me around for the sake of convenience.
Just the other night, four of us took an Uber on an hour and half drive each way to a play across town so that we could drink, avoid having to find and pay parking, relax and talk in the terrible traffic, and the best part is not having to find or get back to your car at the end of the evening. A few taps on the phone and they pick you up wherever you are in 3-4 minutes, then you can sleep on the way home.
I would love be able to read, web surf, or sleep on a 4 hour trip to Vegas in my own car. Imagine self-driving motorhomes. You just go about life like you're at home, only enjoying the changing scenery, and you wake up at some distant location refreshed and ready to enjoy it - no lines, no getting tickets, no trips to the airport or train station. Awesome!, at least to the guy who always ends up doing the driving. Self-driving vehicles will revolutionize and improve our lives as much as the car did in the first place. Therefore, our betters in government will fight them tooth and nail.
My office security system is connected to the internet. I didn't have a choice. That's just the way it is. My office phones are controlled by the internet. It was cheaper than the phone company. And the service was better. I know someone who works maintenance for a building owned by the state. The heat and cooling system is controlled remotely by someone in the state capital via internet, two and half hours away. I am trying to think of other things that might be internet connected in my home or my office, that aren't obvious, but most of my things are very old.
I don't think people should be concerned about hackers stealing the election with toasters or baby monitors. But have you seen what polling stations look like in the Deep South and certain urban areas? Oh my God! It's like the Third World. Maybe it's worse, I don't know, but these places, literally tens of thousands of them, look decrepit and filthy. And these polling stations are run by people who seem to suffer from massive brain damage. The Guardian interviewed these idiots in various opinion pieces that were meant to establish the nastiness and racism that is endemic to the United States. Wow! Also security is non-existent. Good luck convincing some people that the election won't be stolen!
And you know what? The signal is almost assurdly not encrypted. Which means if someone wants to know if you're on vacation, all they have to do is check your power usage.
They'd have to do it twice, because all that's there is the cumulative total.
You can get that with the old meters, just read them. Put on a green vest and hard hat and take them down all over the neighborhood.
Ann Althouse said...
I think there are a lot of internet-connected things that the consumer doesn't even think about as a privacy interest. The consumer just doesn't care. Do you know which of your things are connecting to the internet and would you know how to change the password or bother to learn?
10/23/16, 10:42 AM
Yes and yes. When I log in to my router's admin, I can see a list of attached devices and which channel they're on. Computers, phones, iPad, Apple TV, printer, Chromecasts...
Bagoh
You must be a rich person who lives in a big city. Most people aren't.
No offense meant.
The way she did it, was by there being no way for a hacker to get the password:
1) No backdoor password reset with security questions. If a password or a device needed to reset, the linkage was personally approved of by the SYSOP, Justin Cooper.
2) The user probably did not even know the password, and so couldn't give it away, because the password was set probably set randomly and memorized by a machine while the device was being linked. It was probably co-ordinated by telephone between Bryan Pagliano in Washington and Justin Cooper in New York. *
3) Password not vulnerable to a dictionary attack.
4) No phishing attacks, because few messages would be plausible because very few people knew the e-mail address, and none of them commercial
5) Hackers didn't even know what software it was running, so even of they got in, say hacking nto a device taht was lready connected they could only see what that person saw..
6) System small, so any mis-use would have been detected pretty fast becausde activity on the server would have spiked.
* I'm taking till 2013.
By the way, the system had its 3 TB extrnal hard drive replaced in 2011 by a CISCO NAV storage device at a cost of $8,743 paid to Bryan Pagliano, which the Clintns deducted as a business expense on their tax return.
They claimed they had a speechmaking business.
They had to claim that the server was used 100% for the speechmaking business to take the deduction, although they didn't explicitly do that, but without that they would not be entitltled to deduct 100% of what it xost them.
Remember, nothing is illegal as long as it's disclosed.
They also paid $5,000 to Bryan Pagliano in 2009 to get started. (the server already exisated, but a separate doman was set up I think)
"Which means if someone wants to know if you're on vacation, all they have to do is check your power usage."
Or look at the lawn. Or your Facebook page.
If they want to know you are away, they will find out you are away.
In 1999 Bill Clinton approved the transfer of highly sensitive satellite technology from Loral Corp. to the People's Republic of China. This was technology previously held as 'not transferable'. As you probably guessed before finishing the previous sentence, Loral Corp was a large donor to the Clinton Family Fund (aka his campaign). Of course, the Clintons were taking money from both sides in this case, having previously accepted large donations from Chinese Nationals to fund his campaign. These people then had to flee the country to avoid prosecution (see Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie among others). The Clintons then moved to pretty much global money-for-favors after they left the White House with introduction of their Foundation. It is, under any objective eye- a money laundering firm. Hillary, in the meantime, has proven very successful in removing classified information from secure locations and placing them in very accessible locations in her home. Her associates (John Pedestal, et al) also became official bumblers adding to the take of US Classified info by the Chinese, Russians, and pretty much anyone with a computer.
We're about to place Her and Him (or is it Zir and Ze?) back in the White House. Nice job, America. Obama has broken our foreign policy and our domestic culture. Our economy is mired in huge debt and 1% GDP. We're going to add a layer of Hillary on top of that. For those of you under 35...good luck.
Few have heard of Dyn, but it essentially acts as one of the internet’s giant switchboards. Bring it to a halt, and the problems spread instantly.
This is a nice way of saying that both DYN & the companies that used it did not have redundant DNS servers for their public-facing systems. DYN may have sold them the crock that they (DYN) could provide redundant DNS but clearly that wasn't true.
The scale of this DDoS attack was larger than those in the past, but the hacking concept is old & tried & true: shut down a site's DNS service (i.e. the name resolution service that converts a URL into an IP address, e.g. www.yabbadabbado.org to 192.168.2.4). Everyone involved in this should have had a fallback DNS servers. I mean, shit, how difficult or expensive is it to have some virtual Linux servers on premise with up-to-date DNS tables that can be spun-up in a jiffy?
This is the problem with outsourcing core functions like DNS resolution. Your eggs get put in that one big target basket, too.
"You must be a rich person who lives in a big city. Most people aren't.
No offense meant."
None taken and I understand your uneasiness is saying that, but isn't it strange that even in the nation most identified with the wonderful concept of upward mobility that we would either use wealth as a pejorative or that we could be ashamed of it? I understand not bragging, but being ashamed makes no sense unless you stole the money, which is why I suppose Democrats are always attacking being rich, and pretending to be poor.
AReasonableMan said...
David Begley said...
DHS. That would be Jeh Johnson. The National Security Advisor is Susan Rice. Both asleep at the switch. Both have failed.
The internet is a classic example of the government conceding control of technology that they developed in order to allow the private sector to commercialize that technology and make massive profits. Yet, when something goes wrong it's the governments fault? I call BS. Someone made those devices, someone sold those devices and someone installed them. None of those someones was the government.
To be accurate the idea was first floated at IBM as a way of mainframes talking to each other. The world wide web was created by a computer scientist at CERN in Switzerland. The much vaunted ARPANET was still mostly for institutions to talk to each other.
And Amazon and Alibaba are competitors.
"You can get that with the old meters, just read them. Put on a green vest and hard hat and take them down all over the neighborhood."
Or they can drive through the neighborhood and get hundreds of houses in half an hour.
"Or look at the lawn. Or your Facebook page.
If they want to know you are away, they will find out you are away."
I have the lawn mowed, and I don't do Facebook (this is one, of many, reasons why).
I take care to have the house looked lived in. Cheap security. And it would have been cheap security for the utility company to encryp their signal. They just didn't care.
It sounds so simple but the addition of easy access to artificial memory cancels out short-term loss. The unexamined life is growing impossible and forcing change across the planet. The human brain is evolving and exploiting artificial memory. I think we are watching that evolution speed up and radically change our latest generation right now. Average IQ is rising.
Hold on because the space coaster is close to cresting the top and will soon be putting all of us into a different world view.
rhhardin said...The villain starting the chaos by punching a large button SAVE with the cursor arrow is the most fun of all.
--
I always get a laugh out of the sound effects they continue to attach to every computer action.
"Virtual credit card numbers don't work well with Amazon though, because they keep changing what the business name is depending on what division charges it and whim."
Use PayPal, or ApplePay or SamsungPay or CitiPay, if the vendor uses whichever one(s) you might have. Does Amazon have AmazonPay yet? If not, you can be sure they will.
"Christ, this administration lies about everything else."
Very true.
Every administration lies about everything. Don't make erroneous assumptions to the contrary.
"Every administration lies about everything. Don't make erroneous assumptions to the contrary."
We just need more government to protect us from the one we have.
After Hillary takes over- look for more and more mega corporations to consolidate into even larger and more powerful mega-corporations. When Hillary says she wants to help "small business" - she's lying. She's wants to destroy mom and pop, and help her cronies globalize and create a power structure that only enriches the few. That’s how socialism works. Like Castro and his private blood bank. A globalist power structure that crushes the little guy is a bonus for the power-mad corruptocrat party.. Rich are richer, poor are poorer, middle class squeezed and out of the way. Winning.
Even now she's crawling back to TPP.
Hillary will destroy as much of the private sector as she can. Only the big mega-democrat-corporations and Democrat Media Industrial Complex who give bigly to her will survive. An they do give bigly to her. More swallowing to come. Is it any wonder that idiot Madonna is so keen on HER and all that nice corruption?
"We just need more government to protect us from the one we have."
April Apple warns: When Hillary says she wants to help "small business" - she's lying. She's wants to destroy mom and pop, and help her cronies globalize and create a power structure that only enriches the few.
Just like Obama she certainly wants to destroy private practice medicine in favor of medical mega-corporations.
"If they want to know you are away, they will find out you are away."
Which why I have a house sitter and dog sitter when we travel. She charges $5 a day more than boarding the dog.
The good news about 'Climate Change' is that it projects doom for the coastal communities, most of which are blue. ;-)
Mockturtle - re Obamacare/healthcare: The standard lefty argument is "No fair - Big Insurance company CEO's make too much money." (So the left demand the destruction of our entire health care industry over CEO pay. Terrific.)
Now these mega healthcare CEO's still haul in a lot of much money, except that instead of being paid for making a superior product, they are being paid by tax payers for failing. Thanks government!
We just need more government to protect us from the one we have.
Heh. The next big government fix is right around the corner, and it's gonna be great this time! Promise.
If states were afforded the autonomy and rights granted in our Constitution, this monster would not have been allowed to self-create. It's our bad, for many generations. We keep buying into thinking that government is the solution rather than the problem.
"The good news about 'Climate Change' is that it projects doom for the coastal communities, most of which are blue. ;-)"
Kinda too bad it's not going to come to pass.
This is an externalities problem. The person whose internet-connected thing is hacked never sees any signs of the hacking and suffers no adverse consequences. Rather, the hacker uses the internet-connected thing to attack a third party's website. Thus, the owner of the thing has no incentive to prevent hacking, and the entity with the incentive to prevent hacking has no access to the thing.
"Kinda too bad it's not going to come to pass."
Heh!
"After Hillary takes over- look for more and more mega corporations to consolidate into even larger and more powerful mega-corporations. When Hillary says she wants to help "small business" - she's lying. She's wants to destroy mom and pop, and help her cronies globalize and create a power structure that only enriches the few. That’s how socialism works."
No, that's the inevitable end result of uncurbed, unregulated capitalism.
" that's the inevitable end result of uncurbed, unregulated capitalism."
Says the man who has no idea of what free markets are. "Capitalism"is a Marxist term.
If I had to choose between 'unbridled Capitalism' and unbridled government control, I'll take the former.
If you are not freaked out enough - watch "Nosedive" - Black Mirror/Season 3, Episode 1.
Then read this article:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans
The more I learn, the more I retreat from technology and vow to stick with my folding phone and pay as you go plan. My employer is constantly asking me to access LinkedIn profiles for one reason or another. I keep having to remind him: "No, YOU do that as I don't have a LinkedIn profile and don't want one."
I won't be surprised at all if my employer insists I have a digital/social media presence at some point. Hoping it never gets to that.
This mild, by Althouse standards, hysteria against the government reminds me of the not so mild hysteria about Ebola. How did that work out? Yes, the government could more tightly regulate the internet to reduce many of these problems. Yes, that regulation would stifle innovation. Idiots expect perfection from government when there will always be tradeoffs in the real world. In general I don't think people posting here are so dumb as to expect perfection but instead are animated by crazy partisan agendas to pretend that perfection should exist.
"Even now she's crawling back to TPP."
She never left it. Anything she's said in opposition to TPP has been a lie to pander to the Bernie supporters out there, (who showed by their support for him how easily they can be fooled.)
"Hillary will destroy as much of the private sector as she can."
On the contrary, she is working in service of the private sector, and will do what she can to give them power to do as they wish. This is one of the things TPP will do...to make corporate entities largely free of national sovereign laws.
You're right to oppose Hillary, but you're really very confused, otherwise.
"If I had to choose between 'unbridled Capitalism' and unbridled government control, I'll take the former."
Who says either is good, or that we should have either?
The world is not binary; only our thinking tends to be.
"My employer is constantly asking me to access LinkedIn profiles for one reason or another. I keep having to remind him: "No, YOU do that as I don't have a LinkedIn profile and don't want one.""
I somehow ended up with a Linkedin account that I never used and didn't want (I don't remember ever establishing one, but apparently (maybe) I had one). It was hacked. More specifically, Linkedin was hacked, exposing account names and passwords.
ARM
I'm no computer person but it seems to me that the Wizards of Smart in DC should have had some fundamental defense - especially after all of these years - to such a basic attack. What if Russia, China and Iran launched a real serious attack? I guess if my WaPo and Amazon websites went down I, Jeff Bezos, would be really pissed.
My solution? Just nuke' em.
Blogger bgates said...
Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area.
No, she has years of experience taking millions of ordinary web-connected people — many of them highly insecure — and turning them to vicious purposes."
Like this: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/26314
(Although it's her people and mega funders that created these vast web of networks. All she is capable of electronically is "plsprint" and in public all she does is parrot the TP's and speeches her people have mega researched data points on and written. Having said that, in today's world, it's pathetic--and telling-- that the likes of Priebus made zero effort to build advocacy groups that can cascade messaging in the magnitude that the left can. Trump has been a one-man army against a highly effective, organized, efficient, and wealthy enemy.)
David Begley said...
the Wizards of Smart in DC
These are relatively standard engineering problems with multiple trade-offs. There is no wizard or wizardry that will change that. The very fact that you resort to the realm of magic to discuss the problem tells me that you do not have realistic expectations here.
"Just like Obama she certainly wants to destroy private practice medicine in favor of medical mega-corporations."
You also seem to be confused: Medical mega-corporations are still "private practice medicine," in that it is run for profit by private, not public, entities. However, it is monopoly private practice medicine. The monopoly is inevitable in unregulated, unbridled capitalism. This is the "survival of the fittest" that the "no-regulation, let-the-free-market-have-its-way" kooks advocate: as certain private entities become richer and more powerful, they work and collude to expand and consolidate their riches and power, and they crush smaller competing entities.
But, alas, without government regulation to prevent or break up monopolies, to protect the smaller businesses...this is what will always happen. Isn't the free market a wonderful thing?
Robert Cook wrote:
The monopoly is inevitable in unregulated, unbridled capitalism.
Utter nonsense. The health insurance market is nearly the opposite of "unregulated, unbridled capitalism." With Obamacare, the government fines you if you do not buy a product called "health insurance." Monopolies exist where their is no competition for market share. This is a result of state intervention in the market, not "unbridled, unregulated capitalism." Microsoft has a monopoly on selling the Windows operating system because of copyright laws, not because of "unregulated, unbridled capitalism."
Terry said...
Microsoft has a monopoly on selling the Windows operating system because of copyright laws, not because of "unregulated, unbridled capitalism."
Now copyright laws are a government plot? Is there no end to this idiocy.
"Internet security is way past what the oldsters can handle, and they're the ones buying all he dumb internet appliances."
Any oldsters who buy "internet appliances" do so because their grandchildren buy them. And said grandchildren also set them up and maintain them. Overall this attack was a good wakeup call - now when people object to on-line voting, self-driving cars and to abolishing currency they have something concrete to point to.
It's actually fairly easy to fix this problem.
Instead of vendors setting default passwords to be "password" or some such easily searchable/guessable word, they could put a sticker with the MAC address on the unit (which many do anyway) & set the default password to be the MAC address, which must be unique in the world to every single device that's in any way network addressable.
Then, tell the users in the user documentation that "the default password for this unit is the alphanumeric code on the sticker (e.g. 01-23-45-67-89-ab, dashes included)" unit. The end user has the password right in front of him. A would be hacker would have to sniff packets from a known IP address to find the MAC address. Is that doable? Yes. Is this foolproof? No. But, it makes it a hell of of a lot harder to assemble a fleet of zombie attack bots than guessing at published default passwords.
Blogger AReasonableMan said...
Now copyright laws are a government plot? Is there no end to this idiocy.
I didn't say that copyright laws are a government plot, ARM.
The purpose of copyright laws are to provide a monopoly on certain IP for a term of years. There are three kinds of IP recognized by the government. Patents, trademarks, and copyright. Each covers a different kind of IP. All provide a monopoly for the person who "owns" the IP.
Wouldn't kill you crack open a book and read about a topic before you mouth off, ARM.
"Any oldsters who buy "internet appliances" do so because their grandchildren buy them."
I don't believe Mark ever came back to back up his ridiculous claim.
"The health insurance market is nearly the opposite of "unregulated, unbridled capitalism." With Obamacare, the government fines you if you do not buy a product called 'health insurance.'"
And the "product called 'health insurance'" is sold by private entities. The government, in collusion with these powerful private entities, is using its power to compel citizens to buy a product sold by private entities. This is not just unregulated, unbridled capitalism, but unregulated, unbridled capitalism marshaling to itself the coercive force of government to capture paying customers, regardless of these customers' personal choices. Immediately upon the Affordable Care Act being passed, the stocks of the private health insurance companies soared.
"The government, in collusion with these powerful private entities, is using its power to compel citizens to buy a product sold by private entities."
Is this what you consider "unregulated, unbridled capitalism", Robert Cook? This is fascism. The wealth nominally remains in private hands, but the government directs how it must be spent.
The good news about 'Climate Change' is that it projects doom for the coastal communities, most of which are blue.
And what is the standard blue solution for any problem? Raise taxes so they can throw money at it! Ergo, the best thing to do for coastal communities is to tax them, putting the money in a fund to remediate sea rise.
@Cookie, Terry is right. You're looking at fascism, not capitalism.
Cookie purports: You also seem to be confused: Medical mega-corporations are still "private practice medicine," in that it is run for profit by private, not public, entities.
I am not confused, Cookie. You are. In private practice, a physicians is his/her own boss, not some corporate CEO. Private physician practices are small businesses in every sense of the term.
The IoT is a REALLY bad idea for exactly this reason. People don't change the preset factory password, which is usually "password" or"123456" or "ABCDEFG" or teh name of teh company, and it's too quick and simple for another computer to ping the IP address and guess the password, then take over teh device.
It has some worthwhile uses for manufacturing process control and QA/QC, but in the hands of the public it is a menace and despite my libertarian leanings I think it should be outlawed, pending much more secure standards being developed and enforced.
Sorry, a web-connected dishwasher or refrigerator or baby camera or door locks are nice and all, but this is a matter of national security.
Their manufacture and sale should be banned, and all current ones should be disconnected, while the govt and industry try to figure out a way to ensure they are secure.
People who disagree should remember that every such device used in this attack could have been commandeered to do bad things to the owner--run off the fridge, needlessly run the dishwasher, put fake pictures on the baby monitor, unlock your house in prep for a burglary...
Oh, look! It's seems like the root of the problem lies in yet another Chinese firm making crappy products. An entire product line that can't be fixed because the password in essence is not changeable by the end-user.
An entire product set of seemingly innocuous devices that allows hackers to launch massive DDoS attacks at will. You don't think the Chinese government mighta had something to do with this, do ya?
Nah! That's tin-foil talk!
Ann contemplates the future:
But "the internet of things" sounds so cute. All the cute stuff will be rallied by... whoever it is out there issuing commands.
Maybe President Hillary will fix it. She's got years of experience in this area.
Richard Fernandez contemplates a Hillary win:
It is the psychological shadow 2008 that is so fatal for 2016. To the objection that "you can't repeat the past" the obvious answer is "of course you can! We're going to fix everything just the way it was before". Like most forms of wishful it requires hypnotic suggestion [enter Scott Adams?], in the form of Bill in the form of Hillary, a reminder of the good things that were and could be again.
One the most frequently cited reasons for electing Hillary is that only she can fix Obama's failures. She has the requisite familiarity with Gordian knot to untie it, because she helped entangle it. But that's not the half of it, Donald "The Outsider" Trump, everyone in the policy elite seems to have concluded, can't return things to normal because he doesn't know what they looked like Once Upon a Time, like Hillary did. Therefore he can't fix US Russia ties or begin to comprehend the Byzantine condition of Syria, let alone Turkey, Iran, Yemen, the Sudan, Philippines. He has no memory of the Time Before the Fall even as The Snake. But Hillary does and can fix Obamacare, darn tootin'. "I'm going to fix it," Clinton modestly told an audience at Washington University in St. Louis.
YoungHegelian said...
Oh, look! It's seems like the root of the problem lies in yet another Chinese firm making crappy products. An entire product line that can't be fixed because the password in essence is not changeable by the end-user.
Interesting link. Mirai, the malware responsible for these attacks, pointedly avoids the US Post and DoD domains. Apparently whoever wrote it did not want to be droned.
The internet was down for a few hours. In a relatively small region.
This is a total non story to be honest.
The internet is a classic example of the government conceding control of technology that they developed in order to allow the private sector to commercialize that technology and make massive profits. Yet, when something goes wrong it's the governments fault? I call BS. Someone made those devices, someone sold those devices and someone installed them. None of those someones was the government.
I will agree to some extent with this. The Feds did essentially provide the seed money for what we now know as the Internet, but essentially bowed out around 1993, as it started to take off, and, if they had had their way, at the time, we would have gone with OSI instead of TCP/IP, and we would be fighting its complexity to this day. The federal govt. had mandated OSI for govt. communications in the mid to latter 1980s, and the first casualty was supposed to be TCP/IP. Instead, it was essentially privately ported by IBM, AT&T, Dec, and then MSFT, modified by them to run over Ethernet (and everything else), and everything else is history. I was involved in several attempts to port TCP/IP protocol to run over X.25 for the Ag Dept. during that time, which failed due to its IMP orientation, and the reality that DNS was in its infancy. Five years later, it would have been simple.
But, we get into the question of what is the purpose of the federal govt. And, one of its purposes is to protect us from external threats that we do not have the resources individually or in the community to fight against. The military, of course, falls into this category. But, so, to some extent, does Internet security. And, indeed, many of the threats to the Internet are by foreign actors, including foreign nation states. This may be one of those situations where the federal govt. is in the best position to fight this threat.
That said, there is a distinct risk to letting them do it. Jeh Johnson has already shown himself to be an autocrat of the worst type, appearing to try to take over such things as local voting, centralizing it under his control. And, yes, he has refused on several occasions to work with Congress, lied to them, and is second only to the IRS Commissioner in his apparent disdain for the democratically elected members of Congress. At this point, I am much happier with mega corporations and the like protecting us from these threats, than that power hungry Obama appointee.
"Is this what you consider "unregulated, unbridled capitalism", Robert Cook? This is fascism. The wealth nominally remains in private hands, but the government directs how it must be spent."
Yes, it is fascism. Which is the inevitable end result of capitalism. It is not the government directing how the money gained by the corporate entities is spent, it is the government and the corporate entities working in tandem to mutually aggrandize their power.
"But, we get into the question of what is the purpose of the federal govt. And, one of its purposes is to protect us from external threats that we do not have the resources individually or in the community to fight against. The military, of course, falls into this category. But, so, to some extent, does Internet security."
True, and Pointman notes that is more akin to espionage than military action. These devices are similar to moles that are placed inside the country for many years and then activated by flipping a switch. NSA and CIA are federal agencies responsible for detering this.
"Cyber warfare is more akin to espionage than conventional warfare. The latter starts with artillery bombardments, a struggle for air superiority and finally tanks and soldiers pouring over the border into a country. Intrusion starts on day one of the war.
With cyber warfare, you’ve already penetrated their systems well in advance, secretly installing all the software in them you need to bring them down. It’s cocked and loaded long before the war even begins. All it needs is a simple activate command, a launch code if you will, after which all hell breaks loose. Your software sleeper agents already embedded in the country, wake up and get to work sabotaging all installations of any importance."
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/i-wouldnt-trust-them-with-my-security-why-should-you/
And its telling that our Statist friends here are so tribal, they prefer to shift blame to the private sector rather than honestly identify the threat and those who failed to prevent it. This means they will not learn from mistakes they make and will keep repeating them. Even if that means America is threatened - because they are more loyal to the Marxist Left than they are to America.
They are no longer our countrymen. Consider that when dealing with them. They are not to be trusted. They have enabled Hillary's corruption for some 20 years, because they are just as intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt and corrupt as Hillary is.
"I am not confused, Cookie. You are. In private practice, a physicians is his/her own boss, not some corporate CEO. Private physician practices are small businesses in every sense of the term."
That's not my point. To repeat what I said: "Medical mega-corporations are still 'private practice medicine,' in that it is run for profit by private, not public, entities. However, it is monopoly private practice medicine."
Which is to say, the medical mega-corporations are in the private sphere; they are not government run. By virtue of their size and wealth, they absorb or crush the small business who compete with them in the market. The private practice of individual doctors is destroyed by larger private entities.
This is the inevitable end result of unregulated, unbridled capitalism. It is like a cancer, and it absorbs and kills everything around it.
"Which is the inevitable end result of capitalism."
That's the problem when you are a lefty. "Capitalism" is not what we had. It was Free Market.
medical mega-corporations are in the private sphere; they are not government run.
Are you kidding ? Doctors are enmeshed in a web of regulations that have civil and CRIMINAL penalties.
The giant vertical integrated medical corporations are owned by hospitals that enthusiastically supported Obamacare. They thoght they would get rich and bought up most or all of the doctor practices,
Doctors who practice in these hospitals are no longer in "private practice." I still know some of them. They cannot admit a patient to the hospital without permission and they have practiced there 30 years.
The joke is on the hospital owners, in the local example an order of nuns. Obamacare is a disaster and will go broke taking down all those hospitals that bought the medical groups thereby magnifying their fixed overhead by orders of magnitude.
Fraud is the only way they will survive, A friend of mine, a gastroenterologist, built an endoscopy suite in his office 230 years ago that is very well set up. The hospital came to him last year and "suggested" it might be a good idea for him to do some endoscopies in the hospital suite. He had always done so for inpatients but this was more like, "Nice practice you have there...."
He went over and looked at some charts of patients being scoped there. All hd excessive lab and e-xray procedures done.
Fraud.
There is a growing number of doctors dropping all insurance plus Medicare.
That will be the future, I think. Cash free market medicine,
30 years ago...
The hospital came to him last year and "suggested" it might be a good idea for him to do some endoscopies in the hospital suite.
Yep, like my daughter's office which does endocrinology and nuclear medicine. MultiCare [who bought up the local hospital] wants to put a stop to nuke-med done outside of their domain and keeps trying to buy their practice. It's nothing short of vicious bullying and you can bet a Clinton administration will make it even worse.
"reminds me of the not so mild hysteria about Ebola. How did that work out? Yes, the government could - "
How did that work out? The government got very very lucky. They had 3-4 breaks of quarantine, any one of which could have become difficult if not impossible to contain. If Ebola had been a drill, we would be firing many officials for incompetence and running the simulation till we got it right. We are also lucky it wasn't something more communicative. That luck won't hold.
As for hysteria (and you really mean paranoia), our own government lied to us about the transmission vectors. They responded to the public by answering that the virus wasn't airborne. They leaned heavily in the *scientific* definition of airborne (PPM) with full awareness that the public was asking if they could catch ebola by inhaling droplets from someone sneezing in the bus seat next to them. Turns out that you *can* catch the virus that way even though its not "airborne". So mistrust of the government is not unreasonable.
"Yes, it is fascism. Which is the inevitable end result of capitalism."
So it is not "unbridled, unregulated capitalism", Robert Cook.
If this is the inevitable result of free markets, the future is grim. There is no other choice. A society which does adopt free markets will become fascist, and a society which has a command economy will be a poor society, and it will be steam rolled by a wealthier, fascist society.
These arguments should have been settled at least a half century ago, Robert Cook. Governments are terrible at determining the real value of things (see anything on the economics of public choice), and when governments try to change the real value of things to be more to their liking, poverty, death, and economic collapse follow.
If you disparage free markets, you disparage the choices free people make. This isn't a bad thing, if you have an absolute measure of real value that can be used to judge the value consumers give items, but there is none. Unless you believe that science can determine value, or that the fraud called 'the dialectic of history' is something other than a 19th century intellectual fad. Or you believe in the Judaic-Christian God.
Robert Cook is right re fascism.
That is Schumpeters prediction, and its been playing out in this country for decades.
You dont just get it fast through a Peron or Mussolini. It also comes gradually. It also doesnt necessarily come with nationalism as a moral justification. Systems like this all need some sort of religion. These days in many places it is justified by some sort of elitist liberalism.
Its probably the most typical political-economic system today.
Back around 2009, many lefties said the crash of 2008 was due to the mortgage market being "unregulated and unbridled capitalism."
Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage knows that this is complete bullshit. Financial markets are heavily regulated. My God, you can't even put $10k cash in the bank, or take it out of the country, without a visit from law enforcement.
But to lefties, virtually all problems are a result of lack of government regulation. This is a stupid as the Libertarian belief that all problems are a result of government regulation. The government ain't God, it is a human institution, like Ford Motor Corporation or the Girl Scouts. If you think that government is the engine of history, you are the problem.
now fascism is state management of industry, that happened to a degree through the tarp, and to a lesser degree through the stimulus, the former one might say, closely correlated the contribution they gave all the right parties,
there is some truth to this, but not what cook thinks it is,
http://invisibleserfscollar.com/whispering-in-the-ears-of-princes-and-parents-false-flag-education-narratives/
@Robert Cooke
So, then, fascism (the government and corporate entities working in tandem to mutually aggrandize their power) is the end result of unbridled, unregulated capitalism.
I would like to know where all this unbridled, unregulated capitalism has been going on. Certainly not here. To the contrary, it's the government's all too ready and eager use of its power to regulate (and tax and spend and penalize) that puts it and its select crony capitalists in the catbird's seat. Unbridled and unregulated? Hardly.
I find it interesting the Cook sees this from the left, and some of us from the right. One problem here is that terminology is not our friend. Maybe partly because it is appropriated when convenient by the other side. The big thing that we all seem to agree with is that large corporate interests have undue power in our country, with our politicians, and, thus, with our economy. The invisible hand is no longer that operable. Instead of competing on product, price, and delivery, the biggest companies buy special favors for themselves, at the expense of their smaller competitors. And, thus, Dodd-Frank, the support by the big insurance companies and biggest hospitals, etc. for ObamaCare, etc. And, my pet peeve, that the patent system has been for sale, at least since Obama took office (first bought by IBM, then by Google, whose goal is to reduce the royalties they pay for appropriated technology by weakening patent validity and enforcement). We see which side, right now, is the most bought, by what happened when the Dems had the White House and both Houses of Congress in 2009 and 2010, and who has been receiving the bulk of large company money during this election cycle. It wasn't an accident that the same players in the Dem party were instrumental in causing the financial meltdown that happened in 2008, and then supposedly to get us out of it, but didn't, because their greed was more important to them than solving the problems they caused.
Just like Dodd-Frank, which was designed by the biggest financial institutions to protect themselves against their smaller competitors, by greatly raising the cost of doing business through the increased regulations they had to deal with, the same is true with the PPACA, where the biggest insurance companies and health care organizations have pushed doctors out of private practice through increased regulation that they are far better able to comply with and absorb. Esp. the vaunted electronic records. This isn't good for the doctors, and is, maybe, worse for the patients. For example, in the last year, both my partner's and my primary care providers have gone corporate, which means that we no longer can call up their assistants and ask for them to fill pending prescriptions and the like. Instead, we call the reservationists, who send them emails or text messages, and, maybe, some day, respond to us.
The funny thing is that this isn't new. We saw it with the transcontinental railroads a century and a half ago (and some have suggested with the canals a half century before that). Inside deals with the govt. that hurt everyone else except for the companies that have bought the politicians. It is just getting worse. And, yes, the opposition to it has moved primarily from the Democrats to the Republicans, after the head Dems sold themselves out so thoroughly. No wonder we have a woman who has been accepting corporate bribes for 30 years now running against a guy who has been bribing politicians for almost as long running for President this time.
Right out of Atlas Shrugged, Bruce. Good post.
One of my brothers and I were talking about Rand a couple days ago, and he sent me home with "The Virtue of Selfishness" and "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal". Much shorter than "Atlas Shrugged".
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