Tag Archive for: declared

Russia has declared hybrid war on Britain

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The reported hacking of Liz Truss’s mobile phone over the summer, suspected to have been conducted by people working on behalf of the Kremlin, should raise alarm bells across Whitehall. Britain is under fierce attack in this new era of hybrid warfare. While we may not be exchanging fire on the battlefield, our critical national infrastructure will be severely undermined and potentially destroyed if we fail to get a grip.

Currently, it is quite clear that our political establishment is not taking the threat seriously enough. The compromised information on Ms Truss’s personal phone, it is reported, may have included sensitive information about the Ukraine war. If true, that would be an extraordinary dereliction of security. Even in the analogue days of the Second World War, it is hard to imagine any government minister making calls or sending cables about sensitive military or diplomatic issues through devices otherwise used for personal matters.

We may indeed have extraordinary technology these days, allowing us to encrypt messages as soon as they are sent, but this amounts to nothing if we continue to see Ukraine as a far-off battle that affects us only on our television screens. At times of war – and this is a war the UK is heavily engaged in – even encrypted communications should be carefully guarded by Whitehall’s security apparatus.

For Putin considers Britain to be his second biggest enemy in Europe, behind Ukraine. He demonstrated his particular hatred for us four years ago, with the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury. His authorities will use any means possible to damage us.

We therefore cannot put anything past him. That includes the severing of the Shefa-2 fibre-optic cables between Scotland, Shetland and the Faroes. These have been played down as accidents – “probably by a fishing vessel” – but how likely is it that an accident would produce two separate cuts on the same day, especially when there was a Russian “research” vessel in the same seaway? We should at the very least investigate the possibility of sabotage.

Indeed, it was just a couple of days after the Shefa-2 cuts that three fibre-optic cables were cut in the Mediterranean off Marseille,…

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Why Japan has ‘declared war’ on floppy disks (What’s that?)

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Japan’s government has “declared a war on floppy disks”. Decades after the unwieldy magnetic storage disks became obsolete and were phased out globally, Japan’s digital ministry has announced that it will finally do away with floppy disks and other outdated technology in a bid to modernise its bureaucracy.

In a press conference this week, Japan’s digital minister Taro Kono said he was working towards moving administrative procedures online. “Digital Minister declares a war on floppy discs,” he tweeted in English earlier this week. “Digital Agency is to change those regulations so you can use online.”

Japan may be home to some of the world’s leading tech giants, but the Japanese have always had an affinity for older technology. According to a BBC report, cassettes were still widely used in 2015. Meanwhile, in 2019, the country’s cyber security minister publicly admitted that he had never used a computer in his life.

But first, what are floppy disks?

Popularly used between the 1970s and 1990s, a floppy disk is a removable disk storage device used to save computer data and programmes. If you haven’t used one, you most certainly have seen one on the top left corner of an MS Word document, where a small animated floppy disk acts as the save button.

The disk, first developed by IBM, is only able to store about 800 KB of data, which is about 0.0008 GB. To put that in perspective, today you can find hard drives with storage up to 20 TB (20,000 GB).

Since 2021, when Kono was administrative reform minister, he has been vocal about his disdain for the old-fashioned fax machine, a fixture in many Japanese government offices, and the hanko seal — an official seal that is used to sign contracts and documents. He directed government ministries to discontinue hanko requirements for several documents, including year-end tax adjustments and tax…

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Kaspersky is declared a US national security threat

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By Morf Morford

Tacoma Daily Index

It’s like a plot line from a low-budget, grainy, black and white Cold War movie thriller; a Russian company works its way into the deepest of the deep inner workings of American culture, economy and security and turns us against ourselves.

Fast forward from those paranoid years, if not decades, of fears of a communist in every closet to a far more likely reality of a Russian virus in every computer.

And television.

And hand-held device.

Except this is no Hollywood-driven, over-wrought Cold War propaganda fantasy – this is a battle taking place on, or behind, a small screen near you.

Oddly enough, federal agencies and contractors have been using a Russian-based cyber security and antivirus company for decades now.

Chess VS. Checkers

There’s an old saying that the Russians play chess while Americans play checkers.

Russians play the long game while we pick up pieces and imagine that with each opposing piece claimed, we are closer to victory.

We congratulate ourselves with each move and barely even notice that we are just clearing the field, preparing the way, for our own compromise.

In the digital age, what could be a better disguise for cyber intrusion, surveillance, and ultimate control, than a company with a speciality in, ahem, computer security?

It’s a classic plot-line, and, if you know your history, one of the oldest strategies of all.

And, one might be inclined to come to the conclusion that anyone taken in by one of the oldest and most obvious attempts at deception deserves to lose everything, but you might not be so encouraged when you find out that the eager victims are most businesses and government agencies – and many of us.