The award is judged by a group of retired senior US military and intelligence personnel, and past winners. This year the award to Julian Assange was unanimous.
Previous winners and ceremony locations:
Coleen Rowley of the FBI; in Washington, D.C.
Katharine Gun of British intelligence; in Copenhagen, Denmark
Sibel Edmonds of the FBI; in Washington, D.C.
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; in New York City
Sam Provance, former sergeant, U.S. Army, truth-teller about Abu Ghraib; in Washington, D.C.
Frank Grevil, major, Danish army intelligence, imprisoned for giving the Danish press documents showing that Denmark’s prime minister disregarded warnings that there was no authentic evidence of WMDs in Iraq; in Copenhagen, Denmark
Larry Wilkerson, colonel, U.S. Army (retired), former chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell at the State Department, who has exposed what he called the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal”; in Washington, D.C.
http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2010/08/15/can-wikileaks-help-save-lives/
Not sure yet where this year’s award ceremony will be held, but I’ll be there.
There can be a lot of dross on ATS but it has a number of sharp and well-informed members and some threads are excellent. Ruth’s link is one example. Another fine recent thread concerned the Wikileaks ‘insurance’ file; probably the best discussion on the matter anywhere on the web once the heavy-duty hackers and crackers started weighing in with their two-penn’orth.
Ruth,
Larry is a bully, who only respects more vicious bullies. If he gets paid for his abuse, that is merely a bonus to him. But yes, there are plenty of people and organisations that will buy the loyalty of his sort.
I don’t like the look of Serco, but as pointed out in Ruth’s link, it is possible that their server was compromised – my guess is by one of Serco’s employees.
MJ,
got a link for that one?
ATS is also strictly moderated and off-topic posts and those containing ad hominem attacks are quickly removed. Loopy from St Larry wouldn’t last a second.
Clark: I think this is it:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread598787/pg1
It’s a long thread, 48 pages, and it doesn’t really get going until a few pages in so you can skim the earlier posts.
Live with the nightmare Larry (not from St Louis) because it’s there to stay ad infinitum by your own instruments.
‘Better the pain of truth than the cancer of deceit.’
challenge me in America Larry but first view this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrdFFCnYtbk
Quote of the day – Seneca the Younger (Roman philosopher and dramatist) :
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
DISINFORMATION ALERT!
Symantec have released their analysis of Stuxnet:
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf
Please see page 38. After six pages of raising a technical smokescreen, they finally get to the important bit about what Stuxnet actually does. They repeat (plagiarise?) what Ralph Langner wrote two weeks ago; that Stuxnet is targeted sabotage. I’ve been following the Symantec blog, and they hadn’t mentioned it as of two days ago. But then we have the following outrageous nonsense:
“However, there are some additional interesting clues. For example, code added to OB35 uses a magic marker
value of 0xDEADF007 (possibly to mean Dead Fool or Dead Foot ?” a term used when an airplane engine fails) to
specify when the routine has reached its final state”.
Surely this is utter rubbish! “0xDEADFOO7” is simply a number, it is 3,735,941,127 in hexadecimal, or base 16, as commonly used in computers. Resemblance to “Dead Fool” or “Dead Foot” is just a coincidence. Symantec’s technicians must be aware of this.
“Airplane engines”? Are they going to try to blame Stuxnet on Afghans in caves?
I don’t think aircraft engines use PLCs (anyone?), but even if they do, Stuxnet has been ‘In the Wild’ for six to twelve months. Have planes been mysteriously falling out of the air? Well, if they start to now, it isn’t Stuxnet!
I’ve never trusted Geoff Hoon and now an FOI reveals an Iraq war meeting with General Franks at RAF Brize Norton airbase in April 2002. A meeting that was not disclosed at the Chilcot inquiry by Hoon.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317264/Britain-held-war-talks-US-general-Tommy-Franks-Iraq-invasion.html
RETRACTION AND APOLOGY.
Stuxnet queries a piece of program in the industrial controller (PLC) called FC 1874, which replies with the value 0xDEADF007. But FC 1874 was itself written to the PLC by Stuxnet.
I had wrongly assumed that FC 1874 was part of the original process control program, and therefore that Stuxnet’s designers had no control over its reply and were simply checking for a number from the original process. But since FC 1874 is part of Stuxnet, the number 0xDEADF007 is communication within Stuxnet, and Stuxnet’s designers could well have chosen 0xDEADF007 for its resemblance to “Dead [something]”.
I apologise to Symantec’s technicians for accusing them of disinformation. I still think they’re much slower than Langner.
Mark – An illustration of the uselessness and ineffectiveness of the Chilcot Inquiry. The participants should have been in the dock under oath. Chilcot was set up (at huge expense remember) to absorb dissent and that is all it was – a talking shop for actors like B£iar. Nothing will come of it.
For anyone wondering about Craig, his Facebook page shows no activity for him since before 4th of June, but Nadira posted to her wall late in September that she was enjoying walking on the beach in Ramsgate, and not missing London yet.
0xDEADF007 /* assassinate 15 MI6 agents */
We could speculate for ever about why They want us to think they shot themselves in the foot … perhaps it means “Hey look, I bet this’ll wind them up”.
Clark – “Please see page 38. After six pages of raising a technical smokescreen, they finally get to the important bit about what Stuxnet actually does”
It seems to me that that para. is the punchline :-
“While we are able to describe everything the injected PLC code does, what address are set, what values are
checked without design documents of the intended target, the information is essentially useless. For example, if
a particular output is set to 100, we can not determine if that output is connected to a pump, a centrifuge, or a
turbine. Without that context, we are unable to understand the real-world impact of the PLC code”
ie, they just plain don’t have the info. to be able to say what it was aimed at or what it was intended to do when it gets there.
What continues to strike me as strange is the constant repetition of the same old unsubstantiated guesswork embedded in the hard techy stuff. “DEAD” something is a term used wrt aeroplane engines (which of them ? fool ? foot ? both ?). The myrtle/Esther thing, which is _really _ peculiar. The May ’79 date, and one thing that happened then. They do qualify some of these as “only speculation” – but, why raise them at all, they’re not techy points, they add nothing to the context they’re mentioned in ? Nor, surely, are they unambiguous; they’re just being passed on without any picking apart at all, quite unlike the rest of it. To me, they just don’t seem to belong in the kind of analysis that the rest of it is.
Personally, I can’t see why the suggestion of a 31-year-old Spanish speaker with a botanical background isn’t at least as plausible (it also brings in the ‘futbol’ spelling for the servers).
On which, did you see the explanation of your observation on their being in Dublin and registered to whoever ? They used to point elsewhere, but have been “redirected”. Now there’s a thing ? The DNS has been taken over, in the passive voice ?
The mytus/Esther thing _is_ weird, and it’s winding me up. The suggestion seems to be that it can be explained by assuming the author(s) was religiously Jewish, yes ? But why would such a person, with such a reference in mind, translate it into the language of the Romans ? and if that is what they intend, then they’re not thinking about the plant family at all, so why ‘guava’, which says that they are (and wasn’t heard of east of the Atlantic until much much later). Wikipedia describes this as of genus ‘pomegranate’; I bet there could have been something more appropriate to be found there, for a Hebrew-speaking Torah scholar who wants to drop such Clues. No ?
Points like this are, perhaps, a kind of secondary virus, with analysis of the code as their path of infection ? People just read-and-repeat, from the eys to the fingers with no intervening processing.
Firstly, my thanks go to Crab (Sandcrab) for setting me right on FC 1874 / 0xDEADF007.
Richard Robinson,
I love your “assassinate 15 007s” joke. To all you non-techies out there, F in hexadecimal = 15 in decimal. Yeah, I’m not jumping to conclusions about that Myrtle / Esther speculation either; it’s too specific. That’s why I was asking Suhayl Saadi; I just wondered what sort of connotations those words might have, and who might use them.
I think this sort of speculation arises because there is little factual to go on. I hope the owners of the target system go public, but they’ve had a year and they haven’t done so.
“I think this sort of speculation arises because there is little factual to go on”.
Yes. And such guesswork getting jumped on as if it were fact, in the resulting vacuum.
“I hope the owners of the target system go public, but they’ve had a year and they haven’t done so.”
Yes. That’s one bit of public analysis that does have specific value, to let people know what it checks for. At least the people who run such systems will be able to see if whatever-it-is could happen to them, even if they’re not saying publicly (and weren’t already aware). (Conspiracy theory alert: assuming the published details are correct).
I wonder if this is also being picked over on the Farsi-speaking web ? They must be working on it …
“dead foot” is part of a pilots’ mnemonic for which engine has failed (in a twin-engine plane). The rudder feels stiff or dead on that side. The whole phrase is “dead foot, dead engine” its aim being to help the pilot avoid feathering the wrong engine.
I really dont know what has gotten into you to -Clark and Richard. %}
The fact is, the most sophisticated piece of malware yet seen, a worm which infects windows pcs and can infect a common kind of safety critical industrial equipment has been discovered and analysed by major computer security researchers…
The worm was found to form a controllable, commandable network of infected pcs ( this is normal, it is what many worms do, they create a ‘botnet’ from which the attackers can control infected machines – this worm did that too, it did it because it was programmed to do it, we know it was programmed to do it because the code has been documented. There is no point talking about “one target” A 100 thousand strong botnet, left to hang around despite owning a deinstall command, after it has done its job. This idea is silly. )
Symantec had the botnet’s control urls redirected so the network could be measured, and found that it consisted of about 100 thousand pcs, centered geographically and acutely or Iran.
All *facts* here so far guys. For *fuzz* read unconfirmed newspaper reports of a million infected pcs in China, -totally invisible or lied(?!) about by Symantec. Thats fuzz, believe in it when their is considerable evidence to seriously damn Symantecs reputation.
The programming evidence is provided in at least two exensive papers, and testified to by the accounts of at least 9 (Eset team, Symantec team & Langner….) named, known, proud, computer security researchers.
Also, Langner describes the attack as “directed” not “targeted” same as symantec. Only F-security mentions it “doing nothing if specific target is not found”, in its simplistic faq.
A possible live, or test, or default target has been idnetified in the difficult to analyse Plc code.
An developement sequence through different versions of the PC worm, and worms architectual modularity and network control has also been established.
This is a IT and Industrial reconnaisance and control Botnet, directed at and into Iran by state or corporated adversarys – admirably discovered and thwarted by computer security companies and experts.
No bets, caveats, fuzz, sound bytes, blog wizards or goose chases.
Those are the *facts* guys.
More details are available from Symantec, Eset and Langner…
@ Ruth,
‘Prince Bandar “Bush” Running, Equipping And Financing Terror Organizations In Iraq, Lebanon and Pakistan’
Sure – if there is no conflict stirring – then how are arms going to be sold?
Vronsky, thanks.
Crab, thanks for the summary, with which I pretty much agree.
crab – “I really dont know what has gotten into you … This idea is silly”
I’m doing what you did there. Remarking that not all the statements made follow inevitably from the facts.
Sorry Richard, all totally factual statements there. Every statement is backed up by first hand documentary evidence. Irrefuteable by those bound to truthiness and not perhapsliness.
What did you find at all contentious? apart from admittedly the certain exxaassperated tone 😉
crab – “What did you find at all contentious?”
The things I already mentioned. At 3:42, for instance.
I’m sorry, your tone of voice has me baffled. I was guessing sarcasm, until you mentioned “exxaassperated”.
Just a friendly suggestion… maybe all this stuxnet stuff could utilise another thread of its own? I mean, only about 3 people are interested in the subject yet it’s taken up ~80% of the posts since it started. And a lot of the regulars aren’t bothering to post much anymore. Not that this subject has no interest, but it’s not an interest to the exclusion of all else and – frankly – it’s starting to bog down the usual conversation around here.
The first 3 paragraphs of the 3:42 post read to me, as repetition of a old point, that specific targets and events are very difficult / impossible to discover from the code alone. – A basic reality, explained and not mislead by the researchers.
The rest of the post laments how certain fruitless details such as x and y, are talked about too much, and perhaps were unwise to ever be reported, because they will get talked about too much…
…Im not sure what my tone is.
I would like to see some clarity supported around this event rather than it being obscured ironicaly with curiosities and cynicisms.
It was almost certainly an aggressive experiment and excercise in accessing and potentially sabotaging at strategic points and/or times, important Iranian industrial computer resources -by its warmongering nation state enemies.
The non-partisan security researchers who did the work and wrote the reports did not overstate this likelyhood, they deserve a little more respect imbo.
Craig is tending his garden. I read that book after seeing it mentioned here months ago. Wonderful read.
I think tbh, we should meet up in another forum. I dont have loads to contribute, i try to keep it short, and stay out of the best conversations.
I wonder how writerman is these days, Sabertache.. Vronsky has made some of the best posts ive seen.. I could miss the spectrum of minds here.
wbr
Or rather, you should all meet up in another forum, and ill lurk and chip in occasionaly.. 🙁 but its unlikely to happen.
Crab: I miss the spectrum of subjects too! Where the heck is writerman? I don’t recall him saying he was taking any sort of sabbatical. It really needs Craig to start posting again… dammit, he pulled us all here in the first place. You can’t start a party then slope off, and expect it to not fizzle out. Couldn’t Craig be at least persuaded to do a weekly update?
Funny thing about posting… once you get into it, each post comes pretty much naturally. Leave it for a while and it’s like starting to run again, or getting back on a motorbike after 20 years – there’s this curious reluctance and trepidation about the first crack back at it. You know how to do it, but you’d rather not, and the longer it’s left, the more difficult it is. You know the time and effort it takes and although it’s a nice thought, there are other things to do now.
Hopefully this isn’t what Craig is thinking, because the crowd is not going to come back otherwise, and it’s unlikely there’ll be many newcomers. Even the angry-stooge and the teabagger troll have lost most of their interest now, although maybe that’s no bad thing. Something like going on a starvation diet to get rid of tape-worms, perhaps.
Anyway, couldn’t those in contact ask CM to just put in a few words on a weekly basis, not only to get the blog more active again, but to get him back into the idea of getting back on that figurative bike.
crab – I’m not disrespecting their work, not am I looking for a fight. I am just, as you say, lamenting the pointless bits and looking for clarity. But I regard both curiosity and cynicism as valuable tools in that search.