American blackout

El canal de documentales de National Geographic parece que se 'inspiró' en el Blackout para realizar este documental que como veréis se asemeja mucho a la estructura de mi libro, mal que ellos digan que es mera casualidad.

La inevitable llegada del 'pico del petróleo'

Un artículo de Robert L. Hirsch sobre la inevitable llegada del pico del petróleo y sus consecuencias.

+ 'The inevitable Peaking of World oil Production'

Stuxnet se parece tanto a výpadek...

El 2 de noviembre de 2011, la cadena de noticias de Boston publicó este artículo en su website.

Leedlo y cambiad el nombre de Stuxnet por vypadek. Después de leer el Blackout ¿no os suena familiar?

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The Stuxnet computer worm, arguably the first and only cybersuperweapon ever deployed, continues to rattle security experts around the world, one year after its existence was made public.

Apparently meant to damage centrifuges at a uranium enrichment facility in Iran, Stuxnet now illustrates the potential complexities and dangers of cyberwar.

Secretly launched in 2009 and uncovered in 2010, it was designed to destroy its target much as a bomb would. Based on the cyberworm's sophistication, the expert consensus is that some government created it.

"Nothing like this had occurred before," says Joseph Weiss, an expert on the industrial control systems widely used in power plants, refineries and nuclear facilities like the one in Iran. "Stuxnet was the first case where there was a nation-state activity to physically destroy infrastructure [via a cyberattack]."

Reactions to the use of Stuxnet in Iran generally fall into two categories. For those focused on the danger of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, Stuxnet was something to celebrate, because it set back Iran's nuclear program, perhaps by years.

But for people who worry about the security of critical U.S. facilities, Stuxnet represented a nightmare: a dangerous computer worm that in some modified form could be used to attack an electric or telecommunications grid, an oil refinery or a water treatment facility in the United States.

"It's just a matter of time," says Michael Assante, formerly the chief security officer for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. "Stuxnet taught the world what's possible, and honestly it's a blueprint."

Further complicating the Stuxnet story is the widely held suspicion that the U.S. government, possibly in partnership with Israel, had a hand in the creation of this lethal cyberweapon, notwithstanding the likelihood that in some form it could now pose a threat to the U.S. homeland.

Training To Face A Catastrophe

The prospect of a cyberattack on U.S. infrastructure assets has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to arrange a new training program for the people who are supposed to protect the electric grid, manufacturing plants, refineries, water treatment centers and other critical facilities.

The top concern is the industrial control systems (ICS) that oversee the operation of key equipment at those facilities, from the valves to the breaker switches.

By hacking into the computer networks behind the industrial control systems, an adversary could reprogram an ICS so that it commands the equipment to operate at unsafe speeds or the valves to open when they should remain closed. This is roughly the way Stuxnet was able to damage the centrifuges in Iran.

Participants in the training program, based at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, are taken step by step through a simulated cyber-intrusion, so they can experience firsthand how a Stuxnet-like attack on their facilities might unfold.

During an Idaho National Laboratory exercise that was staged for visiting reporters in late September, instructor Mark Fabro installs his "red" team on the second floor of the training center, with the mission of penetrating the computer network of an unsuspecting industrial company, set up on the floor below.

The trainees on the "blue" team downstairs sit in a mock control room, monitoring their computer screens for any sign of trouble.

At first, everything appears normal. The attackers have managed to take control of the computer network without the defenders even realizing it. But gradually, problems develop in the control room.

"It's running really slow," says one operator. "My network is down."

Sitting at their monitors upstairs, the attacking team is preparing to direct the computer system to issue commands to the industrial equipment.

"Take this one out," says Fabro, pointing to a configuration that identifies the power supply to the control room. "Trip it. It should be dark very soon."

Within 30 seconds, the mock control room downstairs is dark.

"This is not good," says Jeff Hahn, a cybersecurity trainer who this day is playing the role of the CEO of the industrial company under attack. The blue team is under his direction.

"Our screens are black and the lights are out. We're flying blind," Hahn says.

During the exercise, the critical industrial facility under attack is a pumping station, such as might be found in a chemical plant or water treatment center. As the operators sit helpless at their terminals, the pumps suddenly start running, commanded by some unseen hand. Before long, water is gushing into a catch basin.

"There's nothing we can do," one of the operators tells the CEO. "We can only sit here and watch it happen."

If this mock facility were an actual chemical plant, hazardous liquids could be spilling. If it were an electric utility, the turbines could be spinning out of control.

If it were a refinery, the tanks could be bursting or pipelines could be blowing up, all because the cyberattackers have been able to take over the computer network that controls the key operations.

The cyberattack scenario is all the more worrisome, because it is not clear that such attacks can be effectively stopped.

"Some of these [systems] can't be protected," says Weiss, the industrial control systems security expert. "We're going to have to figure out how to recover from events that we simply can't protect these systems from."

A U.S. Role In Stuxnet?

The challenge of managing a Stuxnet-like attack is compounded by the possibility that the U.S. government itself had a role in creating the cyberweapon.

U.S. officials were certainly aware of the ICS vulnerabilities that the Stuxnet worm ultimately exploited. An Idaho National Laboratory experiment in 2007, dubbed "Project Aurora," first demonstrated how cybercommands alone could destroy industrial equipment. Idaho lab researchers, who at the time included Michael Assante, rewrote the ICS computer code for the generator, directing the generator to destroy itself.

"When we started to conduct the test, that really robust machine couldn't take it," Assante recalls. "The coupling broke ... and you saw black smoke belching out of it."

In 2008, Idaho National Laboratory researchers performed a demonstration expanding on the Aurora experiment and their further analysis of ICS vulnerabilities. The PowerPoint briefing was prepared specifically for Siemens, the company whose equipment the Stuxnet attack targeted. One year later, the worm was introduced into Siemens ICS equipment used at a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran.

Ralph Langner, a German cybersecurity researcher who was among the first to analyze the Stuxnet code, came away convinced that it was a U.S. creation.

"To us, it was pretty clear that the development of this particular malware required resources that we only see in the United States," Langner says.

Marty Edwards, director of the Department of Homeland Security Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, based at the Idaho lab, denies any Idaho National Laboratory role in the creation of Stuxnet, and says the ICS traits the worm exploited were relatively well-known by the time it was created.

"I think it was only a matter of time before those common weaknesses or vulnerabilities were leveraged in an event such as Stuxnet," Edwards says. He would not comment on any role that other U.S. government agencies might have played in the development of the Stuxnet weapon.

That the United States has an offensive capability in the cyberwar domain is a matter of official record. Activities in that area are highly classified, but officials privately acknowledge that U.S. agencies have developed cyberweapons for offensive use.

It has also been reported that the United States has engaged previously in the sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities. The use of Stuxnet would fit squarely within such a category.

Joel Brenner, the former inspector general at the National Security Agency, writes in his new book,America the Vulnerable, that the use of Stuxnet "would ... have been consistent with U.S. policy but not with previous U.S. methods, which avoided computer operations likely to damage others besides its intended targets."

Some observers have argued that the risk of a weapon like Stuxnet being turned against U.S. assets was so great that no U.S. government agency could logically have supported its development. But others aren't so sure.

Among them is Assante, who was among the first cybersecurity experts to warn that Stuxnet could provide a blueprint for attacks on U.S. infrastructure.

Now the president of the National Board of Information Security Examiners, Assante argues that concerns about Iran developing a nuclear weapon could have justified Stuxnet's creation.

"That is probably one of the largest national security challenges I can envision," Assante said in a recent meeting with reporters at the Idaho lab. "In that context, you can make a pretty strong argument that the benefit of using a cyberweapon to slow down or delay [a nuclear weapon program] or to achieve a specific objective might absolutely outweigh the risk."

Questions Of Information-Sharing

Given the secrecy around the U.S. offensive cyberwar capability, however, that cost-benefit analysis could only be carried out at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Moreover, it is unclear whether agencies responsible for defending the U.S. infrastructure would even be part of the deliberation.

"[The development of a cyberweapon] would probably be so highly classified that the people at DHS wouldn't even know about it," says one former intelligence official.

Such a strict compartmentalization of policymaking would raise the question of whether there is sufficient communication between the offensive and defensive teams in the cyberwar domain.

If Stuxnet was developed by U.S. cyberweapon specialists, the DHS personnel who spent a year analyzing the computer code were presumably engaged in a major duplication of effort.

But Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary of homeland security for cybersecurity and communications, says DHS officials have no complaint over coordination with U.S. agencies responsible for offensive cyber-activities.

"DHS is focused on network defense," Schaffer says. "We do get assistance from the organizations that work on the offensive mission. Whether they bring their work [to us] is something they have to decide. That is not something that we worry about."

A growing awareness of the cyberthreat to critical U.S. infrastructure assets, however, may well deepen concerns about the "blowback" risk to the U.S. homeland from the development of a potent cyberweapon designed to be used elsewhere.

The appropriate level of information-sharing between the offensive and defensive teams within the U.S. cybercommunity is likely to be the focus of intense interagency discussion.

"My sense is that there are lots of people talking about it," says Herbert Lin, chief scientist at the National Academy of Sciences and a co-editor of a book on policy, law and ethics in cyberwar. "But almost all of the discussion is going on behind closed doors."

Eventually, this could change. Whether and when the United States should use nuclear weapons or chemical weapons or land mines has been vigorously debated in public for years, and it may be only a matter of time until the use of cyberweapons gets similar attention.

[Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/]

No más de cincuenta corporaciones dominan el 80% de la economía global

Unas pocas compañías tienen control sobre la mayor parte de la economía real

La idea de que unos pocos dominan todo no es nueva para los movimientos de occupy wall street o los de ocupación en cualquier parte. Pero hasta ahora era sólo una intuición que unas pocas corporaciones controlaban el mundo.

Ya no es una intución. Un equipo de matemáticos suizos acaban de probar que, sobre 43.000 corporaciones transnacionales, hay sólo unas pocas que controlan casi el 80% de la economía mundial. Descubre cuáles son esas corporaciones.

Dominación global, un fenómeno de Facebook, no una conspiración

El equipo liderado por S.Vitali del Swiss Federal Institute of Technology en Zurich, ha usado un método de análisis que normalmente se aplica a la conectividad en Internet, llamado  "bow-tie model," mediante el cuál han asignado compañías a cada una de las partes de un nudo...

+ Leer la entrada completa
+ Descargar el documento 'The Network of Global Corporate Control'

La conciencia universal

Existen corrientes de pensamiento que defienden que la conciencia es una energía universal. Por ejemplo la doctora Théresse Brosse, una de las abanderadas de las psiconeuroinmunología.

Las mil y unas noches

Las mil y una noches es una recopilación de cuentos árabes. El compilador y traductor de la obra se cree que fue el cuentista Abu abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahshigar, que vivió en el siglo IX. La historia principal sobre Scheherezade, parece que fue incorporada en el siglo XIV.

Europa tuvo que esperar has 1704 para leer la obra de la mano de la traducción de Antoine Gallard quien acorde a las costumbres y moral europea de la época eliminó todo el contenido erótico y violento de los relatos.

Sería el británico Sir Richard Francis Burton quien tradujese la obra sin censura en el año 1884, aunque la versión más extendida y aceptada fue la del francés Joseph Madrus del año 1898, traducida al español por el escrito Vicente Blasco Ibáñez a principios del siglo XX.

Las citas de Las mil y una noches en la versión española del blackout son de la traducción de Eduardo N. Gordona, año 2002 sobre la de Madrus, sin embargo las citas en la versión inglesa son de la traducción de R. Burton. No todos los relatos son iguales en la traducción de Burton y Madrus, sobre todo en el volumen 6 del libro. Así el cuento de la tierna historia del Príncipe Jazmín y la Princesa Almendra que cierra la traducción de Madrus antes de la conclusión final, no es igual en la versión de Burton, que cierra el libro con la historia del zapatero Ma’aruf y su esposa.

Entrevista al decrecionista Richard Heinberg

Una entrevista a Richard Heinberg sobre la situación mundial, la vuelta a la autoproducción alimentaria, casas autosuficientes, decrecer en la dependencia de los recursos fósiles...