Rockstar Librarian has been publishing a guide to the music of Burning Man for the past decade. It has now grown to a 32-page booklet, listing more than 5,000 DJ sets and live music performances.
Rockstar Librarian, President of the Galaxy, 2008
She is raising money to help with the production costs. Now that the guide is so big, it creates a lot of work for her and her designer who have to work around the clock for 3 days straight.
It’s an amazing offering, and one that BMOrg themselves could easily donate $5,000 to, given how integral it is to their event.
As well as the guide, she also compiles as many of the DJ sets from the Burn that she can link to. Sign up for her free newsletter to get access to last year’s sets. Here are the 2013 sets on Soundcloud: 229 of them. It takes a massive amount of time to put this kind of information together, and it is incredibly useful to all Burners – as well as fans around the world of the thousands of different DJs .
Please support Rockstar Librarian, let’s thank her for all the spectacular work she has done for the Burner community to date and encourage her and her team to keep working so hard for us in the future.
Yesterday Burning Man bigwigs and BLM bigwigs got together to discuss Chocotacogate. According to the information leaked (by BMOrg?) to Jenny Kane at the RGJ: the BLM wanted $1 million+ in extra funding to build them the Blue Pit, an off-site VIP compound with 8 double rooms for visiting dignitaries; and this is all coming from one person, BLM special agent Dan Love.
Image: Burn.Life
This information – blasted widely around the world – was later quietly corrected by Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham in a radio interview on NPR, who said that actually, the BLM were just asking to increase the Infrastructure part of the budget from $600,000 to $1 million. This includes walkie talkies and other safety equipment. Part of this increase was to pay for expanded medical facilities, and only some was to provide VIP accommodation. The VIP component was coming from the highest levels of the Department of Interior, who naturally wanted to visit the event after all the media and lobbying campaigns by BMOrg. The request for food was the same as last year’s, which was met without complaint by BMOrg.
Still, the global media ran with the RGJ story, putting egg on the faces of the BLM. Some politicians were stirred to pile onto the story, including Harry Reid and Mark Amodei.
Yesterday, on the day of the meeting BLM’s Nevada Director Neil Kornze wrote a column for the RGJ, saying:
Many have read stories in recent days about a proposed lavish encampment for Bureau of Land Management employees working at the Burning Man festival that is held annually on public lands in the Nevada desert. These reports painted a troubling portrait of government employees seeking VIP accommodations and outlandish provisions. Like you, I was surprised and upset by much of what I read.
I have directed my team to take a top-to-bottom look at exactly what is needed to properly support BLM employees that have oversight responsibility for this enormous public event in a remote corner of Nevada. Our revised proposal will include only what is essential for our core operational needs for providing appropriate health, safety, and environmental safeguards on the playa. That is our commitment.
And while we undertake that review, we are also working to address critical safety and health issues at Burning Man. Over the past five years, the Burning Man event has nearly doubled in size. What was once a loosely organized gathering of a few thousand like-minded individuals is now an instant metropolis hosting 75,000 attendees, volunteers, and staff in one of the most remote corners of the American west. At its peak, Burning Man is the sixth largest city in Nevada, complete with a busy airport. Attendees come to the playa from around the world with their own ideas of what Burning Man is and ought to be.
This rapid evolution has dramatically increased the complexity of the BLM’s and Black Rock City LLC’s management responsibilities, and in recent years a series of incidents have made it clear that improvements need to be made. Last year, a total of 2,880 patients were treated for medical issues, including 71 drug overdoses, 67 trauma incidents, and 30 cases of alcohol poisoning. Tragically, a woman was killed last year when she was run over by an art car. Incidents of burglary, battery, and sexual assault have risen as the event has grown, and the BLM has also responded to flooding, aviation accidents, and out-of-control fires in recent years.
In March, the BLM raised twenty critical health, safety, and environmental issues with event organizers, including ensuring that on-site medical services are adequate to serve the vast population of Black Rock City. To date, Black Rock City LLC has only acknowledged seven of these important issues and has provided adequate plans and updates for just two.
In the coming days, the BLM will make an important course correction regarding what is needed to support our teams that are on the ground during the Burning Man event. It will also be necessary for the organizers of Burning Man to come to the table as serious partners in addressing the concerns that were identified for them months ago. We look forward to further dialogue on these issues. Our priority is to make sure that all burners come home safe and healthy.
Present at the meeting Wednesday from Burning Man were founder Larry Harvey; Marnee Benson, political affairs manager; Rosalie Barnes, agency relations and regulatory affairs manager; Ray Allen, attorney; and Goodell…For BLM, Ruhs was present along with Winnemucca district manager Gene Seidlitz, Nevada-Utah special agent in charge Dan Love and acting assistant state director Ann DeBlasi from Washington, D.C.
…the meeting centered on safety and security concerns, which have been repeatedly brought up in BLM statements to media.
Rather than review the points of contention in documents obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal in June, Burning Man and BLM officials discussed some of the failures and successes of working together in years past.
It sounds like the meeting ended on a positive note, but didn’t go quite the way BMorg were expecting.
“There’s a lot of heat on everyone at the moment,” Goodell said after the 90-minute meeting. “The intention of the meeting probably changed in the past 24 hours.”
“We agreed to collaborate on what we can accomplish this year, and we looked back. We looked at the present and the past,” Goodell said. “We pointed out that there’s been a 40 percent increase in the event population and a 244 percent increase in cost for the permit,”
“This was a good meeting and an opportunity to discuss our mutual interests in coming up with a plan to support Burning Man, which is a truly unique cultural event on Public Lands. We are working to come up with a plan that is cost efficient and ensures public health and safety,” Ruhs said. “We are going to do all we can to make this year’s event a success. I am confident that BLM and BRC will be able to work together to address safety and environmental concerns.”
The meeting discussed 20 medical and safety issues. Only 2 have been resolved, and only 7 have even been acknowledged by BMOrg. The gates open in 50 days.
WASHINGTON – A month and a half before the scheduled start of this year’s desert festival, organizers of the annual Burning Man in Northern Nevada have yet to resolve more than 15 health and safety issues stemming from last year’s event, according to the Bureau of Land Management.
Officials from the BLM and the Burning Man organization were meeting Wednesday in Reno to discuss outstanding issues in advance of the Aug. 30-Sept. 7 festival in the Black Rock Desert.
The federal agency has yet to issue a permit for the event. John Ruhs, the BLM acting Nevada state director, said all conditions raised in a post-event review last year must be addressed for the BLM to allow this year’s event to proceed.
Ruhs stopped short of saying the BLM might shut down Burning Man, expressing confidence an agreement could be worked out.
“We have a long ways to go yet but I’m pretty confident we will as always be able to address issues together and get to a good place with them,” Ruhs said in an interview.
But the agency took the unusual step of making public a letter listing the outstanding health and safety issues. Of 20 compiled following the 2014 festival, the BLM said 18 remain to be resolved including improvements to its medical program, transportation management and security surrounding the festival’s signature burn events.
“Last year, a total of 2,880 patients were treated for medical issues, including 71 drug overdoses, 67 trauma incidents and 30 cases of alcohol poisoning,” Ruhs said in the letter to the government affairs director of Black Rock City, LLC, the nonprofit that runs the festival. In addition, a woman from Wyoming was killed when she fell beneath a moving bus…
BLM officials on Wednesday denied they were in a tit-for-tat with Burning Man. The agency’s letter though makes a connection…
“We are now taking a top to bottom look at exactly what is needed,” Ruhs said, adding “While the BLM revises its statement of work, dialogue must also continue on a wide array of health, safety and environmental concerns raised by the BLM earlier this year.”
The 20 Safety, Health and Security Issues and Concerns are:
BRC Medical Program
BRC Fire, Rescue, Hazmat Programs
Fatality Medical Response and On-Scene Management
Transportation Management
Art Project Management
Security and Safety Plan for Scheduled Burn Events
Sanitation Management
Early Arrival Program
D-Lot Design and Management
Fuel Storage Management
Deployment of Medical Resources
Placement of Emergency Vehicles at the Airport
Highway 34 Road Conditions
Population Tracking and Reporting Program
BRC Event Table of Organization
BRC Event Management Program Description
Participant Evacuation Contingency Plan
Significant Incident Reporting
Art Car operations
Illicit narcotics
Time precludes me from going into much detail on this letter now, it warrants a post in itself as it reveals interesting details on a number of events last year, such as the art car fatality and Embrace burn. One thing in particular really jumped out:
The letter makes frequent references to the 2014 HGH After Action Report (AAR). If anyone has a copy of that report, please send it in. It seems that HGH raised some concerns, these concerns went to the BLM who then raised them with BMOrg – who then fired HGH.
Did BMOrg try to scapegoat HGH here? Did they think that just ditching HGH would resolve the issues, since HGH are mentioned in many of them? Perhaps they didn’t like HGH giving the Feds a list of headaches problems to fix.
The number of patients being thrown around, 2,880, is very different from what has been reported in previous years. BMOrg’s own 2014 Afterburn report said there were 6,100 medical patients last year – more than double the number the government are using. The difference may be in this magic word “treated” – this year, there will be much less treatment provided on-site by CrowdRX.
This morning I have received an Anonymous tip-off, from someone with inside information about the medical discussions. Treat this as an unconfirmed rumor, but I trust the source.
It seems that, as usual, there is much more to the story than what we’re being told.
One thing the source revealed is that BMOrg have recently filed a public information request for Pat Songer’s records of HGH’s care at the previous years Burns. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be much continuity between medical services at Burning Man between 2014 and 2015, it’s a brave new world now.
The bombshell revelation from this source is to do with off-Playa medical treatment.
In previous years, your Burning Man ticket purchased you Medical Insurance at the event. If anything happened to you at Burning Man, even if you didn’t have insurance yourself, theirs would take care of your treatment.
In the past with HGH, all care was covered, on-Playa and transport off. If anything happened to you at Burning Man and you needed to be taken to a hospital, an HGH ambulance would take you to the nearest hospital (Reno). Humboldt’s plan was to treat everything they possibly could on-site at Black Rock City.
Image: American Med Flight
Now, if anything happens, you’ll have to be taken outside the event to a Default world hospital – most likely, still Reno/Sparks. By air. There will be no medical ground transportation for medical emergencies, the plan is air transport only. Fixed wing, no helicopters.
The price for an airlift with American Med Flight is $30,000.
The rumor is that certain members of the Org are getting a better rate if they become injured and need transport. This seems to approach the idea of “kickbacks”. There may also be issues of local county permitting, in relation to this business.
This comment is from Anonymous Burner. We have no specific information on this arrangement.
Of course none of this should be a problem, since Obamacare means every person in the United States now has medical insurance. Someone else will pay! Oh, but what about the 20% of Burners from other countries? Hopefully they got travel insurance.
American Med Flight are offering a Burning Man insurance package. For only $25, if you do need their services, you won’t pay more than $7,500.
Towards the end of 2013, a former DPW manager blew the whistle on safety issues, then BMOrg lost their respected Emergency Services Director, Joseph Pred. Chaos seems to have ensued, with 18 major issues unresolved less than 2 months before the gates open. Let’s hope BMOrg can sort this out – in the circumstances, perhaps sticking with their existing partner HGH should be re-considered.
[Update 7/9/15 1:25pm]
Thanks to A Balanced Perspective for alerting us to the latest RGJ story, in which BMOrg say they have already responded to many of the BLMs concerns and there are a lot of falsehoods in the report. Keep reading for my comments.
[Update 7/9/15 4:47pm]
Someone Who Knows has given us this update:
HGH transported to Reno, just like REMSA did, not to Winnemucca. Careflight has been offering low cost membership that helps cover the whirly bird ride for years. That being said, fixed wing is actually a safer, more reliable option than helicopter in the black rock playa conditions and I highly doubt CrowdRX will not have ambulances
They sound like they do know. And I agree – surely there will be ambulances. Surely there will be helicopters. Coming soon.
[Update 7/9/15 5:30pm]
Francisco Ceballos from Humboldt General Hospital created a pro-active presentation last year, on what could be done to prevent injuries at Burning Man. One of their suggestions was to communicate with Burners via Burners.Me! Perhaps that may have led to their downfall…
Francisco was right: we would be happy to share any information that could improve the safety and wellbeing of Burners.
[Update 7/9/15 6:30pm]
BMOrg have claimed that they sent a response to BLM addressing all 20 concerns in April. We call on them to share their documentation with all Burners, not just chosen journalists at the RGJ. Why are the “After Action Reports” not part of the “After Burn Reports”?
In April, Burning Man submitted a 40-page working document that addressed “every single point” that the BLM made, according to Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell…
Burning Man’s own assessment, which is put together in collaboration with various county, state and federal agencies, including the BLM, contradicts many of the BLM’s findings. According to the Burning Man’s series of “after action reports,” the BLM’s assessment has a number of inaccuracies, including:
•All appropriate HAZMAT procedures were followed during the handling of bodily fluids following the fatal accident.
•Emergency medical services vehicles were available at all times during the event, though Humboldt General Hospital did report a sustained 11 minutes during which time five of eight vehicles were dispatched and three were “idle.” Burning Man organizers are uncertain as to why the idle vehicles were not available for use during those 11 minutes.
•Vehicles were not stranded during the delay, but instead were parked on the side of the road. Burning Man organizers at the time told participants that they had the option of going home, though most decided to wait until the weather and conditions improved.
•Pyrotechnic effects, which usually include fireworks or explosive displays, are not allowed on art cars, though Burning Man does allow flame effects, which are automated fire features.
Burning Man also took issue with Kornze’s statement Wednesday that the San Francisco-based nonprofit had not addressed enough of the agency’s concerns, saying Burning Man staff have been working with a number of agencies to improve its operations.
Burning Man created a new emergency operations chief position, according to Graham, and hired a new medical services management provider, replacing Humboldt General Hospital.
13 items are still open. Item #20 is quite probably irresolvable, the BLM might as well drop it. BMOrg should cave to everything else, if they can sell 10,000 more tickets.
The BLM note in their letter that 13,545 people entered the event before it started with Early Access passes. Before the event opened, there were many people bicycling around sight-seeing and partying. Tut-tut!
A major hacker group “Hacking Team” themselves got hacked. More than 500 GB of emails, financial and other data was leaked to the Internet. They revealed that the company had sold hacking tools to the FBI, DEA, and Department of Defense; as well as to the governments of Mexico, Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Spain, and many others.
July 7:
The Intercept published documents about the Hacking Team corporation that was selling its secrets to 3rd world despots, as well as G20 countries and alphabet agencies. They revealed Zero-Day Exploits in Windows and Flash, which could be a major vulnerability across the entire Internet.
The zero-day vulnerability affects all major web browsers, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox as well as Apple’s Safari.
Chinese equities have lost more than $3.5 trillion of value in less than a month as traders liquidated leveraged bets at an unprecedented pace. Foreign investors extended a record three-day exodus on Wednesday…On the Shanghai exchange, 365 companies suspended trading, equivalent to 33 percent of all listings. A further 992 were halted in Shenzhen, or 56 percent of the total.
Time magazine publishes a story How Real Is The Threat Of a Cyber Attack, warning that a “black swan” cyber attack could really destabilize the world economy over the next, ummm, year – and the government has been consistently surprised by cyber attacks recently. This blames the Chinese as the most sophisticated group of cyber hackers.
Just before midnight, Anonymous tweets “I wonder if tomorrow will be bad for Wall Street”
Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street…. we can only hope.
Amazing how they can diagnose that so quickly. Especially given that by definition, “hacking” is intruding into internal technical systems.
A trader on the floor described the situation as unprecedented:
In my time in the capital markets or working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, I have never seen a complete halt of the markets due to technology problems. Even 9/11 cannot be considered a halt because the markets never opened that day. This is extraordinary. There was no clue, or early indication that this would happen. The music just simply stopped playing. There is no panic on the part of the trading community and right now we are just ensuring that we are prepared when the market re-opens… Most of the volume in this market (and most markets, for that matter) happens in the first half hour and last half hour, so the NYSE is scrambling to get us back on line for a close of the market.
The computer problem in the airline’s reservation system caused the FAA to impose what is known as a ground stop at 8:26 a.m. ET, meaning United flights were not allowed to take off. It lifted the stop for feeder airlines that fly under the name United Express about 15 minutes later, but it took until just before 9:47 a.m. for the ground stop to be lifted for United flights.
The computer problem had forced United to hand write tickets for passengers at multiple airports. But Record said the lack of a reservation system meant that the airline was not able to check to confirm that passengers were not on a no-fly list or that everyone on the flight was supposed to be there.
“Because of the safeguards and the backups built into the reservation system, once that goes down, everything has to stop,” Record said.
Was this just a one off, or has it been brewing for a while? How do we know “Anonymous” is really behind this, and not a state actor?
Going back a little earlier in the year, we can see the build up to this “First Cyber War” being seeded in the media. In particular, software pioneer, cyber-security expert, and hacker of entire countries John McAfee has been sounding the alarm.
A couple of months ago, seemingly out of the blue he started writing a column about hacking – his stories are excellent and he’s quite a character, follow him on Facebook. His most recent columns seem to have been “priming the pump” for today’s events. Prescience? Inside track? Or just a series of lucky guesses?
The first big event of the year was the infamous Sony hack – which led to racist emails between senior Sony Execs circulating.
Then we had the “next level” Sony hack – the one blamed on North Korea, timed to come out at the same time as a comedy film about assassinating the leader of North Korea.
June 4
McAfee wrote about the most damaging hack in history: Adult Friend Finder, 15 million records. There were senators and governors and their staffers in the list, using their own names and official email addresses. There were also church leaders and celebrities.
June 8
McAfee’s next column Four Million Ways To Lose Your Secrets is about how the Office of Personnel Management got hacked, the intruders stole 4 million detailed records. This includes comprehensive and highly sensitive information that is collected as part of the application for Top Secret and other security clearances. This was blamed on the Chinese government.
June 25
McAfee said the OPM hack was smokescreen for a much bigger problem: 24 major hacks in the last 30 days. None of these appear to be linked to Anonymous.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack has acted as a smokescreen to mask a far broader problem that has occurred in the past 30 days. Here’s the full story in headlines (those in italics are included for completeness only and are not counted in the 24 hacks.):
April 7th 2015 – Russians Hack White House Computers and Even Access President Obama’s Schedule – New York Post
May 22nd 2015 – Adult Friend Finder hack exposes millions of sex seekers – SiliconANGLE#GetMcAfee’d
May 26th 2015 – 104,000 records taken from IRS Website – CNN
May 29th 2015 – IRS Blames Russia For $50 Million Hack – Engadget
May 27th 2015 – Kentucky GOP Website Hacked – GovTech
June 1st 2015 – 1.25 Million records from Japan’s Pension System Hacked – Japan Times
June 4th 2015 – U.S. agency handling security clearances hacked – SiliconANGLE
June 5th 2015 – Records of 4 million Federal Employees Exposed in OPM Hack – NPR
June 15th 2015 – US Officials Now Say 14 Million Records Taken In OPM Hack – NPR
June 23rd 2015 – OPM Hack 4 Times Larger Than Reported – 18 Million Records Now Reported Taken – CNN
June 23rd 2015 – John McAfee predicts OPM number will reach 30 Million – SiliconANGLE
June 4th 2015 – Russia Hacks German Parliament – Business Insider
June 8th 2015 – US Army’s Website Hacked By Unknown Intruders – NBC News
June 22nd 2015 – U.S. National Archives Says It’s Data Was Hacked – NextGOV
June 22nd 2015 – The NSA Hacked Into Popular Antivirus Software To Track Users And Infiltrate Networks – TechTimes
June 22nd 2015 – Script.CC. Hacked, Large Number of Bitcoin Stolen – NewsBTC
June 23rd 2015 – Britain’s National Health Services Hacked – Mirror
What can we make of the above headlines?
The first thing that I noticed was the complete absence of the type of hacks that appeared in the news in the previous year. Nothing similar to the Target Corporation, Nordstrom Inc. and long string of other retail hacks; no mention of credit cards; no mention of individual financial loss. All the mentioned hacks had to do with Political and Government personnel, or with gaining access to the deeper layers of individual lives – going way beyond mere financial data which is in constant flux.
The data taken focused on the more permanent aspects people’s lives. For example, medical data was targeted in nearly 20 percent of the hacks (Japan’s Pension System, Indiana Healthcare Software, North Dakota Workers Comp, Britain’s National Health System). The OPM hack, by far the most devastating, focused on the intensely personal data collected during the process of vetting people for secret security clearances. This data included everything required to determine a person’s fundamental character.
Given the above, we can predict the following with a high degree of accuracy:
More hacks of medical data within multiple states (and countries) will soon be reported.
Reported hacks within the U.S. Government will spread to a number of other Government agencies.
As currently known hacks unfold, they will significantly worsen.
People may be astonished by the increasing frequency of the number of hacks
In a story this morning in IB Times, which doesn’t mention today’s attacks, McAfee said the leaks portends a grim future of global cyber war. One which we are already in.
Nothing to see here, sheeple, move along. As long as CNN tells you everything’s fine, it’s fine.
Burners have always been preparing for a post-apocalyptic, post-economic civilization – that time might be coming sooner than we think.
I don’t want to give a spoiler alert for the end of the new season of Orange is the New Black, but for anyone who’s seen it, I’m kind of imagining that…if the system shut down, and no bank accounts were working, that would probably seem fine for a moment. Eventually, reality would set in.
Wonder what is going to happen tomorrow: will the markets just shrug and move on? Will The Powers That Be continue to deny vehemently that it was a hacker attack, without even investigating?
[Update 7/9/15 5:41pm]
In today’s news, the OPM hack has now been increased to 22.1 million people’s records stolen, 1 in 15 Americans.
Officials have concluded that the larger breach, which targeted background investigation records kept by OPM, included Social Security numbers, information on family members and other contacts, as well as health and criminal records. The data haul also included an estimated 1.1 million fingerprint records.
In total, hackers are thought to have netted records on 19.7 million people who applied for background check investigations with the federal government, and another 1.8 million people including spouses who did not apply for a background check but whose information was included in the forms. Anyone who applied for a background check from 2000 on is likely to have had their information compromised…
Among the forms used in federal background checks is the Standard Form 86, an 127-page document that delves into intimate questions about prior brushes with the law, drug use, psychiatric health, and info on friends and family members. It requires the applicant to put his or her Social Security number on nearly every page of the document.
China was named as “the leading suspect” in the breach last month by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper…Officials did confirm on the call that both attacks were the work of “the same actor” who gained access to the OPM system probably starting in May or June of 2014 with a contractor’s stolen username and password.
It sure seems like a lot of hacker related stuff was launched yesterday. In the Washington Post, DARPA announced a “Cyber Grand Challenge”, noting that we’re losing the cybersecurity war.
Image: DARPA/Facebook
DARPA initially started with more than 100 teams when it began the program a year ago, but the field was quickly whittled down. On Wednesday, it announced the seven finalists chosen to compete in the competition next year. They are an eclectic band of cyberwarriors, ranging from academics representing major university computer science programs to well-known hackers and defense industry heavyweights.
The White House and the FBI might be saying “no cyber attack”, but John McAfee thinks it was. I’m more inclined to go with the billionaire domain expert on this one, rather than the hasty diagnosis by political mouthpieces.
At around the same time that the NYSE went down, the Wall Street Journal’s website went offline, as did that of popular financial blog Zero Hedge. United Airlines also experienced a “network connectivity issue” which impacted almost 5,000 flights worldwide.
Given the criticality of technology to United Airlines, let’s assume for a moment it has a daily reliability rate of 99.9%, meaning it has a system failure once every 1,000 days – which equates to once every three years. Now, let’s assume the NYSE and the Wall Street Journal also have a daily reliability rate of 99.9%.
If these events were truly random and independent, then the frequency of all three of these events happening on the same day is once in a billion days (or if you prefer to count in years, almost 2.8 million years).
Coincidental failure is possible, sure, but it does seem highly unlikely. If you add Zero Hedge to the mix, then the probability of all four events happening on the same day rapidly approaches zero.
If we throw in the near simultaneity of the NYSE and the Wall Street Journal issues (happening within minutes of each other), then it is more likely that your car, using quantum probability effects, would leak out of your garage and show up instantly in my driveway an ocean away.
It is certainly possible, but no one in their right mind would bet on it.
The Financial Times commented on the attacks, and was rather dismissive of the official denials. They call for a new Agency to manage cyber defense, or just take it out of the hands of the USAF and give it to Homeland Security. That way, the same TSA goons groping you at the airport, can be looking up all your personal records in the Cyber databases too.
On paper, there is no shortage of resources; earlier this year, for example, President Barack Obama earmarked $14bn for the cyber fight. But the key problem now is not so much a lack of cash — but co-ordination: as fear spreads, a bewildering alphabet soup of different agencies and task forces is leaping into cyber battle, often with little collaboration. The institution that is supposed to be in charge of security threats is the Department of Homeland Security. But its skills are viewed with scepticism by military officials. The Pentagon has its own cyber warriors, as do America’s intelligence agencies.
The White House has tried to force these bodies to work together. Separately, civilian agencies such as Nuclear Regulatory Commission started holding discreet meetings with each other last autumn on cyber issues too. But collaboration across sectors is patchy. “The level of readiness in different agencies varies enormously,” admits a senior Washington figure at the centre of these efforts. Add in private sector bodies and the picture is even worse: not only is the Pentagon wary of sharing data with, say, the Chamber of Commerce, but companies are often terrified of revealing attacks to each other.
Is there a solution? One sensible response might be to create a new agency to provide a central focus for the cyber fight. There is precedent for that; most Washington regulators emerged in response to a new threat. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, was created after the 1929 stock market crash; the Food and Drug Administration appeared after scandals over dangerous medicines. A second option might be to relaunch the DHS to focus on the cyber fight. It could, for example, be named the Department of Cyber and Homeland Security.
7 hackers from L0pht raised the alarm about this to Congress in 1998, saying that any one of them could take down the entire Internet in about 30 minutes. [Source: Washington Post]
So, to summarize, the NYSE has a disaster recovery center which… they choose not to use because it is an inconvenience to clients who would rather be unable to trade!
Maybe there was a different angle altogether: with China crashing and halting 70% of the market, the US had just one response:
China: We'll halt 70% of our stocks US: Oh yeah, we'll halt the world's largest stock exchange
The Chinese stock market surged again today, after the government threatened short sellers with arrest. This may merely be a “dead cat bounce”, a reflexive response from the market when technical indicators show it as massively oversold.
It raises the prospect that the motivation of the hackers may not have been to destroy, but in fact to profit from wild swings in the stock market. The use of derivative instruments like Put and Call options can create massive profits from swings of only a few percentage points. Certainly, Anonymous would have been in a position to take out such trading positions before making their threat – and, it looks like, executing their plan.
The first thing that I noticed was the complete absence of the type of hacks that appeared in the news in the previous year. Nothing similar to the Target Corporation, Nordstrom Inc. and long string of other retail hacks; no mention of credit cards; no mention of individual financial loss. All the mentioned hacks had to do with Political and Government personnel, or with gaining access to the deeper layers of individual lives – going way beyond mere financial data which is in constant flux.
