Conspiracy theories run wild on Amazon

The e-commerce giant has become a hotbed for Covid-19 and QAnon disinformation.


Amazon says that, like other book sellers, it offered customers titles from a wide variety of viewpoints, and its content policies dictated what could be sold on its online marketplace. | Michel Spingler/AP Photo


By MARK SCOTT

12/23/2020 

LONDON — Amazon is profiting from disinformation linked to Covid-19 falsehoods and QAnon, the debunked conspiracy theory, according to POLITICO’s analysis of hundreds of books sold on the e-commerce giant’s global online marketplace.

Across the company’s multiple European and U.S. sites, more than 80 titles advancing claims that the ongoing pandemic is a hoax; that vaccines are harmful; and that people should be wary of national lockdowns are easily found — often promoted by Amazon’s own algorithms to entice people to buy conspiracy-laden books.


Roughly 100 books associated with the QAnon movement — or unproven claims there is a so-called deep state plot to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency — are also readily available within Amazon’s online marketplace, in several languages, based on the analysis.

These titles have often garnered thousands of positive reviews in which customers praise conspiracy theories which hold that Bill Gates, Angela Merkel and other global leaders are using the ongoing pandemic to undermine people’s freedoms for their own gain. Many of the books are included in Amazon’s subscription services, Kindle Unlimited and Audible, which allow people to read and listen to a selection of e-books and audio books for a monthly charge.

Other social media giants like Facebook and Google’s YouTube have banned QAnon content from their networks, in part because of its connections to real-world violence. These platforms have clamped down on Covid-19 disinformation, including Facebook banning anti-vaccine ads and other dubious content from its global network.

On Amazon, many of the Covid-19 and QAnon books are either self-published or promoted by small publishing houses, then printed and sold through the company’s own publishing division. The e-commerce giant typically takes at least a one-third cut of all e-book sales, while it pockets around 15 percent when people purchase traditional books, according to the company’s policies.

POLITICO could not determine how much money the U.S. tech giant had made through the sale of these digital and traditional books, though it is likely to be a mere fraction of its yearly book revenue — a figure that Amazon does not break out from its financial earnings. But many of the conspiracy theory titles, including “Vaccines Are Dangerous – And Don’t Work” by Vernon Coleman, a well-known anti-vaccine influencer, are best-sellers in several health, politics and alternative medicine book categories on Amazon, according to POLITICO’s analysis.

“Amazon is falling short by allowing people to promote these conspiracy theories,” said Ciaran O’Connor, a disinformation researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank in London that tracks extremist material online. It “offers online influencers with an infrastructure to monetize content and material directly linked to disinformation.”

In response, Amazon said that, like other book sellers, it offered customers titles from a wide variety of viewpoints, and its content policies dictated what could be sold on its online marketplace. The tech giant outlaws pirated content and counterfeit goods from being sold on its platform, but does not have specific rules linked to disinformation or conspiracy theories. The company has also removed several QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy books from its sites in recent months.

“Our shopping and discovery tools are not designed to generate results oriented to a specific point of view,” said Dagmar Wickham, a company spokesperson, when asked why Amazon was recommending QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theory books to people on its sites.
Shift in focus

For much of 2020, attention has centered on how the biggest social networks — Facebook, Google and Twitter — have become hotbeds for disinformation tied to Covid-19 and QAnon. But as these platforms have taken steps to remove such material, online users have shifted their focus to less-policed parts of the web to spread conspiracy theories across digital audiences, according to disinformation experts.

That has thrown up difficult questions about the right to publish and read content that, while objectionable to some people, does not break specific laws, and whether tech companies should clamp down on material that either promotes political divisions or undermines medical responses to the global pandemic.

Since the summer, Spotify, Soundcloud and other audio streaming services have seen a marked increase in conspiracy podcasts. Fringe online groups have also promoted Amazon, whose online marketplace has become a go-to source for many during national lockdowns, as a key source of income and influence, based on POLITICO’s review of hundreds of conversations on Telegram, an internet messaging service favored by white nationalists and other extremist groups.

“A lot of this stuff exists because platforms haven’t had to think about it before,” said Jonathan Bright, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Junk content will exist in the least regulated parts of the internet.”

To determine how widespread disinformation was on Amazon, POLITICO worked with researchers from King’s College London and the University of Amsterdam who started with 16 widely available QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy books on the e-commerce giant. The academics then relied on the company’s own recommendations — based on automated algorithms that serve up other titles that may be interesting to its customers — to compile a list of more than 100 books with ties to disinformation and conspiracy theories.

POLITICO also conducted a separate review of Amazon’s U.S., British, German and French sites by searching for books associated with QAnon and Covid-19, and similarly used the company’s own recommendations to put together a list of 70 different books. While the English-language online marketplaces had the most conspiracy theory content, Amazon’s German and French versions also listed reams of such material, often associated with local groups like Germany’s right-wing identitarian movement and Didier Raoult, the French doctor who promoted an antimalarial drug to treat Covid-19.

“Amazon’s ecosystem, even before Covid-19, seems to have been a rich place for hyper-partisan literature that skews predominantly to the right,” said Marc Tuters, an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, who worked on the disinformation project. “Predominantly rightwing publishers are using Amazon to reach the widest audience possible.”

Everywhere you look

It does not take long to find disinformation on Amazon.

A search for QAnon or Covid-19 returns scores of books with titles like “Scamdemic: the COVID-19 agenda” and “QAnon: the awakening begins,” based on POLITICO’s analysis.

Many of these titles are written by leading online influencers such as Alex Berenson, whose skeptical take on the global pandemic was initially rejected by Amazon’s self-publishing division. His book was eventually added to the online marketplace, and became a bestseller, after Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive who has also expressed doubt about nationwide lockdowns, criticized the e-commerce giant on social media for censoring the book. The company said it had removed Berenson’s book “in error.”

Much of this material blurs the line between political, often anti-government, content and outright falsehoods, making it difficult, if not impossible, to remove the books for breaching Amazon’s content policies. But unlike other platforms that have tried to reduce the spread of conspiracy theory-related posts and videos, the e-commerce giant has actively promoted these titles to potential customers, based on POLITICO’s review of the company’s online sales network.

On Amazon’s U.S. site, Dave Hayes, a well-known QAnon influencer, has published a series of e-books to decipher the movement, garnering thousands of positive reviews despite the claims being mostly debunked. Almost all the reviews were positive and did not run with disclaimers — steps that other social networks have taken when handling user-generated conspiracy theory content. Such commentary can nudge people to buy the books, but there are few, if any, professional reviews of the QAnon-related content on Amazon, according to the University of Amsterdam’s Tuters.

“The Qanon posts describe an effort to take America back from the globalists and Deep State bureaucrats who’ve been in control of governments, banks, and politicians for decades,” one reviewer, who gave the book five stars, wrote. “This is not some wild story or conspiracy.”

The e-commerce giant also bundles QAnon books together as potential purchasing suggestions for would-be customers.

On Amazon’s British site, for instance, “QAnon: An Invitation to The Great Awakening” — a so-called field guide to the movement — is packaged together with two other titles that associate QAnon with “destroying the new world order.” The bundle, collectively costing £31.15, is “dispatched from and sold by Amazon,” according to each book’s page on the online marketplace.

The company’s recommendation engine, an automated tool that offers up other titles people may be interested in, based on others’ purchasing histories, similarly pushes people towards conspiracy theories and disinformation.

In France, a book titled “COVID-19: the oligarchy exposed,” written by a former senior official from the National Rally, the country’s far-right political party, outlines why global elites are behind the ongoing crisis and how vaccines could prove to be dangerous. It blurs the line between political speech and conspiracy theories

Yet on the book’s Amazon page, the e-commerce giant recommends other books — covering everything from claims Emmanuel Macron, the French president, caused the virus to spread, to why Didier Raoult’s debunked Covid-19 treatments were correct — that skew more toward outright disinformation. Similar suggestions appear on all of the QAnon and Covid-19 books available on the company’s multiple sites reviewed by POLITICO.

“With Covid-19, people are already moving away from trusted institutions,” said Claire Wardle, co-founder of FirstDraft, a nonprofit organization that works with news outlets to combat disinformation, including falsehoods linked to the global pandemic. “They search out information that reinforces their existing beliefs.”

Leonie Cater contributed to this report.

'A violation of trust': Alberta doctors decry government vacations abroad

© Provided by Calgary Herald Rockyview General Hospital. Thursday, Dec. 10, 2020.


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The revelation that at least five Alberta MLAs travelled abroad over the holidays amid strict COVID-19 restrictions has left some doctors in the province feeling frustrated.

The vacation destinations for the elected officials dot North America. Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard and Calgary-Klein MLA Jeremy Nixon both visited Hawaii. Arizona was the sunny locale visited by Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan, while Calgary-Peigan MLA Tanya Fir jetted to Las Vegas and backbencher Pat Rehn took a trip to Mexico.

On their website, the Alberta government advises against non-essential travel outside of Canada, aligning with a federal advisory.

Premier Jason Kenney said on New Year’s Day sanctions would not be issued to any government officials who spent their holidays on foreign soil. He said he issued a directive forbidding future out-of-country unrelated to government business.

The news was upsetting for Dr. Fiona Mattatall, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Calgary’s Rockyview General Hospital.

“It made me really angry and frustrated, and as I sorted through where that’s coming from, I realized it’s essentially coming from what I see my patients going through,” Mattatall said, estimating she sees about 50 patients each week.

“They’ve been changing a lot in their lives to keep themselves and their unborn child safe, and (I’ve been) hearing the sacrifices that people are making for their families and for their neighbours. I think it’s been hard coming to terms with knowing as Albertans we’re being given restrictions and then the people who are giving them out are not abiding by them.”

Mattatall worked early Saturday morning, and said she saw patients who felt “extremely angry” because they had altered celebrations around the holidays and foregone interactions with loved ones that would normally be an indispensable part of being an expectant parent.

“It’s extremely frustrating they’re not following the same precautions as the rest of Albertans to keep everyone safe,” she said.

© Provided by Calgary Herald

In mid-December, the province introduced strict measures meant to curb the rapidly rising spread of COVID-19, including implementing an ongoing ban on all social gatherings that lasted over the holidays.

Dr. Shazma Mithani is an emergency room physician in Edmonton. She suggested it was hypocritical for government officials not to follow the “spirit of the rules” while most Albertans give up Christmas traditions to adhere to public-health orders.

“I don’t know if it’s naive, but it did surprise me. Like the premier said yesterday, elected officials and people in public service are held to a higher standard, and knowing that and believing that, I was very surprised to hear that so many of the staffers and MLAs have left the country,” Mithani said.

“Unanimously, everybody is upset. It really feels like a violation of trust.”

Mithani said her family cancelled a ski trip to British Columbia booked months ago as the second wave worsened.

“We chose not even to leave the province, and we haven’t even left the city,” she said. “We chose to stay in Edmonton because it’s the safest thing to do and it’s in the spirit of these recommendations.”

Mattatall said she’s unaware of any colleagues who have left the country, saying a beach vacation is “the further thing” from a health-care worker’s mind currently.

Both doctors said they were frustrated those who travelled did not face consequences from Kenney.

On Wednesday, when the province last provided updated data on severe outcomes from COVID-19, there were 921 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 152 of whom were in intensive-care units.

At least 1,046 Albertans have died of the virus, with nearly half of that count coming in December alone.

In 1918, Children Of California Went On A State-Ordered Squirrel Killing Frenzy

CALIFORNIA GROUND SQUIRRELS : A BULLETIN DEALING WITH LIFE HISTORIES, HABITS AND CONTROL OF THE GROUND SQUIRRELS OF CALIFORNIA / [BY J. GRINNELL, J, DIXON AND OTHERS]. PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA INTERNET ARCHIVE.


By James Felton 30 DEC 2020

In April of 1918, while the world was at war, the children of California set about systematically slaughtering over 100,000 squirrels.

Californian ground squirrels were considered a pest by the state, given their habit of devouring around 30 million dollars worth of crops every year. After years of farmers trying to chase them down like Elmer Fudd had failed to get them under control, the state stepped in with its own idea: Get children to murder every last one of the adorable little irritants.

As you'd imagine, getting kids to go outside and wipe a species off the face of the planet isn't the easiest thing in the world – even in the days before the PS5 and Shrek. As well as the struggle of making them go outside, try telling a kid "here's a list of animals I want you to kill" and see what sort of look you get in return. Fortunately, the state had a plan. They would simply launch a $40,000 propaganda campaign against the squirrels, likening them to top-ranking Germans.

The campaign, which would involve creating competitions between schools and schoolchildren for who could kill the most critters, was kicked off by the state commissioner George H. Hecke who called for children to form "a company of soldiers" to get out there and destroy "the squirrel army", which is an unusually combative term for "squirrels".

Speeches were given to rally the troops, and some of the most deranged posters you'll ever see distributed to (presumably quite baffled) kids. As well as painting the squirrels as greedy jerks under catchy slogans such as "kill the squirrels" and "slay the mother squirrel during breeding season", squirrels were dressed up as Kaiser Willhelm. 

The picnic seems quite cute until you notice the guns and poison.

  Public Domain via Internet Archive.

Public Domain via Internet Archive.

After the propaganda campaign came the killing. In what was termed "squirrel week" – which was a lot more genocidal than the adorable name implies – kids were asked to bring the tails to schools as proof of the kill and subsequent dismemberment. This was because in the lead-up to squirrel week, the instruction had been to send them directly to the horticultural commission, which had begun to reek of death due to the "accumulation of ground squirrel tails" in the office.

The methods of killing ranged from poison to shooting and everything in between.

"All the killing devices of modern warfare will be used in the effort to annihilate the squirrel army including gas poisoned barley and other destructive agents," a news report read at the time.

"Large quantities of these supplies are being rushed to the fronts where the fighting will be the fiercest. The battle will gain in intensity as days pass and will be at its height during state “Squirrel week” to be proclaimed by the governor from April 29 to May 4."

The leaflet campaign had clearly been effective, as the week-long frenzy brought in an astonishing 104,509 tails. The Commissioner congratulated the children in the local paper for their "patriotic service" and encouraged them to do it in their spare time for fun now that the competition was over, rather than, for instance, giving badminton a try.

With the week over and the prizes given out, the killing nevertheless continued in some counties unabated, with one frankly terrifying kid bringing in 3,780 dead squirrels, which I guess at least helped with his math.

[H/T: Atlas Obscura]

CANADIAN PROVINCES SHOULD DO THIS

UK names Tesco and Pizza Hut for biggest breaches of minimum wage law

Updated / Thursday, 31 Dec 2020

Tesco was 'extremely disappointed and surprised' at being publicly named for making what it described as a technical error that it had self reported to authorities

Tesco and Pizza Hut were the two biggest offenders among 139 employers who failed to pay staff the UK minimum wage between 2016 and 2018, the UK government said today after it resumed a policy of publicly naming firms that broke rules.

Supermarket chain Tesco, Britain's largest private-sector employer, underpaid 78,199 staff by a total £5.1m.

Pizza Hut failed to pay staff £845,936 which they were due.

"It is never acceptable for any employer to short-change their workers, but it is especially disappointing to see huge household names who absolutely should know better on this list," UK Business Minister Paul Scully said.

Other employers, mostly smaller businesses, underpaid staff by around £700,000 in total, with some individual workers losing thousands of pounds.

Britain's minimum wage stands at £8.72 an hour for workers aged 25 and over, and will rise by 2.2% from April as well as being extended to workers aged 23 and 24.

Younger workers and apprentices receive a lower minimum wage.

The list published by Britain's business ministry did not distinguish between employers who deliberately broke the law and those who made errors applying the sometimes complex rules.

Tesco said it was "extremely disappointed and surprised" at being publicly named for making what it described as a technical error that it had self reported to tax authorities.

"We take our obligations to our colleagues very seriously and all colleagues were reimbursed in full in 2017," it said in a statement.

The UK government said underpayments by employers often reflected deductions for the cost of food, parking costs, clothing or equipment which took wages below the legal minimum.



Pizza Hut said tax authorities had alerted it and other businesses in the sector to errors relating to deductions for staff uniform costs, which it corrected in 2018.

"It is important to stress that there was never any intent to underpay our employees," a spokesperson for Pizza Hut Restaurants said.

The UK government temporarily suspended naming firms that broke rules in 2018, before deciding to restart the practice in 2020 after issuing new guidance.

Source: Reuters

Rep. Gohmert Calls for Street Violence

as Another Legal Loss Sends MAGA World Spiraling

THE NEW CONFEDERACY SAME AS THE OLD ONE;

SEDITIOUS AND TREASONOUS

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Far-right conspiracy theorists and ultra conservative members of the GOP—who have less and less daylight between them as the days go by—have gone into collective meltdown mode, apparently triggered, at least in part, by calls for violence by Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Trump-allied lawyer L. Lin Wood

© Provided by The Daily Beast Newsmax

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Kernodle, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dismissed a hail-mary lawsuit filed by Gohmert and 11 Arizona Republicans that attempted to give Vice President Mike Pence the ability to overturn the results of the November presidential election won by Joe Biden.

As the president of the Senate, Pence will preside over the ceremonial counting of the Electoral College votes, which have already certified Biden as the clear winner, on Wednesday.

In an interview Friday evening on pro-Trump news network Newsmax, Gohmert falsely claimed that letting the will of the voters stand would “mean the end of our republic, the end of the experiment in self-government."

Gohmert then seemed to encourage violence as a means to this end. “But bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this. You have no remedy’—basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.”

Louie Gohmert on Newsmax: "But if bottom line is, the court is saying, 'We're not going to touch this. You have no remedy' -- basically, in effect, the ruling would be that you gotta go the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM." pic.twitter.com/cZIdGTiQls— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2021

Gohmert, a former judge, sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees federal courts and law enforcement.

At the same time, pro-Trump lawyer Wood fanned the flames by suggesting Friday that Pence could “face execution by firing squad” for “treason” if he doesn’t go along with the attempt to subvert the election—which Trump’s own former Attorney General, William Barr, declared free of any fraud that could have potentially swung the results.

This prompted some key Trump loyalists like Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney, to swiftly distance themselves from Wood.

“I do not support the statements from Attorney Lin Wood,” Ellis said in a tweet late Friday. “I support the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.”

Trump-loving Newsmax host Greg Kelly, who called Wood a “legend” for “getting to the bottom of this mess in Georgia” just two weeks ago, apparently woke up to reality on Friday.

“This WHIPE just called for the arrest of Mike Pence,” he tweeted. “Wood is doing a crazy man act.”

In another, he wrote: “His heart may be in the right place but his BRAIN is either TOTALLY FRIED. Or OWNED BY CHINA.”

How it started / how it's going, Newsmax edition pic.twitter.com/hA98s7Q90i— Will Sommer (@willsommer) January 2, 2021

Trump himself has gleefully poured gasoline on the fire, tweeting his support for street protests planned for Jan. 6 in D.C., during which his supporters will reportedly try to stop lawmakers from getting to the Capitol and finalizing the election results. Pence’s role is merely a constitutional formality.

Eleven Republican senators also said Saturday they would object to certifying the Electoral College vote on Wednesday—a stunt that will most likely have no impact on the result but will perpetuate Trump’s claim that the election was somehow stolen from him.

Wood’s broadsides are only the latest in his increasingly unhinged—and so far unsuccessful—attempts to undermine Biden's victory.

He has filed lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan to stop the states from certifying their results, all to no avail. He recently suggested that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is a pedophile and was behind Justice Antonin Scalia's 2016 death from natural causes, and has publicly embraced the QAnon conspiracy movement.

His Friday remarks had QAnon types excitedly welcoming "the great awakening," a mass delusion that expects “criminally corrupt government leaders, celebrities, religious leaders, media figures, and corporate heads [to] be tried and punished for crimes involving treason, human trafficking, ritual sacrifice and unspeakable perversions.”

Wood fired back at Ellis on Twitter, saying that he has been “fighting” for the rule of law since “7 years before you were born.” Following questions about Wood’s mental state, he posted another tweet saying that he was “fine,” signing off his message with a quote from Vernon Linwood Howard, author of, among other things, The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power.

“A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.”

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Gohmert for comment, and left a phone message at Wood’s home. He did not reply.

Trump is the first sitting president to lose a re-election campaign in nearly three decades. He continues to blame his loss on nebulous claims of voter fraud, and has since lost every court challenge but one.

The president is now attempting to convince supporters that next week’s special Senate election in Georgia is “both illegal and invalid” because of another nonsensical conspiracy theory involving what he claims are “massive changes made to the voting process.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The Sunburst hack was massive and devastating – 

5 observations from a cybersecurity expert

by Paulo Shakarian, The Conversation

Some of the exposed organizations, like Microsoft, made limited use of the SolarWinds software, which appears to have contained the damage they suffered. 

Credit: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA

So much remains unknown about what is now being called the Sunburst hack, the cyberattack against U.S. government agencies and corporations. U.S. officials widely believe that Russian state-sponsored hackers are responsible.

The attack gave the perpetrators access to numerous key American business and government organizations. The immediate effects will be difficult to judge, and a complete accounting of the damage is unlikely. However, the nature of the affected organizations alone makes it clear that this is perhaps the most consequential cyberattack against the U.S. to date.

An act of cyberwar is usually not like a bomb, which causes immediate, well-understood damage. Rather, it is more like a cancer—it's slow to detect, difficult to eradicate, and it causes ongoing and significant damage over a long period of time. Here are five points that cybersecurity experts—the oncologists in the cancer analogy—can make with what's known so far.


1. The victims were tough nuts to crack

From top-tier cybersecurity firm FireEye to the U.S. Treasury, Microsoft, Intel and many other organizations, the victims of the attack are for the most part firms with comprehensive cybersecurity practices. The list of organizations that use the compromised software includes firms like MasterCard, Lockheed Martin and PricewaterhouseCoopers. SolarWinds estimates about 18,000 firms were affected.

As CEO of cybersecurity firm Cyber Reconnaissance Inc. and an associate professor of computer science at Arizona State University, I have met security professionals from many of the targeted organizations. Many of the organizations have world-class cybersecurity teams. These are some of the hardest targets to hit in corporate America. The victims of Sunburst were specifically targeted, likely with a primary focus on intelligence gathering.

2. This was almost certainly the work of a nation—not criminals

Criminal hackers focus on near-term financial gain. They use techniques like ransomware to extort money from their victims, steal financial information, and harvest computing resources for activities like sending spam emails or mining for cryptocurrency.

Criminal hackers exploit well-known security vulnerabilities that, had the victims been more thorough in their security, could have been prevented. The hackers typically target organizations with weaker security, like health care systems, universities and municipal governments. University networks are notoriously decentralized, difficult to secure, and often underfund cybersecurity. Medical systems tend to use specialty medical devices that run older, vulnerable software that is difficult to upgrade.

Hackers associated with national governments, on the other hand, have entirely different motives. They look for long-term access to critical infrastructure, gather intelligence and develop the means to disable certain industries. They also steal intellectual property—especially intellectual property that is expensive to develop in fields like high technology, medicine, defense and agriculture.

The sheer amount of effort to infiltrate one of the Sunburst victim firms is also a telling sign that this was not a mere criminal hack. For example, a firm like FireEye is an inherently bad target for a criminal attacker. It has fewer than 4,000 employees yet has computer security on par with the world's top defense and financial businesses.

3. The attack exploited trusted third-party software

The hackers gained access by slipping their malware into software updates of SolarWinds' Orion software, which is widely used to manage large organizational networks. The Sunburst attack relied on a trusted relationship between the targeted organization and SolarWinds. When users of Orion updated their systems in the spring of 2020, they unwittingly invited a Trojan horse into their computer networks.

Aside from a report about lax security at SolarWinds, very little is known about how the hackers gained initial access to SolarWinds. However, the Russians have used the tactic of compromising a third-party software update process before, in 2017. This was during the infamous NotPetya attack, which was considered the most financially damaging cyberattack in history.

4. The extent of the damage is unknown

It will take time to uncover the extent of the damage. The investigation is complicated because the attackers gained access to most of the victims in the spring of 2020, which gave the hackers time to expand and hide their access and control of the victims' systems. For example, some experts believe that a vulnerability in VMWare, software that is widely used in corporate networks, was also used to gain access to the victims' systems, though the company denies it.

I expect the damage to be spread unevenly among the victims. This will depend on various factors such as how extensively the organization used the SolarWinds software, how segmented its networks are, and the nature of their software maintenance cycle. For example, Microsoft reportedly had limited deployments of Orion, so the attack had limited impact on their systems.

In contrast, the bounty the hackers stole from FireEye included penetration testing tools, which were used to test the defenses of high-end FireEye clients. The theft of these tools was likely prized by hackers to both increase their capabilities in future attacks as well as gain insights into what FireEye clients are protecting against.

5. The fallout could include real-world harm

There is a very thin, often nonexistent line between gathering information and causing real-world harm. What may start as spying or espionage can easily escalate into warfare.

The presence of malware on a computer system that gives the attacker greater user privileges is dangerous. Hackers can use control of a computer system to destroy computer systems, as was the case in the Iranian cyberattacks against Saudi Aramco in 2012, and harm physical infrastructure, as was the case Stuxnet attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010.

Further, real harm can be done to individuals with information alone. For example, the Chinese breach of Equifax in 2017 has put detailed financial and personal information about millions of Americans in the hands of one of the U.S.'s greatest strategic competitors.

No one knows the full extent of the Sunburst attack, but the scope is large and the victims represent important pillars of the U.S. government, economy and critical infrastructure. Information stolen from those systems and malware the hackers have likely left on them can be used for follow-on attacks. I believe it is likely that the Sunburst attack will result in harm to Americans.


Explore furtherData crunching consequences of SolarWinds cyberattack
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Brazil scrambles to approve virus vaccine as pressure mounts

by Diane Jeantet and Mauricio Savarese

JANUARY 1, 2021
Demonstrators hold the Portuguese messages: "Vaccine now!" and "Get out Bolsonaro" to protest Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the coronavirus, at a bus station in Brazilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Brazil, a nation proud of its role as a regional leader in science, technology and medicine, finds itself falling behind its neighbors in the global race for immunization against a pandemic that has already killed nearly 200,000 of its people.

Latin America's largest nation, long heralded for its domestic vaccine development programs, appears to be at least three or four weeks away from launching any formal immunization campaign against COVID-19. In contrast, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica and other countries in the region have already begun giving shots to their populations.

The Brazilian government has not approved a single vaccine and has stumbled in attempts to acquire even syringes and needles for an immunization effort that, as of the new year, still had no definite rollout date.

Meanwhile, the number of new coronavirus infections in the country reached a new high in December—peaking with more than 70,000 cases on Dec. 16.

The lightning rod in Brazil's vaccine debate is President Jair Bolsonaro, who has cast skepticism on all of the vaccines being developed even as his government negotiates to obtain them. He has said he doesn't plan to get a shot himself and joked at one point that side effects might turn people into crocodiles or bearded ladies.

Such talk has left Brazil's image abroad "very damaged," Margareth Dalcolmo, a professor in respiratory medicine at the state-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, also known as Fiocruz, told The Associated Press.

"No one is saying that Bolsonaro really believes this, but he is discrediting the vaccine," said Walter Cintra, a professor in health management at the Getulio Vargas Foundation university in Sao Paulo. "When the government behaves like this, it loses credibility. And these are million-dollar contracts."

One of the earliest vaccines on the horizon appears to be one developed by China's Sinovac company, which has contracted with the government of Brazil's largest state, Sao Paulo, for distribution and production.

       WOT ME WORRY?

in this July 24, 2020 file photo, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who is infected with COVID-19, wears a protective face mask as he talks with supporters during a Brazilian flag retreat ceremony outside his official residence the Alvorada Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil. The South American nation proud of its role as a regional leader in science, technology and medicine, finds itself falling behind its neighbors in the global race for immunization against a pandemic that has already killed nearly 200,000 of its people. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

Sao Paulo Gov. João Doria announced plans to start distributing shots on Jan. 25 if federal health authorities approve the vaccine. Doria is a vocal critic and likely challenger in the 2022 presidential election, and his announcement added pressure on the Bolsonaro administration to come up with its own federal immunization plan.

The president initially sneered at the Chinese vaccine, saying its origins don't inspire trust, but other states quickly showed interest in acquiring some.

Another contender for early release nationwide is likely to be the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which could be available by early February once regulators approve it, according to Brazil's state laboratory Fiocruz, which is producing it in Brazil.

Fiocruz is one of Brazil's largest public laboratories for vaccine production, including measles, polio and yellow fever. Relying on advanced technology and Fiocruz' ability to produce at a low price, Brazil is the world's biggest manufacturer of yellow fever vaccines, exporting millions of doses to dozens of countries worldwide, according to Fiocruz information.

Fiocruz said it expects to have 100 million of domestically produced COVID-19 doses by the end of July. Two doses are needed.

The government also expects an additional 42 million doses from the global vaccine partnership known as COVAX, with no set date, and has signed a memorandum with Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, for 38 million doses of its single-shot vaccine when it becomes available.

The government has struggled to reach a deal for the first vaccine approved globally, the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. Pfizer complained in late December of Brazil's regulatory hurdles, while Bolsonaro expressed surprise that pharmaceutical companies did not show more eagerness to sell to a nation of roughly 210 million people.

Tensions seemed to wane in a meeting between regulators and Pfizer on Dec. 30, during which officials said they would simplify protocols and Pfizer said it would consider applying for emergency use approval. The Brazilian government and Pfizer earlier signed a memorandum of understanding for 70 million doses, according to information from the health ministry.

A demonstrator wears a face shield with a red handprint, mimicking blood, to protest Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the deadly coronavirus pandemic in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020. Protesters also called for the immediate start of COVID-19 vaccinations. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

For Cintra, the professor in health management, the confusion over the COVID-19 vaccine approval is symptomatic of this administration's chaotic handling of the pandemic, during which Bolsonaro has repeatedly denounced local officials' efforts to impose social distancing rules and described the virus as a "small flu".

"This is not about Anvisa (the regulator), or excessive regulation. It's about the federal government systematically sabotaging the fight against the pandemic, or completely destroying the Brazilian health system," he said.

Cintra noted that a public tender to acquire over 330 million syringes and needles for the government's COVID-19 vaccination campaign resulted this week in bids for only 8 million units within the acceptable price range—less than 3% of what was required.

The Ministry of Health said in a statement that it would keep the tender open.

"There is a real risk of having a vaccine but not enough needles and syringes," warned Carlos Eduardo Lula, president of a council of state health secretaries.

The head of Brazil's bar association, Felipe Santa Cruz, told the newspaper Valor that further delays in the vaccination program could lead the association to draft an impeachment request against Bolsonaro.

For physics teacher Francisco Ferreira, 55, hope for a vaccine any time soon is fading.

"Brazil is getting a mix of bad faith and incompetence on the vaccine issue," Ferreira said as he walked through the Sao Paulo international airport. "There are serious administrations around the world giving out the shots, but this isn't our case."

Explore further  Brazil drug agency questions 'transparency' of China vaccine

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Guinea uses Russian COVID-19 vaccine on some officials

by Boubacar Diallo

JANUARY 1, 2021

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Guinea began vaccinating against COVID-19 with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine on an experimental basis, starting with government officials, authorities said Thursday.

Guinea has ordered only 55 doses of the Russian vaccine, said Dr. Sakoba Keita, the director-general of the National Health Security Agency.

"We requested a small quantity of the vaccine, 55 doses precisely. This is the beginning of an order," Keita said. "Yesterday we vaccinated in this pilot phase 25 senior officials of the state. There are 30 doses left and we will continue with the vaccination."

However, he said on state TV Wednesday that they also sent a letter to Russia requesting 2 million doses of Sputnik V to help the country's vulnerable. Guinea has a population of 13 million.

Guinea is one of the first African nations to vaccinate its officials.

The Minister of Defense, Mohamed Diane was the first to receive the vaccine. He was shown getting the inoculation on national TV followed by other Cabinet ministers receiving the shots on Wednesday.

Gen. Bourema Condé, Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, spoke after receiving the Russian vaccine.

"This new vaccine is a strong signal. This signal shows the strong will of the president. Today is a sampling, and this sampling will be duplicated," he said. "The president wants all Guineans to be in good health in relation to this pandemic."

Amadou Damaro Camara, the president of the country's legislative body, the National Assembly, was also vaccinated.

"We are the guinea pigs," he said of receiving the first doses of the vaccine.

"It is the government's permanent concern to want to fight against this disease and we are very happy about it," he said. "We hope that this vaccination will be extended to the rest of the people and that it will be the beginning of the eradication of this disease."

Tibou Camara, Guinea's industry minister, also spoke on the television broadcast after being vaccinated.

"The Guinean population should be congratulated and rejoice at a time when the vaccine is coveted and not very accessible to many countries, and that our country is a beneficiary," he said.

Russia has businesses in the West African nation and Guinea is known for its bauxite mining.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was among the first world leaders to congratulate Guinea's President Alpha Conde after he won a controversial third term in office after a violently contested election in October.

© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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FIRST NATIONS USA

Fast rollout of virus vaccine trials reveals tribal distrust

by Felicia Fonseca

JANUARY 2, 2021

In this Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020, photo provided by Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, registered nurse Starla Garcia prepares a coronavirus vaccine in Chinle, Ariz., for someone who enrolled in the COVID-19 vaccine trials on the Navajo Nation and initially received a placebo.

 (Nina Mayer Ritchie/Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health via AP)

The news came during a hopeful time on the largest Native American reservation.

Daily coronavirus cases were in the single digits, down from a springtime peak of 238 that made the Navajo Nation a U.S. hot spot. The tribe, wanting to ensure a COVID-19 vaccine would be effective for its people, said it would welcome Pfizer clinical trials on its reservation spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

Right away, tribal members accused their government of allowing them to be guinea pigs, pointing to painful times in the past when Native Americans didn't consent to medical testing or weren't fully informed about procedures.

A Navajo Nation review board gave the study quicker approval than normal after researchers with Johns Hopkins University's Center for American Indian Health made the case for diversity. Without Native volunteers, how would they know if tribal members responded to vaccines the same as others?

"Unfortunately, Native Americans have effectively been denied the opportunity to participate in these clinical trials because almost all of the study sites are in large, urban areas that have not done effective outreach to Native Americans," said Dr. Laura Hammitt of Johns Hopkins.

About 460 Native Americans participated in the trials for the vaccine by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, including Navajos. The enrollment reflects a growing understanding of the role that people of color play in vaccine development and the push to rapidly deploy it to curb infections among populations that have been disproportionately affected by the virus.

Yet, few of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes have signed on for the studies, a hesitation often rooted in suspicion and distrust. Many tribes also require several layers of approval for clinical trials, a challenge researchers aren't always willing to overcome and don't face in the states.

This undated photo provided by Arvena Peshlakai shows Arvena Peshlakai opening the gate to her sheep corral at her home in Crystal, New Mexico. She and her husband Melvin volunteered to participate in coronavirus vaccine trials on the Navajo Nation. As coronavirus vaccines were being developed around the world, few Native American tribes signed up to participate. The reasons range from unethical practices of the past to the quick nature of the studies amid the pandemic. Native researchers say without participation from tribal communities, tribes won't know which vaccine might best be suited for their citizens. (Courtesy Arvena Peshlakai via AP).

While vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna Inc. roll out across Indian Country, others are being studied.

In the Pacific Northwest, the Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe plan to participate in a vaccine trial from another company, Novavax Inc. A Cheyenne River Sioux researcher plans to enroll Native Americans and others in South Dakota in the Novavax trial and another by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.


On the Navajo Nation, Arvena Peshlakai, her husband, Melvin, and their daughter Quortnii volunteered for the Pfizer trials.

Arvena Peshlakai said the rumors were rampant: Navajos would be injected with the virus, and researchers would use plasma from people who got COVID-19.

She was assured that wasn't happening and let the words of her parents and grandparents guide her: Don't let our struggles be your struggles, begin with our triumphs.

"What else am I supposed to do? Just sit back and say, 'No, I don't trust them' and not try something new to see if we can find a breakthrough?" Peshlakai said. "We have to do something, we can't just sit by and wait and hope and pray."

She overcame her fear of needles to get the doses and keeps track of her well-being daily on an app. As trial participants, the family can get the vaccine if they initially received a placebo.

This undated photo provided by Arvena Peshlakai shows Melvin Luke Peshlakai, left, and Arvena Peshlakai at their home in Crystal, New Mexico. The couple volunteered to participate in coronavirus vaccine trials on the Navajo Nation. As coronavirus vaccines were being developed around the world, few Native American tribes signed up to participate. The reasons range from unethical practices of the past to the quick nature of the studies amid the pandemic. Native researchers say without participation from tribal communities, tribes won't know which vaccine might best be suited for their citizens. (Courtesy Arvena Peshlakai via AP)

The Pfizer trials among the Navajo and White Mountain Apache tribes enrolled 275 people, about 80% of them Native American, Hammitt said. It wasn't as many as researchers had hoped for, but she said it's enough to compare immune and antibody responses in Native patients to others.

Vaccine trials nationwide have been moving quickly, which doesn't always align with tribal guidelines on considering research proposals.

"It must be done with respect for tribal sovereignty and knowing that each individual has truly been given informed consent," said Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle.

It helped that Johns Hopkins has a decadeslong history with the Navajos and Apaches, including other clinical trials. Hammitt said the Navajo Human Research Review Board was receptive to a quick review of the vaccine trials because of the devastating impact of the pandemic.

In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal health committee initially pushed back on Dr. Jeffrey Henderson's proposal for trials of the Novavax vaccine. Henderson, a tribal member, was sent into the community to gauge support.

He expects to get approval from a newly seated tribal council but for now, plans to set up a mobile unit outside the reservation.

"We refuse to do this type of research or any research within the boundaries of a tribe without having explicit approval from the tribe," Henderson said.

This undated photo provided by Arvena Peshlakai shows Melvin Luke Peshlakai, left, and Arvena Peshlakai at their home in Crystal, New Mexico. The couple volunteered to participate in coronavirus vaccine trials on the Navajo Nation. As coronavirus vaccines were being developed around the world, few Native American tribes signed up to participate. The reasons range from unethical practices of the past to the quick nature of the studies amid the pandemic. Native researchers say without participation from tribal communities, tribes won't know which vaccine might best be suited for their citizens. (Courtesy Arvena Peshlakai via AP)

In Washington state, the Nooksack tribe is set to begin enrolling volunteers in the Novavax trials Monday, said Dr. Frank James, the tribe's health officer.

"I expect a slow start to it, and we have to get a few brave people who are comfortable with it and then people to follow," he said.

The nearby Lummi Nation is moving forward with a three-part review and approval process for the Novavax trials.

Initial hesitation among the tribe stemmed from a researcher who took photos of Lummi children years ago to develop a tool to diagnose fetal alcohol syndrome but didn't offer any ways to address it, said Dr. Dakotah Lane, executive medical director of the Lummi Tribal Health Clinic.

"I had already known and was aware of certainly some distrust with any kind of research within our community," Lane said. "But I also knew the only way out of this pandemic was with access to vaccines."

Other stories about the sterilization of Native American women, noted in a 1976 federal report, and military testing of radioactive iodine on Alaska Natives have bred distrust.

The Havasupai Tribe also settled a lawsuit a decade ago that accused Arizona State University scientists of misusing blood samples meant for diabetes research to study schizophrenia, inbreeding and ancient population migration without the tribe's permission.

This photo provided by Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health shows a brochure that was used to provide information about a COVID-19 vaccine trial on the Navajo Nation, Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020, in Chinle, Ariz. (Nina Mayer Ritchie/Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health via AP)

That case came to mind when Annette Brown, a Navajo woman, heard about her tribe's willingness to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials.

"There's this historical distrust when it comes to any type of experimenting," she said. "It's just experience, I don't know that there are many families out there who haven't been touched by some sort of experimentation (or) biological attacks on tribal communities."

Brown has mixed feelings because she previously participated in a vaccine trial with Johns Hopkins.

It was related to research that determined the first generation of vaccines for bacterial meningitis was less effective among Navajo and Apache children 6 months and younger, Hammitt said. The rate of the disease used to be five to 10 times higher among those children than the general population.

Researchers and doctors in Native American communities also have found that standard doses for medications like blood thinners weren't always the best fit for tribal members.

For Marcia O'Leary, helping with a study that indirectly discovered HPV vaccines don't protect against a strain that's a leading cause of cancer among Native American women in the Great Plains shows the importance of having more Native researchers and being involved in clinical trials.

"We can't wait for this to trickle down," said O'Leary, director of Missouri Breaks, a small Native American-owned research group on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. "It seems like in Indian Country, we keep chasing the ball of health and we never get ahead of it."


Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

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Torpor: a neat survival trick once thought rare in Australian animals is actually widespread

by Chris Wacker, The Conversation

DECEMBER 30, 2020

Credit: Shutterstock

Life is hard for small animals in the wild, but they have many solutions to the challenges of their environment. One of the most fascinating of these strategies is torpor. Not, to be confused with sleep or Sunday afternoon lethargy, torpor is a complex response to the costs of living.

To enter torpor, an animal decreases its metabolism, reducing its energy requirements. A torpid animal will often be curled in a tight ball in its nest and look like it's sleeping.

Once thought to occur only in birds and mammals in the Northern Hemisphere where winters are more pronounced, we now know torpor is widespread in small Australian mammals, and has also been observed in many small Australian bird species.

Masters of metabolism

Birds and mammals are endotherms and can maintain a high and constant body temperature independent of the environmental temperature, thanks to their high metabolic rate. This allows them to be active across a wide range of environments.

The downside? This high metabolic rate requires a lot of food to fuel it. By reducing the metabolism in a very controlled manner and entering torpor, an animal can live on less energy.

With a lower metabolic rate, the animal's body temperature decreases—sometimes by as much as 30°C. How low it goes can depend on the extent of the metabolic reduction and the temperature of animal's immediate environment. The reduced body temperature further lowers the metabolic rate.

Echidnas use torpor to save energy. Credit: Shutterstock

Slowing down to survive

Torpor is an extremely effective survival strategy for small endotherms. For example, small mammals have been observed using torpor after bushfires.

Take the brown antechinus, for example. When other animals have fled, this 30g marsupial hides in refuges, waits out the fire, then uses torpor to cope with reduced food availability until local vegetation and invertebrate populations recover.

Many pregnant and lactating bats and marsupials, and even the echidna, synchronise torpor with reproduction to cope with the energetic costs of mating, pregnancy or lactation.


There are two main types of torpor: daily torpor and hibernation.

Daily torpor

Animals that use daily torpor can do so for approximately 3-6 hours a day as needed.

Daily torpor is common in, but not exclusive to, endotherms living in arid areas, such as the fat-tailed dunnart. This species is a carnivorous marsupial and has a diet of insects and other invertebrates, which may be in short supply in winter.

Weighing approximately 12 grams as adults, the fat-tailed dunnart may need to eat its body weight in food each day. When finding enough food is difficult, it uses torpor; foraging in the early part of the night then entering torpor in the early morning. Fat-tailed dunnarts reduce their metabolic rate, and subsequently their body temperature, from 35 °C to approximately 15°C, or the temperature of their underground nest.

The brown antechinus uses torpor to cope with reduced 

food availability after bushfire. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Hibernation

Animals that hibernate lower their metabolic rate further and have longer torpor bouts than those that use daily torpor. An example of an Australian hibernator is the eastern pygmy possum, a 40g marsupial found in south eastern Australia that hibernates regularly, decreasing its body temperature from approximately 35 °C to as low as 5°C.

When active, this species can survive for less than half a day on 1g of fat, but when hibernating, it can survive for two weeks.

If it weren't for the periodic increases in metabolic rate and body temperature, a hibernating pygmy possum could live for well over three months on 1g of fat. However, the exact purpose of these periodic arousals is unknown.

The metabolic rate during pygmy possum hibernation is just 2% of the minimum metabolic rate endotherms at a normal body temperature need to live. This baseline metabolism is called basal metabolic rate.

Compare this with a well-known hibernator, the American black bear.

At approximately 120kg, its metabolic rate during hibernation decreases to 25% of the basal metabolic rate, and the body temperature decreases from approximately 37°C to 30 °C. Black bears can't hibernate with a lower body temperature, perhaps because it would take them a very long time to reduce it, and then cost them too much energy to rewarm at the end of hibernation.

When finding enough food is difficult, the fat-tailed dunnart uses torpor. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A torpid eastern pygmy possum. Note the curled posture. 

Credit: Chris Wacker, Author provided


Can humans do it?

The question people often ask about torpor, is "can humans do it?" Interestingly, some small primates have been observed using torpor. While it is technically possible to induce torpor in humans chemically, torpor is a very complex physiological process, and there are many aspects of it scientists still don't fully understand.

Coping with climate change

Australia's wildlife have evolved strategies to cope with life in an often-harsh environment affected by multiple year-long droughts, landscape-altering floods, and widespread bushfires.

Climate change is predicted to increase the duration, frequency and severity of these events, and in conjunction with landscape clearing, animals are facing new environmental and resource challenges.

While animals that use flexible, daily torpor may be well-suited to cope during these times, at least in the short term, hibernators that depend on long winters are most at risk.


Explore further Hummingbird reduces its body temperature during nightly torpor

Provided by The Conversation