Leak and destroy: On the hunt for climate killing gas



Issued on: 22/08/2021 - 

Chad Dorger (L), Senior Environmental Program Associate at Tradewater Refrigerant Solutions, picks up empty refrigerant tanks from Rick Karas (R) in Peotone, Illinois, on August 11, 2021 

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI AFP


Peotone (United States) (AFP)

After finding a rusty gas canister near his midwest US home, Rick Karas checked online if it was worth anything. Incredibly, it turned out to be a coveted commodity in the battle against climate change.

His roughly basketball-sized container was filled with CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), a potent greenhouse gas that is perfectly legal to possess but which has been globally banned from manufacture for decades.

Absent a government mandate to destroy the ample existing stocks, a handful of companies have stepped in to hunt down the gases in a process funded by selling carbon credits they earn from destroying the chemicals.

Karas connected online with a company called Tradewater, which subsequently led to one of its staffers picking up the can at his home in tiny Peotone, Illinois, about an hour's drive from Chicago.

Minutes later he had a $100 bill and the gas -- once standard in car air conditioners or refrigerators and packed into cans that leak over time -- was on its way to the incinerator.

"I feel good. A little cash in the pocket and it helps the environment," Karas, who raises bees, told AFP, though he was completely unaware of the climate connection.

That's the way the Chicago-based firm prefers it.

They make no mention of their mission in online ads targeting would-be sellers and they even do business under a different name, Refrigerant Finders, to sidestep what remains a politically charged subject in the United States.

Companies like Tradewater collect potent greenhouse gases at their facility near Chicago and then sends then for destruction

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI AFP

Chad Dorger, who picked up Karas's tank, noted that 80 percent of customers don't care what happens to the gas, but for the rest it can get tricky.

"They will flat out refuse (to sell) and they'll say, 'No, I want this to be used. Or I don't believe in that climate change hoax," he said.

Still, the taming of CFCs has been one of the success stories in humanity's patchy efforts to tackle the manmade emissions that are driving stronger storms, drier droughts and the massive, deadly wildfires that have come roaring after them this summer.

- The right to pollute? -

The United Nations trumpets the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which barred making CFCs so as to repair a thin layer of ozone in the atmosphere that shields life on Earth from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays, as the "only UN treaty ever that has been ratified by every country on Earth."

The cans that hold the refrigerants, which are powerful heat-trapping gases, can rust and over time leak their contents

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI AFP

It's hard to debate the logic. Besides their corrosive effect on the ozone layer, CFCs are also a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat up to 10,000 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide.

Global CFC concentrations fell steadily until about 2012 after the Protocol took effect, but startled scientists discovered in 2018 that the pace of that slowdown had dropped by half during the preceding five years.

Evidence pointed to factories in eastern China. Once CFC production in that region stopped, the ozone layer's healing process appeared to be back on track.

There's not many voices against destroying CFCs, but carbon offsets are more complicated.

Under the scheme, a polluting company or individual buys a credit equivalent to a metric tonne of carbon dioxide, with the money going directly or indirectly into an emissions reduction plan, like planting trees or investment in renewable energy sources.

But some critics accuse big business of paying for a quick fix rather than seeking to truly overhaul the environmental impact of their operations, while some botched offset projects have failed to deliver.

"For some hardcore environmentalists, that is giving someone the right to pollute and we shouldn't pollute," said George Washington University economics professor Michael Moore.

Tradewater's leaders, however, are very clear about what they do and why.

"If companies like ours don't destroy this refrigerant, it will leak into the atmosphere," chief operating officer Gabe Plotkin told AFP.

Tim Brown (L) and Gabriel Plotkin (R) of Tradewater pose for a picture at their warehouse in Elk Grove Village, Illinois 

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI AFP

"There's no government mandate to do it. There's no financial incentive to do it. And in some cases there's no will to do it," he added.

© 2021 AFP

Sufis strive to protect their heritage in war-torn Libya



Issued on: 22/08/2021 - 

A 2012 attack forced the Sufi seminary in the Libyan town of Zliten to close, but in recent years it has discreetly reopened to students of the mystical Islamic tradition Mahmud TURKIA AFP

Zliten (Libya) (AFP)

Bullet holes scar the minaret of the Sufi mosque in Libya's Zliten, but followers of the Muslim mystical tradition are working to renovate and preserve their heritage.

A handful of students sit cross-legged on the floor of the mosque in the Asmariya zawiya, transcribing on wooden tablets as their teacher chants Koranic verses.

Elsewhere in the complex, named for its 16th-century founder Abdessalam al-Asmar, scholars pore over old manuscripts on theology and Islamic law.

The zawiya -- an Arabic term for a Sufi institute offering a space for religious gatherings, Koranic education and free accommodation to travellers -- also includes a boarding school and a university.

Historian Fathi al-Zirkhani says the site is the Libyan equivalent of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University, a global authority in Sunni Islam.

But despite Sufism's long history across North Africa, Libya's plunge into chaos after dictator Moamer Kadhafi was ousted in a 2011 revolt gave a free hand to militias.

They included hardline Islamists, who are deeply hostile to Sufi "heretics" and their mystical nighttime ceremonies aimed at coming closer to the divine.

"(Previously) dormant ideological currents, with backing from abroad, took advantage of the security vacuum to attack the zawiyas," Zirkhani said.

In August 2012, dozens of Islamist militants raided the site, blowing up part of the sanctuary, stealing or burning books and damaging Asmar's tomb.

But today, craftsmen are busily restoring terracotta tiles and repairing damage caused by the extremists.

Students at the Asmariya zawiya come from all corners of the Islamic world to study the Sufi tradition, which has a long history in North Africa 

Mahmud TURKIA AFP

The tomb is surrounded by scaffolding but still bears its green silk cover, delicately embroidered with gold.

The zawiya hosts several hundred students, including many from overseas, who enjoy free food and lodging.

"I came to Libya to learn Koran here," said Thai student, Abderrahim bin Ismail, in faltering Arabic.

Houssein Abdellah Aoch, a 17-year-old from Chad wearing a long blue tunic, said he was working hard to commit verses to memory.

"I'm hoping to memorise the entire Koran then go home and become a religious teacher," he said.

- 'Fear and mistrust' -

When the call to prayer rings out, all rise and head through an arcaded courtyard to the mosque for noon prayers.

Libya's longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi viewed the Sufis with suspicion but after his 2011 overthrow, Sunni extremists posed a greater threat to the mystics 

Mahmud TURKIA AFP

It is a scene repeated daily for hundreds of years, but the zawiya has had a turbulent few decades.

Kadhafi, who ruled Libya with an iron fist for four decades after seizing power in a 1969 coup, was suspicious of the Sufis.

"He infiltrated the zawiya with his secret services, creating a climate of fear and mistrust," said an employee, who asked to remain anonymous.

"Kadhafi chose to divide the Sufis to control them better."

But Kadhafi's authorities "loosened the stranglehold in the mid-1990s, which allowed the zawiyas to regain their autonomy," he added.

After Kadhafi's overthrow in 2011, another danger emerged. The attack in Zliten, on the Mediterranean coast east of Tripoli, was echoed across the country.

Islamist militants used diggers and pneumatic drills to destroy numerous Sufi sites across Libya -- attacks echoed in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Zirkhani says the people who attacked the complex in Zliten were "extremists known to the state".

But in the chaos of post-revolt Libya, they have never been held to account.

The zawiya has also suffered from a lack of funds as it seeks to rebuild and restore its treasures.

Zirkhani showed AFP dusty old manuscripts he wants to preserve for posterity.

The seminary has a large collection of old Islamic manuscripts that historian Fathi al-Zirkhani is eager to preserve for posterity

 Mahmud TURKIA AFP

"We have neither the means nor the know-how to restore them," Zirkhani said. "We need help from (UN cultural agency) UNESCO and European institutions."

But there are some signs of hope for Sufis in Libya.

The zawiya was closed for six years following the 2012 attack. But in 2018 it discreetly reopened, and Sufis have been able to exercise their customs more publicly.

Last October in Tripoli, they took to the streets of the old city to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed -- a festival frowned upon by more austere currents of Islam.

© 2021 AFP

Disney pushes for private arbitration in Scarlett Johansson's 'Black Widow' lawsuit

Elise Brisco
USA TODAY

Disney has filed a motion to settle a lawsuit brought by "Black Widow" star Scarlett Johansson behind closed doors.

The motion was filed to Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday afternoon by Disney attorney Daniel Petrocelli. In documents obtained by USA TODAY, Petrocelli argued that the contract between Disney and Periwinkle Entertainment Inc., the company representing Johansson, included an agreement to settle any disputes through "binding arbitration" in New York City.

Disney's request for arbitration is the company's first filing in the case since Johansson filed suit on July 29, alleging her contract with Marvel was breached when "Black Widow" was released on the Disney+ streaming service at the same time as in theaters.

In Friday's filing, Disney argued the complaint put forth by Johansson and Periwinkle Entertainment has "no merit."

"There is nothing in the Agreement requiring that a 'wide theatrical release' also be an 'exclusive' theatrical release," Petrocelli wrote.

Petrocelli cited box office numbers, noting that the combined opening weekend revenue from ticket sales in theaters and Disney + Premiere Access receipts totaled more than $135 million. That surpassed other Marvel Cinematic Universe films that were released before the pandemic, including "Thor: The Dark World," "Ant-Man and the Wasp" and "Guardians of the Galaxy," Petrocelli wrote.

"Disney is now, predictably, trying to hide its misconduct in a confidential arbitration," Johansson's attorney John Berlinski told USA TODAY in a statement. "Why is Disney so afraid of litigating this case in public?"

Berlinski and his team "look forward" to presenting evidence to prove Disney's alleged wrongdoing, he said.

Disney vs. Scarlett Johansson:
A look at more stars who reworked Hollywood deals during COVID-19


After Johansson filed her complaint, a statement from Disney called the suit "especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Bryan Lourd, co-chairman of the Creative Artists Agency and Johansson’s agent, issued a response to Disney, saying the company "shamelessly and falsely accused Ms. Johansson of being insensitive to the global COVID pandemic." The response was "a direct attack on her character," Lourd said.

'A direct attack on her character':
Scarlett Johansson's agent slams Disney response to 'Black Widow' suit

The case's first hearing is scheduled for Oct. 15 in Los Angeles Superior Court

Op-Ed: Boomers, polarization, the environment, and no, none of it’s OK


By Paul Wallis
Published August 21, 2021


“OK Boomer” is a polarizing buzz phrase. It perpetuates a lot of false myths. It’s like “old white guys” (We had a choice?) and about as totally counterproductive as a talking point. There are a few explanations required.

(For the record; polarization was a short-lived academic party trick many decades ago. It kept people interested for about 5 minutes until everyone got bored with it as a one-trick-wonder. Then it became media psychology, and proved there was nothing interesting about it, and never could be. Then it became standard political social engineering.)

About the myths

The myth of Boomer affluence is one of the most misleading. According to this myth, nothing was ever paid for, it all just came along. It didn’t. it all had to be paid for, the hard way for most Boomers. Pay was lousy, and life experience doesn’t make too many deals. The past was lived in, in the usual half-ass mix of not enough money and rising prices.

This particular myth appeals to the sort of people who live in the “Fetch!” society; you go out and fetch a six-digit job, a family, and social status. You wind up about 50 and wondering where everything went. “Everything” in this case is a shopping list, success is a cliché image of someone else, etc. Quality of life back then was better than this Idiot World Theme Park, but what wouldn’t be?

The Boomer-era media created this myth to sell products. There was no ideology, just a sales pitch. It’s like a fashion; it’s just a style, not a fact for many people in every generation.

The myth of Boomer apathy is another. The Boomer era started in 1945, just after the worst war in history. By 1961, Rachel Carson’s iconic Silent Spring came out, beatnik (young Boho culture) was giving rise to the 60s revolution, etc. Apathy wasn’t a currency with teenagers. The world was getting ugly around then. The Cold War was and still is an existential threat.

A tired Greatest Generation, our parents, didn’t quite get it; some didn’t get it at all. This was where the Generation Gap solidified into a hard fact. Non-violence, antiwar protests, peace, and the rest of the litany didn’t get much traction, particularly with the right wing press.

Feminism also didn’t get much of a welcome. One of the uglier hidden histories of those decades is that domestic violence was common, divorce rates soared, and few if any of the basic feminist values got heard, let alone discussed seriously. Feminism as it now is was a thankless task, and a huge achievement.

Among the myths is a pseudo-image regarding early environmentalism. Environmentally, the Boomers tried, usually unsuccessfully. You could protest anything, sure, but getting results was a very different matter. The current state of the world shows how little impact those early environmental movements had in real terms. Nobody listened.

(It should be noted that some of these protests were highly suspect and perhaps sabotaged by so-called “radicals” who invariably derailed discussion with more polarizations. How do you walk into someone’s office, call them all criminals, and expect action? Went down well with the anti-human right wing press of the time, of course. Like the Black Bloc, the idea was to discredit environmentalism. You don’t save rainforest by burning someone’s car, for example. Worth thinking about for this generation.)

Anti-Millennial crap explained

Simultaneously with the polarizing OK Boomer came the anti-Millennial propaganda. “They’re lazy, they want everything, etc. etc.” Wrong on all counts. Millennials are sharp, alert, broke, and worried, with good reason. This world is full of nuts, and they’re “inheriting” a murderous, mismanaged, dunghill.

This process of choreographing a mutual hate campaign is a boringly standard and very old media tactic. Create an argument, make ever-more-extreme statements, feed in more hate on both sides, and then claim to be geniuses representing something. The technique still works, although mainly just with the illiterate. People don’t just naturally hate their grandparents; someone has to tell them they do.

(Actually, you’re morons, you polarizing psych guys. You always have been. You’re always in the way of any and all human rights and aspirations. Usually it’s calling something socialism, or whatever the buzzword for conformists is that week. Disappear into whatever current stupefyingly self-righteous coma you’re in now and stay there. Take your geriatric hate preachers with you.)

Health, education, housing, and other things young people can’t have

While this merry little dance of the mythologies was going on, the next two generations effectively got priced out of every market on Earth. Undiluted decades-long hype turned the housing market into a game of Monopoly nobody but the property sector could win.

Unaffordability is the new status game. An insular corporate culture of “great numbers” for all occasions has basically destroyed real income values. That’s if you have an income, which many people effectively don’t. Debt is piled on the young like never before. Animals look after their kids; this society doesn’t even pretend to try.

Now tell me – How do Millennials or anyone under 30 manage to afford anything right now? What’s the future for people who can’t pay for anything much? Given the entry of artificial intelligence and the obsolescence of so many types of work, how do they get regular incomes?

“That’s their problem,” you say? No, you idiots, it’s the incoming disaster for the world. How do they get mortgages, pay for education and health, or have lives, on gig-economy income streams? What happens to all your capital and asset values if they can’t afford to play your stupid game of Self-Worshipping Monopoly? Markets crashing and assets devaluing on a routine basis? Bingo.

They and future generations are truly 2000% screwed. They’re broke already, despite this ludicrous $30-40 trillion of money they’re supposed to have in their 30s. That’s a drop in the bucket, particularly over any extended period of time. They won’t even be able to afford the holy credit cards.

While we’re on the subject – How do they no-doubt-so-pleasantly while away the intervening decades or so? With what? How do they live, by eating press releases? A (very) few privileged and highly patronized kids who managed to afford an education and survived the ever-shrinking jobs markets will be OK, but most won’t.

Health? Who can afford to be healthy? Most people already can’t, thanks to the totally irrational US business culture’s infatuation with gouging the world. It’s a sort of “genocide by spreadsheet”. Happy?

No, it’s not OK

Many of us Boomers truly hated the insular society from the start. Not much has changed. It was precisely what we fought against. We have nothing against Millennials or their even unluckier follow-up generations. It hasn’t occurred to us that polarization, which we’ve seen so often, achieves anything at all.

Read this article by Greta Thunberg and friends in The New York Times. Be extremely thankful you’ve got kids able and trying to stand up for themselves. Listen to them for once. They’re talking about climate, but the macro “environment” they’re growing up in is a pigsty/sewer at best. Who’s responsible for that? Not them. They’ll have to clean it up.

Boomers don’t expect you useless self-proclaimed “elites” (Ha! “Elite” what? Professional bores, boors and incompetents?) to do anything. You never have. What you do, you invariably screw up and pay yourselves for doing it.

No, it’s not OK, you generation-molesting sycophantic vermin. Get back in your dear little middle aged delusory day care centers, shut up, and get out of the way of humanity. Now.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/boomers-polarization-the-environment-and-no-none-of-its-ok/article#ixzz74Ff20xTx

New England preps for 1st hurricane in 30 years with Henri

As of 5 p.m. Friday, the National Weather Service suggested the storm might make landfall first in eastern Long Island before careening further north.

Boaters got their craft out of the water Friday at the boat ramp in Mattapoisett Harbor as Tropical Storm Henri churned its way toward New England.


By PHILIP MARCELO and PAT EATON-ROBB, Associated PressAugust 20, 2021


PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — New Englanders bracing for their first hurricane in 30 years began hauling boats out of the water and taking other precautions Friday as Tropical Storm Henri barreled toward the Northeast coast.

Henri was expected to intensify into a hurricane by Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Impacts could be felt in New England states by Sunday, including on Cape Cod, which is teeming with tens of thousands of summer tourists.

Henri’s track was imprecise, but as of 5 p.m. EDT Friday, the National Weather Service suggested it might make landfall first in eastern Long Island before careening further north. The White House said President Joe Biden was briefed on the storm’s track.

Radar Map


Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday urged people vacationing on the Cape to leave well before Henri hits, and those who planned to start vacations there to delay their plans. “We don’t want people to be stuck in traffic on the Cape Cod bridges when the storm is in full force on Sunday,” he said.

Baker said up to 1,000 National Guard troops were on standby to help with evacuations if needed.

“This storm is extremely worrisome,” said Michael Finkelstein, police chief and emergency management director in East Lyme, Connecticut. “We haven’t been down this road in quite a while and there’s no doubt that we and the rest of New England would have some real difficulties with a direct hit from a hurricane.”

Finkelstein said he’s most concerned about low-lying areas of town that could become impossible to access because of flooding and a storm surge.

Thursday marked exactly 30 years since Hurricane Bob came ashore in Rhode Island as a Category 2 storm, killing at least 17 people and leaving behind more than $1.5 billion worth of damage. Bob, which left streets in coastal towns littered with boats blown free of their moorings, knocked out power and water to hundreds of thousands for days.

Large swaths of the Eastern seaboard were mopping up on Friday from the effects of Henri’s predecessor, Tropical Depression Fred. In North Carolina, Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher said four people died and five individuals remained unaccounted for, down from around 20 people reported missing on Thursday.

The weather service warned of the potential for damaging winds and widespread coastal flooding from Henri, and officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York cautioned that people could lose power for a week or even longer. Authorities urged people to secure their boats, fuel up their vehicles, and stock up on canned goods.

The system was centered in the Atlantic Ocean about 345 miles (560 kilometers) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and about 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of Montauk Point, New York. It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph).

The hurricane watch stretched across the South Shore of Long Island from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk, and the North Shore from Port Jefferson Harbor to Montauk. It also covered the coast from New Haven, Connecticut, to Sagamore Beach, Massachusetts; and Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Block Island.

The main threats were expected to be storm surge, wind, and rain, forecasters said. Storm surge between 3 and 5 feet (1 to 1.5 meters) was possible from Watch Hill, Rhode Island, to Sagamore Beach.

Rainfall between 2 to 5 inches (5 to 12 centimeters) was expected Sunday through Monday over the region.

Henri was heading northwest Friday morning, but forecasters expect it to make a turn toward the north and approach the coastlines of New York and New England. New York hasn’t had a direct hit from a major hurricane season storm since Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc in 2012.

At Safe Harbor Marina in coastal Plymouth, Massachusetts, Steve Berlo was among the many boaters having their vessels pulled out of the water ahead of the storm

“It’s rare, but when it happens, you want to be sure you’re ready,” said Berlo, 54. “Got to protect our second home. So that’s that. Now I can sleep tonight.”

In the Hamptons, the celebrity playground on Long Island’s east end, officials warned of dangerous rip currents and flooding that’s likely to turn streets, like mansion-lined Dune Road on the Atlantic coast, into lagoons.

Ryan Murphy, the emergency management administrator for the Town of Southampton, said that while the storm’s track continues to evolve, “we have to plan as if it’s going to be like a Category 1 hurricane that would be hitting us.”

The National Weather Service also warned residents and beachgoers on the North Carolina coast of rip currents and rough surf associated with Henri. Meteorologist Steven Pfaff of the weather service’s Wilmington office said swells from Henri were expected to create hazardous surf conditions beginning Friday and continuing on Saturday.

At the U.S. Navy’s submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, personnel on Friday were securing submarine moorings, installing flood gates in front of doors on some waterfront buildings, and doubling up lines on small boats, officials said. Families were being encouraged to watch the forecast and make any necessary preparations.

The Coast Guard urged boaters to stay off the water, saying in a statement: “The Coast Guard’s search and rescue capabilities degrade as storm conditions strengthen. This means help could be delayed.”

At the Port Niantic marina in Niantic, Connecticut, Debbie Shelburn and her employees were already busy Friday hauling boats out of the water and into a large storage building.

“Basically, it’s become all hands on deck. No matter your position — mechanic, whatever — everybody is out there helping with the logistics of moving the boats and getting them secure on land,” she said.

Eaton-Robb reported from Columbia, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak in New York, Skip Foreman in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and William J. Kole in Warwick, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

New attacks from APT31 are targeting Russia, U.S, and Canada


By Dr. Tim Sandle
Published August 21, 2021

The Positive Technologies Expert Security Center has revealed details of new cyberattacks launched by APT31, the criminal group known for targeting global government agencies. He origin of the threat appears to be stemming from China.

As a result of this attack, more than a dozen malicious emails have bene dispatched around the world. This email onslaught occurred between January and July 2021. In terms of global reach, traces of the group were found in the U.S., Canada, Mongolia, the Republic of Belarus, and – for the first time – Russia.

These attacks leveraged previously unseen malicious content: The group’s new tool is a Remote Access Trojan that allows criminals to control a victim’s computer or network, and steal any file from an infected machine.

A Remote Access Trojan is a tool used by malware developers to gain full access and remote control on a user’s system, including mouse and keyboard control, file access, and network resource access.

Read more: North Korean hackers APT38 have conducted $600 million crypto heist

A detailed analysis of the malware samples, as well as numerous overlaps in functionality, techniques, and mechanisms used enabled researchers to attribute the detected samples to APT31.

In particular, the researchers detected a link to a phishing domain inst.rsnet-devel[.]com, which imitates the domain of federal government bodies and government bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation for the Internet segment – a malicious domain likely designed to mislead government officials and companies that work with government agencies.

In terms of what is known about the group’s new tool:
It uses techniques to avoid detection and self-deletes after it accomplishes its goals, as well as deletes all the files it created, and registry keys
In some cases, such as in attacks in Mongolia, the dropper was signed with a valid digital signature that was most likely stolen, indicating the attacker’s high level of knowledge
The malware can be used as a part of a global campaign that includes cyber espionage
In order to make the malicious library look like the original version, criminals named it MSVCR100.dll—the library with the exact same name is part of Visual C++ for Microsoft Visual Studio and is present on almost all computers. In addition, it contains as exports the names that can be found in the legitimate MSVCR100.dll

It is of further concern that the Positive Technologies researchers believe the potential malware is only version is 1.0, based on the value embedded in the code and contained in the network packages.

The trends indicate that the hacker group is expanding the geography of its interests. The researchers believe further attacks stemming from this group will be revealed soon, including against Russia. Based on the changes that have taken place over the last year, researchers believe the group is not afraid to make significant changes to their tools – so future malicious programs may be completely different from those already researched.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/new-attacks-from-apt31-are-targeting-russia-u-s-and-canada/article#ixzz74FeN2L1H

MoD seeks security tech to harden military systems

The Defence and Security Accelerator has launched a programme to root out technology that will reduce the military’s exposure to cyber attacks

By Alex Scroxton, Security Editor
Published: 18 Aug 2021 

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a new Innovation Focus Area, or IFA, to seek out and develop technologies that will reduce the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) exposure to cyber attacks on its systems and platforms.


Dubbed Reducing the cyber attack surface, the new IFA is being run on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and Defence Science and Technology (DST), and is now open to applications, with the process closing on 20 October 2021.

The UK’s defence sector currently has a large, integrated network of legacy security technologies giving malicious actors a substantial and diverse attack surface to have a pop at, and the scheme will supposedly “accelerate next-generation hardware and software technologies” to address vulnerabilities in networks and systems.

DASA said it expects to fund proposals within Technical Readiness Level 4 to 7, for up to £300,000 across a nine-month contract period.

Proposals will need to demonstrate how they will achieve a technical demonstrator by the end of the 2023 fiscal year, should further funding be made available. More details are available here.

The brief seeks technologies that can be intelligently applied to reduce the chance of successful cyber attacks; can raise the barrier to entry for hostile actors and give the UK military confidence and assurance that it can withstand cyber-enabled attacks; and are novel and applicable across a class of attack surface, as opposed to tailored to specific threats.

It is not seeking off-the-shelf products that will not need experimental development, or anything that offers no real prospect of integration into the UK’s defence and security capabilities, or offers no real prospect of out-competing extant products and services.

Read more about cyber security and digital in the MoD

The Ministry of Defence has formally “stood up” a dedicated cyber security regiment tasked with protecting the UK’s defence networks both at home and on overseas operations.

The Ministry of Defence has launched a 10-year digital strategy, focusing on creating a digital backbone and enabling the department to exploit data and innovation.

AI and cyber capabilities have formed part of the government’s integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy.

Commenting on the new scheme’s launch, Talion chief operating officer Keven Knight said: “This is a great initiative from the MoD as it is encouraging software and hardware providers to start thinking about security and vulnerabilities at the beginning of the product development cycle, rather than bolting things on at the end.

“However, the one thing to note is that just because a product is developed with security in mind and vulnerabilities are addressed in the early stages, doesn’t mean the product will always be free from security bugs,” he said. “First, if these products are connected to networks and the internet, this will open them up to all the threats we are facing today.

“Second, it is virtually impossible to make an absolutely perfect product, where no vulnerabilities exist. This is because these products are built by humans, and humans are imperfect.

“Ultimately, the MoD should never let its guard down and should continue to monitor these products for vulnerabilities and security issues in the same way they do with other equipment,” said Knight.

A wave of high-profile security incidents affecting elements of critical national infrastructure in the past 18 months has thrown a spotlight on how hostile nation states use technology against Britain and its allies to cause disruption to national life. Military systems are no less vulnerable to such incidents and almost certainly draw great volumes of attacks that are never disclosed.

As part of a broader package of responses to this threat, the UK is currently in the process of developing a 250-strong cyber security regiment, the 13th Signals, created in 2020, alongside a cyber security defence force.

More recently still, the MoD has announced a major digital funding package including more money for cyber defences, and earlier this year ran its first ever bug bounty challenge with HackerOne, which led to the discovery of a number of security vulnerabilities, ranging from authentication bypass issues to misconfigured systems.

 

T-Mobile says cyberattack impacted more customer data than initially thought

Data on millions of additional customers was also compromised, T-Mobile said.

ByCatherine Thorbecke

20 August 2021, 14:55

• 

People walk past the front of a T-Mobile retail store on Aug. 18, 2021, in Arlington, Va.

By the Numbers: T-Mobile hack exposes data of over 40M customers

T-Mobile revealed Friday that the personal data of more than 5 million additional customers was compromised in the recent cyber attack, bringing the total number of people impacted to over 50 million.

The company revealed earlier this week that it was the victim of a "highly sophisticated cyberattack," and that the data of millions of current and prospective customers -- including names and social security numbers -- had been compromised. The company reiterated on Friday that it has no indication any of the stolen files include financial information or credit and debit card information.

"We previously reported information from approximately 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts that included first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information was compromised," the company said Friday, adding that it also determined phone numbers and IMEI and IMSI information (identifier numbers associated with a mobile phone) were also compromised. "Additionally, we have since identified another 5.3 million current postpaid customer accounts that had one or more associated customer names, addresses, date of births, phone numbers, IMEIs and IMSIs illegally accessed."

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The company said the additional accounts, however, did not have any social security numbers or driver's license information compromised.

"We also previously reported that data files with information from about 40 million former or prospective T-Mobile customers, including first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information, were compromised," the company added. "We have since identified an additional 667,000 accounts of former T-Mobile customers that were accessed with customer names, phone numbers, addresses and dates of birth compromised."

Similarly, the company said social security numbers or driver's license information for the additional batch of accounts was not accessed.

The mobile carrier said the investigation remains ongoing, but they are confident the access point used by hackers to access their networks has been closed off.

T-Mobile said it is offering support to those impacted by the data breach by offering two years of free identity protection services with McAfee's ID Theft Protection Service, sharing best practices and security steps that can be taken and recommending customers sign up for a free scam-blocking protection.

The company also published a customer support landing page with further information on the data breach.

MORE: T-Mobile says data breach exposed personal data of more than 40 million people

"As we support our customers, we have worked diligently to enhance security across our platforms and are collaborating with industry-leading experts to understand additional immediate and longer-term next steps," the company said. "We also remain committed to transparency as this investigation continues and will continue to provide updates if new information becomes available that impacts those affected or causes the details above to change or evolve."

The massive breach at the mobile carrier comes amid a spate of recent high-profile cybersecurity attacks on firms big and small -- raising concerns from many that no company is immune.

In the wake of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack that forced a multiday shutdown of a massive East Coast fuel conduit, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at modernizing the federal government's response to cyberattacks.

Opinion | Why So Many Holdouts Still Won’t Get Vaxxed — And Why We Should Learn to Live With It

Vaccine resistance runs deeper and wider than the current Covid strain. Keep trying to convert the hesitant — but keep expectations in check.


Protesters rally against vaccine mandates in Los Angeles on Aug. 14. | 

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes


Opinion by JACK SHAFER
08/18/2021 
Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

The verdict has been rendered: The Covid-19 vaccines on offer in the United States — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are safe and effective. The vaccines protect (to some degree) against Covid-19 infections, but they also vastly reduce the chances of serious illness, hospitalization and death following rare “breakthrough” infections. Except for a smattering of transient, relatively mild side effects and extremely rare severe reactions, what’s not to like?

Yet a sizable number of people here and abroad have refused vaccination. Only about 60 percent of Americans have gotten at least one vaccine dose. You can blame America’s lax vaccine attitude on a variety of factors, but other countries that have national health care systems, universal access to the vaccines, and cultural and class homogeneity have struggled to jab everybody, too. Take the egalitarian republic of Iceland, which has only 360,000 residents. Just 80 percent of this well-educated population of civic-mind folks have taken the shot, and the rate of vaccination has slowed, maybe even plateaued. The United Kingdom’s vaccination rate similarly has slowed, currently standing at about 70 percent, as has Canada’s, currently at about 73 percent.


In polls, people offer a grab-bag of reasons for resisting vaccination. They intend to get the jab later. They worry about the side effects, or about how quickly the vaccines were produced. They say they can’t afford to miss work if the vaccine makes them sick. They express distrust of big pharma and doctors. They regurgitate vaccine misinformation. They protest they don’t know where to get the shot. For some Americans, rejecting a vaccine could be related to their faith — 24 percent of white evangelicals told a pollster in June that they wouldn’t get vaccinated, the highest share of any religious group. And even though some 4.7 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in 183 countries so far, some people still say they’re waiting until the shots are proven safe. (Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy is not just a U.S. thing, by the way. Russia, other parts of Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East lag, too.)

Without questioning the poll respondents’ motives, we can agree that these excuses are paper-thin. Yet reluctance to get vaxxed seems to be built into many vaccination programs in the United States, including vaccines for the flu, shingles, hepatitis, polio and others. No matter what vaccine is packed into the syringe, no matter the quality of persuasion and education applied, most vaccines hit a ceiling well below 100 percent of the U.S. population. Vaccine reluctance has been with us since the first vaccine, which prevents smallpox, proved its worth in the late 18th century. During the 2019-2020 flu season, only 48 percent of U.S. adults took the flu vaccine. It’s unlikely the avoiders declined that vaccine over “trust” or because they couldn’t find it or they wanted to wait until it was proven absolutely safe. Only about 35 percent of people over age 60 have taken the recommended shingles vaccine. At least that 24 percent of white evangelicals who said they would avoid the Covid-19 vaccine are consistent on the subject: In a 2018 Pew survey, 22 percent of them said they oppose mandatory vaccinations for children. Nor is mass vaccine avoidance new. At the turn of the previous century, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded to combat mandatory vaccination.

Where, exactly, does this long-held indisposition come from? Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston surmised earlier this summer that, in the United States, an innate Republican antipathy for being told what to do informs the reluctance. He might be right, but that doesn’t explain the vaccine holdouts in Iceland or Canada, home to very few Trump Republicans. Scientists studying the vaccine conundrum have found that some people anchor their vaccine mindset to initial doubts about safety or efficacy, and that those attitudes harden even after safety and efficacy have been assured. “Once people question the safety or effectiveness of a vaccine, it can be very difficult to get them to move beyond those negative associations,” said Feng Fu, one of the study’s authors.

Setting aside mathematical models, political analysis and polls for a moment, we should remind ourselves that most vaccines are elective, designed to prevent or reduce the severity of illness in healthy people. Taking a vaccine is like buying insurance. You might never know for sure if the vaccine blocked disease, but taking it will buy you some peace of mind. Most other medicines are the opposite of elective — they’re taken by the sick in order to get better. Although there are some outliers, most people take meds without making the excuses vaccine resisters offer. Sick people demonstrate almost no “drug hesitancy.” Instead, some people who come down with serious Covid-19 infections experience a deathbed conversion and ask if they can still take the vaccine. (Sorry, it’s too late.) Of course, there’s an obvious downside to the resisters who catch Covid-19: Their infections spread the contagion. The ghoulish upside is that they also increase herd immunity.

Often, the more medicine people take, the more medicine they want. Old people, many of whom already take statins or blood thinners, have normalized drug-taking. They sense their mortality, and this knowledge makes them open to additional medical intervention. Adding a shot of Pfizer is a simple matter of adding another arrow to their medical quivers.

The million-dollar lottery appears to have failed to win vaccine hearts and minds. Can we change resisters into enthusiasts by encouraging them to become pill-popping hypochondriacs? Probably not. Convert them into enthusiasts by providing more facts? Assuredly not. Now that billions of doses safely have been served and untold thousands of lives have been saved, it’s hard to imagine a fact we could conjure that would persuade them. If visiting an intensive care unit and finding that nearly every ventilated person is unvaccinated won’t convince you to take the vaccine, what will? Should we teach fear of the virus by screening the Covid-19 equivalent of those old bloody drivers’ ed films? Lecture the anti-vaxxers for the 100th time that prevention via vaccination is superior in almost every way to treatment? Explain the cost-benefit argument one more time? Appeal to their altruism? Explain once more that, absent a vaccine, it’s less a question of whether you’re going to get a brutal case of Covid-19 than when?

Mandating vaccination for employment or for admittance to the next Foo Fighters concert will move some people on the margins, as will public shunning of the unvaccinated. But persuasion, shame, nudging and the setting of barriers have limited powers over people. Governments can enforce laws requiring vaccination, according to a Supreme Court precedent from 1905. But the punishment is only a fine, and recent rulings have upheld religious exemptions to the laws.

A world in which 100 percent of the population volunteered for Covid-19 vaccination would be the best. But that’s not the one we live in. Vaccine resistance is not solely about this particular vaccine. Don’t vax me, bro, has been the default setting for many adults since the invention of the first vaccine, and door-to-door visits and passports can’t change that. As much as the campaign to vaccinate might want to exercise zero-tolerance policies against resisters, in the absence of a law mandating universal compliance, we can’t reach that goal. Realism requires us to accept — though not salute — deadenders who have burrowed deeply into their tunnels. Some people will never surrender their lost causes.

When is Alberta going to see pandemic data and modelling? Hinshaw offers no new timeline



Adam Lachacz

CTVNewsEdmonton.ca 

Digital Producer
Published Thursday, August 19, 2021 


EDMONTON -- Alberta’s chief medical officer of health is apologizing for COVID-19 data and modelling not being available and said her team remains committed to ensuring it is publicly available.

In a town hall with doctors in Alberta Wednesday evening, Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the modelling data to show what is driving the province’s pandemic response is not ready.

According to Hinshaw, the delay in releasing the modelling is due to Alberta’s shift in pandemic response plans.


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Originally, the United Conservative Party-led government was planning on lifting testing, isolation, and mandatory masking rules for transit, taxis, and ride shares in August.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s top doctor, previously said the decision to drop the pandemic response measures was made after data on age-specific outcomes related to COVID-19, vaccine effectiveness and modelling on the transmissibility of the Delta variant and related health outcomes were reviewed by her team.

Last Friday, Hinshaw announced that the government was delaying the decision to eliminate testing, isolating, and masking measures until Sept. 27 due to rising hospitalizations that she said exceeded projections by more than 60 per cent.

Additionally, Hinshaw cited growing evidence about the Delta variant’s effect on children led the province to back down from relaxing COVID-19 public health measures until at least the end of September.

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On Wednesday, Hinshaw said she understood the keen interest in the modelling but offered no timeline for when the public report would be ready.

“The team worked incredibly hard to try to pull those pieces together and I think that the challenge is that it's not just about kind of releasing a list of references,” Hinshaw told her colleagues Wednesday evening at the town hall.

“What the team's been trying to do is to put together a narrative that articulates the considerations and that evidence that can be put out publicly."

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The chief medical officer of health apologized and said she “own(s)” responsibility for not having the data prepared in time.

“I promised a timeline that ended up not being realistic based on the other work that was necessary for the team to do,” Hinshaw said. “I can assure you my team is working flat out and has been for a very long time and they're doing their best to get these things packaged together.”

In addition to the medical community, the official opposition in Alberta, Edmonton’s Mayor Don Iveson and several city councillors have called on the province to release the pandemic modelling.

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“In the interests of being able to release the package without releasing things in piecemeal, we want to be able to kind of put together in a comprehensive overview. So, I'm sorry it's not available,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is not something I can do by myself and it's also not something we can do without moving through all of the processes that are necessary in government.”

Hinshaw said she was committed to ensuring the data is released publically and that the medical community and Albertans get to look at it.

“The information is not secretive information,” she said. “The work that’s required isn’t just that list of articles. It’s trying to put it together into a narrative mode that helps explain not just to you as my peers, but to all Albertans, that list of considerations that was taken into account.”



Alberta chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw updates media

 on the Covid-19 situation on Friday March 20, 2020 (The Canadian Press/Jason Franson )