Friday, March 24, 2017

Remote outlets and hackers

Hackers are going to hack.

Hiding behind their masks like the KKK, hackers are going to virtually lynch people who refuse to conform to their arbitrary and variable morality systems.  And it isn't like there is a universal morality system for hackers, the only thing anyone can be sure of is that hackers don't care about individual privacy and will happily violate article 12 of the United Nations Human Rights Declaration to enforce their brand of morality.  Whatever justification is used the reality is the same, hackers hack people because they are bullies and enjoy hurting people.

Another thing that you can generalize, and this doesn't apply to all hackers, is that guys like me who call these anonymous lynchers what they are will be attacked by hackers.  I've been pissing these guys off for almost 20 years now and for twenty years now these self appointed guardians of arbitrarily determined morality justifications have been hacking me and virtually lynching me, because that's what they do. 

Hackers oppress basic human rights in favor of ??? what?  Some arbitrary and anonymous morality that changes as often as the face behind the mask changes.  If you are outspoken you are going to piss people off and it doesn't matter what your beliefs are, some scum bag will put on a mask, hide in the virtual night, burn a cross on your lawn and string you up in a tree.  Why?  Because you are anti-pro abortion, anti-pro gay rights, anti-pro 2nd amendment, anti-pro privacy, etc.  Truthfully there is no way to satisfy the virtual blood lust of these scumbags.  They don't really have any agenda except virtual violence, trying to hurt people because hurting others is the only way they can alleviate their own feelings of worthlessness and despair.

Now, not all hackers are like that.  Some hackers have real agendas and they target corporations, governments, they make money from these entities, reveal their secrets and basically do a lot of good.  We aren't talking about these guys, they aren't going to hack people.  People are easy compared to organizations, low hanging fruit for script kiddies.  Real hackers hack organizations.

Anonymous released a list of supporters of oppression and had some people on that list who were very vocally and politically against oppression.  That is because they, very stupidly, targeted people instead of the real evil, corporations.

Sometimes hackers falsify data the way they falsified AOL messages to destroy the career of a Florida politician and that is just as wrong as corporations stripping resources from poor nations.  There is more than enough real evil that hackers with laudable agendas can address without faking crap, violating human rights and adding to the oppression of humanity.  Corporations are not people regardless of the legal fictions used to oppress the majority.

That is the 1% though, most hackers out there are just looking for reasons to hurt people because they think they can. 

One of the first things some hackers do, because they live on GDT, is to change your time to GDT.  It is just a stupid way of saying, look at me, I need attention because I have deep seated feelings of worthlessness and insecurity!  Pretty lame, but, what do you expect from a card carrying KKK member.

In the comic books good guys wear masks.  In real life, bad guys wear masks.  Look at the people who have worn masks in reality and what they have done and look at the people who have stood up for something.

There is an iconic picture of Che Guerra wearing a mask, oh wait, no there isn't.

So, what does that rant have to do with remote outlets?  (https://smile.amazon.com/Etekcity-Wireless-Electrical-Household-Appliances/dp/B00DQ2KGNK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490381295&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=remote+outlet&psc=1) as an example.  Feel free to buy it somewhere else, I'm not shilling for amazon.

Rant over, this blog is about basic protection against hacking, and it is weak protection indeed.  Depth.  Multiple firewalls between a hacker and you.  Those firewalls have to be reset often.  I use a series of routers and firewalls and networks that are all plugged into two different remote outlets.

One of my systems is a computer without a hard drive that actually sits on the network and sniffs traffic.  It is a live CD linux distro that doesn't do anything except log data, traceroute and identify ip addresses.  Long story, the distro is out there, or it used to be, and I didn't build it.  That is hidden and I have it plugged into its own remote outlet.

Then, I have multiple routers.  I have a modem with a cheesy firewall that is plugged into o a router that I have three other routers plugged into. I have an insecure wifi, a "secure" wifi (no such thing) and then a hard wired network router. All plugged into a power strip that is plugged into a single remote outlet.  The whole thing draws less than five amps at 110.

No, I'm not telling you where my sniffer is.  Actually, I move it around and I have been thinking about putting in a second one.  I just need to put together another ITX.  Time and money.

All fairly cheesy stuff that hackers can bypass and gain access to my systems.  The complicated nature of the network makes it more difficult though and then, when I shut it down a hacker has to start all over.

I shut my network down quite regularly.  Turn off the power so it can't be powered on over the network.  If I'm not using my computer, or watching the output from my sniffer, I probably have my network shut down.

Most people leave their networks on all the time and only reset it if there is a problem.  I don't. If I shut down my sniffer it boots right back up when I turn on the power because it runs off of a Live CD.  Everything else is EEPROM so, just push the button and it all resets.  I generally wait ten seconds to several days to turn my network back on.

Turn off your network when you aren't using it.  Just push the button, shut it down and then bring it back up when you want it.  If you have different sections of network you can control them using different remotes, leave your server up, shut your personal network down, your guest network, etc.  There are all kinds of different things you can do, except, prevent getting hacked.

If you are into electronics there are some bits and pieces you can buy on the web to do all kinds of things with relays and remotes.

Some of you are probably thinking that there are people out there who can't get hacked.  That is B.S., anyone and everyone can get hacked.  This is just a simple way to make it more difficult to hack a network, but, leave still leave it open enough for people to worm their way in.  Fewer people, but, there are those who will.

There will always be guys in masks, burning crosses and lynching people because that is what losers do, beat up on others.  They will always have their justifications and it really doesn't matter what they are, the point isn't really their justification it is that they get to hurt people.  Always has been, always will be.

In the mean time, there are a few simple things we can do without going very far out of our way to make things harder for them.  I don't suggest you build a sniffer, that is essentially a "script kiddie" way of identifying KKK members.  I don't even suggest that you run multiple routers/firewalls.

I do suggest plugging your network hardware into a remote outlet so it is easily shut down.  This reduces energy consumption and it makes it easier to reset all the bits and pieces on your network.  It also shuts off access when you don't need it.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Revenge based criminal justice is a waste of time.

I want to point something out.  I was just considering marketing strategy regarding purchasing motivation.  I don't have a good reference, I learned this stuff in a variety of seminars when I was involved in technical sales support at a software company.

People have a binary motivational personality trait, similar to the binary personality trait of extroversion/introversion.  Psychology is kind of weird in that binary thinking patterns are considered a mental disorder and then they break down psychological traits into binaries "the big five" and then classify people as either/or as opposed to accurately positioning them within a continuum between the two traits, or better yet, somewhere in a ten point circle where all traits influence each other to create an individuals unique personality matrix.  Okay, off topic there a bit.

So, binary motivational personality trait.  Some people are motivated more by desire and some people are motivated by avoidance.
If I'm trying to someone with a focus on desire why they should buy something and all I talk about is the problems they will avoid they will kick me to the door pretty quick.  On the other hand, if I talk to them about all the problems they will solve they will buy.

It isn't quite that easy, actually you have to pitch both avoidance and desire, just focus a little more on one based on an estimate of a person's location in the continuum between the two extremes of the motivational trait.  If someone is 70% desire and 30% avoidance and I explain seven problems they will solve and three problems they will avoid I've kind of hit the sweet spot in their motivational trait.

Now, other personality traits influence all this stuff, so it isn't really black and white.

Considering that knowledge I considered the motivation of criminals.  Are they primarily avoidance, dissuaded by considerations of problems?  Are they primarily desire, encouraged by thoughts of success?  Especially those with poor impulse control.

I think the vast majority of criminals don't give a rats ass about potential punishment.  I think they are motivated more by potential reward.  This means that no matter how severe punishment is it will not motivate the criminal to avoid because most criminals behavior is not motivated by avoidance.
I think a criminal justice system focused on helping people define what they want and how they can legally achieve it will work better when applied to a Pavlovian punishment/reward behavioral modification system such as the current criminal justice system.

But, the criminal justice system isn't focused on behavior modification, it is focused on revenge or retribution so no one really cares about behavior modification, reducing crime, and so our prison population is increasing as we become more and more focused on punishing people, getting retribution, revenge, for mala prohibitum offenses like prostitution, recreational drug offenses, gambling, and non-violent mala in se offenses like various forms of theft.

Which ends up costing us a ton in court costs and imprisonment costs and lost labor, etc.

Think about that, we get revenge on a guy for getting busted multiple times for possession of too much weed and argue about how much damage stoners do our community, a revenge that lasts sixty years and costs us a crap load in prison costs.

Is revenge that is specifically designed not to address behavior modification and costs us an incredible amount of money really worth it?  Does it do anything to solve the problems of society or is it just creating more?

Statistically, I would say revenge is creating more problems than it solves and I think the data on increasing ratios of incarcerated people in the States and increasing crime rates proves it.

Pew Report:  One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-crime-statistics-released

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Modern Justice System, literally driving people crazy!

Our modern justice system is designed around two foundational concepts, innocent until proved guilty and assigning punishment which is "equal" to inappropriate behavior.

This is why we have judges and trials, so judges can determine guilt and assign an appropriate punishment which should be "equal" to the crime.  Essentially, "an eye for an eye".

An "eye for an eye" is an interesting concept and it depends on values assigned to behaviors.

Suppose an individual breaks a window and steals a watch that the retailer values at $500 (but, I can get it on Amazon for $250).  The thief is immediately caught and the watch is recovered.  It costs $1,000.00 to repair the window.

The thief is fined and incarcerated.  Fines are ???  Incarceration ???  Probably a misdemeanor, a year in jail and a fine of as much as $1000.00. http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/Burglarly.htm

How do we value time?  Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  Do we charge people for "room and board"?  How much?  24*7.25=174 8*7.25=58 We incarcerate people for 24 hours a day.  Is a criminals time worth $174 a day?

How do we place a value on trauma?  Many people are traumatized in jails.  Prisons in the United States typically violate International laws against torture.  We legalize torture of convicted criminals and protest torture of terrorists, unless they are convicted and incarcerated and then we can torture them!  https://www.afsc.org/document/torture-us-prisons

How do we value trauma to the victim?  Do we value trauma to victims more than criminals?  Suppose the only job a person can get is dealing drugs.  Unemployment is interesting.  Unemployment only counts people receiving unemployment.  Real unemployment, the difference between employable people and employed people (Labor Force Participation) among blacks is 40%.  That means real unemployment is 60%.  Census claims the number is 61%, but, in 2013 (the latest date I can get numbers) out of 32 million people over 16 only 13 million are employed.

https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?st=0&r=20&q=Employed+black+over+16&fq=survey:[ln]&more=0

https://www.census.gov/population/race/data/ppl-bc13.html

Okay, so the only job an individual in a 60% unemployment bracket can get is dealing drugs and that person is tossed in prison for 20 years where they are tortured based on international laws.  I'll let you equate the values in the system for that one because they have nothing to do with "an eye for an eye", in my opinion.

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/c/chalmersk/sea%20website/vengeancearticle.pdf

Suppose we have a Senator who violates the constitution?  How should they be punished?  Surprise, there are no laws which specifically criminalize Senators who violate Article 6 of the Constitution during confirmation proceedings by asking nominees for civil service about their religious beliefs.

Senator Durbin did this during Judge Alito's confirmation hearings and no one even objected.  I wasn't surprised because it happens all the time even though it is illegal.  I'm just picking this incident out because I documented it in a discussion I had with an attorney friend of mine.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109shrg25429/pdf/CHRG-109shrg25429.pdf Page 576

An "eye for an eye", punishment equal to offense, is a Pavlovian conditioning method.  For Pavlovian conditioning to work punishment must be consistent and consistently applied.  http://psych.fullerton.edu/rlippa/Psych101/outline2.htm

Lets face it, there is no consistency either in the application of punishment or the "value" of punishment.  Our current punishment standards are overly harsh, have nothing to do with equating value of behavior/punishment and result in recidivism rather than behavior modification.

As we learn studying Pavlovian conditioning the lack of consistency in punishment will literally drive those being conditioned insane.

Our justice system is currently designed to drive people crazy.  Literally, I'm not being figurative here.  I'm pointing out that our current system of punishment is literally driving people crazy.