Amerika

Not for the first or last time will I say the following: “Julian Assange had a point.” His point was that the modern state used its intelligence apparatus as an information cartel to better enslave and control their civilian populations.

I referred to this apparatus as The Orwell State because if it were taken to its logical extreme, we’d all be forced into eternal servitude before some digital Big Brother. Orwell himself describes this set of goals thusly. “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” The Alan Parsons Project wrote that Amerika’s national anthem.

So Orwell warns us that the modern Post-9-11 Amerikan Surveillance State is a behemoth of malice that claims to protect us. Indeed this is so, but Orwell doesn’t span the entire scope of danger we have to fear from those determined to protect us right into the penitentiary. Perhaps it was the first twenty or so chapters of the Stephen King novel, The Stand that predicted something like “WannaCrypt” ransomware.

Starting first in the United Kingdom and Spain, the malicious “WannaCrypt” software quickly spread globally, blocking customers from their data unless they paid a ransom using Bitcoin. The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States. That theft was publicly reported earlier this year. A month prior, on March 14, Microsoft had released a security update to patch this vulnerability and protect our customers. While this protected newer Windows systems and computers that had enabled Windows Update to apply this latest update, many computers remained unpatched globally. As a result, hospitals, businesses, governments, and computers at homes were affected.

Yes, indeed. The NSA had brewed up a digital version^* of Captain Trips Flu. They were going to “keep us safe” by knowing how to get into any device that existed. Apple wisely resisted them when presented with a demand from Generalissimo Comey that they let the FBI into the backdoor of his software. Amerika’s SJW haters of innovation and intellectual property immediately balked when Tim Cook declined to trust James Comey.** Cook remarked that the government couldn’t be trusted with that level of power. The ransomware pirates that horked up the malicious code as if they were an extra stack of Pentagon Papers just proved Mr. Cook’s perspicacity.

A Chief Engineer at Microsoft essentially admits that he and his boys got handed their asses over the weekend and gave us the straight-up scoop on why this was, as Martha Stewart would have told us, a bad, bad thing.

this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.

We would appreciate the assurance of believing our government was a little more trustworthy than Kim Jung Il with a handful of nukes. I’m not as convinced this morning as I was last Thursday. In all honesty; I wasn’t particularly sold on the proposition last Thursday. So everybody, your’s truly included, who ever accused Julian Assange of being a bad man should be clearly convinced that Wikileaks was an ethical hack. We are just beginning to see what the scumbags who know how to hack are capable of. The NSA has forgotten that Col. Flagg is out there. Time and destiny will not. Amerika’s demise could be a massive own goal worthy of an old Stephen King novel. Small wonder that Vladimir Putin laughs at us this morning.

^* — Thank God it was digital. I’d much rather have a sick I-Phone than a sick me.
^** — This was well before ¡HILLARY! learned that she couldn’t trust him either.

Tags: cyber pearl harbor, cyberattack, cyberwar, government, nsa, surveillance, wannacry, wikileaks