Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 63

News & Analysis | No. 246

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Our Problem is Gullibility, Not Disinformation

I think we’ve lost the plot on disinformation. It’s not the attacks that are the problem. It’s the fact that too many Americans are willing to believe almost anything.

Ideally we’d reduce both the attacks and the vulnerability.

Of course it would be nice to have fewer attacks. Of course it would be nice to keep attacks from being used against higher numbers of vulnerable people. But ultimately the problem is the vulnerability itself.

Bad ideas are worse than bad code because they’re naturally contagious.

This is easier to see in the information security world. If you have a target that will run any code that it’s given, you cannot spend all of your energy making sure it doesn’t receive any code. Part of your plan has to be making sure it’s not so eager to do so. We call that patching.

It’s the same with people. We need to do more than control bad ideas; we need to patch our population against them.

Trade school doesn’t immunize against specious ideas.

For people, patching means education. And not the worker-prep kind of education where you learn how to be an obedient and productive office worker, but the kind that teaches the fundamentals of how things work—from physics to psychology, and from physiology to philosophy.

Controlling bad code, or bad information is tactically valuable, but it’s not a solution. If you have half a billion people who will believe and act upon any idiotic thing they are told, attackers will always find a way to deliver those bad ideas.

We see this with scammers today. We block scam phone calls, the attackers start texting instead. We block text scams, they start sending physical mail to people’s addresses. At some point they’ll just show up at your door like Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Bad ideas will find targets eventually. If we want to survive, we have to reduce the number of susceptible targets. This is why I’m pessimistic about the American union.

Millions don’t believe in vaccination More
Millions don’t believe in manmade climate change More
1 in 5 Americans can’t name a branch of government
41% of Americans think Jesus will return to the Earth by 2050. More
45% of Americans believe in ghosts and demons. More
Only two-thirds of 19-24 year-olds believe the Earth is definitely a sphere. More

This is the deeper problem.

Facebook and Twitter are just the marketplace. The problem is the customers.

We can blame Facebook and Twitter all we want, but to do so a distraction and a copout. It allows us to avoid a much more terrifying truth, which is that we’re becoming a nation of idiots. Ignorant people cannot survive in a system of government that allows them to behave against their own self-interest, because they will.

We need to reduce our attack surface for bad ideas.

Either our gullibility or our freedom has to give. And it’s much easier to lose freedom than it is to educate a population. The saddest part is that we’re not even talking about the problem. We’re just talking about how people are taking advantage of the problem.

Controlling the spread of bad ideas is not a strategy. We need to patch if we want to survive.

Notes


To be very clear, I find the fight against mis/disinformation to be extremely interesting, and extremely valuable. And I regularly talk about and praise the people who are doing this critical work. All I’m saying is that if we have an ignorant population it eventually won’t matter.

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Unsupervised Learning: Book Summary | Naked Statistics, by Charles Wheelen

Statistics is a major component of the scientific method, and its goal is to help us make better decisions on how to live our lives.

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Primary Concern Theory

I have a model I’m using to explain how good people can support Trump. I call it the Primary Concern theory.

It’s not really a theory, just an idea. Theories need research and support.

The idea is that people can have dozens of moral alignments simultaneously, which are active at different times and are not fully known to the person.

For example, someone could be deeply Christian in many ways, but also very isolationist when it comes to immigration. But they believe cussing is fine, and even encouraged. They also have lots of Black and Asian friends. But their father was part of the Italian Pride group in town for the last 30 years. And they believe in a woman’s right to choose, but are pro-death-penalty.

Many people are like this. Some combination of conservative, progressive—open and judgemental. Maybe they harbor racist thoughts, but they don’t come into play when they’re interacting with their friends of other races. Maybe they’re deeply religious but think there’s nothing wrong with atheists. Or maybe they have many atheist and Black friends, but would never let one marry their daughter.

Each of us is multiple people, and it’s hard for anyone—even the person himself—to know exactly which of their personas is in charge at any moment.

I think the reason we’re seeing such strong Trump support is related to this. It has to do with an often unnamed and invisible Primary Concern among his supporters, which is that the country is being destroyed by the left.

This is their Primary Concern. And it’s the reason they can ignore everything else.

They may have ten other moral personas that hate Trump. They think he’s a bad husband, a bad father. A bad business person. Or maybe they think he’s too close to Russia. If you talk to enough Trump supporters—and I’ve talked to many—you won’t find too many people who think he’s great.

But the way they see it, if your house is burning down and a firefighter runs inside, carries you out on his shoulder, and your wife and kids on the other shoulder, you don’t ask him who his favorite baseball team is.

Really. I think it might be that simple, and that extreme.

The country is the house
It’s on fire
Trump is their fireman
He’s immune to criticism during a rescue attempt

This is why it’s so strange to Trump supporters when liberals talk about taxes and adultry and violating the constitution. These might seem like colossal things to people on the coasts, but they’re small things compared to losing the actual spirit of America.

In short, the Primary Concern for Trump supporters is a deep, emotional, often inarticulable, fear of loss of their country at the hands of liberals.

Many liberals feel the exact same way, but they have a different view of the house that’s burning, and they believe Trump is the arsonist, not the firefighter.

So, practically speaking, I think it’s worth searching for everyone’s Primacy Concern. That’s not a trivial thing, because like I said—they might not know themselves. And what they tell you they most care about might be misleading.

Liberals might talk about the environment, or breaking the law, or police brutality, or whatever—and maybe one of those is the main issue, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe its a feeling that America is about freedom for all, and equality, and a feeling of safety and welcome for immigrants.

Conservatives might talk about too many genders, or bathroom politics, or political correctness. But their main issue could be that they just want things to go back to what they remember, even if they can’t articulate that memory.

I think we get distracted by specific arguments—and neglect the search for the Primary Concern—at our peril. It creates dialogue that feels productive, but doesn’t actually yield anything. Because the true issue wasn’t named or addressed.

If you want to make progress with a person, or a group of people speaking as one, find out their Primary Concern. Take the time to dig for it. It might be buried. But the real conversation won’t begin until you find it.

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Unsupervised Learning: Book Summary | Atomic Habits, by James Clear

10/10

In this episode, I go through my summary of the book Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I cover:

My rating of the book
My one-sentence summary of the text
My capture of the main points
My takeaways, questions, and ideas that came from reading it
My final summarization
And then my rating of the book and whether I recommend you read the full text

You can read my full summary of the book, here.

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Book Summary: Atomic Habits

10/10

In this episode, I review the book Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I cover:

My rating of the book
My one-sentence summary of the text
The table of contents, which is super helpful to see the structure of the argument
My capture of the main points
My takeaways, questions, and ideas that came from reading it
My final summarization
And then my rating of the book and whether I recommend you read the full text

Read my full summary of the book, here.

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Unsupervised Learning: No. 245

Anxiety and Freedom, Microsoft Deepfake Detection, Facebook Disinformation, Replacing Huawei, India China Apps, JEDI Oracle, A Text Scam, Cisco Jabber Flaw, Technology News, Human News, Ideas Trends & Analysis, Discovery, Recommendations, and the Weekly Aphorism…

Discovery, Creation, and Ideas…

I spend 5-20 hours a week consuming books, articles, and podcasts about security, technology, and society—and every Monday morning I send a summary of my best finds.

 MY ESSAYS



Is Anxiety Freedom Without Direction? More



The Original Meaning of Begging the Question More



SECURITY NEWS



Microsoft has released a tool to help identify deepfake videos to help counteract disinformation. More



Facebook is taking some pretty extreme steps to limit their blame for any upcoming election drama. They’ve removed new accounts linked to Russian propaganda and they’re now going to ban all political ads for the week leading up to the election. I can’t help but feel like they already know it’s going to look bad for them, no matter what, and they’re just trying to build a case that they did what they could. More



The FCC says it’s going to cost around $1.8 billion to replace Huawei/ZTE wireless gear in the US. That seems low, but what do I know. More



Tensions are increasing between India and China, and India has now banned over 100 China-related apps, including PUBG and Baidu. More

This episode originally had this story wrong in the podcast and newsletter—stating that the JEDI contract went to Oracle.

The Pentagon has once again awarded the JEDI contract to Microsoft, and Amazon continues to be upset about it.More

 

There’s a text-message scam going around saying “You, we came across a package from June pending for you. Kindly assume ownership and confirm for delivery here”. Yes, it’s a scam. If you’re reading this you probably already knew that, but tell your loved ones. More



Vulnerabilities: 

Cisco fixes a huge flaw in Cisco Jabber for Windows. More
There are around 450 thousand QNAP devices that are vulnerable to three RCE vulnerabilities in QNAP’s Photo Station app, which comes pre-installed. More
Millions of sites are being attacked to look for a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin called “File Manager”. More

Breaches:

Atrium Health, who used Blackbaud software, reported a breach of patient data between Feb 7 and May 20th related to the Blackbaud breach. As it turns out, Blackbaud’s breach was really tens of thousands of smaller breaches. More
Millions of US voter details have been leaked onto a Russian Dark Web forum. More

Ransomware:

Cygilant, which is a company that protects companies from ransomware attacks, got hit with a ransomware attack. More
Fresno-area schools canceled online classes due to a ransomware attack. More

Disinformation:

Facebook and Twitter have been warned by the FBI that Russia’s Internet Research Agency is active once again around election disinformation. They’ve created a new network of fake accounts and a fake left-wing news website. They also hired US-based writers to help with the believability of the language. More
Graphika published a 120-page report on a new Russian Information Warfare campaign that goes back to 2014. More

TECHNOLOGY NEWS



Amazon gig drivers are putting phones in trees to try to catch more incoming work. More



Amazon is adding 10,000 more jobs in the Seattle area, and 7,000 more in the UK. More More



Walmart is launching Walmart Plus to compete with Amazon Prime. It’s $98 instead of $119, but doesn’t have as many advantages. More



Reed Hastings says remote work has been bad for Netflix, and that they’ll be going back to onsite work as soon as they can. More



Zoom and enhance technology has finally arrived, thanks to the rapid improvement of camera tech. More



Facebook is working a wearable that will allow you to hear inaudible sounds in the real world, including enhancing the speech of someone talking to you in a loud place. More



Amazon has a new line of security cameras that can last up to four years on a single charge. More



Companies:

Zoom’s revenue jumped 355% in Q2. More
Patreon has raised $90 million in Series E funding. More
Hypatos uses language processing and computer vision to speed up financial document processing. More

HUMAN NEWS



More than half of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US are living with their parents. More



Solar and Wind energy reached 67% of new power capacity added globally in 2019, with fossil fuels making up just 25%. More



Divorce rates are up 34% during COVID. More



Economists are getting more concerned that there will be a quick economic recovery—but only for people already doing well. More



Netflix is making a series based on Three-Body Problem. More



In Japan there are companies that help people disappear out of their lives that are so burdened with visibility, expectation, and responsibility. More



Chess is getting big on Twitch. More



IDEAS, TRENDS, & ANALYSIS



What Happened When I Went Full Stoic — I really enjoyed this piece, and I like how it found what I did during my journey with it, i.e., that it’s a lot more like some Eastern teachings that tell you to maintain distance from the world so that it cannot harm you. More



What Will You Do if Trump Doesn’t Leave? More



Riot Porn is making the violence worse. More



UPDATES



Bruce Schneier is moving his blog to WordPress, and the trolling started immediately. Why are you moving to something so insecure! This is wisdom as old as “firewalls keep you safe”. WordPress Core is quite secure (for a blogging platform). It’s the plugins that get you. More



Well, I tried and failed again to create a shorter show this week. This one took me around six hours to assemble. I think I need to raise the bar for what I send to the review queue during the week.



DISCOVERY  



A Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List More



Analyzing Senators’ Stock Picks Using ML More



The Criteria for 10x Content More



My Thoughts on Editors in 2020 More



The Most Favorited Hacker News Posts More



Things I Learned From a Senior Software Engineer More



The origin of obscure UNIX commands. More



Someone fed Nassim Taleb aphorisms to GPT-3 to see if it could make more of them. More



Lessons Learned from Running SSH Honeypots More



Using VirusTotal’s API to Detect Malicious Activity More



Red Team Village CTF Writeup More



RECOMMENDATIONS



There are an increasing number of studies (including this new one) that shows that vitamin D can be helpful with COVID-19. I’m being very cautious about how I word this because 1) I’m not a doctor, and 2) even doctors are still confused about this stuff. But here’s one thing I can tell you for sure: it’s probably a really good idea to make sure your vitamin D levels are not below where they should be. That’s true whether this research turns out to be strong or not. TL:DR: Make sure you’re not deficient. More



APHORISMS



“True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.”



~ Baltasar Gracian

Notes


Sep 8, 2020 — This episode originally had this story wrong in the podcast and newsletter—stating that the JEDI contract went to Oracle. My apologies for the error.

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The Original Meaning of ‘Begging the Question’

You probably hear the phrase, “that begs the question…” a few times a week. Speakers and writers using these words mean to say—in a sophisticated way—that the point just made raises a new question.

I’ve mostly outgrown my Well Actually habit, but in this case the situation is interesting enough to make an exception.

Notice I say originally, not actually.

Begging the Question is originally a type of flawed argument called a logical fallacy. It’s an informal logical fallacy because it’s not violating deduction, which would do something like:

All men are humans –> Ken is a man –> Therefore Ken is tall.

That’s a formal logical fallacy, and the other ones you’ve likely heard of like Strawman and Appeal to Authority and such are of the informal variety.

Aristotle is the first philosopher to formally describe Begging the Question.

Anyway, the original meaning of Begging the Question is a type of circular reasoning. That’s where you make a statement that you justify with another version of the statement. For example:

Fruits and vegetables are part of a healthy diet. After all, a healthy eating plan includes fruits and vegetables.

So you say the first thing forcefully—which is what you’re trying to argue—and then you say the supporting statement using different words that are commonly accepted by many in the audience.

In this case, “A healthy eating plan includes fruits and vegetables” is so well accepted that it’s likely to land as solid evidence of the first statement. But it’s not because it’s just another way of saying the same thing.

The greatest thing we can do is to love each other. Love is the highest form of human emotion.

Again, this sounds solid because they’re both repeated so often and accepted by so many. The problem is thinking that the second statement supports the first when it does not.

The language of “Begging” and “The Question” comes from the original Greek that was then translated into Latin, which meant, “Asking for the original thing.”, where the initial thing is the thing you’re trying to prove. In the examples above, the initial things were “The greatest things we can do is love each other”, and, “Fruits and vegetables are part of a healthy diet.”

So Begging in that context meant Assuming, and The Question meant the point that they were trying to make. In other words, Assuming the Conclusion.

Meanings change over time, and that’s ok

We won’t know until later if the meaning has fully changed.

Unfortunately for the pedants—I’m recovering myself—words and phrases change meaning all the time. In fact they’re changing right now, and “Begging the Question” maybe one example.

So maybe it’s ok to use Begging the Question as a smart synonym for “raising a question” already. I don’t know when exactly that call is made, and I’m not sure anyone does.

But I do know that if someone is attempting to sound smart by using the phrase—which is invariably the case—it’s probably best for them to know both meanings. And I’ve never seen a situation in which someone who knew both meanings continued to use the new meaning. They usually switch to “raising” instead of “begging”. I’m one of those people.

Other examples

Student: Why didn’t I receive full credit on my essay? Teacher: Because your paper did not meet the requirements for full credit.

They added “requirements” in here to make it sound official.

Killing people is wrong, so the death penalty is wrong.

That sounds super clean, but all the work is still left undone.

Opium induces sleep because it has a soporific quality.

Cool, so it induces sleep because it makes people sleepy? Thanks for that.

Summary


Begging the Question originally meant “Assuming the Conclusion”.
It sounds cool, so people started repeating it thinking that “Begging” was a smart way to say “Raising”.
This has been happening for some time now, so at some point this may become an accepted and official alternate meaning, but I’m not sure if it is yet.
If you know both meanings—which you now do—I recommend you use “Raising” instead of “Begging” unless you really mean Assuming the Conclusion.
Try your best not to be the guy—yes, it’s usually a guy—who calls someone out in a live conversation when they make the mistake. If you think they’d care and you honestly want to educate them, pull them aside afterward.


Notes


Thanks to Steven Harms for being the first one to tell me about this. It was actually the communication that launched our friendship!

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Is Anxiety Freedom Without Direction?

Anxiety—as we’ve all seen throughout 2020—can be extremely debilitating. I’ve been thinking about how it relates to other types of mental stress.

Anxiety


/’ang ZIE eh tee’/


noun
Stress and fear about what’s to come.

I need to be cautious not to beg the question here.

Fear of what’s coming is a good definition, but I’m speaking more specifically about a type of stress that relatively well-off people face when they are inactive.

Suffering, or exhaustion, seem quite different from anxiety and depression because—while they are unpleasant and traumatic—they are often faced during periods of extreme struggle, while anxiety and depression seem less likely in those situations.

It seems that someone with a major drive to do something, and who seems intent on that purpose, is not often anxious or depressed. Or perhaps they’re depression takes the hue of disappointment and discouragement. There’s no question that driven people can be unhappy, but the color of that unhappiness does not seem to match what we see today.

Perhaps I speak of existential depression when I describe what I see today—especially in the US. It’s the anxiety that comes from not knowing what one should do.

This seems to require two things:

Freedom to do multiple things.
A lack of driving purpose.

Freedom is required because if you are restricted from action in some way, by some sort of physical bondage or harsh life circumstance, you essentially get a driving purpose for free. That purpose is to gain freedom. Anyone without it tends to want it badly, and that desire becomes a furnace of purpose and drive. But when someone has freedom but no purpose, the very presence of options can become a ray of paralysis.

People with ideas and plans tend to cherish time alone and time with nothing else to do. It gives them time to explore and articulate their craft or their calling. People without purpose tend to see solitude as torture. Because they have nothing driving them internally, a lack of external stimulation means a lack of any stimulation. To be alone is to spend time with someone who is boring. And to someone who is not driven, being boring is the worst of insults.

The easiest way for this to be solved is not pleasant, which is to have an undeniable force applied to you. Like losing a job if you’re determined to work. Or struggling with a serious health issue. Those situations remove this type of existential anxiety because they create a path for you—the only path—that gets you out of survival mode.

The other option is to cultivate a life purpose that pulls you towards it even if you have 1,000 other options. A life mission of sorts. Or even something smaller, like a project to better yourself or to help other people.

People in the distant past, and even as recently as 50 or 100 years ago—were naturally forced into either survival mode or a career path that forced them forward. So while they might not have been happy, or fulfilled, they were at least not burdened with freedom.

Today is different. There are many mechanisms available today that allow people to be sedentary without starving or being subjected to the elements. Many go on disability and/or live with their parents and family indefinitely. They are able to live in a perpetual state of not being forced to survive and not being forced to choose a path.

Major depression rates rose 63% from 8.1% in 2009 to 13.2% in 2017 among U.S. adults ages 18 to 25.

I think it is that state—more than anything—that is causing the increases in anxiety and depression today.

It’s the poisonous combination of a lack of danger and a lack of drive that I call Soul Rot.

I don’t have the answer, obviously. But I do know that we should identify this as the problem—or at least as one model of it. We need to emphasize to our youth that having a deep purpose in life is the best possible thing one can have for their health and happiness. And that people without such a purpose can want for nothing but still pray for death.

This is one of the most important lessons that nobody ever teaches explicitly. Not most parents, not most schools. Nobody. We hear that it’s nice to have a purpose, but we don’t hear that it’s essential.

We should.

Notes


Helicopter parenting creates a different kind of stress I think, which isn’t anxiety around not knowing what to do, but rather the stress of needing to do something that you may not care about. I have no interest in comparing different types of hardship and stress here. I only wish to say that the stress of getting a Masters degree and great job in some area that doesn’t bring you joy is not quite the same as not doing anything.

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Zuboff vs. Doctorow vs. Miessler: What’s the Greatest Threat to Human Privacy?

Shoshana Zuboff came out with a brilliant work called Surveillance Capitalism a while back, which I reviewed here. It talked about not just the threat of the tech itself but how that tech could be used to control the behavior of populations.

I highly recommend it.

Cory Doctorow, of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother fame just came out with a rebuttal, essentially saying no—it’s not the tech that’s the problem, but rather that the companies wielding the tech are monopolies.

I personally think they’re both looking for the enemy in the wrong place. It’s not tech that’s the problem, and it’s not capitalism’s final bosses, i.e. monopolies.

The problem is much worse—human desire combined with progress.

I want to convince you of this in two ways:

Showing you that human desire and progress ultimately lead to Surveillance Capitalism, and…
Showing that you can have Monopolies without the problem, and the problem without Monopolies.

My first point is that evolution drives us to win. As individuals, as groups, as governments, as cities, as countries. It’s ultimately the reason we get up in the morning. To be better. To win. To have better kids. Kids that are happier, more successful, and more attractive. So they can have more kids. Who can do the same thing.

This is not our game. It was a game that was given to us all. Against our will. Yet we claim it’s our idea.

So that’s evolution. And that’s what it makes us do.

Next is progress. Progress is like the drunk man named Stok struggling home after the bar. You might not be able to predict where his next step will be, but you can predict that he’s likely to end up at home.

We’re not going to slow progress because progress feeds on itself, and combined with evolution constantly pushing for improvements—we end up stumbling into constant advances that eventually arrive at superior technology.

It’s less predictable than the sunrise, but it’s just as inevitable.

So we can’t stop our desire to win as humans, and we can’t stop the advancement of technology because it’s driven by time plus that desire. Unfortunately, that is all that’s needed to get to Surveillance Capitalism and a serious threat to human privacy and freedom.

You don’t need monopolies. That’s a side effect. A detail. A triviality. Like the color of a sword that’s been passed through your bowels. Here Doctorow talks about one scary thing about the tech:

The Neighbors app allows you to form a neighborhood-wide surveillance grid with your fellow Ring owners through which you can share clips of “suspicious characters.” If you’re thinking that this sounds like a recipe for letting curtain-twitching racists supercharge their suspicions of people with brown skin who walk down their blocks, you’re right. Ring has become a de facto, off-the-books arm of the police without any of the pesky oversight or rules.

Cory Doctorow

This is, of course, correct. But it has nothing to do with monopolies. Ring was doing a lot of this before it was bought by Amazon, and it could have continued doing so even if it weren’t.

Again, the thing that made it possible is 1) the human desire to be safe, and 2) the advancement of technology. Those are the vehicles at play.

Capitalism is simply a racetrack that these vehicles can use to move at high speeds, and monopolies—if anything—are an obstacle to that progress.

A good example of this is Clearview AI, which advanced one of the biggest attacks on human privacy in history by aggregating Google images and tying them to profiles through facial recognition. One person built that, which is the polar opposite of a monopoly. The reason it thrived is because it’s deeply empowering to be able to see someone and know everything about them.

So, big tech can be a problem if it’s not encouraged to follow a liberal and progressive spirit. Without a positive drive that’s consistently monitored and checked, it can become malignant. And monopolies can have many negative effects, from stifling innovation to providing increasing amounts of the world’s data to steal in one place.

But while it’s true that evil monopolies could stop benign competitors through anti-competitive practices, and big tech might branch into larger societal functions like education and healthcare once it gets big enough (see Amazon), the ultimate problem is not the size of companies or whether they’re monopolistic.

The problem is humans wanting to win, combined with the inevitable march of technological progress.

These are the forces that will create the tech companies. These are the forces that will make them large. These are the forces that will make their leaders want to control others. And these are the forces that will make them anti-competitive.

It’s ok to look for danger in particular manifestations of these core problems, such as certain types of company or certain types of government. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking those things are the problem.

The problem is that evolution drives us to survive, to be safe, and to win. Constantly. And forever. Until we stop those forces, and the progress that comes with them, we will continue to see these mechanisms for controlling others spring into existence.

The path forward is not to stop symptoms of evolution-imbued drives, but rather to find ways to build a society where those tendencies can be exercised in a healthy way.

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