Stalin in the Underground

Are London subway riders more intellectual than the Metro hordes in DC? That is one conclusion one might draw from some of the things advertised in the Tube here. In DC, I recall ads for defense contractors, HIV medication, living in Baltimore (!), health & auto insurance, fake-me-out college degree programs, and (to be fair) a number of other things, including books, albeit usually trashy romances or pulp thrillers. In London, I see ads for musicals and museums, along with, of course, ads for travel agents, movies, booze, insurance, plastic surgery & botox injections, etc. But what made me pose the question was seeing this series of ads a couple of times:

Stalin in the Underground, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

The product being advertised is Simon Sebag Montefiore's book Young Stalin (to be released in October in the US). The ads are attention-getting; my only beef with them is that they - like the posters for the Borat movie - use a Cyrillic "Д" in place of the Latin letter "A". I've griped about the same type of offense being committed in a similar context in the past, and I still don't understand why publishers / advertisers do this. Can someone who doesn't read Russian enlighten me? Does the appearance of an out-of-place Cyrillic letter that sort of resembles the Latin letter it's replacing instill an air of compelling exoticism in the product being advertised?

"Cyber Attacks Explained"

I thought this was a nice, apolitical article about an incident (or would it better be called a phenomenon?) which I don't think I've yet seen discussed in politically neutral terms. Clinically discussing the technical aspects of what happened is a good antidote for the hysteria which has tended to envelop all online discussions of this topic that I've seen. Of course it's because the author's agenda has nothing to do with Russia or Estonia - rather, his goal seems to be the laudable one of raising consciousness about potential American vulnerabilities.

Cyber Attacks Explained
By James A. Lewis, Director, CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program
June 15, 2007

The small Baltic country of Estonia was the target of a series of cyber attacks in May 2007. These were "denial of service" attacks, where an attacker floods the target network with bogus messages, causing its servers (computers that serve as a hub in a network) to slow or shut down.

The attacks caused grave concern among NATO officials, in large part because, at first, Russia was blamed. This attribution was wrong, in the sense that the attacks were not launched from Russian government computers. Like many things in cyberspace, it was difficult to tell who was at the other end of the Internet. Attribution in the Estonia case was made even harder by the use of "botnets." Botnets—short for robot networks—are the big new thing in cyber crime. A cyber criminal takes remote control of a computer by surreptitiously loading software on it. Most consumers don’t know that their computers have been compromised. Some botnets are huge, using tens of thousands of computers around the world. Having these gigantic criminal networks simultaneously send thousands of messages every minute overburdened Estonian servers and caused them to crash.

Attacks, crashes, robots—sounds like a war—and many commentators saw this as the first "cyber war." This was, of course, completely erroneous. Botnets are used all the time—they are the source of most spam—and are nothing special for cyber crime. This was not the first time that a government had seen foreign protestors attack servers and Web sites with botnets, hacks, and graffiti. China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the United States have seen similar attacks, albeit on a smaller scale.

Nor was the Russian government inept enough to leave a trail of e-mails leading back to the Kremlin. Though one Russian government computer was used in the attacks, that was because it had been captured and controlled in a botnet. This does not prove that the Russian government is innocent. Russian government agents could have used chat rooms and e-mail to incite patriotic Russian hackers and cyber criminals to batter Estonian networks as punishment for daring to move a statue of a Soviet soldier. Estonian police arrested one such hacker, an ethnic Russian and Estonian citizen. Again, this is standard stuff—intelligence agents inciting a protest or riot. The attacks on Estonia are better seen as cyber protests than as war, like demonstrators lying down in a capital’s streets to block traffic (only without the risk of being run over).

On the Estonian end, there was turmoil, but not collapse or terror. Since independence, Estonia has been a leader in "e-government," or service using the Internet. This made them more vulnerable, but it also made them prepared to work in cyberspace. The Estonians responded calmly and were able to restore key services to minimal levels within a few days. Parliament, the president’s office, the police, and the foreign ministry were the primary targets, along with Estonia’s largest bank. Some took the simple response of blocking messages coming from other countries—this reduced the attacks, although it kept Estonians on travel from accessing their bank accounts.

Denial of service is not the most dangerous form of attack. A serious attack would not have been as noisy but would have penetrated Estonian computers and databases and scrambled or erased the data. Making health records and bank accounts disappear would have been far more disruptive. The United States faces this kind of attack, and it is vulnerable—U.S. government networks are routinely penetrated. We have many more networks than Estonia. Many are secure. Others are not. Unfortunately, we do not know which is which. All will be made clear when it is our turn to be attacked, but it might be better to find and fix our vulnerable systems before this occurs.

The article in pdf format.

Yeltsinomics - or, old jokes are the best jokes

Following on from Boris Yeltsin's funeral,
our favourite story from a British journalist
who interviewed him:

Journalist: "So, President Yeltsin, how would
you describe the state of the Russian
economy in one word?"

Yeltsin: "Good".

Journalist: "Okay then Mr President, perhaps
you would describe it in more than one word?"

Yeltsin: "Ah, in that case - not good."


Thanks, MK!

A tale of two cities - three, actually

St. Pete & Moscow meet in London

The photo is from May 13, the day I arrived here.

More on Moldovans in Italy

A couple of months ago, I translated a comment on Alex Culiuc's blog which I found to be touching and revealing about the lives of Moldovan labor migrants. Since then, I've been meaning to translate a follow-up comment by the same person (here's the original), and I've finally gotten around to it:

...when I write about Moldova I get very emotional, because I don't understand why life is so difficult. On every corner in Italy there are Moldovans looking for work which they hope will make them some money and allow them to pay off their debts and send some money home to their children. Just today I was standing by a bank, and a strange woman walked up and greeted me. She asked me just one thing: "Do you know of any job at all, no matter what it pays, I'm sick of walking around outside and searching from morning until night," and she got teary-eyed, then she got embarrassed and left.

It's difficult when there's nothing I can do to help, it's difficult when I hear hurtful words about us, but those at home should know that there are lots of us here who work very hard and aren't ashamed to say we're from Moldova, and to tell people about our holy places; we cook our national dishes, and we pray all the time for our motherland.

I know lots of people who say that they are sick of being someone's slave and have gone home to their villages, because it is psychologically very difficult to always be a foreigner.

My friend is an Italian, and he always wants to learn something about my country, I'm happy that at least Europe is interested in us because of our girls. Because before, 10 years ago, no one even knew what side of the world we were from, but now, like they say, "whether they talk good or bad about you, at least they talk about you." [...she describes differences between Moldovans and Italians...]

I'm still quite young, and I have time to choose my way in life, but now I want to tell the people who want to come here that the land where you were born will always be in your soul. Best to you all, Ciao vi voglio sempre bene.

Another comment from Snejana, in which she summarizes an Italian's opinion and posts it in full (in Italian, which I can't translate and have omitted here):

Here are a few words from Italians who have visited Moldova. I don't know if you'll understand Italian, but I'll translate the most important part, which is that those who have been there a few times say that the situation is getting better; I want to believe this, too.

So do I, although I'm not sure it's true.

Old and New on Str. Cosmonautilor - Chisinau, Moldova, August 2006