"10 scariest hacks" from BlackHat don't even begin to cover the threat landscape

With due respect to Network World reporter Tim Greene, his summary today on the "10 scariest hacks from Black Hat and Defcon" don't even begin to cover the real threat of NOT articulating a guaranteed-response Morgan Doctrine to cyber miscreants. The "twitterverse" top influencer (as illustrated by my QuantumLeapBuzz.com cyberwar dashboard) says it all:

Duqu "alien architecture" still a mystery

As I wrote on January 7th, the Duqu virus seems to spring out of the guts of target computers like an Alien monster. That's probably because it was created with an alien architecture. In today's Computerworld Security online alert, a telling paragraph raises a question that seems to have an obvious answer:

"When we checked Duqu it looked totally unknown and that was very curious, because it's unclear why something very custom was developed and used," said Vitaly Kamluk, chief malware expert with Kaspersky Lab's global research & analysis team.

The key statement: "…it's unclear why something very custom was developed and used…" Nothing unclear about it. As I've said on repeated occasions, the Holy Grail of the perfect virus is principle #7, Black Box Portability. Net net:

1. A "Black Box" is an alien architecture.
2. An alien architecture will take government-level resources to develop and maintain and evolve.
3. The vision of cracking all future architectures is critical to future world dominance.

Given Joseph from Spain's previous success in unravelling a mystery the FBI's "best and brightest" couldn't hack, maybe he'll come up with an answer to this conundrum. Who is the architect and what is the alien architecture? Joseph? Answers?

Duqu "hints" of an alien architecture

My Quantum Leap Buzz "cyberwar dashboard" fired off a new alert to me about the Duqu command and control servers being "…written in a language the researchers had never seen before…"

The link cited an article, in which I found the following paragraph:

Another question is that one of the components for the Duqu command-and-control (C&C) servers was written in a programming language that the researchers had never seen before. "It was a very curious procedural language .. we don't know why they chose to write it in a different language, and we don't know what this language is," Raiu says. "Solving this [may] help us understand who created the communication module, or if different groups don't know about one another," for example, he says.

I've written multiple times about the "holy grail" of The Perfect Virus being Black Box Portability (principle #7). From this latest bit of intelligence (I really like running my own news-aggregation/analysis dashboard, rather than leaving it up to any news organization to tell me what THEY think is important), I make the following inferences:

1. The creators of Duqu have made a government-level investment in attack architecture.
2. The creators of Duqu are a Western goverment (most likely the U.S.).
3. This may explain the slacking off of China's cyber misbehavior (ie; "There's a new sheriff in town.").
4. If I were one of the whacky anarchists attacking supporters of SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), I'd think twice about using extra-legal means, as hard prison time for a late-teen/twenty-something prisoner could have some nasty experiences in the general population of a federal prison.

Net net: You wild and zany guys from Anonymous/Lulzsec might line up some legal heavyweights. And when you decide to file lawsuits challenging SOPA, you might seriously considering filing in the jurisdiction of the only federal judge who knows dittley-squat about cyber law. That would be Judge Clark Waddoups in Utah, about whom I've opined over a year ago (see my article on how Judge Waddoups kept 1-800Contacts from hijacking the Internet).

I just got an email obviously sent by Anonymous to all of the Stratfor subscribers giving me George Friedman's mobile and home phone numbers, along with a spoof "butthurt" incident report website. While I am ashamed of myself for laughing so hard, especially since I think George Friedman and Stratfor have been pretty on the money in their analyses, I'm afraid that some hard jail time for the anonymous culprits will give their concept of "butthurt" a whole new meaning.

Oh, yes. And for those of you who are the least bit paranoid, I'd recommend getting your own BUZZ dashboard going and sending you cell phone text messages whenever the H5N1virus starts trending into your state. If you wait for the evening news to figure out there's a story afoot, it could be way too late for you and your family.

I predicted the Anonymous/Lulzsec attacks 6 days ago

For those of you keeping score (my prediction of 12/20 based based upon Twitter "data exhaust"), I suggested that those zany folks at Anonymous/Lulzsec need to quickly up their game and do something before the new year. Yesterday, I got an email from George Friedman announcing that the Stratfor Global Intelligence think tank had been hit. Here is the email:

My Quantum Leap Buzz "Anarchist Dashboard" confirmed today that Anonymous/Lulzsec were taking credit for this attack, threatening to make "charitable contributions" from Stratfor customer credit cards. This was rather brilliant of them, because those zany anarchists forced Stratfor to notify the world. Of course, my question to Stratfor's George Friedman: "Given the number of government-sized entities you've gotten the better of over the years, didn't you think to get some rock-solid security in place?"

My next prediction (I'm on a roll, now):  A similar groundswell of cyber warfare will soon take place against supporters of the Software and Online Piracy Act (SOPA). I strongly suggest that supporters of that idiotic legislation (see the list here that my Buzz dashboard gave me) circle their cyber wagons and get set for some awful retaliation. Almost a year ago, I wrote about one "righteous hack" of Hollywood. My preference, of course, is to beat SOPA in court and via legal means. Unfortunately, the world does not turn upon my whim, and I therefore predict some serious mischief against the above referenced organizations. One of the best tweets unearthed as strongly trending by Quantum Leap Buzz: 

"Under SOPA, you cd get 5 yrs for uploading a Michael Jackson song- one yr more than the doc who killed him."

Stay tuned.

"Zombieland" meets "Person of Interest"

As I've pontificated before, "data exhaust" from Twitter can be used to gain all kinds of actionable intelligence. The Derwent Capital hedge fund is using their own Twitter data feed to beat the market. So, my budding cyber privateers, you can download the free (until Leap Day, 2/29/2012) Quantum Leap Buzz analytics program to set up your own predictive analytics dashboard. Not only can you get news the major news organizations dare not bring you (like real arguments against SOPA, because people like CBS and Disney have been complicit in selling "entrapment" software that they are now suing people for using), but you can get one heck of a good laugh (download Buzz and then type "bird flu zombie" for a real knee slapper). Everybody with a Web-connected computer ought to have this running continually. Here's a video about Quantum Leap Buzz:

To get your copy of Quantum Leap Buzz, go to…yep…www.QuantumLeapBuzz.com.