HACK-THE-HACKERS Bill Gets Castrated by Morons in Congress

The Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act (ACDC) reported by the UK Register (read the article here) got its nuts cut off in vitro. Great idea, allowing hacking victims to seek revenge and hack the hackers who hacked them. Unfortunately, you can only hack hackers who hacked you from computers on American soil.

The bill's co-sponsor Tom Graves, Republican Congressman from Georgia (photo above) clearly took too many shots to the head in his high school football career. Come on, Congressman! Read Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution for the real solution. You can read, can't you?

Hacking the Hackers, Today's WSJ Ad

Page C12 in the REVIEW section of today's Wall Street Journal.  The next time you get a robocall, spam email, a phishing attempt, or an actual hack, Daddy's Little Felons could give you some ideas for striking back. Of course, it could also get you tossed into jail for a very long time. But Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution might be your GET-OUT-OF-JAIL-FREE card. Selah.

Anticipating Saturday's WSJ

Thank you WSJ cartoonist Stu Heinecke for the above cartoon, which will be appearing on Saturday, August 5th, in the REVIEW section of The Wall Street Journal.

Casting Suggestion to Jerry Bruckheimer for the Ultimate Silicon Valley Hack: I DO NOT COME IN PEACE

There is a game afoot in Silicon Valley. In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Marc Benioff lobs a shot across Larry Ellison's bow. On Thursday's, Larry's ad runs:

Get some popcorn. Enjoy the show.

The Movie ARMAGEDDON Suggests The Ultimate Environmental Hack

I think the above speaks for itself.

Comments?

Is Marc Benioff Making His Move on Oracle in Today's WSJ?

Here is the video I sent to my old friend Marc Benioff on May 12th. He must have liked the advice, because following the video is the Salesforce.com ad on the front page of todays Wall Street Journal. I have included this personal video to Marc with his permission.

 

My "Awh Hell, Let's Go Hijack Something!" Hack

I must have too much time on my hands. Here's an article published yesterday by my Silicon Valley buddies at SandHill.com called HIJACK MARKETING 101 (click here to see the article).

Trump To Ask Congress To License Bonded Cyber Privateers?

How can the "Beltway Bandits" come to President Trump with a straight face and ask for federal bucks to combat hackers? Especially when the hackers are using stolen N.S.A. tools? The New York Times (click here to see story) calls it an "audacious global blackmail attempt." The UK National Health Service probably uses more colorful invective.

Given that 74 countries were hit hard by a stolen N.S.A. tool, and given that our own government agencies hoard other "zero-day" cyber exploits rather than letting industry know about them so they can be silently fixed, I would advise President Trump to clobber any federal contractor with the Frederick Remington Bronco Buster statue in the Oval Office. Net net: A centrally organized cyber security effort is asinine.

Mr. President, you want to create the biggest job boom in modern history? Simply invoke Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to have Congress license bonded cyber privateers. Have the NSA act as the bonding authority (see the Cyber Privateer code here), and have the privateers loot the bad guys, splitting the swag 50/50 with the U.S. Justice Department.

Not only would this put a check into the swing of the bad guys, but you'd create a technology boom not seen since the invention of the transistor.

Could be biblical in scope!

Selah.

RECORDING: IRS Fraud Phone Call I Got Today

For your weekend entertainment, here a recording asserting that the IRS is after me:

So, White Hats OR EVEN BLACK HATS, wanna have some fun? Call the number they gave me and give the creeps some heartburn. I know I can't count on the FBI or the NSA to tie a can to their tails. So let's give free enterprise a chance.

The scamer's phone number is 202-684-6838. I suspect it's a burner phone and may not be viable long. But if it is, have at it.

Hey, both Russia and China are big readers of my blog.

Bring these guys down, and I'll owe you one.

The Last 200,000 Visitors to This Site

In my business, I live and die on analytics. A mathematician who somehow stumbled into advertising guerrilla warfare, I simply love numbers. So here are some numbers, places, and subjects. Of the last 200,000 visitors to this site, here are the top ten blog subjects:

Links to particular posts	Subjects
The Perfect Virus principle #18: Universalization Dec 13, 2010	Principle #18 of my 22 principles for the Perfect Virus
"Stupid and Stupider" in Zombieland Jul 20, 2011	My litany of stupid cyber defense morons
My 2010 top-ten cyber privateer blog topics Jan 1, 2011	For some reason, my Top-10 posts of 2010 continue to draw attention.
FBI's "best & brightest" blow one for the gipper Nov 16, 2011, 15 comments	My heap of disrespect for the FBI’s cyber capabilities.
The Perfect Virus: All 22 principles summarized Dec 18, 2010	A summary of all 22 principles for the Perfect Virus.
Pre-installed Malware on New, Fresh-out-of-the-box... Mar 5, 2014	Why go phishing or finding zero-day bugs when you can hack the supply chain?
Huawei walks into a Beltway bar… Oct 12, 2011, 1 comment	Absolute proof that Huawei can’t be trusted.
Privateer analytics: high-reward/high-risk numbers... Oct 20, 2010, 3 comments	What if licensed, bonded cyber privateers are turned loose? High-reward/high-risk answers.
The Cyber Privateer Code Nov 13, 2010, 6 comments	Pirates of the Caribbean had a “Pirate’s Code.” Here’s my shot at a Cyber Privateer code of conduct.
JOSEPH from SPAIN Working on Part K4 of the CIA Kr... Oct 4, 2013, 10 comments	One of my favorite readers (and commenters) is Joseph from Spain. He’s made monkeys out of the FBI.

Next, who are the top-ten countries who most frequently visited this site?

Pageviews by Countries United States 1 Ukraine 2 France 3 Russia 4 China 5 Germany 6 Israel 7 United Kingdom 8 Poland 9 India 10

So where's the Islamic caliphate? Or North Korea? I have a fairly un-politically-correct assessment, which naturally I'll keep to myself. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.

Hacking Skid Marks in Your Shorts: ButtValet.com

A couple of BYU entrepreneurs asked me for advice on a company they wanted to launch. Kind of a Dollar Shave Club for frequent travelers plagued with skid marks in their shorts. It took me about 30 seconds to arrive at an available URL: ButtValet.com. You should check out their Facebook site, which they launched yesterday. And another 30 seconds to come up with the verbiage on the back of their individual ButtValet packets: Give these away on the airplane and land yourself a free month's supply with every referral. Talk about viral marketing, heh heh.

I remembered several trips where I really could have used individually wrapped butt wipes to spare myself some serious discomfort. Truly. When I travel for 3 days, I pack 3 sets of shorts. Skid marks on one mean either wearing them for the rest of the day, or, eh, going commando. Once, at a Safeguard Scientifics advisory board meeting in Atlantic City, I rather badly defiled my shorts. Something about the food there? At a group dinner that night, several of my table mates started sniffing the source of the poo smell at the table. I pretended to sniff, myself. We never did discover the culprit, although several heads nodded when one fellow left the table. He was a start-up presenting to the group, hoping to get VC funding. Someone commented that he must have gotten too nervous. We all laughed.

I once had a buddy who had the middle seat on a transcontinental airline flight. He, well, "sharted" himself and did a rather poor job of rinsing out his shorts in the airline lavatory. His seat turned into the seventh level of hell for the people to either side of him.

If you're a frequent traveler, $8 per month will solve a lot of problems.

And if you're one of my CEO buddies, Spencer and Chance (my two BYU buddies) will make your company a swell deal supplying your corporate restrooms with a monthly supply of ButtValet.com pre-packaged wipes. Not only will your employees thank you, but your Monday morning staff meetings will, ah…go a lot more smoothly.

Check out ButtValet.com to see a cute movie they did. The boys didn't like the script I wrote for them. I even bet them my stock position in their company, double or nothing, that my script would out pull their by 100-to-1. But those of you familiar with my guerrilla warfare style can probably guess my script offended the sensibilities of young idealists.

So take a peek at the movie, and their website. And if you sign up for ButtValet monthly deliveries, be sure to write RICK BENNETT as the referring source. You'll get infinite satisfaction as you travel, and I'll get a lifetime supply of wipes for myself. Of course, I don't travel. I get to sit here in "The Pirate Cottage" and come up with outrageous marketing ideas for my high-tech clients. Thank Heaven for GoToMeeting and the Internet.

Selah.

Hacking Horse Race Challenge: Russia or Israel?

Yo Black Hats International,

How about you try to get this simple script onto the CNN website? Permanently. Here it is:

Want to see what it looks like?  Here ya go:

http://sitecloudcentral.com/page/ubdHdX4ktTMm

Just click on the above. Good, clean fun.

Russia or Israel. For the championship.

Hacking Your Enemy's Website (And It's Legal)

Okay, THIS is interesting. How would you like to drop an animated or even real-liveperson video onto your competition's website? Just get yourself a GREEN SCREEN setup from Amazon ($138 including tax and shipping) and shoot something. Here's my raw video:

Then I used this via VideoPal.io to get it onto my test website. Check out that site:

http://www.titaniumeagles.com

I could have dropped it onto ANY WEBSITE with the new URL supplied by the guys at VideoPal. Then I just promote their URL in mail to my "community" (protesters, anarchists, hackers, etc.) and let them post it to their communities.

Want to see what it looks like on the CNN website? Click on

http://sitecloudcentral.com/page/ubdHdX4ktTMm

Let me know what you think.

Trivial Hack: Voter Fraud Easy to Check

Being a mathematician at heart (and living on analytics to determine whether ads for my clients are getting any ROI at all), it would be easy to check whether or not voter fraud is rampant. Two scenarios: (1) Dead People Voting; and (2) Illegals Voting. How?

1.  Dead People Voting:

The Social Security Death Index is publicly available through numerous sites. A quick pass of this data through a given state's voting records would immediately spot "dead guys voting." Period.

2.  Illegals (non-citizens) voting is only slightly more difficult to check. Take California.

Since anybody can get a driver's license in California, and since a driver's license adequate for voter registration, a pass of Hispanic driver's license names against all voter records would give a massive database of voters. Generally speaking, a random sample of 400 such names could then be checked for valid citizenship and yield a statistically significant prediction of fraudulent voter percentages.

In both cases above, such research would require the cooperation of the state. Which might require some court action. Or not, if a presidential order could get the NSA to coach the idiots at the FBI on how to hack the associated state cyber infrastructure. Sorry, but I've posted previously on my low opinion of the FBI's cyber capabilities (do a search in the box to the left for my articles critical of the FBI).