The BBC has posted a story on malware issues of the Indian Navy.

a virus had collected data from computers not linked to the internet and had sent it to IP addresses in China.

Not on the network, yet sending data on the network? Perhaps they mean not directly connected to the Internet? Need more detail. I’m totally ready to start assuming the worst. Did the malware also install network interface cards and make cables? Did it install a router? ZOMG. NICware!

Update: It turns out to only be a case of shared infected removable storage. Some systems were taken off-line to protect them from infection; and then storage was shared with on-line systems. The storage device collected data after it was plugged in. When it detected network access it also attempted to send data.

Sophos, however, says not to get excited yet. There isn’t much detail.

Although those IP addresses were reportedly traced to China, an analyst from security firm Sophos warned against reading too much into the detail.

“Even if a hack is traced back to a Chinese IP address, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Chinese hackers are behind the hack,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, told the BBC.

“It’s very hard to prove who is behind an attack because hackers can hijack computers on the other side of the world and get them to do their dirty work for them. In fact, they often do this to cover their tracks.

Thanks Sophos for throwing a wet blanket on my sometimes pastime of poking fun anti-virus companies. McAfee has had some really good examples of jumping to wild conclusions, as I wrote a year ago.

Earlier, in February of 2011, I made pointed out in several presentations that the urge of Americans to instinctively blame the Chinese was getting ridiculous.

To be fair, this is not only an American habit. The Finnish company F-Secure desperately wants to fault America every time malware in the Middle East is a topic of conversation, as I pointed out recently. If you want a good laugh, you can watch Mikko Hypponen’s analysis of international political issues.

Alas, I should give a giant thank you to Sophos and Graham Cluley. I would love to see them spar with the other vendors on this issue.

Sophos’ argument, not exposed in the BBC report, is supported by some common sense facts. There are a vast number of out-of-date, un-patched, pirated, un-licensed, poorly managed computers in China. So systems there are no only far more numerous lately but also rife for exploitation by automated attacks, which often install remote-control and bot capabilities.

There also is a big complication of getting details out of the attack paths. Unfortunately after tracing an attack to a random PC (let’s say a point-of-sale in a tiny noodle-shop in Chengdu) the next steps for a (civilian) investigator can be controversial and even difficult.

That is why it used to be common to throw up a “the Chinese did it” (if you are American) or a “the Americans did it” (if you are Finnish).

If you want historic parallels this is a lot like how medicine and forensic science was practiced in America in the early 1900s. Doctors rushed to conclusions, perhaps with intent to prescribe a wonder-product from a giant company. Do you have a cough? Bayer once was happy to sell you a “harmless” cure with diacetylmorphine, also known as Heroin. It was even pushed on mothers to give to restless babies, often killing them. A tragic assessment of cause and solution.

In short, the commercial sector did not really understand causality as much as they led the public to believe. And people did not have details or skill enough to find causality themselves. The author of the Poisoner’s Handbook gives us some perspective on the birth of forensic science as a public practice.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum talks about her new work, The Poisoner’s Handbook, a look at how easy it used to be to kill someone with poison and the researchers who made poisoning much harder to get away with.

[…]

“I was looking for coverage and you could not open up a paper in that period without seeing accidental poison death, spectacular poison suicides and really some very bizarre murders; and you’re right, a real acceptance of which I have to remember that this was in an era where a lot of these chemicals were just being introduced, they were the backbone of the industrial age. People regarded them as this scientific magic for which you had to somehow pay a price. And there was a bizarre acceptance of that. I’m not saying we’ve entirely outgrown that. People still die of carbon monoxide poisoning. We still have industrial chemicals that we haven’t figured out.”

And we have malware that we haven’t figured out, with an IP in China, but at least we know who created the Heroin problem, right?

Blum’s book, by the way, is a brilliant look into the damage to society when trained professional investigators rush to conclusions or fail to be thorough in their analysis.

A great mass of soldiers, estimated at over 150,000 men and women, marched towards Pennsylvania in late June of 1863. Almost half were were led by General Lee, who had made it abundantly clear since the start of hostilities that he planned to push conflict deep into Union territory.

In 1861 Lee had turned down the offer to be a Major General in Washington DC. He instead returned to his home state to command forces in secessionist Virginia. Within a year his plans were to return north with Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson; they intended to lead a Confederate Army into Pennsylvania. Resources could not be spared at that time but by 1863, following aggressive tactics and success in the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee convinced Confederate leaders to let him push forward.

The massive Rebel army was assembled quickly; it had to be made from unseasoned and less confident men than Lee had relied upon in past, which brought challenges in communication. Stonewall Jackson, for example, no longer was part of the plan. He had been gravely wounded by his own soldiers at Chancellorsville. Lee nonetheless hesitated little because of risk that his superiors would change their mind about his strategy.

Many books and articles have been written about the contributing factors to Lee’s decision and his preparations. Whatever he really thought or said by July 1st many thousands of Rebels neared Gettysberg, Pennsylvania and Lee stirred up an urgency to defend the North. A first-person account by a school girl gives a colorful description of when the first ones arrived:

…a dark, dense mass, moving toward town…

“What a horrible sight! There they were, human beings! Clad almost in rags, covered with dust, riding wildly, pell-mell down the hill toward our home! Shouting, yelling most unearthly, cursing, brandishing their revolvers, and firing right and left.

“I was fully persuaded that the Rebels had actually come at last. What they would do with us was a fearful question to my young mind.

“Soon the town was filled with infantry, and then the searching and ransacking began in earnest.

“They wanted horses, clothing, anything and almost everything they could conveniently carry away.

“Nor were they particular about asking. Whatever suited them they took. They did, however, make a formal demand of the town authorities, for a large supply of flour, meat, groceries, shoes, hats and (doubtless, not least in their estimations), ten barrels of whisky; or, in lieu of this five thousand dollars.

The Rebels also were surprised to encounter nearly 10,000 Union men near there. The two sides had been estimating where they would battle when a decision suddenly was made. The importance of this small town elevated quickly and was not lost upon the commanders of the Union forces, as explained in a first-person account by a Union soldier.

Gettysburg was a point of strategic importance, a great many roads, some ten or twelve at least concentrating there, so the army could easily converge to, or, should a further march be necessary, diverge from this point. General Meade, therefore, resolved to try to seize Gettysburg, and accordingly gave the necessary orders for the concentration of his different columns there. Under the new auspices the army brightened, and moved on with a more elastic step towards the yet undefined field of conflict.

And so began escalations of historic proportions. Nearly 90,000 Union soldiers rushed ahead to hold the town against the 75,000 coming Rebels. Right from the start Lee’s charge over his newly formed army, rife with misunderstandings and delayed communication, found itself unable to push through the right and left Union flanks.

July 1st ended in standoff as the Rebels did not fully engage. July 2nd, Lee pushed harder and increased the total dead count to more than 30,000, yet his efforts failed to break the Union line.

He then infamously ordered a full attack on the center. His next in command, General Longstreet, later claimed registering a strong objection:

General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.

Whether or not these words were said Lee did not back down from his aggressive plan for the third day and, believing two prior days of flank attacks had weakened the center, gave the order to attack. The plan failed miserably.

Artillery first was unleashed in the early afternoon to weaken the Union line. Ammunition was quickly spent.

About 150 guns opened up at once–the biggest artillery barrage in the history of the North American continent–and thundered with bone-jarring ferocity for nearly two hours.

“…Ammunition nearly out.” Pickett read the note, then took it to Longstreet. “General, shall I advance?” he asked. Longstreet, with no confidence in the attack, could not speak, but merely nodded.

A Union cease-fire during the barrage, meant to conserve ammunition, also may have persuaded the Rebels to move forward. Brigades and regiments then were decimated as they advanced into heavy Union artillery and musket fire.

Within only one hour 7,000 new casualties lay on the battlefield. Lee was forced to withdraw.

When Lee asked [Pickett] to reform his division to repulse a possible counterattack, [Pickett] replied, “I have no division now.”

A series of tactical battles and aggressive maneuvering in the South had brought him success yet Lee’s strategy to bring pressure to the North failed on July 3rd 1863 at Gettysburg.

On July 5th, after a two day train ride from New York, a newspaper reporter arrived in Gettysburg to search for the body of his friend. He wrote home a description of the calamity:

The city is filled with wounded officers, all of whom agree that our loss was at least 30,000, and many estimate it as high as 50,000. I saw a Brigadier General for a few moments, who was wounded in the arm, and who says that his brigade lost 1,200 out of 1,600 men

I mentioned in my Dr. Stuxlove presentation early in 2011, and in later blog posts, it was American policy-makers who were behind the move for Iran to get nuclear capability.

The Washington Post probably said it best in 2005:

Ford’s team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium — the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.

[…]

After balking initially, President Gerald R. Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete “nuclear fuel cycle” — reactors powered by and regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.

That is precisely the ability the current administration is trying to prevent Iran from acquiring today.

The story is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz came back in the Bush administration and sang a completely different tune compared to their work under Ford. The WashPo offers a possible explanation why.

Gary Sick, who handled nonproliferation issues under presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, said the entire deal was based on trust. “That’s the bottom line.”

“The shah made a big convincing case that Iran was going to run out of gas and oil and they had a growing population and a rapidly increasing demand for energy,” Sick said. “The mullahs make the same argument today, but we don’t trust them.”

That doesn’t really get to the heart of weapons risk. Never mind the energy issue. There are other energy solutions. Why was Iran trusted in nuclear non-proliferation? Or for that matter, why was Pakistan trusted? As Gorbachev used to often tell President Reagan, trust but verify.

Analysis this month by famous political scientist Kenneth N. Waltz might better explain what President Ford’s crew was thinking. Competition between states, in Waltz’s self-described structural realist view, keeps them in check. He writes in “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb” that proliferation would bring stability.

Most U.S., European, and Israeli commentators and policymakers warn that a nuclear-armed Iran would be the worst possible outcome of the current standoff. In fact, it would probably be the best possible result: the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.

Perhaps Rumsfeld et al in the 1970s believed this and also held the view that competition would only ever be between Iran and Iraq — at the very most a limited regional affair. After all, Iran was an ally of Israel, sending oil supplies and collaborating on weapons development until the 1980s.

Ironically, the shah teamed with Israel to develop a short-range system after Washington denied his request for Lance missiles. Known as Project Flower, Iran provided the funds and Israel the technology. The monarchy also pursued nuclear technologies, suggesting an interest in a delivery system for nuclear weapons.

A joint Iran-Israel nuclear ballistic missile collaboration? It seems impossible now. But that’s the issue with nuclear proliferation. A long-term irreversible threat to the region let alone America must have occurred to Rumsfeld, Kissinger and anyone even vaguely familiar with Iranian history. We can say the world changed a lot but to work hard for Iran to get the bomb, and then try hard to stop Iran from getting the bomb…Rumsfeld never explained his reversal on an irreversible issue. It certainly puts Stuxnet in a different light when you look at the historic role America and Israel have had with regard to technology in Iran. Wonder if Waltz thinks malware is also good for stability.