On this day in 1945 the city was liberated by the Allied forces but found completely devastated. Over 1.3 million people lived in Warsaw, Poland at the start of war with Germany in September 1939; at least 350,000 were Jewish.

When Soviet troops resumed their offensive on January 17, 1945, they liberated a devastated Warsaw. According to Polish data, only about 174,000 people were left in the city, less than six per cent of the prewar population. Approximately 11,500 of the survivors were Jews.

Warsaw Rising Museum “City of Ruins” Trailer (MiastoRuin.pl):

Also on this day, three years earlier in 1942, the Nazis began the forced deportations from ghettos to the Chelmno extermination camp to carry out mass killings of their “Final Solution”, as described by an escapee with details and reported to London by June 1942.

The Bundesamts für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) in Germany has announced the release of a new cloud security study

Unter Mitwirkung des Bundesamts für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) hat die VCE-Koalition (Virtual Computing Environment Coalition, gebildet von Cisco und EMC mit Investitionen von VMware und Intel) eine Studie zum Thema “Gefährdungen und Gegenmaßnahmen beim Einsatz von VCE Vblock” erstellt. Die Studie beschreibt ausführlich die Gefährdungen, die sich aus Betrieb und Nutzung eines VCE Vblocks ergeben und zeigt in Anlehnung an die IT-Grundschutz-Kataloge des BSI Maßnahmen zum sicheren Betrieb eines Vblocks auf. Hierbei wurde der Fokus auf Cloud-spezifische Aspekte gelegt. Gefährdungen und Maßnahmen, die bereits heute in den IT-Grundschutz-Katalogen aufgeführt sind, werden in der vorliegenden Studie nicht betrachtet. Der VCE Vblock ist ein Infrastrukturpaket, in dem Blade-Server, Virtualisierung, Netzwerk- und Speichertechnologien, Sicherheitskomponenten sowie Funktionalitäten zum Management der IT-Infrastruktur in einer Komplettlösung vereint sind.

Auf Basis der im Mai 2011 veröffentlichten “Sicherheitsempfehlungen für Cloud Computing Anbieter” des BSI ist dies die erste einer Reihe von Studien zum Thema Private Cloud Computing, an denen das BSI zusammen mit verschiedenen Technologieanbietern arbeitet. Ziel der Studien ist es, die Sicherheitsempfehlungen des BSI um detailliertere und tiefergehende Sicherheitsanalysen von Cloud Computing Systemen mit besonderem Fokus auf Private Clouds zu erweitern. Zielgruppe der Studien sind in erster Linie IT-Verantwortliche in Unternehmen, Behörden und Institutionen, Administratoren sowie IT-Architekten für Virtualisierung und Informationssicherheit.

I couldn’t find a translation, so here’s mine:

The German Federal Office for Information Security has published a study on “threats and countermeasures in the use of VCE Vblock“. The VCE (Virtual Computing Environment) coalition was formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel. The study describes risks of VCE Vblock; it shows, based on the IT Baseline Protection Manual from BSI, the appropriate measures for safe operation. The study is focused on specific aspects of cloud; risks and controls already listed in the IT Baseline Protection catalog are not included in the study. The VCE Vblock is an infrastructure package, which is made up of virtualization servers, networking and storage technologies, as well as security components and functionality to manage IT infrastructure in one complete solution.

Based on the BSI “Safety Recommendations for Cloud Computing Providers” published in May 2011, this is the first of a series of studies of private cloud computing by BSI in collaboration with various technology providers. The study aims to extend BSI security recommendations to more detailed and in-depth security analysis of cloud computing systems with particular emphasis on private clouds. Target groups of the studies are IT managers, administrators and IT architects for virtualization and information security.

Although the document text is in German many of the diagrams are still in English. A few use both languages and real-world examples, such as this one, which shows the risk of an Ost VLAN invading a West VLAN. I’m kidding. Not really

Grab the popcorn.

A long film declassified by the US National Reconnaissance Office explains the history and use of the HEXAGON surveillance system, a joint CIA and Air Force effort. HEXAGON was conceived in 1963 to blend the powers of two existing systems; a plan to mix the high-resolution of GAMBIT with the wide-area coverage of CORONA and achieve results that have not been made available to the public even today (e.g. resolution down to a couple feet over 150 miles). The system was taking 150,000 feet of film at up to 200 inches per second.

Obviously much of the scenes and audio are redacted yet the movie still manages to detail how 40 years ago (1971) a US government-contractor team successfully launched a broad and high-resolution reconnaissance system with satellites to spy on other countries (90% of Eurasian land mass, 80% of Africa, and “much” of South America) during the Cold War.

The Air Force described this broad view as “treaty compliance verification” of the Soviet Union. The narrator of the movie also calls HEXAGON a “sentinel of liberty” and the defense of freedom.

Success of the program is said to have come from redundancy in the design and comprehensive testing. The dish used to communicate with the satellites sat very exposed on a main street in Sunnyvale, a block from my office at Yahoo! headquarters, until just a few years ago.

There are a lot of interesting characters but this guy might be my favorite in the film…by golly.