Energy, Food, Security

Virus Causes Firework Explosion

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The Oregonian says San Diego accidentally launched its entire Fourth of July firework display in one giant fireball. The $250,000 arsenal was spent in less than a minute.

Garden State Fireworks has apologized, saying they’re working to determine what caused “the entire show to be launched in about 15 seconds.”

August Santore, part-owner in the company, said tens of thousands of fireworks on four barges and a pier had been prepared. But because of a glitch or virus in the computer firing system, they all went off with one command, he said.

“Thank goodness no one was injured. Precautions all worked 100 percent,” Santore said.

I think he means physical precautions. When it comes to the other precautions…they might have worked at a lower percentage.

Also, an explosion like that must have created quite a plume of chemical compounds, as listed by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services

Security

The High Cost of Park Vandals

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SF Gate recently reported on the cost of park vandals to the city of San Francisco. Only one day after a renovated children’s playground in Duboce Park was opened it was covered in graffiti. That event in May prompted a wider look at the problem.

In the past five years, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has spent nearly $1.8 million repairing and replacing equipment, buildings and even trees, lawns and flowers damaged or destroyed by hooligans.

In all, 17,108 incidents of vandalism were reported from Jan. 1, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2011. Work crews spent 22,266 hours of labor fixing the damage. Already this year, more than 1,400 vandalism-related incidents have been attended to, costing the city more than $156,000.

[…]

Denny Kern, director of operations for the department, added to the list: fire set at the newly renovated South Sunset playground that burned hot enough to melt the hard plastic play structure and the ground cover, the four-wheel drive vehicle that tore apart three greens at the Golden Gate Park golf course, the rash of destruction to rose bushes and young trees in Golden Gate Park.

Just the other day as I walked past Woh Hei Yuen (Garden of Peace and Joy) Playground on 922 Jackson St a flicker in the shadows caught my eye.

I looked closer. Three teenagers, two boys and a girl, crammed themselves into the bottom shadowy area of a ship-like structure. A boy then a girl held a small lighter flame hard against the walls next to them. Little children played above them on the “deck” and parents sat on benches to the side, all strangely unaware of the vandals lurking in the dark.

I stopped and said “Hey!” The two boys looked out from their hiding place and gave me a scowl. One of the boys said “you freak, what’s your problem?!”

Had I read the above SF Gate article sooner I would have said “$156,000! That’s my problem.” Instead I just turned them over to park authorities.

Energy, History, Security

Vaping Harmful to Health

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At the recent Structure conference, a young woman who had just moved from the east coast to San Francisco boasted of her boyfriends’ addiction to “Vaping”. She showed photos of all the accessories he has been obsessing about, from batteries to different colors and patterns. A young man visiting from New York echoed her story and said he was happy to be spending money on hip new e-cigarettes.

The e-cigarette contains a nicotine cartridge in four strengths – 16mg, 11mg, 6mg and 0mg, compared with the 13mg in the average manufactured cigarette. One cartridge lasts for 300 to 350 puffs, or two days. It also has a battery that enables it to emit a mist of propylene glycol, essentially fake, fast-dissipating smoke, and light up at the end when puffed on.

My first reaction was that there should be a chip in the e-cigarette that captures data to be transmitted and stored. Big data should be collected from vaping immediately. I was thinking about all the health info that could be assembled quickly from these battery powered devices. Lung capacity, ingredients, amount of nicotine per second/minute/hour, draws per charge, particulate matter in external air…and trend-lines for everything.

My next thought was that they should be solar powered. Why aren’t they able to absorb sunlight as power? Standing in the sun with a stick in your mouth? Use the power right there. And for that matter why doesn’t the act of sucking air generate sufficient power? Hello, funnel turbine. Why are you sucking power out of the grid? Oh, that’s right. You want to buy accessories, I mean batteries. Got it.

Neither of them seemed to have a firm idea about the energy use, let alone health risks or harm. They said it’s “just vapor”. But the fact is not much data has been collected.

The man from NY listened to me, took a long drag from his plastic tube of toxic fumes and said “By Jove! My old man you might be right! Could a teeny chip really go inside this contraption to record data? I will go start a company right now on that idea!”

I wondered if they read the news from the FDA:

Dr. Mike Feinstein, a spokesman for the American Lung Association said, “People are inhaling some type of chemical vaporized compound into their lungs without really knowing what’s in it.”

[…]

Authorities don’t necessarily know what’s inside of e-cigarettes, but the FDA tested a small sample just a few years ago and found a number of toxic chemicals including diethylene gylcol – the same ingredient used in antifreeze.

The accessory feature can actually introduce additional risks. Obviously the idea of putting a battery between your lips can be harmful to your health.

Chief Butch Parker of the North Bay Fire District responded to the call. He said a faulty battery inside the electric cigarette likely caused the accident. Parker described the explosion as if Holloway was holding a “bottle rocket in his mouth.”

[…]

Parker said the explosion knocked out all Holloway’s teeth and part of his tongue. The event also set fire to the room.

For some reason all the unsubstantiated buzz and positive marketing around e-cigarettes just reminds me of the tobacco smoke enema.

By 1805, the use of rectally applied tobacco smoke was so established as a way to treat obstinate constrictions of the alimentary canal that doctors began experimenting with other delivery mechanisms. In one experiment, a decoction of half a drachm of tobacco in four ounces of water was used as an enema in a patient suffering from general convulsion where there was no expected recovery. The decoction worked as a powerful agent to penetrate and “roused the sensibility” of the patient to end the convulsions, although the decoction resulted in excited sickness, vomiting, and profuse perspiration.

If only exploding batteries and unknown other “toxic chemicals” could have been used for anal treatment hundreds of years ago; today we would know better and not bother with e-cigarettes. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t joke about them becoming a public enema. Given the nature of the young vaping proponents I met, they might be thrilled by the idea and interested only in new accessories they could buy or sell…

Update five years later (April 2017):

“Concerns explode over new health risks of vaping and find toxicity issues are real, especially among children:

Students as young as 12 or 13 are now more likely to vape than to smoke. Many are under the impression that because e-cigs don’t contain tobacco, they pose little risk to health. Wrong.

Over the past few months, research has turned up evidence that vaping can pose many brand new risks. The vapors mess with immunity, some studies show. “Smoker’s cough” and bloody sores have begun showing up in teen vapers. The hotter a vaped liquid gets, the harsher its effects on human cells. And a relatively new vaping behavior called “dripping” ups the heat. This threatens to intensify a teen’s risks from those vapors.

Evidence is mounting that teenagers in particular, susceptible to advertisers and social pressure, are being hit hard by harms in vaping:

It worries [Rob McConnell, internal medicine specialist at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles] that vapers show some of the same lung symptoms as cigarette smokers. It also worries him that more teens are taking up vaping. E-cigarette use grew an astounding 900 percent among high school students between 2011 and 2015.

[…]

[Adam Goldstein of UNC] says it’s important to note that just because something doesn’t taste like tobacco doesn’t mean it is safe. Studies have shown that some flavor compounds in e-liquids (such as cinnamon extract) appear to become harmful when heated in an e-cigarette.

[…]

Now Catherine Hess of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues have turned up traces of toxic metals in the e-liquids used in five different brands of e-cigarettes.

[…]

“The fact that vaping can deliver benzene levels many times higher than those found in the ambient [air] — where it’s already recognized as a cancer risk — should be of concern to anyone using e-cigarettes,” [Chemist James Pankow] says.

While many people cite the use of vaping as an intentional way to stop smoking, anecdotal evidence suggests the opposite. Vapers smoke more, and subject themselves to additional harms beyond just higher overall intake of nicotine.

Vaping in practice increases the frequency of puffs. While dosage of nicotine actually may increase through more frequent use (can choose masking scents, keep vaping device in pocket and breathe from it repeatedly and frequently, far more easily than with the complications of lighting tobacco leaves with flame) it is the new toxic metals and chemicals that scientists are only just beginning to document as additionally harmful.

Update seven years later (2019):

  • April: Rite-Aid announces it will stop selling e-cigarettes in all stores
  • August: Reuters reports the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified 193 potential cases of severe lung illness tied to vaping in 22 states as of Aug. 22, including one adult in Illinois who died after being hospitalized: “The severity of illness people are experiencing is alarming and we must get the word out that using e-cigarettes and vaping can be dangerous,” Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said.

Update thirteen years later (2025):

One e-cigarette a day as harmful as smoking twenty packs of traditional cigarettes.

History, Security

Sophos Warns: Don’t AutoBlame China

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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.