Russia, Russia, Russia

Another busy week this past week, and I've got the folks arriving tomorrow for another week-long visit. At this point, I'm struggling to meet my goal of checking in once a week. Hopefully things slow down again soon. Anyway, while I've got a few minutes spare, I thought I might actually get around to putting down my thoughts on this whole Russia deal.

ROUTERS

I've spoken before about the problem with the proliferation of cheaply made (and easily hacked) gadgets appearing online. While it's true that these devices are being probed by every intelligence agency on the face of the planet (Russian, Chinese, US, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Israeli, etc, etc), few if any of these groups have anything to gain by attacking random people in foreign countries (unless you're a high value target, in which case, beware!). The bigger danger comes from the regular criminal element (again, coming from Russia, China, USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, India, Israel, etc, etc) who have much to gain from attacking random people in foreign countries. The three most likely scenarios are:

1. They take over your device and use it to attack online businesses, often as part of an extortion racket. If this happened, you probably wouldn't even notice.
2. They take over your device and use it to mine bitcoin, or other crypto-currencies. If this happened, you may notice your device running slower or hotter than usual.
3. They take over your device and use it to get into your computer, where they encrypt your files and then demand a ransom to unlock them. If this happened, you would definitely notice and I would hope for your sake you are thoroughly backed up.

As for singling Russia out in all of this, that's just politics. If North Korea was firing off rockets at the moment, no doubt we'd be blaming them instead. That's the great thing about cyber-warfare, you can blame anyone you like for anything, and there's no way anybody can prove you wrong.

As for what you can do to protect yourself, well, if you don't know how a router works, unfortunately about the only thing you can do is start learning how a router works. Once you've got that sorted out, the best things you can do, are:

1. Buy a decent router with updatable software.
2. If your router has an option for logging in from the internet, make sure that option is turned off!
3. Make sure UPnP (Univeral Plug 'n' Play) is turned off.
4. Set your router to drop all packets not coming in over an established connection.

As a start, you can head over to Steve Gibson's website and run through his suite of router tests. They should be easy enough to navigate through, even if you don't know what you're doing. Also, you can come back here and ask questions if you're having trouble.

SYRIAN GAS ATTACKS

I haven't had a lot of time to follow this story in detail, but I would like to point out a few things:

1. Assad is winning. He has absolutely no need to use chemical weapons.
2. The one thing he could do to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory would be to provoke US/EU to take direct action against him.
3. The one thing he knows would provoke them, would be to use chemical weapons.
4. The last time the UN sent specialist into Syria to investigate a chemical attack, they concluded it was most likely carried out by the rebels.
5. If the US/EU was really worried about stopping atrocities, they would be intervening in Yemen. Instead they are helping Saudi Arabia carry them out.
6. The US still wants to build a gas pipeline through Syria, so they can compete with Russia in the European energy market.

THE SKRIPAL AFFAIR

Again, haven't really had time to follow this, but here's my thoughts:

I originally said I thought it was likely that the Skripals had been poisoned by Russian operatives because:

1. It's the sort of thing the Russians do when they want to make an example of someone.
2. I can't imagine the US or UK poisoning someone on UK soil JUST to make Russia look bad.

However, there are a few things that don't really help that case:

1. If the Russians believed Skripal was dangerous, they would have killed him sooner; like, before they handed him over to the UK.
2. If they just wanted him dead, they would have made it look like an accident or a random criminal act. The only reason to do it this way would be to send a message to someone else.
3. Personally, Putin had nothing to gain from this. He was always going piss the election in, and all this does is cast a shadow over the soccer world cup.

So, what are the other possible scenarios?

1. The Skripals were poisoned by a rogue element within Russian intelligence who either had a personal vendetta against them, or is working to undermine Putin.
2. The Skripals were poisoned by a third party. Maybe Russians NOT working for Russian intelligence (private mercenaries). Maybe Ukrainian or Israeli intelligence. I single them out, because they're two countries that have a beef with Putin, and that I suspect wouldn't think twice about murdering someone on UK soil.
3. The Skripals were never poisoned or they were poisoned with something non-lethal, and the whole thing's been an elaborate hoax. This one's really getting into conspiracy theory territory, but if they both make a full recovery, you've kinda gotta wonder, don't you?