Cyber Warfare - What Is Air Gapping In Cyber Security?

 

The word "air gapping" refers to a security procedure implemented to safeguard a computer system against unauthorized access.

A computer system must be separated from any local area network or public wireless network in order to be air gapped.

Because of the sensitive information stored therein, the military, intelligence agencies, financial institutions, and even certain advocacy organizations air gap some systems.

Air gapping is primarily a security mechanism, but it may also refer to a data transmission technique from one classified system to another.

It's often utilized to transport material from the low side (unclassified machines) to the high side (classified equipment) (classified machines).

On the low side, data is cut to a CD-ROM and put on the high side.

Even isolating the system from the rest of the network may not be enough to keep it safe.

Recent exploits have shown the importance of air gapping in critical systems.

A hacker claimed lately that he gained access to a flight control system through the plane's media network.

The Stuxnet virus, which infected Iranian centrifuges, was delivered through a USB device linked to the machine.

Even if the system's exterior connections keep it safe from electromagnetic or other electrical attacks, they can't keep the system safe from internal errors or threats.

The US government created guidelines to aid air gap computer systems under the National Security Administration's (NSA) TEMPEST program (Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions).

To avoid intrusion, the guidelines propose keeping the system at a minimum safe distance and enclosing it in a Faraday cage.

 

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read and learn more about Cyber Warfare, Global Geo Politics, Conflicts, And Conflict Resolution here.

See also: 

Cyber Security; Hardware; Internet

Further Reading:

Clarke, Richard A., and Robert K. Knake. Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Libicki, Martin. Cyberspace in Peace and War. Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2016.

Investing in Social Media ~ A very Special Cup of Tea

BREAKING: Facebook stock falls to a new intraday low of $19.76 on the day company insiders can sell up to 271 million shares. ~ CNNMoney
https://www.facebook.com/cnnmoney


                  Just goes to show you by measure exactly how naive and hopelessly uneducated some people are about the potential of things such as Social Media, monetization and the evolving commercial reach of the Internet in general. Every year their pockets keep getting deeper and bigger, that is the only thing they are gardening and investing in. Greed is predictable and idiotic, a flash in the pan the rest of the sane and stable world can live with out.   
P.S -> Do you guys remember this from not so long ago ?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/19/300-million-investment-from-saudi-prince-boosts-twitter/
       For curiosity's sake have you ever wondered what was the weighty thought process that defined such moves. Do you care if and when many more of the likes of these are to be initiated to oversee the impact of Social Media.

True Worth is Relative when it's Real

P.S ~ Around here some people live and think like it, but Unfortunately Growth and Greed are not the same word. Growth is kind of like your kid's GPA, something that clearly is not a conclusive definition of him/her, it is a very persuasive and compelling label, a measurable thing used as a psychological trigger to evoke or manipulate market sentiments and an instrument to make that pitch and appeal more effective where ever and however it may be legally permissible and possible. It is understandable that brushing aside the use of well researched parameters and variables and overly emphasizing and attributing importance to certain indicative figures is nothing but a carefully cultured and baseless habit and is never anything more than a kind of a dismal science dictated by a flood of pre-programmed and predictable responses.  

Appending another note/comment in response to,

"Facebook's 6.3% drop yesterday makes it the second-worst post-lock-up IPO performance since January 2011 | http://bloom.bg/RmVJ8k "

Ref.
http://tinyurl.com/9kmhvx6

as seen on  https://www.facebook.com/bloombergnews 


           Social Media is still well and truly in its infancy. Investors and people in general do not have a good understanding or grasp of its current global impact and its potential for future monetization and growth. Sustain this trend for a few more years and if there is a steady growth in the online user community you are guaranteed a global revolution in many areas including newer models for representative governance, media and commerce. 

           Social media opens up both conversation and creativity. Even from the initial excitement about the stock till this day it is a Mirror capturing not only your sentiments but also gauging your levels of awareness of its value. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/18/study-twitter-sentiment-mirrored-facebooks-stock-price-today/

P.S ~ Creating and predicting the eventual start of the next long term bull market is real for anything that is fit enough to be deemed a technological breakthrough and a game changer.



A very insightful and well written take on the subject:

The Story of Twitter & the Saudi Prince

           The social media universe has been aghast this week after the revelation that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia has invested $300 million in Twitter. The shock and awe seems to center around the notion that Twitter has been at least partly responsible for the Arab Spring uprisings that directly threaten the Saudi royal family's grip on power. On the surface, anyway, this seems like a contradiction.

Why would the king's nephew be investing in the medium of his family's enemy? Will he attempt to influence the development of the network or try to make it more susceptible to censorship in a regime-threatening emergency? And what of Twitter?

Will the participation of a major investor widely considered to be the beneficiary of one of the world's most exploitative dynasties tarnish the company's otherwise net-friendly brand image? Why would Twitter accept such an investor, and why would he court them in the first place?
The answer, most simply, is for the money.


Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is no doubt aware of Twitter and Facebook's tremendous influence in his own and neighboring countries, and may even be personally concerned about what a revolution might do to his own and his family's sovereign rule. But why should that stop him from positioning himself to become the wealthiest deposed royal he can be? It's a win-win.
For its part, Twitter, which isn't even a public company, is not actually selling shares to a Saudi Arabian prince. It's Twitter's early investors who are selling $300 million of their own shares to the Prince's investing group, "Kingdom Holding Company." Of course, Twitter benefited by selling those shares initially, and now benefits indirectly as the resale of these shares puts the company's total valuation up to $8.4 billion.

The dismay and disillusionment associated with this transaction seems overblown to me, or at least misplaced. In short, we are looking at the wrong medium. We are not witnessing Twitter operate against its central, democratizing premise. We are witnessing money operate in perfect accordance with its own, highly abstracting premise. Money, by its very nature, launders.

This is exactly what money and the corporation were invented 700 years ago to do: provide kings and other members of the aristocracy with a way to invest at arm's length in projects they may or may not want to be associated with. The corporation gives people a way to invest passively in companies whose operations they might not want to know about, much less be known for.
Likewise, generic, central currencies give people who have done Lord-knows-what the very same access to markets as those who have earned their money through sweat or innovation. Once it's money, it is as clean as anyone else's money.
Similarly, once you sell your business to shareholders, they can do what they like with the shares. That's what is meant by shareholding. In the simplest language possible, when you sell your business, you have sold your business. (Maybe that's why so many top people have been leaving Twitter lately. Their shares have vested and they are less restricted about what they can do with them once they quit.)

This is the beauty and horror of investment capital.

Just as a Saudi prince can invest in our revolution-inspiring Internet darlings, each of us is free to invest our own retirement savings in the likes of cigarette and liquor companies, weapons manufacturers, polluters, outsourcers and sweatshop exploiters. We can put our kids through college by investing in the very oil companies through which the Saudi royals made their money in the first place. Then, hopefully, our kids can go on to become peace workers, revolutionaries or even Twitter employees. Or not.

If we're truly concerned about the long arm of international investing, we might best reconsider how we invest ourselves. Instead of relying on the anonymity of outsourced investing to the stock market, why not look around for who or what needs money in our towns and communities?

The Obama administration is already in the process of curtailing the regulations that prevent nonmillionaire investors from putting money into one anothers' businesses. This means we can begin to depend on local money to start-up our own ventures, and on local ventures to build our own savings.

PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act: A Case for Better Preparedness

This isn’t an Argument but rather a Case for Better Preparedness and a Broader Strategic Realignment

                                It is important to note the big difference between technology firms such as Google, social media platforms such as Facebook and the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. It is unacceptable and unfair to claim to talk about a middle ground or a reasonable position of compromise that is fair without understanding how they all function as businesses.

This a comment in response to a post on TAP: Technology | Academics | Policy's Community Page on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TAPolicy


Quoting from the article,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/idUS6947526520111206

‘claims that Congress’ efforts against online piracy would “break the internet” and usher in censorship and “Finding a reasonable solution to the problem of online piracy and counterfeiting is too important to let hysterical, ideological posturing and threats influence public policy,”

…… these types of responses are completely understandable and absolutely expected and anticipated by most people in the technology industry. It is sad that even in this day and age despite all the progress and radical growth and impact that we have seen, some people still think of the internet as a place that is mostly or solely meant for sharing music, movies and proprietary digital content. I’m quiet certain that given this attitude the people entrusted with the job are not likely to focus on the challenges, that will greatly impact the way in which many sites are carefully designed and function around the way in which people openly and freely use the internet. Technology firms have to constantly adapt to people, their consumers, the average internet user, the competition and the trends and a comprehensive sketch of their patterns of behavior, market conditions and changing habits online. Sales and Marketing strategies for most internet based commercial transactions and even for media giants are based firmly on many of these highly relevant fundamentals that are intrinsic to how the Internet works and evolves. The condescending naivety with which these things are ignorantly referred to as ‘Hysteria and ideological posturing’ unmistakably proves that the issues that are central and matter evenly from the perspectives of all parties concerned, including sites such as Google, social media platforms, small/ medium sized businesses, independent publishers, the internet itself and the public who use it, are least likely to be considered on the basis of facts and rational argumentation.

                               This is strictly an opinion……:I think it is important for people, especially high profile technology firms and highly used websites to stop worrying about or wasting anymore time dealing with these types of policies and the market conditions and legal/economic environments that may come about, and start embracing new strategies to allocate a budget and try their best to develop neutral technologies and neutral technological barriers that will fully enable them to selectively or terminally insulate themselves from certain sections of mainstream media that are most likely to abuse the provisions of this Act and also make efforts to protect themselves from a legal system that may affect the environment in which their business processes function or provisions that could be used to unfairly target them, their media partners and ultimately their business itself. If you wish to engage in business or promote sales and business interests of big content owners then you must carefully setup the mechanism to ensure everything occurs contractually and not otherwise. It is also highly advisable to buy insurance coverage for legal liabilities or allocate sizable amount of funds to safeguard against these types of possible risks and threats (Many publishers and firms who were anticipating this and that I’m aware of have millions in coverage and pay hefty premiums as an added overhead to their existing budgets) .




                              The public must use the example of China and see what has happened to their internet users in the recent past to psychologically prepare themselves to start having access to only a certain percentage of sites, servers and domains present on the World Wide Web and be very…. Very….. careful as to how they use the internet or rather how they should not use the internet to share any copyright protected content whether it is for their personal use or if it is with their friends, their family or on other social media platforms. Even if they have their own content which they may wish to publish online they must take extra measures to avoid placing any third party media elements on the site or incase they don’t have the financial backing they must also avoid making references to potentially harmful material that could be used again to implicate them legally under the provisions of the Acts. I’m not expecting it but I hope and pray that the people who are rushing to promote these laws will show the same level of enthusiasm when it comes to educating the masses and the online community about the exactly ‘N’ number of ways in which they could be in trouble while sharing online or while assuming that they are exercising their constitutional rights. This will make these companies with an online presence responsible for the actions of people who may choose to supposedly, deliberately or allegedly “misuse” the technologies and platforms that they are providing or in other words they’ll be the first to be held responsible if the measures that they have in place fail.

                                   I’m not saying that we are another China – II in the making, but we are definitely starting to look something like many of these countries especially since people and industries here are desperately trying to stay ahead and in many cases are trying to stay in par with the competition, especially in terms of growth, advancing technologically and having the financial health, resources, supporting industries/infrastructure and the means to realign the strategic outlook of their future.

The people in China didn’t make a lot of noise and even if they did there is no way you could have heard it,

http://mashable.com/2011/07/13/china-web-shutdown/

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/google-shuts-down-chinese-search-redirects-to-hong-kong/

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/06/08/china-increases-internet-control-takes-down-hundreds-of-websites/

http://mashable.com/follow/topics/internet-freedom/


                                       I hope the following link clearly hints you to accept the fact that industries here, that could and should potentially complement and even achieve a great synergy in many ways, are not quiet any where near doing the same. Where there is self centeredness there can be no synergy.



http://www.ucsdguardian.org/component/k2/item/25186-quicktakes-stop-online-piracy-act

http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_19472833


                    I’m an optimist, I believe that adapting to problems and adopting solutions aggressively is the key mantra to survival in this day and age. Time is too precious a resource that can easily outweigh all others. It takes a reasonably intelligent and logical mind to respect the rights, the freedoms, the time, the lives, the voices and the problems of others.

                      I don't know if there is a difference of mentality or outlook or culture when it comes to the people working in the concerned industries, I don't know if this difference is irreconcilable either but there comes a point where we have to look beyond mere arguments and our differences and think of the collective higher good. Showbiz can be a funny word that means different things to different people, art to some, ratings to others and $Money$ to the people who matter the most. Business can get dirty at times and life can get tricky, but we need to appreciate and learn by dealing with the challenges we face rather than imposing them in a way that sidelines the rights of others and the public who are outside the industry and don't quiet understand what are the substantial and legitimate concerns that plague the industry, address and bring out those issues in a way that will not cause it to be confused with other broader rights. I wish every one both my dear friends in Technology and others in the Entertainment/ media industry the very best. Why argue when you have the means and the choice of being civilized enough to talk and state your concerns in a respectful, constructive and viable way. It doesn’t matter who or what you represent or what your business interests are, there is nothing you can’t achieve by putting people first above all else : )