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There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

loworbitsecurity.com

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Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People massively simplify the dynamics of launching a nuke. If Russia launched a nuke on a Ukrainian military target away from civilians there is virtually 0 chance of nuclear retaliation. Ukraine doesn't have them. Does anyone think the US, France, etc. would nuke Russia? Of course not. It's scary, but in some scenarios one nation can absolutely nuke another nation without threat of getting nuked themselves. In real…

The problem is the precedent that sets. Russia launches a nuke on Ukraine, and there are no repercussions. That will teach every nuclear-armed state that they can freely nuke non-nuclear-armed states without consequence. But then what happens when somebody makes a mistake? China nukes Japan, but maybe Japan had a secret nuclear program and actually does have a retaliatory capability and nukes China back? Or China inv…

>The problem is the precedent that sets. Russia launches a nuke on Ukraine, and there are no repercussions. That will teach every nuclear-armed state that they can freely nuke non-nuclear-armed states without consequence. But then what happens when somebody makes a mistake?

I agree with you. It's really bad and it's a slippery slope. It's also true that there are many scenarios where you can launch nukes without repercussions. That's the misperception I'm pointing out.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People massively simplify the dynamics of launching a nuke. If Russia launched a nuke on a Ukrainian military target away from civilians there is virtually 0 chance of nuclear retaliation. Ukraine doesn't have them. Does anyone think the US, France, etc. would nuke Russia? Of course not. It's scary, but in some scenarios one nation can absolutely nuke another nation without threat of getting nuked themselves. In real…

Yeah yeah yeah, this is the new narrative that I keep seeing. "A small nuke, as a treat." It's scary, but it's fine!

Where did I characterize it as a treat or fine?

I said Russia dropping a nuke on a Ukranian military site will not escalate into a nuclear war. I say this because so many people assume that it would and it makes no sense.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sovereignty of Venezuela is not the right argument here, because practical sovereignty is not absolute and there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture. The man was an awful tyrant. However , just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an o…

I agree with you for the most part. The subtext to all of this is Maduro's close relationships with China and Russia of course.

There are all sorts of factors motivating it. Crony capitalism (w.r.t. oil, for example) is another one of them. But that doesn't mean they justify the operation. At this point, it is a fait accompli. I pray that things don't get worse for Venezuela (the unfortunate side effect is that it will give supporters of this operation greater false confidence that they did the right thing; "Look! Nothing bad happened afterward!").

Furthermore, Trump has revealed that once again, he's full of shit. He and his people have been chanting their opposition to regime change operations and various military involvement for years, even until a few months ago. And now, voila.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#404
post #367

Does it mean that countries must not buy American telecom equipments? Snowden already revealed the intromission of the government in Cisco routers.

Only the ones run by dictators.

Dictators the US doesn't support (so Sisi, MBS, MBZ, etc. are fine)

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#405
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like more 'strongly worded letters' which never go anywhere and they never do anything about. It's over for the EU. They rested on their laurels for too long and cowardice rotted them from the inside. I don't think Denmark will put even a smidge of resistance up. Trump is going to bark some orders, boots are going to hit the ground and it's fait accompli .

What does action (i.e. not-strongly-worded-letters, i.e. not words) look like? Capture Trump? Invade the US? The idea the EU is some bureaucratic hellhole incapable of anything is really odd and nigh-universal - I'm used to righties adopting it from Brexit & antipathy for social demoracy, but I'm not used to see it as a despondent wailing from people otherwise sympathetic to it. Note no one even mentioned the EU - it…

Isn't this comment just confirming GP's sentiment that the EU is a toothless sitting duck that's begging to be plundered? Yes, when another country threatens your sovereignty you're supposed to vigorously defend it through shows of force, prepare for war and possibly impose economic penalties on the aggressor. The most the EU can do is put out some mild condemnations on Twitter (without mentioning Daddy).

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#406

Was the OSRS economy affected by the strikes? I'm assuming they didn't disrupt internet access for most Venezuelan citizens but I have not looked into it yet.

My clanmates and I noticed that some of the more popular goldfarming hotspots were much less populated that day. Rev caves, Zalcano, etc. Not sure about impacts for the broader economy though. Maybe FlippingOldSchool will release a video analyzing the economic trends over the course of that week? Would be interesting for sure.

Maybe they were out celebrating.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> him being able to summon his diplomatic relations into 50 countries declaring war to the USA. As if. Dictators only do things that benefit themselves, and deciding to attack the US is suicide and/or world ending.

Took a long time to catch up with Bin Laden after he attacked the US.

That was moreso about taking down the ORG before cutting its head. Unfortunately their radical ideology spreads with or without Bin Laden.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requires the client to only emit ECH, even if the ISP-provided (and therefore government controlled) DNS blocks HTTPS/SVCB records. China can easily make the default for a browser in China be to never even try to use ECH as well. Then they'll only annoy people trying to actively circumvent their system. They already do TCP sessionization to extract the SNI domain. Detecting ECH and then just dropping the connect…

> That requires the client to only emit ECH So for example, Firefox since version 119. Or Chrome since 117 Now, for most services ECH doesn't have an encrypted target server. But the important choice in ECH was in this case it just fills that space with noise. An encrypted message also looks like noise. So you can block all the noise, in case it's secrets, or you can let through all the noise (some of which might be…

The great firewall was updated to support inspection of TLS 1.3. They didn’t just decide it was whatever and let everything through. It was easier to just update their parsing than to force everyone to turn it off, so they did that instead. Perfect forward secrecy was a thing before TLS 1.3, and they’ve found other methodology to accomplish what they want.

For ECH, China can just require you turn it off. Or distribute their own blessed distribution. It’s the more marginal censorship regimes that will be in an interesting spot. Especially ones where the ISPs are mostly responsible for developing the technical measures.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#409

> When BGP traffic is being sent from point A to point B, it can be rerouted through a point C. If you control point C, even for a few hours, you can theoretically collect vast amounts of intelligence that would be very useful for government entities. The CANTV AS8048 being prepended to the AS path 10 times means there the traffic would not prioritize this route through AS8048, perhaps that was the goal? AS prependin…

CANTV (AS8048) is a correct upstream transit provider for Dayco (AS21980) as seen in both https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as21980#connectivity and https://bgp.tools/as/21980#upstreams What most likely happened, instead of a purposeful attempt to leak routes and MITM traffic, is CANTV had too loose of a routing export policy facing their upstream AS52320 neighbor, and accidentally redistributed the Dayco prefixes…

Most providers enforce rpki but unless you peer with tier1 networks you can't influence a network you don't peer with.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US had already secretly intercepted cables from Japan with it looking to "terminate the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan" as far back as July 12th 1945 in which they also expressed a willingness to relinquish all claimed territories. [1] The only condition they were seeking is that the Emperor be able to remain as a figurehead. That urgency and willingness to surrender was before Japan…

Pro tip: if your enemy is really about to surrender, nuking them once will suffice. Even after the second bomb was dropped, the Emperor faced assassination threats from the military high command for running up the white flag. More to the point, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible events, they were cheap lessons compared to what it would have cost humanity to establish the taboo of nuclear warfare later, in Kor…

Like you're indirectly acknowledging, the nukes had no real impact on their decision. Half their way cabinet wanted to fight to the last Japanese, half wanted to surrender. This was both before and after the nukes. The Emperor wasn't like a super-politician - he was seen as a [literally] living deity who was above politics. So the cabinet called upon him to make the final decision, which he had made long before the nukes - which was to surrender. There was no danger to him. Even the plots to undermine his decision involved destroying his announcement of surrender and leaving him under house arrest. And that plot was stopped by a speech from another officer, leading to most of the plotters to commit suicide for their dishonor.

And I don't think there were any real lessons learned. We nearly nuked ourselves during the Cold War multiple times. And today, with bombs that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like primitive weapons, you have people acting like nuclear war isn't something 'that' fearful. We killed hundreds of thousands of people largely for the sake of trying to get a slight geopolitical edge over the USSR. And that's far better than the alternative of there being no reason at all. In no world are the arguments about it saving lives valid, even if you attach 0 value to the life of the Japanese for having audacity to be born in the wrong country.

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Leo Szilard was a critical scientist in the story of the atomic bomb, and he's also full of just amazingly insightful quotes. [1]

- Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

- A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb.

- Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.

[1] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd

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