Thursday, January 26, 2012

Space spies

When somebody was talking about different forms of space spying, it was traditionally considered as the usage of spy sattelites which allowed to follow the objects on Earth. 

If the recent news are real it is a time to change this attitude. Several sources had informed that the United States were using their space shuttle to eavesdrop Chinese space laboratory. 


The end of NASA's cruise flights doesn't mean that the gained experience would no be used on different projects. That is why in 1999 the agency had started to work on another shuttle ((unmanned vertical-takeoff, horizontal-landing, VTHL), which would be able to do many space missions on much lower costs. 

On March 2011 a new 9-metres-long shuttle was taken on the low orbit by the Atlas rocket. Soon the observers had noticed that X-37B's trajectory was different from traditional ones used by previous American shuttles. They have soon revealed that the trajectory was the same as the course chosen by another object in space - Chinese station Tiangong 1. 

According to Beijing, Tiangong 1 is going to be the first module of Chinese space station, so we shouldn't be suprised that their main competitors are interested in their technology.


Friday, January 20, 2012

Italy controlled by mafia

According to the report published by Daily Mail, the crisis did not affect Italian mafia which seems to be in really good shape. 

Organised crime is very profitable business in Italy, it gives almost 100 bilion euro profit per annum. Its traditional forms of earning money is, thanks to the crisis, getting less profitable than their new business. 

The report reveals that mafia's new source of income are expensive loans given to companies. Marco Venturi, president of Confesercenti - an association of small- and medium-sized companies, and publisher of the report - described the Mafia as 'the biggest bank in the country'. In his opinion more than 190,000 businesses had been forced to shut in the past three years, as a result of extortion and loan sharking.

Due to the report, loans are easier and more profitable than drug running, arms smuggling, prostitution or gambling. What is more, most important players are interested in Italy's capital - Rome: 

  • Sycylian mafia - created in 19th centrury widely known as Cosa Nostra (green),
  • Camorra - decentralized and conflicted structure from Campania (orange),
  • 'Ndrangheta - connected with Calabria (blue), considered as one of the most powerful crime organisations in the world
  • Sacra Corona Unita - the youngest one, the strongest especially in Apulia (yellow) and in Albania, 

Italian mafia joins the exclusive and elitist club of the crisis beneficiaries. When we take a look on growing power and influence of several states in the world, we must give credits to popular Polish aforist and script-writer Andrzej Majewski, who noticed that: "well organised criminal group is being called mafia, best organised mafia is being called the state".


Computer virus which will protect you from the attack

It seems that Japanese programists have taken the word "virus" seriously and decided to take another inspiration from nature. In the natural world microorganisms live in symbiosis with other creatures protecting them from the attacks. Now the Japanese are planning to create a virus which will be safe for computer but it will protect it from the outside attacks. It will be analyzing the nature of the attack and then localizing its source and stopping the "infection".

Japanese government has declared to finance the project and invest 2,3 milion dolars, but as the authors from Pejcz.cz have noticed, creating computer viruses is forbidden by law. It will be necessary to change it or, as it hapenned in Germany, to ignore it.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

War games – year 2011

It the end of January it will be a year since the first post on "Code of Power" blog. From that moment on many things have happened and the world have encountered many changes, even if we don’t see it in every day life. All the comments and quotations were about to constantly follow these changes. Did it work? It’s you who rate it every day. 

What has happened this year? Generally speaking we can mention: 

1) World war games 
2) Technological war 
3) Crisis – more or less stimulated by economic or political influence centres 

If we take the world as a big board game, where players are setting their figures, we can say that the year 2011 was an extraordinary intensive period when the world biggest powers played very actively. 

Arabic revolution 

The year 2011 was the year of protests; the TIME magazine put a protesting man on its cover with reason saying that it is as a man of the year. All this has already started in February when the protests in North Africa were growing larger and larger. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt resigned, but Libya’s leader – Muammar Gaddafi didn’t give up and declared that he would fight till the end. The rebels who fought against Gaddafi were supported by the West: France, Italy, Great Britain and USA. After a few long months the Libya’s capital Tripoli went down, then the Gaddafi’s home town Sirte was seized. The dictator was captured and killed. The photos of a young man holding a gun were famous worldwide – he killed the dictator and this gun became his trophy. The fall of the Libyan dictator contributed to the reinforcement of radical Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. In only few months the environments near Europe became strong enough to threaten many Mediterranean countries in case of any serious conflict. 

However, the “Arabic spring” wasn’t the same in every country. The similar protests in Syria were brutally quelled by the president Bashir al Assad – then the civil war burst out. In contrast to Libya, the country of Syria was supported by Russia. It didn’t agree for the interventions of the West and what is more, it provides arming for the Assad’s government. 

American spies 

The fact that the United States retreated their army from Iraq doesn’t mean that we can feel safe. Some say that a sudden attack on Iran is about to begin. This country situated near Iraq and Afghanistan plays a significant role in the region, whereas its president plays on American and European elite’s nerves. Apart from the American and Israel’s protests against the Persian declarations to build a nuclear power plant, there are also many outrages on Iranian scientists and nuclear objects – all that represents a real sabotage. 

As for Iran, the one of the most popular cases concerned the ultra modern spy drone Sentinel which was to be taken over by Teheran; also, the photos of the special drone were published on the Internet. This can serve as an example of a landmark in the use of modern equipment in technological war although the USA claims that the loss of the special drone was coincidental. 

In 2011 many interesting things have happened as far as the technology is concerned. Apart from the special drone which has given the access to the ultra modern and the cheapest technologies, we have the Teheran’s authorities which won out in propaganda by showing that they are able to break into the navigation systems and take control over the remote appliances. The more interesting thing is that shortly after the taking over the Sentinel, the American drone Reaper crashed in Seychelles. It happened just a few days after the China’s declaration of the opening of the first military base situated exactly on this archipelago. A bit earlier in Nevada there was a Trojan attack on the drone control center system which paralyzed the base’s activity for few hours. Is this a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not? 

Cyberspace invasion 

The year 2011 is a specific period when the technological war is waged rather in cyberspace than in a real world. A mysterious group of hackers called “Anonymous” plays an interesting role in this phenomenon. This ephemeral organization was famous of its spectacular attack on some governmental and personal websites. What is more, many people want to join “Anonymous” declaring the attack and destruction of Facebook or stealing some data from STRATFOR. 

The huge wave of protests that happened all over the world took their beginning from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement; they also took the Guy Fawkes figure – the symbol of the “Anonymous”. However, this growing activity of the “hacktivists” is more spectacular than efficient. In many countries the censorship, such as the controversial project ACTA, is becoming more and more popular under the pretext of fighting against hackers, terrorism, piracy and child pornography. It is not the only attempt which arouses anxiety. Year after year there are more and more data about us accessible on the Internet – huge concerns as Google or Facebook are accused of violating the users’ privacy or even of giving those data to the third parties. We also have a growing number of ubiquitous tappings, bugs, cameras and transmitters in our telephones. Nobody really knows how much the Big Brother sees and knows about us. 

Crisis – how much truth how much interests?

In 2011 we saw the third fundamental threat. The crisis, which erupted with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, has – after a brief period of stability – came back with even bigger momentum. The wave of unemployment and poverty that struck the United States was larger than anything seen in the past decades. In Europe the economies of EU counties have been weakened by the crisis in the euro area, which additionally led to the political unrests that cast many shadows on the future of the European Union in her present form. Greek, Spanish and Italian problems are not new discoveries, and even though they have been debated many times in the past 3 years only now they became the dominant issue, the issue that might change the European Union herself. We do not know whether the EU survives the year 2012. Some experts speak of necessary reforms and want to deepen the European integration, while others say we should abandon it for good. Politicians spread fear of next big war in Europe, the protests still go on the streets of Athens, cars are being burnt in many French cities. The crisis became an excuse for politicians to get to national financial reserves in the name of rescuing the people. But is it really about the people?

The atomic tragedy

Whatever direction will the 2012 take, we must remember that at the same time last year no one was able to predict the enormous tsunami that hit and ruined the shores of Japan on March 11th. This tragedy made people all over the world realize how much technology matters when confronted with the natural forces. Forces, that are so difficult to pacify, not even speaking of controlling them.

No one was able to predict the disaster in Fukushima and – reportedly – no one was able to predict the death of Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi. It seemed impossible that at the end of 2011 new alliances will begin to be formed among Asian states. The destruction of Facebook announced by Anonymous did not happen. Sheik Nazim’s prophecies about the Great War at the beginning of the month Muharram did not fulfill.

How will 2012 be? Some say it will bring solutions to all global problems, including a complete destruction of our whole civilization. Will it happen? Similarly to the previously mentioned cases, one thing is certain. Someone will make a lot of money out of it. He surely will have a lot of time in 2013 to spend it all.

Monday, January 16, 2012

French psychic - true or false?

A new interesting interview with a mysterious psychic can be found on YouTube. It is supposed to be recorded in 1980. The visionaire is talking about things which are going to happen in coming 30 years: nuclear plant catastrophy in Chernobyl, the Warsaw Pact collapse, the terrorist attack on the US territory, religious wars, wars for oil and energy and finally about a black US president who will be treated as a messiah. 

Whole video lasts for about 15 minutes, it shows a man about 30 years old sitting on a chair. He is dressed neatly but old-fashioned, we can notice the collection of gamophone records. The man is speaking French. 

From the description we can learn that the interview was recorded in 1980, but there is no information about who is this French-speaking visionaire. 

His visions seem to be very accurate, but the lack of any information about his identity makes his reliability questionable. There are many who claim that he is an actor and the whole film is nothing else as just an one big mistification. 


The record looks like it was copied from the VHS tape, but despite the fact that it is quite old, its quality is still very good. What is more the film was uploaded just several days ago, on January 7th 2012. The profile where you can find the record seems to be created only for this particular film. 

Is this a hoax?

It is hard to say it for sure. If the film is real, why nobody heard about that man before? It seems to be obvious that the person with such a great abilities would become famous. Maybe he died soon after the interview was recorded or maybe he started to work for people kto knew how to use his abilities, but didn't want to share his talents with the world. 

On the other hand if the film is a hoax, there is nothing left as to wait until someone proves that or people who had made that film would reveal themselves saying: "Gotcha!"


Did Nokia and Apple sell their customers' data to Indian intelligence?

According to the proofs which can be heard in the web, telecom giants helped Indian intelligence agencies to spy on the members of the comission focused on American-Chineese relations. 

The information was revealed on Saturday 7th by the Indian group "Lords of Dharamraja" who on their website had published documents according to which Apple, Nokia and Research in Motion (Blackberry producer) had helped the services to break into the mobile phones belonging to the comission members. 

The "eavesdroppes" had started on April 2011. United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission is a governmental institution created in 2000 in the US is responsible for monitoring and investigating national security and trade issues between the United States and People's Republic of China.

fot. sxc.hu
The reasons why the companies had helped the Indian intelligence remain unknown. One hypothesis is that this helped them to enter an enormous Indian market of more than billion consumers. It is also important to say, that the New Delhi authorities had given permission to their major spy agency RAW to spy on electronic communication of all their citizens. 

It is still unknownd if the Indian hackers' allegations are trustful. Critics point that there are several uncertainities about their "break in". First of all, "The Lords of Dharamraja" are claiming that they have used a source code from anti-virus system Norton Security to break into intelligence servers. This information is being questioned by the producer - Symantec Company, which had also stated that the case will be investigated. The second reason is the information about the "back door" existing in the smartphones - there is an open discussion in the web about this and the opinions are split. There is also a third reason - the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission reports are public and available in the web, which makes the sense of such risky actions made by Indian services questionable. On the other hand the intelligence services can be interested in some informations which would not be revealed in official reports. 

If the allegations of "The Lords of Dharamraja" are real this would mean this year's first scandal revealed by the group of hackers. We could notice a growing influence of such people whether it was by the portal Wikileaks or famous Anonymous group. Also in Germany a case of a special computer virus created by the government agency was revealed by the group of hackers called Chaos Computer Club.


Monday, January 9, 2012

Turkey: New Cold War is coming

According to the authorities in Ankara, the Middle East is close to a new cold war. This time the conflict is going to take place between two islamic traditions - Sunni and Shiite.

As Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu stated just before his take off to Iran, there are people who are willing to start another cold war. What is more, this war can become a "suicide" for a whole Middle Eastern region. He also added that they are determined to prevent these trends. 

Davutoglu has gone to Iran on Wednesday to discuss Tehran's nuclear programme as well as the situation in the neighbouring countries - Iraq and Syria. 

The tensions between Sunni and Shiia are very important for the relations between the states of the whole region, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. Both countries want to take as much control over the Persian Gulf as possible. 


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Who's behind and why is he hiding the mysterious birds' death?

On New Years Eve the citizens of the town of Bebee, Arkansas have once again been stormed by the plague of dead birds. Dead animals were everywhere, on the streets, roofs, on the grass. Their bodies were already taken by proper services but still the mysterious deaths didn't find any explanation. 

DDees.com
The same hapenned a year ago, also on the New Years Eve. In order to avoid such situation to be repeated, all fireworks were forbidden. It didn't help. About 7pm birds started to fall on Bebee. Was the fireworks the real cause? Let's suppose that yes, but if so, why there was no such situation on July 4th when Americans are festing their Independence Day? Why did it happen on New Year's Eve in 2011 but not earlier? Finally, why did it happen on New Year's Eve and only in this particular town? 

If there was only that unique incident, whole case would be much easier, considering the fact that it hapenned only in relatively small area. The problem is that these deaths appeared not only in Arkansas and not only birds were affected. The list below contains several best-known examples of mass animal death in very short period of time:


These are not all the incidents. Much more information can be found for example here. The map below contains places where massive mysterious animals deaths took place:

source Google Maps/link


While the scientists still claim that there is no connection between these events, we need to remeber that there are no accidents. That is why it is worth to analyse who or what can be responsible for what happenned. Everything took place in relatively short period of time, we can also see that majority of the animals' deaths hapenned in the Eastern part of the USA and in Great Britain. 

Zen Gardner in Activist Post has made a list of 10 possible reasons of animals' massive deaths. According to several hipotesis it was connected with natural causes such as geomagnetic change or meteor showers. On the other hand it can be also caused by human activity: geoengineering, bioweapon testing, GMO (connected with the bees and bats deaths) or HAARP. 

No matter what is the real reason, another question shows up: is it going to repeat with similar intensivity as it hapenned lat year? We'll see.

Home made satellites - a new frontline is open

The Internet is rising. It is a source of knowledge, opinions and revolutions. It is the Internet which was used to inform and gather protesters in Egypt and Tunisia. The people from the "Occupy" decided to protest also in the web.

The authorities are looking forward to establish, very often undercover, some kind of new law, which will be able to take control over the Internet, or at least get the knowledge about the most active participants in the web. 

These efforts seem to be more and more intense recently, that is why during the last Chaos Communication Congress which took place in Berlin between December 27-30 2011, an idea of hacker satellite network was discussed. 

The project is going to be called Hackerspace Global Grid and is going to allow communication out of government control as well as the access to 2P2 network. 

It is proposed that the satellites would be sent on the Earth's low orbit. This way a new network which will be created will allow the internauts to remain independent from local web providers but will also make them harder to find. 

Small satellites network on the low orbit is becoming possible even for a average person, proper network can open a new frontline in the cyberwar and make partizans hidden somewhere in the urban jungle much stronger. 




Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Middle East - it is not safe there


It is almost one year after the Arab Spring had beagun. It was supposed to be the beginning of the great change in the Middle East and perhaps idealists were expecting that the things will go better. They were probably connecting the regime change with a greater stability, freedom and safety. While it is surely too early to conclude what would be the results of the spring protests, it is worth to search informations from the region. 

We are still pretty far from having sheikh Nazim prophecies coming true. He warned us that in the month of Muharram (between November and December) there will be a great war in the Middle East, he suggested to everyone that they should stay in their homes for at least few days. 

What is the level of security seen by the independent analytics and advisors? In their opinion many organisations should verify their strategies of functioning in many countries in the nearest future. 

source: Maplecroft/Statrisks.com
(please be apologized for the resolution)

As they claim the risk of war has increased recently in several countries, the most dangerous areas are obviously the Middle East and Africa. 

In a special conflict risk index there are 12 countries considered as the "extreme risk" states. Following list contains the first ten of them: 

1. Afghanistan
2. Côte d’Ivoire
3. Iraq
4. Libya
5. Pakistan
6. South Sudan
7. Syria
8. Nigeria
9. Somalia
10.Yemen

We can see from the map above, that not only Africa and Middle East are in danger. Almost whole Asia i considered as the "high-risk" - this would explain recent events in this area and new alliances.

On the other hand we can see that Poland is once again a "green island", this time in security. We are safer than the majority of West European countries and our Eastern neighbours, with Ukraine at risk of a civil war. 

It is also interesting that in the previous index Libya was on 120th position and this year it has "advanced" to fourth. Does it mean that the rank is unnacurrate? Only year ago there were few who expected that the richest country in Northern Africa will suddenly change. We live in the time of dynamical changes, that is why it is very hard to say where we are really safe.