In another incident, 16 illegal immigrants landed their boat at icon B shown on the map.

The US Marine base is some 50 miles north of the US Border by sea.  There have been local rumors of other boats coming ashore on beaches even further north than 50 miles, including reports of landings on Santa Catalina Island, a roughly 87 mile boat journey from the US Border.

California’s unemployment rate stands at over 12%.  The boats aren’t arriving because of jobs because there aren’t any.  So what else could they be doing?   How about smuggling humans, drugs, and/or terrorists?  Ridiculous?   How do you know if they aren’t stopped and checked?

As a side note, Eagle was one of many participants conducting research into the report.

Hop over to the link below to review the report.

Project Grey Goose report on Critical Infrastructure: Attacks, Actors, and Emerging Threats

I have been intrigued ever since hearing the story of how prisoners in Sau Paulo, Brazil were using carrier pigeons to transport cell phones in and out of the prison. In July 2009, prison Guards at the Danilo Pinheiro prison near Sorocaba, Brazil intercepted an exhausted pigeon as it approached. The tired bird was carrying a backpack. Inside the backpack was a cellphone and a piece of paper with the name of the inmate who was waiting for the phone.  [1]

In yet another Brazilian prison, guards found two carrier pigeons inside the bag of a visitor. Carrier pigeons typically fly home.If you take them to another location, they will make their way back to their home base. The pigeons were likely to be used to send equipment or messages out of the prison.[2]

Other reported stories include:

• 2003-The Daily Times of Pakistan, quoting intelligence sources, said flocks of pigeons are being used by Afghan and Pakistani drug traffickers to carry heroin from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where the traffickers are mostly based. Interestingly, the Taliban have allegedly banned the ownership of pigeons.[3]

• 2006-MOSCOW. — Russian prosecutors say it appears criminals in the Astrakhan region are using carrier pigeons to deliver drugs to prison inmates.

• As early as the 1920’s, drug traffickers in the El Paso-Juarez area used flocks of pigeons, (and dogs), to easily transport drugs across the border.

• Reuters was set up in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter, a German-born immigrant. He opened an office in the City of London which transmitted stock quotations between London and Paris via the new Calais-Dover cable. Two years earlier he had used pigeons to fly prices between Aachen and Brussels.[4]

• Birds were used throughout World Wars I and II to deliver messages to avoid the risk of radio intercepts.  The French even awarded the homing pigeon, named Cher Ami, a heroic service medal for its flying service during World War I.  (Last time I was in France, I ordered pigeon from the dinner menu just to try it…but I digress.)

The history of pigeons used for messaging goes way back.  Some say the earliest account was Noah’s use of a dove as a carrier pigeon.  Records show the Egyptians and the Persians used them more than 3000 years ago to send messages.  Pigeon racing, where pigeons race each other over long distances, is still a practiced “sport” today. [5]

So what are the characteristics of a carrier pigeon?  How far can they fly? And how much can they carry?

Typically a Rock Pigeon is used as a carrier, although other breeds can be used as well.  Pigeons have an innate ability to find their way home.  No one knows for sure how they navigate (electromagnetic, vision, sense of smell, or a combo of them all) but they are good at it.  Typically they will fly home.  So they are taken to another location and released, finding their way to their home perch.  Some reports indicate that pigeons can be trained to fly round trip, from home to a single destination, and then fly back to their home food source.   There are no reports of pigeons trained to find multiple locations. Distances of 500 miles in a day are typical for pigeon races.  Pigeons can travel up to 50 miles per hour (depending on wind and weather) and can make the approximate 10 hour trip before nightfall.  One of the longest racing records was 1,100 miles. But the average city pigeon flies only about 12 miles per day.  The average weight of a pigeon is 10-16 oz.  Pigeons are usually trained to carry 2.5 oz packages.  But the cell phones in the Brazilian prison photos weigh approximately 7 oz, perhaps partly explaining why the birds were exhausted.  Sometimes birds are used to run two round trip missions per day.  It seems that a roundtrip range of 100 miles could be done twice a day without too much trouble, depending again on weather and load.

So if one wanted to build a “pigeon network”,  what might one look like?  One could construct a hub and spoke network of pigeon nodes, using each pigeon for a specific linear route.   Need your message to fly North instead of West?  At the node, transfer the contents of the delivery between pigeons and send out another bird.  (Or send duplicates to mitigate against falcon attacks.) Or extend your linear range with hubs located along a particular route.  How do you know when your bird arrives?  In pigeon racing, one method used to trigger the clocks is to equip the bird with an RFID leg bracelet. When the bird arrives at its final destination, the bracelet is read by the RFID scanner and a message is sent to the owner, indicating the bird has landed.  In South Africa, an IT company wishing to poke fun at the slow speeds of the network, equipped a carrier pigeon with a 4GB memory stick and had it fly 60 miles to its destination. [6] The bird was reportedly faster than the local line carrying the same amount of data.  Is it possible to send encrypted memory devices on the backs of pigeons over long distances?  Sure is.  Fascinating isn’t it?   Low tech never really went away, it’s just not as sexy as say…Twitter.   But it still works.  And expect to see a lot more of it.

Bon Appetit

[1] “Nation & World | Prison guards intercept carrier pigeon with a cellphone | Seattle Times Newspaper,” http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009417088_pigeonphone04.html [2] “YouTube – Carrier pigeons take drugs and phones into Brazilian jail,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-mDEtz9mRI [3] “NewsLibrary Search Results,” http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=WT&p_theme=wt&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_text_search-0=carrier%20AND%20pigeons&s_dispstring=carrier%20pigeons%20AND%20date(04/01/2003%20to%2005/01/2003)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=04/01/2003%20to%2005/01/2003)&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no [4] May 5, 2007.  The Guardian. [5] “Racing Pigeon Digest,” http://www.racingpigeondigest.com/archives/articles/1 [6] “BBC NEWS | Africa | SA pigeon ‘faster than broadband’,” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm

You can download this post as a PDF.

The link is here.

Not surprisingly, as computer use grows around the world, the trends are all upward for more malware, more spam, more fraud.

One of the solutions hightlighted in the Cisco report is user education.
“Previous Cisco security reports have emphasized that “user education” is an essential component to security. Users should be expected to take measures to protect their online identity and to be aware of the risks that accompany their use of technology.”

While true, it’s simply not enough. Businesses need to raise security higher on their own priority lists in order provide their customers with “as secure as possible” environments.

I had an account at a regional bank that highlighted their focus on security (secure access to accounts, privacy, etc.) They even charged extra for it. One day I received an email allegedly from the bank that led me to their web page. It had the account login script on the page. Upon further inspection, the web page was coming from a server and location that didn’t belong to the bank. Looked like a phishing site to me.

So I called the bank and asked for their security department. “We don’t have a security department,” he said. I asked who I should talk to if I did have a security problem. He said, “You need to talk to Jim, our IT guy.” I was feeling much less comfortable by now.

Jim (not his real name) called me back and after discussing the situation with him, told me the site was legitimate. They had outsourced all their marketing efforts to a 3rd party company and allowed their main website to be routed from an untrusted source. I asked him why, in the age of so much internet crime, would they choose to create a vulnerable point for their customers–particularly their elderly customers. He was a nice guy. Very polite. But I’m not sure if he understood the risks. Clearly marketing hadn’t.

My account is now closed.

The two pillars of trust and reputation are hard to build.  Securing the “client’s  visit” (physical and virtual) is required if you want those pillars to stay up.

Dear Bank CEO: Jim’s a good guy. Jim needs help. This isn’t an IT problem, it’s your responsibility.

In October, the National Cyber Security Alliance published a survey of 1500 small businesses on Cyber Security practices and attitudes.

Here are some highlights:

• 75% of small businesses use the Internet to communicate with customers
• 38% use the Internet for Procurement
• 34% use the Internet to manage their database
• 92% think they are generally safe from hackers, viruses, malware, or cyber breaches.  Yes 92%!
• 62% have a wireless router at the office
• 23% do not have a password on their router

So using rough figures, (62% X 23% X 1500 SB) = 214 small businesses with open routers accessible to anyone driving by and peaking in.  Assuming the survey represents the total population, then roughly 14% of small businesses admit to having no security on their routers.  I hope my personal data isn’t in your database!

Exploits are increasing. If you’re part of a supply chain now and you’re the weak link, not only do you risk liability for compliance related issues but you also risk being replaced in the supply chain. The easiest thing to do is to replace you with another.

On a somewhat bright note, 58% of respondents said Cyber Security is a cost of doing business.  I believe this number will go much higher as small businesses realize the consequences of operating with no security—or false security.

Summary survey and full survey are attached.

NCSA SB Study Factsheet

FullSMBStudy2009 FINAL