Six In The Morning

Cyber search engine Shodan exposes industrial control systems to new risks

　

By Robert O’Harrow Jr., Monday, June 4, 11:19 AM
It began as a hobby for a ­teenage computer programmer named John Matherly, who wondered how much he could learn about devices linked to the Internet. After tinkering with code for nearly a decade, Matherly eventually developed a way to map and capture the specifications of everything from desktop computers to network printers to Web servers. He called his fledgling search engine Shodan, and in late 2009 he began asking friends to try it out. He had no inkling it was about to alter the balance of security in cyberspace. “I just thought it was cool,” said Matherly, now 28. Matherly and other Shodan users quickly realized they were revealing an astonishing fact: Uncounted numbers of industrial control computers, the systems that automate such things as water plants and power grids, were linked in, and in some cases they were wide open to exploitation by even moderately talented hackers.

Hosni Mubarak has fallen. Assad clings on. Yet the fate of their nations is anyone's guess
The Long View: They can say Shafik's rule would be 'a more ferocious version of a police state than that under Mubarak'

Robert Fisk Monday 04 June 2012
There is nothing so bad as a journalist in the wrong place at the wrong time. So here I was in Cairo, covering the trial of Hosni Mubarak, arriving from Lebanon – where 15 people have just died – while Bashar al-Assad pops up on my television screen yesterday to say that his army was not responsible for the massacre at Houla a week ago. And there was Assad, talking of the most serious crisis since the end of colonialism. Well, you can say that again. And I don't feel a lot happier. Ahmed Shafik, the Mubarak loyalist, has the support of the Christian Copts, and Assad has the support of the Syrian Christians. The Christians support the dictators. Not much of a line, is it?

Ireland Still Long Way from Overcoming Debt Crisis
Irish voters have approved the fiscal pact in a closely watched referendum, to the relief of European leaders. But the country is still a long way from solving its debt crisis, and its banks will soon need additional billions in fresh capital.

By Christoph Pauly in Dublin
Henry Healy spent March 17, St. Patrick's Day, at the White House in Washington. His distant cousin Barack Obama had invited him. The US president has Irish roots on his mother's side of the family. "We went to a bar for a pint of Guinness," recalls Healy. Last week, however, Healy, an accountant from the small Irish town of Moneygall, was no longer in a celebratory mood. "Joined the ranks of the recession brigade today!! #unemployed," he wrote in a Twitter message. His employer, an Irish supplier to the construction industry, had laid him off after six years. It was probably inevitable, Healy says without bitterness, pointing out that "the construction industry in Ireland is rapidly downsizing."

Massacre memories resist the party line


John Garnaut, Beijing June 4, 2012
MEMORIES of the Tiananmen Square massacres refuse to fade, despite the Communist Party's 23-year efforts to air brush them from history. Not only are parents of victims and ordinary citizens refusing to forget, but party leaders from the time are challenging the party line as they try to explain or vindicate their roles in the tragedy that took place on June 3 and 4, 1989.

Can you love a fake piece of art?
A court battle is fought over whether a painting is fake, a drawing said to be Warhol is disputed, but is there ever a case for cherishing the fake and the forged?

By Melissa Hogenboom BBC News
Wrong signature. Dubious provenance. Fake. These are words an auction house dreads to hear. This is exactly what happened recently with a drawing hailed as an early Andy Warhol. It was denounced by his brother as a fake but discussions on its authenticity are ongoing. A work by Van Gogh or Munch can fetch tens of millions. Cast a shadow of doubt over its provenance and that value rapidly declines. But if it has a level of draughtsmanship, colour and imagination that is nearly enough to fool an auction house expert, isn't that worth something?

Singapore a poor model for Myanmar
Southeast Asia

By William Barnes
BANGKOK - When Myanmar's reforming President Thein Sein visited Singapore in January, officials there offered lessons on how to modernize and attract foreign investment. Singapore's eagerness to court Myanmar's ruling generals has been a diplomatic feature of the international community's two decades of trying to crack open the reclusive country. Now that Asia's "next economic frontier" has started to open up, Singapore - where Myanmar's senior generals bank and seek hospital treatment - is keen to offer itself as a dazzling example of how to become a first-world economy within a couple of generations. It's a siren call that should be resisted, said Rodney King, the Australian author of the controversial book Singapore: Myth and Reality.