| Wednesday,
All Hallows Eve, 2001 Can anyone tell
me what this is:
Look what the've written about you on CNN:
"REMOVED TO PREVENT MORE MESSAGES TO
ME"
Yours, Artem
artem@fruitnet.inso.ru
And just what is going on? I have to go have
coffee: none this morning because of errands. Ugh. I can't think about
this stuff without coffee.
Clearly it's a hoax, the question is, to what
purpose? More below. A lot more below and quite
interesting. Thanks to all the readers who responded. (No more needed!)
And in fact it's horrible: everyone who visits
that site generates an email message to me, or something does.
Continuing a discussion:
Jerry,
RE conquering Iraq with available troops, I suspect
it could be done with a fraction of the force we assembled for Desert
Storm, most likely without use of tac nukes. (Sure, bring 'em along just
in case.)
First, consider that the force levels for Desert
Storm were massive overkill, in order to minimize casualties. Second,
consider how poorly the Iraqi army fared in open-country battles even
where they weren't badly outnumbered locally. Between the level of
training and equipment of our forces, and the level of air support we can
apply, I expect something on the order of a reinforced corps, 100,000 or
so total troops in a mix of mechanized, tank, and airmobile divisions,
could roll through Iraq and defeat anything the Iraqis sent out into the
open to fight. (The Iraqis aren't what they were in 1991 either.)
The hard part would be fighting our way into the
cities, of course. I suggest we don't do that.
Instead, bypass smaller urban areas while crippling
any heavy sortie forces present with bombs and artillery. Once we get to
Baghdad, we surround the place, bombard mobile forces as above, stand back
- and start airdropping small arms and ammunition into the blockaded city,
along with flyers stating that we'll start dropping food instead of guns
as soon as the locals hand over Saddam and company, dead or alive, we
don't care.
Would it work? Good question. But if it could be
made to work, it has the considerable virtue of fitting the Army we have
now, not the considerably larger Army we used to have.
Henry Vanderbilt
The problem is that we no longer have 100,000
troops in the region, and we are not likely to be allowed a leisurely
buildup. And given the nonsense we hear from the news, if one stray cat
were killed we'd be accused of mass murder.
Establishing a beachhead under fire is one of the
toughest of military operations.
Jerry,
In my last letter I espoused invading Iraq (assuming
as seems likely that it's necessary) with a relatively small fast mobile
force, bypassing or besieging cities rather than fighting our way into
them.
One thing to look at in such a plan is, of course,
what are the options if everything goes horribly wrong. Having multiple
American divisions forced to surrender is not an option. Multiple possible
lines of supply and potential lines of retreat are a good thing.
I assume we'd initiate such an invasion out of
Kuwait. I don't worry about Kuwait getting wobbly on us; if we lose
they're for the chop regardless. Worse come to worst, we could no doubt
find non-wobbly Kuwaitis to install.
But we could lose access to Kuwait if someone
successfully blockades the Gulf against us, something not outside the
realm of the possible.
At that point, we still have two potential lines of
supply/lines of retreat: East through the desert to Israel, and north
through the Kurdish territories to Turkey. The March of the Hundred
Thousand wouldn't be an ideal way to end such a campaign, but it'd beat
the hell out of the alternative were we to lose our primary supply line.
If as I suspect our leaders are sitting on evidence
of Iraqi complicity in 9/11 until we're done with Afghanistan (I approve
of such a policy; when resources are limited deal with one thing at a
time) then we are going to have to do something final about Saddam's
regime. Invasion and conquest would be brutal, make no doubt about it -
the implications of securing supply routes and besieging cities until
Saddam falls are fairly frightful - but less brutal by far than simply
nuking every place of Saddam's power.
And after we've finished, likely we'll have bought a
decade or two where no government in the region would think of aiming
terrorists at us, other than in chains for trial. Worth the risk and cost,
I think.
Henry Vanderbilt
Well, we certainly have to see to it that the
governments that allowed bin Laden to operate, and even those who
supported his "right" to do so, are changed. It needs to be got
across that killing Americans has a price, not just for those who do it,
but for those who cheer the murderers on.
I recall reading we already had an armored division
in Kuwait on maneuvers on 9/11. I doubt we've withdrawn them since; I
suspect we've been slowly building up. I suspect we will have enough on
the ground to hold the place when the time to put the main force in comes.
My worry, as I allude to in the longer note
preceding, is a fall of the House of Saud followed by a local coalition
blockade of the Gulf against us. We could hold Kuwait just fine, till the
supplies ran out. Worst case, any concentrated invasion of Kuwait would
present a target for tac nukes - but if the supply ships stop coming, we'd
have to establish an overland route from Israel or Turkey, or surrender.
Henry Vanderbilt
All of which is I am sure in the minds of the
generals. Some will take counsel from their fears.
The great thing is not to lose your nerve.
All platitudes are based on truth. I have no real
information on what kind of generals and admirals survived 8 years of
Clinton.
And then:
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Why, exactly, should we want to conquer Iraq without
using nuclear weapons? It seems to me the reason we didn't use nuclear
weapons in the small wars of the twentieth century, such as Korea (where
they would have been decisive) or Viet Nam (where they probably wouldn't
have been) was fear of igniting a general holocaust with the USSR.
But Iraq has no nukes, and no allies who have nukes.
So what is deterring us from crossing that threshold? I find it hard to
believe that if, say, China wanted to use nukes in reclaiming Taiwan, it
would make any difference to them whether or not we had used them
previously in Iraq.
And as for Iraq, et al using them on us, they cannot
be any more likely to do so than they are now. They haven't done it ONLY
because they don't have any. If Saddam Hussein thought he could get away
with denying his apparent sponsorship of the WTC and anthrax attacks, why
would he think a nuke would be harder to deny?
Steve Johnson Fredericksburg, VA
"It is not the critic that counts, not the man
who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena,
whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again; who, in the end, knows at last
the triumph of high achievement, or, if he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly, so that his place should never be with those cold, timid
souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
And finally for this
morning:
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
The most likely long-range forecast seems to be
Almost Empire: the US wreaks great damage in Afghanistan, destroys the
Taliban, kills a lot of bin Laden's network all over the world, declares
victory and goes home.
And a few years later it happens again, because
Saddam Hussein now believes he can keep sponsoring this kind of attack
forever.
My question to you is: what THEN?
Seriously, if the Bush administration ends this war
inconclusively, the way Bush Sr. did in 1991, and we get another attack
from the same sort of people, then the next election will probably feature
two McCain-type candidates, each swearing to be more extreme than the
other in reducing the Middle East to the level of Carthage. Or do you
think there will still be room for Clinton/Bush Sr. "business as
usual" behavior?
Steve Johnson
Fredericksburg, VA
"It is not the critic that counts, not the man
who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the
doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man
in the arena, whose face is
marred with dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly; who errs and
comes short again and again;
who, in the end, knows at last the triumph of high achievement, or, if he
fails, at least fails while daring
greatly, so that his place should never be with those cold, timid souls
who know neither victory nor
defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
I don't know. And the Incompetent Empire seems
fairly likely as the compromise position, given the media. We will see.
The US muddles through, and sometimes we get
things right. Perhaps Bismarck was right.
Regarding that
"award", there is a great deal below, much of it interesting; I
have learned a lot from this, and thanks to my readers. I have also
learned that this thing generates spam to me, so I have made a subtle
change in the URL; you will NOT see the "award" I got:
I got this window after I left the fake CNN page
(the URL was very suspicious):
(Embedded image moved to file: pic26500.pcx)
I got nothing like that...
Look closely at the URL: http://www.cnn.com@195.170.225.178/cgi-bin/show.pl?277
". The number maps to www.motor.ru
. Your correspondent, Artem, has a .ru address also. Did he ask you for
round-trip fare so he could give you the money?
--Milton--
So far no one has asked for anything...
Look at the full URL - the 195.170.225.178 is the
actual server that's serving the page. Looking up that IP address at www.arin.net
shows it is allocated to Europe (RIPE - Reseaux IP Europeens). Search at www.ripe.net
and discover that the computer is at Main Computer Center of Roshydromet.
But it is a good example of how
"authoritative" an internet source really is - a quick glance at
the URL would make you think it's CNN reporting.
Sorry to have cost you $50k.
David P.
--- A random thought for the day:
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
Which still tells me little about why anyone
bothered with this...
Your award at CNN is not really on the CNN site, nor
have they been hacked.
The address is: http://www.cnn.com@195.170.225.178/cgi-bin/show.pl?277
IP ignores everything to the left of the ampersand.
The actual address here is: http://195.170.225.178/cgi-bin/show.pl?277
Which is Russia:
IP whois of 195.170.225.178 ipw: Connecting to
server: whois.arin.net:43 ipw: Query: net 195.170.225.178 ipw: Connecting
to server: whois.ripe.net:43 ipw: Query: 195.170.225.178 inetnum:
195.170.224.0 - 195.170.225.255 netname: ROSHYDROMET-LAN descr: Main
Computer Center of Roshydromet descr: 9-11 Bol. Predtechenskii descr:
Moscow, Russia descr: Main computer center and major office LANs country:
RU admin-c: SL543-RIPE tech-c: MZ25-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PA notify: mike@rssi.ru
mnt-by: RSSI-NOC changed: hostmaster@ripe.net 19971219 source: RIPE
route: 195.170.224.0/22 descr: Cosmos network descr:
Space Research Institute descr: 117810 Profsouznaya St. 84/32 descr:
Moscow, Russia origin: AS5386 mnt-by: RSSI-NOC changed: mboyarsk@iki.rssi.ru
20000322 source: RIPE
person: Sergey Lubov address: Main Computer Center
address: Roshydromet address: 9-11 Bol.Predchistenskii address: Moscow,
Russia phone: +7 095 255 2419 e-mail: serg@mcc.mecom.ru nic-hdl:
SL543-RIPE changed: mike@rssi.ru 19971119 source: RIPE
person: Michael Yu Zakharov address: Space Research
Institute address: 84/32 Profsoyuznaya address: 117810 Moscow address:
Russia phone: +7 095 333 3467 fax-no: +7 095 913 3040 e-mail: mike@rssi.ru
nic-hdl: MZ25-RIPE changed: mike@rssi.ru 19960226 changed: lsy@kiae.su
19960301 changed: nata@rssi.ru 19990331 source: RIPE
Lawrence T. May, Jr.
Which is suggestive: Space Research Institute? I
once knew people there. Still not sure why anyone bothered, but it's fun.
Thanks.
Looks like that came from http://www.fakednews.com
. The site offers you the chance to pick a boilerplate story and fill in
the blank with the name of the "victim."
Glen
"Dream big, but don't get caught napping."
Webb Wilder - The Last of the Full Grown Men
OK. Interesting...
More seriously, NOTE THE LAST PARAGRAPH HERE:
>Look what the've written about you on CNN:
"http://www.cnn.com@195.170.225.178/cgi-bin/show.pl?277"
>Yours, Artem
A nasty little trick; URLs weren't really designed
to be human-readable, and this is a clever means for forged
authoritative-looking data, or trojans (imagine doing this with Amazon...)
That URL parses as user "www.cnn.com", at
web server "195.170.225.178" (an IP address), with the data to
be retrieved the output of program "show.pl" (presumably a perl
script) run with arguement "277". No doubt different values for
that last number and possibly the user id will give all sorts of other
forged pages. He copied the format from CNN, and included off-site links
to the real CNN. The format copy, at least, arguably consititues copyright
infringement if CNN's lawyers are feeling cantankerous.
Newer versions of Opera give a warning if you open
one of these deceptive URLs; a thoughtful touch.
- Mike Earl
No harm seems to have been done, and in fact it
was a bit of fun: for almost two seconds I believed it before sanity set
in, so it wasn't what you call a major disappointment to realize it was a
hoax.
And here is even more:
Again, feel free to print this, Jerry.
Just a bit of work on that pseudo-CNN web page
reminded me of something I'd seen months ago in one of my random web
rambles. So I went to Google, one of the best search engines I know, and
tried this.. "Obfuscated URL's".
Wow. Over 10 pages worth of hits on just that phrase
alone. But here's the most important bit.
At http://www.searchlores.org/obscure.htm#pchelp ,
they state flat out (as I mentioned in my last letter to Jerry) that
"In actual fact, everything between "http://" and
"@" is completely irrelevant! Just about anything can go in
there and it makes no difference whatsoever to the final result."
A little further down the page is this..
"This feature is actually used for
authentication. If a login name and/or password is required to access a
web page, it can be included here and login will be automatic. Example:
http://username:password@www.whatever.com/secret/eyesonly.htm But if the
page requires no authentication, the authentication text is in effect
ignored by both browser and server."
So, this means that the "www.cnn.com" in
that URL is ignored by your browser, and the REAL page is at the location
of 195.170.225.178, aka "www.motor.ru".
The web page I mentioned above contains a nice entry
level lesson on how to create an obscure, yet fully functional URL string
that will have most people scratching their heads in confusion. It also
teaches you how to DE-obfuscate such deliberately mis-leading URLs.
Apparently, this method is used not only by people
who want to get past nanny-ware filtering programs, but by clowns who
think it's funny to pull cyberjokes on the unaware or unknowing. *sigh*
Like a hammer, I suppose. You can build a house with
one, or crush someone's skull with it. It's the motivation or intent of
the user, not the fault of the tool.
Hope that helps, Jerry.
Ed Becerra.
"Dreamers may die, but the Dream is
eternal..."
And finally from the LASFS scribe:
As I was backing out of the site, this came up in a window...
Dear Jerry Pournelle , Amazed by the news? Relax - that was a fake
story! You can do the same now with your friend, teacher, lover - merely
anyone! Have some Hi-Tech fun! <http://www.fakednews.com/>
<<...OLE_Obj...>> <http://www.fakednews.com/>
I am impressed by their use of the English language. I'll bet they wish
it were a favorable impression.
..........Karl
But in fact I didn't see that, probably because I
was in a hurry. Ah well.
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