Lockdown Wuhan?

 Sri Lanka like many other developing countries are having major construction projects stalled as Chinese workers remain in their homeland or remain "quarantined" in their accommodation in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, for fear of unwarranted discrimination.  

It is disgraceful to read that "tuk tuk" three wheeler drivers in Sri Lanka of all people, are  avoiding tourists in the main cities and villages, driving away without taking on board innocent and quite healthy Chinese visitors,leaving them high and dry without transport?How strange,has the cookie crumbled? It was their custom, which paradoxically brought them their livelihood and what makes this change take place?

The whole globe is trying to find a treatment and support therapy.It is not only a Chinese problem but an international problem.

Simultaneously,we also read in today's Daily Express in UK a frightening story that "the escalating outbreak could claim around 50 million lives as a result of infecting 60% of the world's population." This statement is attributed to Hong Kong based Professor,Gabriel Leung, Chair of Public Health Medicine,Hong Kong University?

He further frightens every one that the outbreaks in China are "growing exponentially" in Chinese cities.

At the same time we are informed by other researchers that what is common to all viruses and as far as they know this strain of corona virus will reach its peak and taper within a reasonable period of time. How long is difficult to discern at present?

But,Prof. Leung at a meeting in Geneva in the last few days, adds further worries by stating "Given the 7.7 billion estimated population of the globe the outbreak may possibly claim around 50 million lives as a result of infecting 60% of the world's population?"

He demands an answer:"how long can you lock down people in cities?" Does he imply that they are prisoners in their own land? Who is he kidding?

We learn that this is a human problem which affects all mankind not necessarily only China?

On the one hand the Chinese government has done everything possible to keep this epidemic from spreading, as one would prudently expect?

Chinese workplaces, factories,universities and schools around the country have extended  the leave of absence from work after the Chinese New Year. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai, life goes on with all the precautions.
                                                 

Besides, we learn quarantine and the shut down of "wild food markets around China" has contained the spread? We understand that among all the victims of this virus,up to now no children have been affected either in China or elsewhere.We hope this is a breakthrough. This is indeed,a great relief for epidemiologists who are working overtime in medical centres around the globe to trace a vaccine, as a matter of urgency.

Up to date 43,138 cases of this strain of the 2019 -nCoV virus have been reported worldwide,the vast majority in China. 

Sri Lanka's Chief Epidemiologist,Dr.S.Samaraweera has declared that no more coronovirus patients have been quarantined in the land. The only patient who tested positive was a Chinese woman tourist who is now recovering,while 15 patients are receiving treatment for "suspicions of having infected with this virus" 10 at IDH and 5 receiving treatment in other hospitals in the country. 

Another item of interest to the public is that this strain of the virus has an incubation period of 24 days instead of 14 days, as envisaged, before.

There are also unreliable reports emanating from the U.S.A. that if the "lockdown" of cities in China does not work, factories dependent on imports from China will undoubtedly re-calibrate and bring back outsourced items of the supply chain, and re-install them, back to the United States?

Why the fear mongering?
                                                     

Some analysts maintain the whole issue of containing the disease, is more like a master exercise of containing China from catching up with the United States in its race of development. This is evidently,not the full story as everyone knows?

You can fool some people some time, but not all the people all the time?

It is in the interest of humanity not to fool any people, anytime.

Victor Cherubim    

How to rethink the way we think?

How to rethink the way we think?

Think about it. If you've been driving for any length of time you get in the car, insert the key, and within a matter of moments you're cruising down the road. Through repetition and time these behaviors have become hard-wired and don't require much conscious thought.

It wasn't that way when you first learned to drive. For example, if you didn't drive automatic,but change gears with a stick shift, you probably remember quite a few stalls and jerky starts. But there came a time when you found yourself sailing along in fourth gear and don't remember shifting to get there.

That's the power of hard-wired neurons. They are highly efficient and enable routine behaviours to happen easily, freeing up the brain to focus on new things that require compare and contrast decisions – which is an energy-intensive activity. It's why we can feel so tired after doing nothing but making decisions.

Likewise we are now told Chicago,USA has a hotel without a check-in desk as it is done by a machine that scans the QR code from your mobile phone or iPad to release the key to your door of your room. 

Whilst technology can come as a substitute in numerous things you choose to do today,lack of human contact, lack of speaking to one another,lack of personal contact but using the SMS to relay our messages with one another, could be frustrating to say the least,in the long term. This is because our brains need a stimulus to be creative.Feelings and emotion are hard if not impossible to replicate through technology. 

Is Social Engineering a science or an art?

We are often accused for fishing for sensitive information.But are we able to withstand the advances of "information overload" to politely say no?

Social Engineering is about building trust through careful exchange of information so that the person at the other end of the information channel or transaction is eventually convinced to share personal details or to perform some task without fear, many times unknowingly.

It can be said, it is the practice of getting confidential information through manipulative techniques. These techniques,methods of persuasion may exploit human psychology to gain access to data,systems,and information which are not in the public domain,or can be readily available?                                   

What makes Social Engineers use a number of techniques to fool users into revealing sensitive information about themselves or others?

Does it mean in today's world you cannot trust anyone? 

Social Engineering is a lucrative and sought after profession. It is both an art and a science.Social engineering tactics are not really a secret,but they are effective because they are predisposed to trust one another, in most normal situations of life.

It is the art of exploiting human weakness to gain access to unauthorised resources. Among others,in today's world,it is the art of manipulating users of a computing system into revealing confidential information that can be used to gain unauthorised access to a computer system, by exploiting human kindness or weakness,greed, curiosity to restricted access to data,documents,buildings,etc. or getting the users to install compromising malware,viruses and backdoor software,unwittingly. 

It is a science in that these techniques are tried and tested over time,space and people, to verify their performance and effectiveness. Some if not many of the tasks that they have tested to perform, such as the use of flattery, anger,voice distortion,caller ID spoofing,phishing,tailgating,and other compromising security situations, are in everyday use and many times go unchecked, unnoticed.

Social Engineers use this acquired knowledge or information which they gather such as "nicknames",birth dates,medical and prior medical conditions,bank balances,biases,fears among others which are then used in projection of how people work,who they associate with, how people are vulnerable,or are used easily at password guessing, and/or other covert operations for ulterior benefit either for themselves or others.

Social engineering is also often used to lure information for blackmail, for character assassination and/or for fraudulent exploitation. In a sense or in essence, it is a form of interrogation to obtain information either for personal gain without the other party, person, firm or object, aware or knowing, that they are passing information about themselves and others. 

Social engineering in the context of information security is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information for gain or sometimes even for fun.

What are some of the protection mechanisms to avoid the causes of social engineering attacks?

1. To counter the familiarity exploit aspect in today's world, users must be trained to not substitute familiarity with security measures. There is a boundary between familiarity and security of information. Even the people that one is familiar must prove that they have authorisation to access certain areas and information.
2. To counter intimidating circumstance attacks,people must be trained to identify social engineering techniques such as follows:
(a) FOCA which stands for Finger Printing Organisation with Collected Archives. This was created by Brazilian hackers in 2010 to access,find meta data and hidden information in documents.
(b) Elicitation. This means constructing the conversation in such a way that makes unique information available, without a person asking for it. This technique is commonly used by spies and undercover agents all over the world. In layman's language, it is appealing to one's ego.
(c) Criticism. This technique is used to criticise someone's company in the hope that the person will give information during the defence, or something said during the communication is wilfully inappropriate to elicit the true information.
(d) Oblique Reference. Any topic which is under discussion is by inference related to a main topic,is another subtle technique.
(e) Alcohol. This is often used to seek,target,and obtain information or source of information.
 (f) Pretence. This is a use to persuade targets to do certain actions to gain access and exploit its structural flaws,
(g) Building a persona.Using pieces of real life knowledge to gather further information.
(h) Pressure. Applying undue pressure to target the form of negative,emotional state,then present a clear solution to elicit the real emotion.

How many of us are able to take the precautions?

The short answer, is not many. But we can of course avoid some or many pitfalls, depending on our abilities and by training and awareness, adopting a zero tolerance mindset, installing a reliable anti-virus, anti-malware,and in a worse case scenario,zero tolerance.

Whilst we are alert to coronavirus and quarantine, we may also try to equate our sensitivity to social engineering techniques and set up a protocol, to know as many of the techniques of sensitive information or rather the access to such information should be kept tight and secure.

Is access to sensitive information possible or practical?

We need not be paranoid about our safety and security, but there is no excuse for not checking our mail,our phone conversation and the company we keep in our daily life and work? Like installing decentralised peer to peer verification into our security systems,we can stop hacks using social engineering for fun, for a cause,or for profit or ransom. 

Manipulations,loss of trust, and lowering down our boundaries for short term satisfaction is not really an option.

Victor Cherubim

Travel restrictions, quarantine,social distancing of people

The question on people's minds is when will the Coronavirus (2019 nCoV) burn out? 

Stamping out the Coronavirus with quarantines and screening at airports is going at full speed. People around the world are all in a panic,perhaps,quite rightly so.

Researchers analysing how many people who catch the infection get sick,how many of those people die and how easily is it to spread from one person to the next, is taking place?
No one has come up with a vaccine as yet. It takes time to research this platform? But, we are informed that a Vaccine will be available in the US by June 2020. Do we have to wait for vaccines to save us, or do we take the precautions, well in advance?
                                                   

Past pandemics

With the outbreak of every infection, as we have seen with recent past epidemics, the HINI the avian flu-the infectious Bronchitis, and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in November 2002/03 which killed 770 globally,including 349 in China, according to epidemic research,they all are member of the same family.

We are also told that with each outbreak there has always been a peak and a induced reduction or containment with quarantine, inoculation, with  the four different strains of this infection that have been noted in humans up to the recent virus. They start off as common colds,becoming pneumonia and affecting the respiratory system,within a unknown short time. The spread,rather the fear of spread, has yet to be quantified?  

It appears, the Coronavirus has become the fifth virus.There is the possibility or rather the probability, it and can come and go like the seasons, or else like the Black Death it could envelope the world, as in an earlier century?                                            

Incubation period

The incubation period also according to the medical research,  is the time before symptoms appear,ranges from 2 to 14 days. But, we are also informed that these estimates may be narrowed down,as more data becomes known or available. 

Knowing and understanding the incubation period is again as far as we know, according the WHO and Health authorities very important. This is to introduce more effective ways to control the spread of the virus.

Who are the most likely persons to be affected? 

Medics state that this virus can pose a particular risk for elderly people and those with pre-existing medical problems like diabetes,respiratory problems, or a weak immune system. 
                                              

                                               

The hope is that the students who recently were repatriated and arrived from Wuhan,Hubei Province back to Diyatalawa IDH, preliminary tests have shown, none were suffering from nCoV, or so it seems at present.

While the National Health Commission of China states it can take a week to recover from a mild coronavirus system.

Why are we not immune to Coronavirus? 

Most infectious diseases are animal borne disease. This is due to the way animals especially  wild animals and humans interact with each other. It appears to be an evolutionary jump from animals to human species.

We note HIV/Aids crisis of 1980's originated from the Great Apes, the Avian Flu pandemic from birds, then pigs gave us swine flue, SARS came from bats and so did Ebola.

The cause of infectious disease

For centuries past, humans have caught diseases from animals,mostly from wildlife with bacteria. With the ease of international travel of humans,they are spread very quickly. It is man's inhumanity to nature. It is where the habitat of animals and man impact each other, who eats whom, and who is afraid of whom?

We saw in Sri Lanka recently how wild elephants and man interact. For us it is a spectacle when elephants roam in the wild and it is a bigger spectacle when we put obstacles in the way they roam and not allowed to live and are trapped. 

We also recently saw how two elephants in the Eastern Province roamed in search of food and "gorge" at a waste disposal by unfriendly to environment humans, making urban spaces a melting pot for evolving disease. 

Humans are to blame for the unsanitary conditions which cause new infections which spread rapidly in big cities as people live on top of each other, breathing polluted air.

How I remember wild boar in Sri Lanka was craved by one and all, as a food delicacy. We talk of inhumanity to man, what about inhumanity to animal life?

All living creatures have a right to life?

What can we do now and in the future?  

The more humans disrespect Nature by non recognition of the space between Man and Nature, the more we will have to contend with these diseases?

We have the measurement for temperature, for wind and weather, rain and snow and Air Quality in cities around the globe, why shouldn't we in Sri Lanka be the first in the world to set up a mechanism, a Rating Scale to monitor the cruelty of man in nature?

The more we will become a civilised race, respected by the world and to follow our lead? 

It makes sense to keep track of animals scavenging for food and habitat, rather than bringing them to market and our tables for man to consume? I am not suggesting that we all become vegetarians or rather "vegans"? 

Besides, we can of course, improve our sanitation, particularly with our waste disposal,effluent and especially pest control,the breeding grounds for dengue?
                                                                                                

                                                                          
The more we will be able to eradicate infectious disease, from emerging and spreading in the future, the more we will stand out as a nation with a purpose and be respected, if not emulated around the world?

Victor Cherubim