Reliability and the Cloud

Well that's your problem, right there:

Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.

CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company’s electronic health record (EHR) system, affected “several” hospitals, leading them to activate “downtime procedures.” Trade publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.

The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.

 Everything is "cloud" these days.  Having worked in cloud for a decade, it's really really hard to get good reliability.  The best vendors promise "Five Nines" reliability, i.e. uptime of 99.999%.  The very best vendors have compensation clauses in their contracts and pay penalties to customers when they don't meet the uptime agreement.

Five Nines means that you will have no more than five minutes of downtime in a year.  Like I said, this is really hard stuff.

Oracle Health had this customer down for five days.  This translates to less than 99% uptime - probably 98.5%.  Not a good look for a cloud provider.

Even worse, this isn't the first problem for Oracle Health.  Oracle Health's Federal cloud went down for a day last month, taking 6 VA Hospitals and 26 clinics with them.  

If you're in IT and looking at cloud services (and why wouldn't you?), pay special attention to the Service Level Agreements.  SLAs with penalty clauses mean that the vendor is serious about reliability.

Ford Woody found on hangar deck of U.S.S Yorktown

Wow:

A remotely operated vehicle exploration of the wreck of the USS Yorktown, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sunk in the Battle of Midway, has found a 1940-41 Ford automobile on the aft hangar deck. This is remarkable for several reasons, first and foremost that it wasn’t thrown overboard in the crew’s attempts to save the ship after it was disabled by a torpedo attack on the battle’s first day, June 4th 1942. Also, motor vehicles were not typically kept aboard ships at sea, especially ones headed into battle. Furthermore, this was a full-featured Ford Super Deluxe Woody civilian model, not the pared-down military model of this Ford wagon, dubbed the C11, that you’d expect to see in active military use.

That engine will take a bit of work before it turns over ...

If you're a military history buff, click through to read the whole post which is pretty long and detailed. It makes the case that this car belonged to Rear Admiral Fletcher.  There's also what seems to be the only photo ever taken of the hand painted mural created by the sailors of a world map showing the voyages of the U.S.S. Yorktown.

Blue Shield sent a boatload of member's health data to Google

This is pretty big:

US health insurance giant Blue Shield of California handed sensitive health information belonging to as many as 4.7 million members to Google's advertising empire, likely without these individuals' knowledge or consent.

The data shared may have included medical claim dates and providers used, which raises the specter of Google targeting ads based on the fact that you booked an appointment with a certain type of doctor - say, a cancer specialist, fertility clinic, or psychiatrist.

Other info potentially shared with Google ranged from patient names, insurance plan details, city of residence and zip code, gender, family size, and Blue Shield-assigned account identifiers, to financial responsibility info, and search queries and results for the "Find a Doctor" tool — including location, plan type, and provider details.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln - how did you like the play?

Blue Shield declined to answer The Register's questions, including how it discovered this years-long data leak, and what other third-party trackers (if any) are on its websites.

...

"This isn't just a technical misstep. It's a HIPAA compliance failure," Ensar Seker, CISO at threat intel firm SOCRadar, told The Register, referring to America's Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that safeguards medical data.

Bingo is his name-o.  Just to emphasize that: this wasn't just a "data breach", it was a criminal violation of US law.

 

We used to call this HERF

High Energy Radio Frequency.  Now it seems to be some sort of cigar thing.  But the old HERF gun concept is back, to shoot down drones:

British soldiers have successfully taken down drones with a radio-wave weapon.

The demonstrator weapon, a type of Radiofrequency Directed Energy Weapon (RF DEW), uses high-frequency radio waves to disrupt the electronic components inside drones, resulting in the devices malfunctioning.

"RF DEW systems can defeat airborne targets at ranges of up to 1 km and are effective against threats which cannot be jammed using electronic warfare," the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said.

However, the nature of the technology means that a wide beam is used, which is effective at disabling multiple drones simultaneously, but lacks target discrimination. Hence, Sgt Mayers, the first British soldier to bring down drones using a radiofrequency weapon, described it as "a great asset to Layered Air Defence."

The MOD believes the system, which it estimates costs 10p per shot fired, "could provide a cost-effective complement to traditional missile-based air defence systems."

This is what you need - as long as drones cost more than 10p, you will win that exchange all day.

Georg Frederick Handel - Worthy Is The Lamb and Amen from The Messiah

Yes, we usually hear this at Christmas.  Remember, though, that Handel wrote this for an Easter performance.  I can think of no greater - more emotionally stirring - music for the Lord's rising than this.  The kettle drum at the end of the Amen never fails to thrill.  As a matter of fact, the opening bars of Worthy Is The Lamb never fail to thrill, either.  If you can read music, you have my permission to do a bit of a singalong to the score shown here.

The Lord is risen, alleluia, alleluia.

 

 

Good Friday

This is a great reflection from the Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land. I hadn't known that today is the only day that the Catholic church does not celebrate the Mass.

There's quite a lot of food for (spiritual) thought and reflection at the link.

Troparion of Saint Kassia

Today is Palm Sunday, and what is unique (well, for a bit) about this year's Holy Week is that the Latin Easter, the Orthodox Easter, and Jewish Passover all line up.  Usually they don't.  So it's kind of a theological alignment of the planets.  I hope that the Lord gives us all some extra grace points for this, but have my doubts about whether the Almighty is impressed with our silly calendrical games ...

But this means that the holiday we are celebrating is ancient indeed.  In respect to this is an ancient hymn, from the 9th century.

The Greek Orthodox liturgy is ancient, dating back to Roman times.  While many things have been lost from this over the centuries, we have music for Holy Week preserved from the ninth century.  This hymn will be sung this week, as it has for the last 1200 years.

Kassia was a Roman noblewoman living in Constantinople in the first half of the 800s.  Both beautiful and intelligent, she was included in what we can call a Medieval beauty pageant.   The imperial court would sometimes have "Bride Shows" where noble families could present their daughters as potential brides for Imperial princes.  Kassia was included in the bride show for prince Theophilos in 830AD, but the chronicles say that her sharp, sarcastic reply to the prince soured him on her beauty.

But she was the daughter of one of the leading families in the Empire, and so had avenues open to her that were not to most women of the day.  She founded a convent in 843AD and became its abbess.  Her education allowed her to write first poetry and then music - all of a spiritual bent, as you would imagine.

She wrote many, many hymns of which 50 survive to this day.  Unusually, both the text and the musical score have survived.  Twenty three of her hymns are included in today's Orthodox liturgy which is astonishing for any figure from the ninth century, let alone a woman.  Remember, this is a properly Roman hymn.

This Holy Week you might want to ponder just how ancient our faith is, and the efforts that people have taken to preserve it over the centuries.

Trump's executive order on shipbuilding

This dropped 2 days ago.  Highlights:

• The Order establishes a Maritime Security Trust Fund to provide consistent funding for maritime programs in addition to a shipbuilding financial incentives program to boost private investment in U.S. shipbuilding.
• It develops Maritime Prosperity Zones to incentivize investment in waterfront communities and is to be modeled on President Trump’s highly successful Opportunity Zone concept.
• It expands Mariner training and education through an investment in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and a plan for expanding training opportunities.
• To ensure national economic security, the U.S. government will increase the fleet of commercial vessels trading internationally under U.S. flag as well as domestically between our ports.
• The MAP will develop a strategy to ensure security and leadership of arctic waterways to address the growing presence of foreign nations in the region and the need for the United States to reestablish itself in the area.

There's a lot more, particularly about reestablishing a shipbuilding (and container building) industry.

Here's a good overview on Youtube:

 

Choosing a home WiFi router

Walter emails with a question that probably will have broad interest:

BP -

Long time reader question here:

I need to replace my long-in-tooth NetGear WiFi router and could use a suggestion on what are the best routers to consider; I need both 2.4 and 5 Ghz to support existing equipment. Square footage = ~1.8K, rough footprint 56X32 on one level; the existing (centrally located) NetGear covers all of it well without repeaters or mesh, meets all speed requirements, is currently supported by 100 meg coaxial cable but 1 gig fiber is a month or so away, house is pre-wired to each room with coax in the next couple of weeks, and since the router also supports the security system high security is a strong consideration.

Expert suggestions?

Well, I am not really an expert, but I play one on TV so here goes.  I will start with some high level recommendations and then get more specific with some actual device suggestions (note: I do not have any commercial interest with any of these vendors).  Lastly, I will end with some generic WiFi security suggestions and pointers to old posts here.

Recommendation #1: Do NOT select any device from TP-Link (which are generally the least expensive options).  These are Chinese and there is a nasty habit of Chinese companies putting back doors in their commercial hardware.  The US Government is considering banning these because they don't trust them any more than I do. 

Recommendation #2: Use open source software on your device.  There is a long history of WiFi routers having security bugs that never get fixed because they are end of life (I posted about this ten years back so this is a persistent problem in the industry).  Profit margins are razor thin and so you will end up with an orphaned device.  I recommend OpenWrt which has been around since forever and has great hardware support.  Yes, this means putting new software on your brand new device. You will only go through this pain once and you never have to worry about unpatched security bugs.

Recommendation #3: Look for commercial WiFi routers that come with OpenWRT pre-installed. This will save you a step.  Turris Omnia is one option (and they have a pretty interesting Distributed Adaptive Firewall security feature).  OpenWrt One is another.  There is one from TakTikal but it seems to be out of stock.

Recommendation #4: If you want to go with a more commercial device and flash your own software, I'd recommend Linksys and Netgear because they have great OpenWrt support.  Here are some recommended devices.  At this point you will be selecting on feature/function.  Walter had some specific needs that you might not, so there's something for everyone here.

Recommendation #5: Once you are set up, make sure you have secured the configuration.  WiFi encryption is almost certain to be on by default, but change your dang password (duh!).   One thing I recommended in that post (and still recommend today) is to write the router password on a piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of the device (note: don't tape it over ventilation holes).  Yes, writing down passwords is usually double plus ungood security but face it - anyone who gets physical access to your device can do a factory reset and take it over anyway.  Your front door lock now becomes an excellent WiFi security feature and you never have to worry about forgetting the password.

Lastly, read this post from sixteen (!!!) years ago.  Secure your damn WiFi router.

I know that a bunch of you are in the tech biz, so if you have anything to add, drop it in the comments.

This. 1000x this.

When did the EU.gov get so, well, stupid?

The EU has issued its plans to keep the continent's denizens secure and among the pages of bureaucratese are a few worrying sections that indicate the political union wants to backdoor encryption by 2026, or even sooner.

While the superstate has made noises about backdooring encryption before the ProtectEU plan [PDF], launched on Monday at the European Parliament, says the European Commission wants to develop a roadmap to allow "lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement in 2025" and a technology roadmap to do so by the following year.

...

According to the document, the EC will set up a Security Research & Innovation Campus at its Joint Research Centre in 2026 to work out the technical details. Since it's impossible to backdoor encryption in a way that can't be exploited by others, it seems a very odd move to make if security's your goal.

China, Russia, and the US certainly would spend a huge amount of time and money to find the backdoor. Even American law enforcement has given up on the cause of backdooring, although the UK still seems to be wedded to the idea. [boldface by me - Borepatch]

Well, duh.

Now the cynical view of things is that the EU.gov is not being stupid at all, but just think that their adversary is not China and Russia and the USofA but rather their own populations.  

 

Heat, TopGun, Tombstone, TopGun Maverick

 Heat, TopGun, TopGun II and Tombstone. My favorite Val Kilmer movies. He's not the leading star in any of them. But all of them would not be the great movies they are without him and Tombstone would be a largely forgotten modern western without his interpretation of Doc Holiday. 

In recent years he suffered from cancer, and his small role in TopGun Maverick is compelling even without his voice. 

Now he is gone at 65. Here he is in his prime.

Well played, CederQ

Well played indeed.