Year: 2018

Do We Really Care?

February 20, 2018 12:59 pm

In September of 2001 the band P.O.D. released their song "Youth of the Nation" which begins with the lyrics:

Last day of the rest of my life
I wish I would've known
'Cause I would've kissed my mama goodbye

I didn't tell her that I loved her and how much I care
Or thank my pops for all the talks
And all the wisdom he shared

Unaware, I just did what I always do
Everyday, the same routine
Before I skate off to school

But who knew that this day wasn't like the rest
Instead of taking a test
I took two to the chest

Call me blind, but I didn't see it coming
Everybody was running
But I couldn't hear nothing

Except gun blasts, it happened so fast
I didn't really know this kid
He wasn't part of the class

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love
Or maybe for a moment
He forgot who he was
Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged

Towards the end of the song is this stanza

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim
No matter what you say
It don't take away the pain

When this song came out I was in high school.  I could still remember the reaction to Columbine which occurred when I was in middle school.  How could I have envisioned then that 16 years later we, as a nation, would have paid lip service over hundreds of bodies of adults and children about "never again" and then done precisely nothing to actually change the course of our society?

Honestly, I'm getting tired of trying to be nuanced about which gun owners are responsible and which aren't, it's about people not guns, it's a mental-health issue, did the Founding Fathers intend for an armed population as a hedge against tyranny, blah, blah, blah, blah.  The endless blathering only seems to amount to yet another dead child, yet another dead mother, yet another dead father.

What we're doing now, which is nothing, is not making the situation any better.

People who want to have continued access to firearms as part of their lifestyle need to stop hiding behind rhetoric and start proposing and implementing solutions.  I'm getting tired of holding a nuanced view on the matter while more people senselessly die.  I imagine there are more like me who, as time goes on, think that a "repeal and replace" of the 2nd Amendment might be the only way anything actually changes.

Research available options, pick a potential solution, plan and fund an implementation, study the outcome.  It really isn't that hard.

Do we really care?

The answer seems to be, "No."

The "Better than Nothing" Philosophy

January 19, 2018 2:21 pm

Many times the thing stopping us from getting something done or making a change in our lives is simply that we are daunted by what we think we "should" do and instead do nothing.

Doing nothing ensures nothing is accomplished.  Doing something, anything, will get us closer to our goal than just being overwhelmed by what we think we should do and instead doing nothing.  Start by doing something--even if it's not remotely close to what you think you "should" be doing.

This is my "better than nothing" philosophy.

My most blatant example comes from work.  After years of lamenting we had no monitoring solution in place to notify us if our applications were not working I used a Hackathon day to create "Better than Nothing Monitoring".  It's not great.  It's probably not even good.  But, it's better than nothing; which is what we had before.  Something is better than nothing.

Also from work, having a robust test suite helps catch bugs in our software before we deploy it to users.  For a long time we didn't have any tests.  Now we have some, but not nearly enough.  When I'm working on an old piece of code, rather than lament not having the perfect test suite or the time to build it now, I'll implement the simplest kind of test: "this thing runs without throwing an exception."  We should have better testing than that, but, when we don't, it's better than nothing.

Feel like you should be saving more money?  You sit down, calculate out how much you "should" be saving per paycheck, but never seem to manage to do it and end up saving nothing?  Ignore the "should" and start saving something.  Maybe start with $5 that you put in a savings account every paycheck.  It's not much.  It's barely anything.  But it's better than nothing.  If you're paid bi-weekly, at the end of the year you'll have $130.  That's not much either, but it's more than you would have saved fretting over what you "should" have done.

Feel like you should be exercising more?  Do you think, "I really should go for a run this week, or ride my bike, or play Wii Fit," but you never quite seem to make it happen?  Stop worrying about it.  Start so small you barely notice: if you're using the elevator at work, take the stairs one or two floors first; do a couple push-ups or sit-ups before going to bed.  Maybe you can only do two push-ups today.  That's better than nothing.

Wish you read more books, but getting through even one chapter just takes too long?  Read a couple of paragraphs at a time instead.  You'll get through more books reading 3 paragraphs a day than you will wishing you had enough time to read full chapters.  It's better than nothing.

Many times I finish up a task at work and pull up our work log to decide what to do next.  I've long since completed all the low-hanging fruit and I scan through the list of tickets thinking, "Uggghh, that's going to take forever, I'll pick something else."  And, big surprise, those work items are still in the queue months later.  Eventually you just have to start.  Pick the smallest piece of the puzzle that makes any sense and get just that piece done.  The overall task isn't done, but it's closer than it was.  It's better than nothing.

Most of these examples are habit items: saving money, exercising, reading.  In these cases the actual accomplishment today is less important than the habit you're creating.  You can increase your daily, better-than-nothing effort to get gradually closer to your "should" level of effort.  Doing 2 push-ups and 5 sit-ups every day takes about 45 seconds.  That's clearly not anything near the 150-minutes per week of moderate physical activity recommended by the American Heart Association, but it's better than nothing.  As you get stronger, 2 & 5 can fairly seamlessly become 5 & 10, then 10 & 20, then 20 & 40 and now you might be exercising for 7 minutes a day.  Still not what you "should" be doing, but worrying that you "should" be doing 20 minutes a day and doing nothing is worse than doing 7 minutes a day.

What is it you're trying to accomplish?  Pick any activity, no matter how small, towards that goal which you can start doing today.  Go do it.

It's better than nothing.

Understanding Meltdown

January 12, 2018 1:43 pm

I've been trying to understand the Meltdown vulnerability that's been in the news lately (a vulnerability in Intel's CPU design allowing an attacker to obtain access to any data in memory on the system).  I understand it at a high level, but every time I've tried to dive into the details to understand an example it falls apart on me.  So I'm going to write this to force myself to fully dissect the parts I'm missing and maybe help someone else in the same boat.

This is not a post intended for a general audience.  I don't expect it will be meaningful or useful to anyone that doesn't already understand programming to some degree.

Eben Upton has a great write up over at RaspberryPi.org which will be the basis of my post.  I'm not going to recreate his work, but instead I'm going to dive into greater detail starting at "Putting it all together".

We start with his pseudocode:

t = a+b
u = t+c
v = u+d
if v:
   w = kern_mem[address]   # if we get here, fault
   x = w & 0b100           # * Modified, See Note
   y = user_mem[x]
* Modification Note:
The original was "x = w&0x100" which I've replaced with "x = w & 0b100".  0x100 is hexadecimal shorthand for the binary 000100000000.  I'm going to use an 8-bit example, so I'm replacing it with 0x4, since my example will only use binary I rewrote it to 0b100.  It is irrelevant to the method of the attack, only changed for convenience.

For those of us that spend our time on higher-level programming languages (like Java, Groovy, Python, JavaScript, etc.) the bit-twiddling needs a little more detail.  That detail is the remainder of my post.

Let's suppose we live in a 8-bit world for this example (mainly so I don't have to write out really long numbers that are irrelevant to the point I'm making).  In our 8-bit world each of our memory locations holds 8-bits.

Now, let's dissect Upton's pseudocode staring inside the "if":

w = kern_mem[address]   # if we get here, fault

This finds the 8-bits contained at "address" in a privileged part of the memory which we shouldn't be able to access, here called "kern_mem".

When the CPU sees us attempt to use that data, it will stop us (i.e., "if we get here, fault").  The crux of this vulnerability is that the CPU will fetch this information for us even though we're not allowed to see it; later it will realize we're not allowed to see it and stop us.  But we do something clever which lets us know what is in that memory even though we never saw it.

Those 8-bits from memory location kern_mem[address] are assigned to the variable "w", let's suppose those bits are 01010101.

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
-----
x = w & 0b100

This is a "masking" operation (think masking-tape when painting).  0b100 is the mask, which is shorthand for 00000100.  This line will "mask" out everything except 1 bit of "w".  The result will always either be 00000000 or 00000100; note that this is either all zeroes or the same value as the mask.  Since both the mask and "w" have 1 as the 3rd bit, the resulting value, in our example, will be 00000100 and assigned to the variable "x".

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
x == 00000100 # A single bit from that number
----
y = user_mem[x]

Now we're going to get the 8-bits contained at "x" in a piece of memory we are allowed to access, here called "user_mem".  "x" is the single bit from the-number-we-cannot-see.  In this case we'll get the 8-bits located at user_mem[00000100] and assign those 8-bits to the variable "y".

We don't care at all what the 8-bits from that location in memory actually are.  The important thing is that the memory system went and got them for us from main memory and loaded them into a local cache.  This process may have taken, say, 100ns.  Next time I ask for the 8-bits in user_mem[00000100] the memory system will say "Oh, I already have that in cache, here ya go" and it will only take, say, 3ns.  Keep this in mind.

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
x == 00000100 # A single bit from that number
y == we_dont_care # Cached value of user_mem[00000100]

These 3 things happen before the CPU realizes we're not allowed to see "w".  Once it makes that realization, it undoes the work so that "w", "x", and "y" no longer have these values so that we can't get to them (effectively at least).

So what good does it do us as an attacker if we can't actually get that data in "w" that we tried to access?

The memory cache still has user_mem[00000100] loaded in to it!

After tricking the CPU into doing this work for me I attempt to access user_mem[00000100].  I know to access user_mem[00000100] because 00000100 was the mask I chose (0b100).  I don't care at all what value is actually stored at user_mem[00000100].  I only care how long it takes to access: I note the current time, access the memory location, and then see how much time has passed.

If it takes ~3ns to access that memory, it must have been in the cache.  It would only be in the cache if "x" had been 00000100.  "x" would only have been 00000100 if the 3rd bit of "w" was 1.

I now know that "w" looks like ?????1??.  That was a lot of work for just a little bit of information (pun intended).  But CPUs are quick and this can all be happening without you being aware of it.  So, now let's repeat the process, but this time we'll change our mask:

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
-----
x = w & 0b10

The mask has been moved over one bit.  Because the 2nd bit of "w" is 0, "x" holds the 8-bits 00000000.

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
x == 00000000 # A single bit from that number
----
y = user_mem[x]

This time we get the 8-bits located at user_mem[00000000] loaded in to the cache.

w == 01010101 # A Number we're not allowed to see
x == 00000000 # A single bit from that number
y == we_dont_care # Cached value of user_mem[00000000]

This time the mask was 00000010, so we time how long it takes us to access user_mem[00000010].  This time it takes ~100ns, by which we determine that it must not have been in the cache.  That could only be true if "x" had been 00000000.  "x" could only have been 00000000 if the 2nd bit of "w" had been 0.

Now we know that "w" looks like ?????10?.  Keep doing this over and over again and we can read any data we like, we just have to piece it together.

Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing? So small a thing!

-- Boromir, "The Fellowship of the Ring"

Like Sauron's One Ring, this truly is a small thing, but will bring about much pain and anguish.

One [Flaw] to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Undermining the Credibility of an Investigation - A Game-Theoretic Analysis

January 3, 2018 10:21 am

Let's suppose you were the subject of a serious criminal investigation.  Further suppose you were also a prominent and influential public figure.  You know a priori whether there's anything damning that the investigation may find.  Should you choose to use your influence to affect the credibility of the investigation?  Should you bolster the credibility or undermine it?  Let's take a game-theoretic approach.

Like almost all game theory analyses we'll construct a payoff matrix to guide our analysis.  I suggest one axis capture the eventual outcome of the investigation: evidence of wrongdoing found (guilty) vs. no evidence of wrongdoing found (innocent).  The other axis will capture the subject's three possible actions regarding using their influence: bolster credibility (bolster), do nothing (null), undermine credibility (undermine).

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation - Empty
Bolster Null Undermine
Innocent
Guilty

We now need to consider each possibility in the matrix and assign a relative payoff.  The payoff value represents the utility of the scenario to the subject, that is, how much does the subject benefit based on the scenario represented by each cell.

I don't think it's particularly controversial to argue that any "Innocent" outcome will be good for the subject.  Better if the credibility has been bolstered, but slightly worse if the credibility is undermined.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation - Partial
Bolster Null Undermine
Innocent 20 10 7
Guilty

Again, it shouldn't be controversial to assume that a "Guilty" outcome will be bad for the subject.  Worse if the credibility is bolstered, but slightly better if the credibility is undermined.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation - Complete
Bolster Null Undermine
Innocent 20 10 7
Guilty -20 -10 -7

At a global view, it seems like the only reason to actively undermine the credibility of the investigation is if you believe the outcome will be "Guilty" as it will increase your utility.  That should be concerning to anyone paying attention to current U.S. politics.

I think there is one potential argument for modifying the "Undermine" payoffs.  If the undermining is an attack on the biases and motivations of the investigation, the supporters of the subject may see an "Innocent/Undermine" outcome as better than "Innocent/Null" because "even the biased investigation couldn't find anything."  A similar argument could be made about the "Guilty/Undermine" payoff.  The increased nuance becomes important if you think that the subject's actions are more directly tuned to either the supporters or opposers.

Payoff matrix for subject using influence to affect credibility of investigation - Supporters/Opposers
Bolster Null Undermine
Supporters Opposers
Innocent 20 10 14 0
Guilty -20 -10 0 -14

These supporter/opposer payoffs are probably up for much debate, but I think this is probably a good ballpark.

With an "Innocent/Undermine" outcome, opposers will use the attacks on the credibility of the investigation against the subject.  But, supporters will see it as stronger evidence of innocence ("even the biased investigation couldn't find anything").

With a "Guilty/Undermine" outcome, supporters will see it as "proof" that the investigation was biased and not valid.  Opposers will see it as an attempt to evade justice.

What's interesting is if the subject cares only about supporters then the only better possible outcome than undermining the investigation is to bolster an investigation that finds the subject innocent.  If the subject, knowing a priori the truth of their actions, believes that the likelihood of the investigation concluding "Innocence" is almost zero and cares most about their supporters' response then undermining the investigation becomes overwhelmingly the best action to take.

Does the President care so little about those who oppose him that he's willing to take another hit from them in the event that the Mueller investigation finds nothing?  Or is he expecting the investigation to find evidence of wrong-doing and he's laying the groundwork to salvage the only group possible?  Or is my analysis completely wrong?