Stuxnet-based cyber espionage virus targets European firms

This time it's called Duqu.  Why not Dookie?  When the cyber war really heats up, that's what'll be dropping worldwide..   The Telegraph has details..

European firms that play a key role in nuclear power and other critical industries have been targeted by a cyber espionage attack based on Stuxnet, the computer virus that was designed to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme.

Security engineers say it is likely the new variant, Duqu, was created by the same government agencies thought to be behind Stuxnet, an attack that heralded a new era of state conflict online.

But while Stuxnet was created to cause physical damage to Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities by surreptitiously adjusting machinery, Duqu is an intelligence-gathering tool.

The new virus’ precise targets have not been disclosed, but they include European firms that make the software that controls power stations and other industrial facilities. By infiltrating their computer networks, it aims to steal confidential information and potentially reveal vulnerabilities that could be exploited in later attacks.
..
Analysis of Duqu has revealed it may have been in use since December last year. It is programmed to remove itself from infected systems after 36 days, so nobody can be sure how many firms have been targeted or how much confidential data stolen.

Same people responsible, not the same people..  It doesn't matter.  Eventually, the Law of Unintended Consequences will come into play..  Cyber-Boomerang doesn't have the elegance I'm looking for, so I will, instead, allow Lenny Kravitz to interject..

Global Economic Collapse: Validation and Better Perception Edition

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world  New Scientist.  Excerpts:

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.



The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).


"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."


Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.


The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.


The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.


When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Marketwatch warns EU banks will crash Wall Street  The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:

..the raging European monetary collapse will ripple through America’s banking system, completing the 2008 meltdown that never ended because Wall Street fought all reforms. But now, a bigger meltdown as history repeats a dangerous cycle like the 1929 Crash and Great Depression. History will also deal a fatal blow to Wall Street.
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Weiss’s worst-case scenario highlights everything we’ve both been warning investors about for a long time. The 2008 meltdown never ended, lessons never learned. But now the end game is accelerating. Listen closely: Weiss final warning to all investors: “Get all or most of your money out of danger immediately … above all, stay safe!” Prepare for the coming bank collapse. And discover how this historic scenario will empower the Occupiers message to get money out of elections: “One citizen. One dollar. One vote.”

This crisis continues to gather strength and speed at a truly astonishing pace.  Critical Mass hasn't occurred, but simple observation assumes that status could change at any moment, or for a few more days, weeks, maybe months.  In what form will the Global Economic Body Blow take?

The Big Picture becomes a bit more clear, and a lot more fearsome.  It's coming.. 

It's What's Happenin', Man..

News: Inside Of Reactor 1  Fukushima Diary. 

Fun, related fact:  MOX is super radioactive.  Go!  Go!  Godzilla! 

Fukushima: Immune-destroying radiation sickness spreads  This tragedy's in motion, but has yet to bloom.  There, Here, eventually Everywhere..  Japan is Coming Attractions.

Two from The Extinction Protocol..

Doomed German space telescope to plunge to Earth on October 23rd

The massive ROSAT X-ray space telescope continues to descend toward Earth. Latest estimates place the re-entry around noon Universal Time on Oct. 23rd. Uncertainties exceed 10 hours, which makes it impossible to say exactly where ROSAT will re-enter.

New Mexico shaken by ‘historically unusual’ 3.8 magnitude earthquake

A 3.8 magnitude earthquake “is unusual for this area, historically,” Richard Aster, a professor of Geophysics at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, wrote the New Mexican in an email Monday. “The present estimate of the epicenter is about half way between Santa Fe and Espanola. This is a large enough event that there may be felt aftershocks.” Monday’s temblor, at 3.8, is small compared to the earth-moving quakes recorded in Japan, California or other hot zones. But in New Mexico, 3.8 is a major event.

Evidence Builds: Deadly Gravity Wave Approaching Earth  Pakalert Press.  Excerpts:

Gigantic gravitational waves up to 100 billion light years long could be warping the universe into a twisted maze compressing and squeezing out the edges of space-time like an old rag being wrung dry. Now evidence is mounting that one of these rogue waves may be on its way towards Earth…



100 billion light year long gravity waves pushing and twisting the universe outward? That’s the astounding theory being proposed by some astrophysicists to explain why space is inflating at different rates in different regions.
 
The scientists’ hypothesis may have arrived like an interstellar cavalry for harried cosmologists. The theory of almost everything has been slipping towards almost nothing.
 
How?



Careful measurements of the universe’s expansion (called inflation) have revealed alarming anomalies. Not every region of space is expanding at the same rate.


Why is that important?


Well, it’s raising concerns because if the universe is inflating irregularly that could mean all the laws governing basic physics may be flawed…or downright wrong.


And if those laws are wrong, much of science is wrong, including the distance to other stars, the laws that affect many experiments—even the age of the universe.

Occupy's global impact:  Rome edition. 

 Greece heads for standstill before austerity vote  Reuters.  Excerpts:

Greece's two main unions, representing about half the four million-strong workforce, are preparing for one of the biggest protests since the crisis began two years ago, likely to hit food and fuel supplies, disrupt transport and leave hospitals run by skeleton staff.



The strike is set for Wednesday and Thursday to coincide with the vote in parliament, expected to take place in two stages on both days.


Memories are fresh of battles between riot police and stone-throwing protesters at anti-austerity demonstrations in June and sporadic incidents were reported on Monday with a petrol bomb hurled at a garbage truck in a northern suburb of Athens.


Trailing badly in opinion polls, Papandreou has defied a wave of protests, pledging to push through a deeply unpopular package that includes tax rises, pay and pension cuts, job layoffs and changes to collective pay deals.
And:

Trapped in deep recession and choked by a debt equivalent to some 162 percent of gross domestic product, Greece has been shut out of bond markets and would run out of money within weeks without international support.



Inspectors from the EU and the International Monetary Fund were in Athens last week and have recommended releasing an 8 billion euro (6.9 billion pound) aid tranche to enable the government to keep paying its bills past November.


That will only provide temporary relief and they have told Papandreou's struggling team to push ahead with further belt-tightening, structural reforms and privatisations, on top of what are already the deepest cuts in Greece's postwar history.

Wow.  Not even a fraction of what all is happening.

I'm Back. Kind of..

I have been, for quite some time now, involved with or effected by multiple family health situations.  Recently, the intensity of those situations have escalated.  To the detriment of several creative projects, all I've done is watch You Tube music videos.  One can only sustain a certain level of tension for so long before retreating and recharging.. 

My heart's still not in it.  "It" being multiple endeavors, including this blog.  But it will be again.  In the meantime, news continues, and will continue, happening, also escalating.  Whatever creates "News" is creating at a more accelerated pace.  This is the time just before Everything Changed, whatever change that may be..

We are both at the apex and nadir of our development as species.  Which will triumph?  Or will an asteroid (or some other extinction event) make it all irrelevant?  We live in Uncharted Territory.  Look around.  Yeah, we're already here. 

Here..  Comes..  History!