Monthly Archives: December 2022

After a long stream of intensive excursions around the Pyramids, museums, the Valley of the Kings, and Luxor, what better way to take the foot off the proverbial peddle than with some… hot-air ballooning?! Indeed – there’s no better way, especially when you take into account the “bonus”: it’s not just modern-day Egypt you see down below during a flight – plenty of Ancient Egypt (its remnants) is down there too ->

But, if you know just a little about hot-air ballooning, you’ll know about how you normally have to get up at the crack of dawn to have a pop at it (“pop” perhaps not the best choice of verb for ballooning:). Is it something to do with the wind (calmer early morning)? Or is it something to do with what best suits the balloon operating company? I’m not sure…

Aaaanyway, you guessed it, we were up at the crack – 4am to be precise – after crashing three (3!) hours earlier (ugh; where did that proverbial easing off accelerator pedal go?!). Still, once up and out, our crossing one of the world’s most famous rivers (JIC: the Nile) cheered us up a touch. Our moods crashed back down not long after though when the coach we were in got caught up in some horrendous traffic; back up went the moods when we made it to the site in time to see the balloons being inflated (this was going to be an up-and-down day in more ways than one:). I’ve seen hot-air balloons being inflated plenty of times before, but that doesn’t make the spectacle any less interesting somehow:

Just before 6am we finally took off!… ->

Ok, so it’s not quite Cappadocia with its hundreds of balloons, but still… uplifting ). I counted around 30 other balloons up in the air with us:

And there’s the line of coaches that brought all the tourists to the site:

Over there – the Nile and the sunrise:

Aerial views of villages:

Another view – this time of a much older, abandoned settlement:

Actually – you see the many holes/entrances/doorways down there? They’re actually entrances to illegal tunnels that appeared when the locals discovered ancient underground burial sites in their “basements”:

Here comes the sun ->

Onward we fly…

Somewhere over there – the Valley of the Kings ->

More ancient temples ->

The sun coloring in the landscapes a hue of orange:

More ruins of tombs and living quarters of “black market archeologists” ->

The Temple of Hatshepsut:

Assorted pics:

And that was that for our spot of Egyptian ballooning. But we weren’t finished with Egypt just yet; more still to come…

The rest of the photos from Egypt are here.

Next up – Luxor. But you need the luxury of plenty of time for this one, which, alas, we didn’t have…

Luxor (formerly – Thebes), for a long time the capital of Ancient Egypt, has one really rich history – and a very long one: it’s nearly 5000 years old! All the same, a lot of it remains to this day – along both banks of the River Nile – albeit in ruins. Statues, columns, temples (and surely tombs?:) – and all of them simply must-see…

First up for us was the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut (I knew there just had to be ~tombs!)… ->

Mortuary temples like this one were erected close to the royal tombs of Ancient Egypt, and designed to commemorate the reign of a Pharaoh while alive, and then be used by his imperial cult after death…

Not bad for a purely ritual building )…

Read on…

I’ve been saying it often – for years: antivirus is dead.

Such a statement might at first seem strange – especially from someone who’s been a mover and shaker since the very earliest days in all things viruses and anti-virus in the late eighties and early nineties. However, if you dig a little deeper into the AV (RIP) topic and consult some authoritative sources in the (former:) field, then the statement quickly becomes quite logical: first, “antivirus” has turned into protective solutions “against everything”; second, viruses – as a particular species of malicious program – have died out. Almost. And it’s that seemingly harmless, negligible almost that causes problems for cybersecurity still to this day – at the back end of the year 2022! And that almost is the basis of this here blogpost today…

So. Viruses. Those Red-Listed last remaining few – where are they these days, and what are they up to?…

It turns out they tend to reside in… one of the most conservative sub-fields of industrial automation: that of operational technology (that’s OT – not to be confused with IT). OT is “hardware and software that detects or causes a change through the direct monitoring and/or control of industrial equipment, assets, processes and events” (– Wikipedia). Basically, OT relates to an industrial control systems (ICS) environment – sometimes referred to as “IT in the non-carpeted areas”. OT = specialized control systems in factories, power plants, transportation systems, the utilities sector, and the extraction, processing and other heavy industries. Yes – infrastructure; yes – often critical infrastructure. And yes again – it’s in this industrial/critical infrastructure where “dead” computer viruses are found today alive and kicking: around 3% of cyber incidents involving OT-computers these days are caused by this type of malware.

How so?

Read on…