Nota Bene

Hi folks!

Onward we sail further and further south, with it getting warmer and warmer as we get nearer to the equator. We keep wondering if, sooner or later, the waters around these parts might become warm enough to take a pleasant dip in… a quick check – alas: not yet. So we continue on our merry way southward – toward our next Kuril: Urup, which comes from the Ainu word for salmon trout. Probably named that way as the island is long and thin like a salmon. But wait – so… does that mean the Ainu people drew maps? How else would they know the shape? Maybe by climbing up a neighboring volcano and seeing it that way?

Or could it be named after the salmon that perhaps inhabit the small island’s… streams (no rivers; no lakes)? Maybe there are salmon trout here. To the north, as far as Paramushir, all the islands are too small for salmon trout to reside on them. And to the south, perhaps, the climate’s too warm for a northerner-fish such as the salmon trout? But just here in between (also on neighboring Simushir), there well could be salmon (there was on Simushir – I saw them myself). Not that we found out – we passed Urup by. We’d landed there last time and there’s not a great deal to see onshore that can’t be seen from the sea (see the below pics), so we just missed it out this time…

Severe Kurilian landscapes…

Woah – killer whales! Maybe they’re after the salmon? What else would they be doing next to an island called Salmon?!

But why take pics from the Athens? Let’s get a drone up! So our American friends did just that…

Evening approaches; in rolls the fog; time for us to move on!…

Next up – Iturup; that rhymes! Surely this will mean something fish-related in Ainu? But of course: it means jellyfish! That’s funny; the island neither resembles a jellyfish, nor did I see a single jellyfish swimming about in the sea around the island. Stop. Perhaps those long capes the jut out quite far into the sea were deemed jellyfish’s tentacles?! But I digress…

One of those tentacles is in fact a volcano of considerable stature: Atsonupuri. We climbed to the top of it last time (what a nightmare it was: real tough conditions), and bathed in its hot springs. It was also here where we found the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything; that is – 42 ). I won’t go over Iturup again here; just a few highlights…

In the next pic: hot stream coming down from Baransky Volcano! In the steeper places: hot waterfalls!

Up here the water’s literally boiling! It cools down enough to be able to bath in it some 400 meters further down…

Woah – here’s something new since last time: neat concrete steps. Just what the doctor ordered (to go with the prescribed recuperative natural spring water:).

Down we go…

Oh no – repair work going on!

Not to worry: two of the upper pools had had their repairs completed:

And anyway, the best bit of all – the full-on hot-spring waterfall – was further down, ahead of the repairs…

Aaaaaaah. What a place! 42 – no two ways about it. And it gets even better for you, dear readers…: drone footage! Could this possibly be the first ever drone footage of these waterfalls in the history of the Universe? Again: 42!!

Must get back here one day. Simply mandatory… That goes for all you readers as well!

The rest of the pics of our Kurils-2019 expedition are here.

Hi folks!

Yesterday you’ll recall we were on Sumishir being bowled over by its Zavaritsky Caldera. Today, sailing southwest along the string of Kurils, we first took in the rather plain Broutona and its bay of the same name (named after the British naval officer and explorer William Broughton). And after that – two small islands together referred to as Chyornye Bratya – the Black Brothers, with one called Chirpoy, and the other – Brat Chirpoyev (Chirpoy’s brother!), here.

Read on…

Hi folks!

Can you guess what question I’m asked most of all during interviews and press conferences?

It started being asked back in the 1990s, quickly becoming the feared question that used to make me want to roll my eyes (I resisted the temptation:). Then after a few years I decided to simply embrace its inevitability and unavoidability, and started to improvise a bit and add extra detail to my answers. And still today, though my answers have been published and broadcast in probably all the mass media in the whole world – often more than once – I am asked it over and over, again and again. Of late though, it’s like I’ve come full circle: when I’m asked it I actually like to remember those days of long ago!

So, worked it out yet?

The question is: ‘What was the first virus you found?’ (plus questions relating to it, like when did I find it, how did I cure the computer it had infected, etc.).

Clearly, an important question, since, if it weren’t for it infecting my computer all those years ago: I may not have made a rather drastic career change; I may not have created the best antivirus in the world; I may not have raised one of the largest private companies in cybersecurity, and a lot more besides. So yes, a fateful role did that virus play – that virus that was among the early harbingers of what was to follow: billions of its ‘descendants’, then, later, cybercrime, cyberwarfare, cyber-espionage, and all the cyber-bad-guys behind it all – in every corner of the globe.

Anyway – the answer finally, perhaps?…

The virus’s name was Cascade.

But, why, suddenly, all the nostalgia about this virus?

Read on…

!folks مرحبا

Now, if ever you’re in Lebanon, whatever you do don’t miss out Jeita Grotto, which is just 15 minutes outside Beirut in a car. It’s title is in the singular, but the grotto actually refers to a ‘system’ of two separate (though interconnected) karstic limestone caves. The upper one is mostly dry and gigantic; the lower one features a river, is generally smaller in size, but it’s length is a full seven kilometers (!), which is five kilometers longer than the upper cave.

Here’s the upper cave:

Read on…

For many of you, what you associate with the brand ‘Beirut’ will probably be nothing too positive. Unfortunately, there are many objective reasons for that. The main one – there was a very long civil war here; there’ve been assorted other armed conflicts since then too. Details of the civil war made the headlines throughout the 1980s all over the world, with its awfulness even trickling down into pop songs – both in the East and the West. I won’t go into the reasons behind the civil war… because I can’t, for there is practically nothing but lies about them if you try to research them (.

Beirut was partially destroyed, but when peace finally came about this blessed land took on a new lease of life. From my hotel room and the hotel’s roof – the city today looks like this today:

Read on…

Hi folks!

Herewith, I continue my historical-archeological dispatches from what is today known as Lebanon. Specifically – from Byblos, one of the oldest cities in the world.

Quite how old no one can really say for sure, but the internet rumors it to be around 9000 years! The guides who were showing us round – plus the info on the walls here – give the more modest figure of approximately 6000 years. Others say ~7000; still others – ~8000. Whatever – give or take a few thousand years (!), this city is still for sure one of the world’s very oldest.

Read on…

I understand perfectly well that for 95% of you this post will be of no use at all. But for the remaining 5%, it has the potential to greatly simplify your working week (and many working weekends). In other words, we’ve some great news for cybersecurity pros – SOC teams, independent researchers, and inquisitive techies: the tools that our woodpeckers and GReAT guys use on a daily basis to keep churning out the best cyberthreat research in the world are now available to all of you, and free at that, with the lite version of our Threat Intelligence Portal. It’s sometimes called TIP for short, and after I’ve said a few words about it here, immediate bookmarking will be mandatory!

The Threat Intelligence Portal solves two main problems for today’s overstretched cybersecurity expert. First: ‘Which of these several hundred suspicious files should I choose first?’; second: ‘Ok, my antivirus says the file’s clean – what’s next?’

Unlike the ‘classics’ – Endpoint Security–class products, which return a concise Clean/Dangerous verdict, the analytic tools built into the Threat Intelligence Portal give detailed information about how suspicious a file is and in what specific aspects. And not only files. Hashes, IP addresses, and URLs can be thrown in too for good measure. All these items are quickly analyzed by our cloud and the results on each handed back on a silver platter: what’s bad about them (if anything), how rare an infection is, what known threats they even remotely resemble, what tools were used to create it, and so on. On top of that, executable files are run in our patented cloud sandbox, with the results made available in a couple of minutes.

Read on…

I’ve already shown you the oddly shaped rock formations up on the surface here at Cappadocia. Turns out the unusual shape theme continues underneath the surface too: man-made caves – ‘upside-down skyscrapers’. Well, why not? After all, pumice is very soft for a rock, so it’s not crazy difficult to carve out (as it no doubt was in Baalbek); also – it doesn’t need strengthening; also – due to the dry climate there’s no water needs pumping out from the underground depths.

Then it seems that everything was forgotten about and abandoned (as often happened), and the caves were taken over by dust, decay and depression. Then, centuries – or millennia – later, Homo sapiens rediscovered them, and archeologists, historians and researchers got down to revealing them though their archeological digs. Today, many of the underground ‘neighborhoods’ have been dug out, cleaned, tidied, fitted with staircases and electricity (!), and probably will have free Wi-Fi fitted very soon too – all to cater for the many tourists who visit.

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If you’ve heard of Cappadocia, you’ll probably know it for one of two things – or maybe both: its strange-shaped pyramid-columns, or (and) the many hot-air balloons that often fill the sky there. Well I’d heard of the place, but had never been, but wanted to for a very long time. The place even has a spot in my Top-100 Must-See Most-Beautiful Places in the World, so it was high time I made a visit seeing as though I was in the region recently…

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After a spot of globetrotting – Beirut > Tianjin – it was time to head somewhere a bit closer to home: Sochi! Wey-hey – here come a few days working in a resort town. For it was here where we had our recent industrial cyber-event…

Since the temperatures in Moscow were taking their usual descent toward 0°C, it was most pleasant to know I’d still be in a t-shirt-weather-place after Lebanon-China. Woah – mid-20s – perfect! Our connection was in Moscow – Sheremetyevo – and it was damp and dark and +8°C outside – but we didn’t go outside. It was six in the morning, there was no one about, and we were through a tunnel/walkway, past passport control and to Terminal F in no time at all. Nothing like what my regular travel companion, D.Z., recently experienced (hours of waiting, lengthy lines, almost missing his connection onward). But I digress…

Anyway, we get to Sochi. Sun: out. The number of our guests: 320! Where from? – all over the globe! Event? – our Industrial Cybersecurity Conference 2019! (btw – here in Sochi for the second year running; the first one was just perfect, so we figured – let’s repeat it!).

Read on…