STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[Fuzz]

17 Of The Oldest Man-Made Structures On Earth

Whilst I have visited a number of these sites, is it a mite sad that I know more about the history of these sites because of the Assassin's Creed series?

[orangedog]

Whilst I have visited a number of these sites, is it a mite sad that I know more about the history of these sites because of the Assassin's Creed series?

Actually somewhat admirable... I skipped all of the informative bits in order to have more time hunting down hapless guards.

[MIKA27]

Actually somewhat admirable... I skipped all of the informative bits in order to have more time hunting down hapless guards.

+2

[MIKA27]

The Division Is A Game Worth Buying A Next-Gen Console For

http://youtu.be/O_j9uKBmUEk

So far at E3 we’ve seen games that aim to show off the next-gen hardware of both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. The only game that really has me sold so far, however, is The Division: an open-world RPG set in post-apocalyptic New York City. Check out this gameplay.

The Division is set in a world where an infection has been transmit through the population via the currency, turning cities into wastelands and citizens into mercenaries. You are a sleeper agent who awakes in the apocalypse with one objective: survive.

The game centres around co-op gameplay to scrounge for supplies and secure territory. Groups of other players are trying to do the same thing, and there’s always the risk of you running across them and getting into a giant firefight. Awesome.

With beautiful graphics and a UI to die for, The Division is a game worth getting a next-gen console for. Thankfully, it’s not an exclusive title, so both PS4 and Xbox One players can enjoy it come-2014.

Here’s the story trailer.

MIKA: Well, it's a no brainer. Grab an Xbox One and we can hook up and play online Co-Op!

Keith: Ditch PS4 and join the dark side. BTW... Playstation 4 will charge you a fee for online once released so no more free online. This is probably good as they'll invest in some Malware and Spyware to avoid another hack.

My gamertag on Xbox Live: MIKA27

[MIKA27]

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Gets A Freaking Gorgeous First Trailer

Despite its flaws, the first instalment in Peter Jackson’s new Hobbit trilogy was a feast for the eyes. We got our first look at the second film in the franchise — The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — this morning, and it’s more beautiful than we could have imagined.

The trailer shows our band of dwarves continuing on their quest, as well as a few old friends along the way. We’re also introduced to Tauriel played by Evangeline Lilly (a decidedly Elven name in its own right).

The new Hobbit film lands in cinemas on December 13. In the meantime, enjoy this great-looking trailer.

[Fuzz]

Seriously, why the heck did they make The Hobbit into a trilogy? The damn book is not that bloody long.

If people thought the Lord of The Rings trilogy was long, what are they gonna think about a novel stretched out into a trilogy?

[Fuzz]

Here's a comparison between Xbox One and the PS4, created by someone on DeviantArt. More powerful chips and/or any features exclusive to a platform are colored blue. Any restrictions or features that were removed vs prior generations will be in red.

Strangely enough, the one thing out of all of this that caught my attention...the return of Carmageddon!!!!!

[CanuckSARTech]

The Division Is A Game Worth Buying A Next-Gen Console For

http://youtu.be/O_j9uKBmUEk

So far at E3 we’ve seen games that aim to show off the next-gen hardware of both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. The only game that really has me sold so far, however, is The Division: an open-world RPG set in post-apocalyptic New York City. Check out this gameplay.

The Division is set in a world where an infection has been transmit through the population via the currency, turning cities into wastelands and citizens into mercenaries. You are a sleeper agent who awakes in the apocalypse with one objective: survive.

The game centres around co-op gameplay to scrounge for supplies and secure territory. Groups of other players are trying to do the same thing, and there’s always the risk of you running across them and getting into a giant firefight. Awesome.

With beautiful graphics and a UI to die for, The Division is a game worth getting a next-gen console for. Thankfully, it’s not an exclusive title, so both PS4 and Xbox One players can enjoy it come-2014.

Here’s the story trailer.

MIKA: Well, it's a no brainer. Grab an Xbox One and we can hook up and play online Co-Op!

Keith: Ditch PS4 and join the dark side. BTW... Playstation 4 will charge you a fee for online once released so no more free online. This is probably good as they'll invest in some Malware and Spyware to avoid another hack.

My gamertag on Xbox Live: MIKA27

LOL. Sure, keep on dreamin'!!!! Funny how the Xbox has more in the red in Fuzz's list above!!!

Even though there are massive pros and cons to both, the biggest one to the PS4 is what you mention - the free online. And, I actually don't play online much - it's honestly only about 5 to 10% of my gaming. So, the other PS4 benefits outweigh it for me. And, like the first few gens of the PS3, this new PS4 will likely be compatible with previous generations' games, and I've got about a dozen much-enjoyed PS3 games that would then transfer over to the PS4 for me.

Simple as pie.

All that said though, while I'm not much for these "battle" games (why take work training home for fun time?), this new The Division game does definitely look amazingly well-done. It definitely is electronic artistry it seems. Those two trailers have me hooked.

[Fuzz]

LOL. Sure, keep on dreamin'!!!! Funny how the Xbox has more in the red in Fuzz's list above!!!

Even though there are massive pros and cons to both, the biggest one to the PS4 is what you mention - the free online. And, I actually don't play online much - it's honestly only about 5 to 10% of my gaming. So, the other PS4 benefits outweigh it for me. And, like the first few gens of the PS3, this new PS4 will likely be compatible with previous generations' games, and I've got about a dozen much-enjoyed PS3 games that would then transfer over to the PS4 for me.

Simple as pie.

All that said though, while I'm not much for these "battle" games (why take work training home for fun time?), this new The Division game does definitely look amazingly well-done. It definitely is electronic artistry it seems. Those two trailers have me hooked.

Actually, there's no backwards compatibility for either console. Either you buy the Xbox One or PS4 version of the game, or keep your old console around to play your old favourites.

[MIKA27]

Actually, there's no backwards compatibility for either console. Either you buy the Xbox One or PS4 version of the game, or keep your old console around to play your old favourites.

I agree with both you and Keith - Both consoles have pros and cons.

To be honest though, the PS3 on paper was more powerful than the 360 however it all boils down to how you use the technology to create the games and this comes down to developers. None of the new consoles will be backward compatible HOWEVER for me, its not an issue as in my view, I'm buying a new next gen console for 'Next gen' games.

Carmageddon though is a great title Fuzz.

[CanuckSARTech]

No backwards compatibility? Hmmmm. Fingers crossed that changes then. And/or, someone works out a hack to allow it.

[MIKA27]

I Can’t Imagine A Wound Horrifying Enough To Justify This Piranha Clamp

Looking like a cross between a piranha’s jaws and an extra-large office binder clip, the ITClamp is designed to almost instantly close a severely haemorrhaging wound when there’s no time, or no one around, to apply staples or stitches. Primarily targeted at battlefield scenarios where wounds need to be dealt with as quickly as possible, the ITClamp also seems like a useful addition to a first-aid kit where serious injury is a possibility.

When applied to a wound not only does the ITClamp close it almost instantly, it also applies a constant even pressure along the opening causing blood to pool and clot underneath so it helps stop the bleeding and stabilise the injured for transportation to proper medical care.

And it’s a good thing the clamp is designed to be used in situations where you’re already in intense pain, possibly even unconscious, since those rows of curved metal needles don’t seem like they’d be too pleasant going in or yanking on your skin. But most people would probably be willing to endure a little extra agony if it meant they lived to see another day.

[MIKA27]

Science Discovered A New Human Body Part

A funny thing happened in the field of anatomy during the first half of this year. Researchers found a previously unknown human body part. It’s inside the eyeball, and it’s very small. At 15 microns thick, the newly discovered layer of material is so small that even calling it a new body part feels inappropriate. That’s what it is though. A new body part. Right there in your eye.

Named for Harminder Dua, the ophthalmology professor who made the discovery, the Dua layer is one of six known layers of the cornea. (The cornea is the transparent lens in the front of your eyeball that focuses light going in towards your brain.) Now that we know about this additional layer, researchers say that doctors will be better able to diagnose and treat certain conditions, especially injuries to the cornea. The discovery will also make corneal transplants easier. Said Dua, humbly, “This is a major discovery that will mean that ophthalmology textbooks will literally need to be re-written.”

So keep that in mind, med school hopefuls. Your books will not only be expensive, they’ll be incomplete. And, yes, you should have taken that year off to go backpacking around South America, because who knows how many new body parts will be discovered in the second half of this year!

[MIKA27]

The Poltergeist Curse

For almost as long as there have been motion pictures, there has been gossip and rumour about their production and their stars. In today’s celebrity-obsessed, internet-ready world, most of these myths and scandals are verified or strenuously denied by PR people within hours of their inception – but not long ago, often the only way that these stories were spread was by word of mouth and movie urban legends were born.

Over the years many films have held the claim of being ‘cursed’. In most cases these claims can be dismissed as simply bad luck or a series of coincidences.

‘Atuk’, an as-yet-unproduced comedy about an Inuit moving to the big city, is one example. Four comedians had shown interest or been cast as the lead character at various times throughout the 1980′s and 90′s: John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy and Chris Farley. Each would pass away either before, or very soon after production began rolling.

On the face of it, these circumstances seem unusual to say the least, but with the exception of Candy, each of these men had a reputation for drug abuse. Candy, Farley, and Belushi could all be considered to have been dangerously overweight. It’s certainly not inexplicable then, that Belushi and Farley should die of drug overdoses and Candy of a heart attack. Of each of their sadly premature deaths only Kinison’s (who died in a car accident when a drunk driver in a pickup truck collided with his Trans-Am on the way to a gig) cannot be attributed to their vices and lifestyle.

Of course, all of this ignores what is perhaps a more pressing question: if someone (or something) intended to put a curse upon a movie, why would they pick a fish-out-of-water comedy about an Eskimo? If we are to believe in a cursed movie, surely there has to be a motive, a cause for the dark forces to stand up and pay attention? Look no further than the ‘Poltergeist’ series. Perhaps the most notorious of all movie curses, it is also one of the most mysterious and difficult to dismiss.

The original 1982 film, directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg centres around the Freelings, a typical middle-class, California family who find themselves at the mercy of the strange titular phenomena when following a series of strange and violent incidents, their daughter Carol-Anne is taken away to ‘The Other Side’. When a team of parapsychologists are called in and eventually rescue her, it is discovered that (in what has become something of a cliche over the years) the Freeling’s home is located over a Native American burial ground. It was a box-office hit, and two sequels would follow in 1986 and 1988.

With it’s central premise being that there are dark consequences for desecrating the dead, it was ironic in the extreme that JoBeth Williams (who played the mother, Diane Freeling) should inform VH1 in 2002 that during the first movie’s well-remembered pool scene (and unspecified scenes in ‘Poltergeist II’), real human skeletons were used as props. If there are dark forces out there who can be angered into cursing film productions, that ought to do it!

In the pre-internet days it was frequently claimed that all of the main cast had perished. Given that many of the actors not only are alive, but continue to appear in film and television, it’s not surprising that this myth has dispelled. In truth, four cast deaths occured during and shortly after the filming of the series, two under far less unusual circumstances than the others.

Julian Beck, who chillingly portrayed the evil preacher Kane, died following an 18 month long battle with stomach cancer shortly after completing work on the second instalment. Will Sampson, who played Taylor the Native American Shaman in the same movie (and is perhaps best known for his role as the pretending deaf-mute in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’), passed away around a year after the film’s release, after a heart-lung transplant that he knew he had little chance of surviving.

Sadly the fates of the actresses who played the two Freeling daughters were far from inevitable. Dominique Dunne, Dana Freeling in the original movie, fell into a coma and later died in November of 1982 at the age of 22. Her abusive ex-partner, Los Angeles sous-chef John Sweeney had arrived at her home to plead with her to take him back. Upon her refusal, he began to choke her for several minutes and seeing her eventually fall unconscious, left her to die in her driveway. Remarkably, Sweeney would be acquitted of second-degree murder and instead charged with voluntary manslaughter with a 6 and a half year sentence.

The Freelings youngest daughter and the series’ focal point, Carol-Anne was played in all three movies by Heather O’Rourke. She would pass away suddenly in February 1988, prior to the release of ‘Poltergeist III’, at just 12 years old.

In early 1987 Heather had been misdiagonsed as suffering from Crohn’s disease and was prescribed cortisone (a side-effect of which was to make her face appear slightly bloated, explaining the noticeable difference in her appearance between the second and third films). On January 31st 1988 she became ill, with symptoms that were initially put down as a simple case of the flu. She collapsed the following day and then suffered a cardiac arrest while being taken to hospital. After being airlifted to a large children’s hospital in San Diego, she passed away during an operation on a bowel obstruction complicated by septic shock. A wrongful death lawsuit was later dismissed.

Whether any of these deaths can be put down to anything other than misfortune is a matter of opinion – though if a person does believe that they are punishment for the use of human remains in the movies, these vengeful spirits most certainly misdirected their anger at innocent parties who had nothing to do with the decision.

That the deaths of both of these young and promising actresses were tragic and unexpected, on the other hand, is undeniable.

They have cast a long shadow over the Poltergeist franchise, and to this day it is rare that the movies are ever discussed without mention of the circumstances surrounding them. Watching young Carol-Anne in her supernatural peril is made all the more poignant by knowing how little time Heather O’Rourke would have on this earth. Indeed, the curse has lent the series an air of intrigue and a longevity that it otherwise may never have attained under its own merits. With a new Poltergeist movie currently in the works (recently revealed to be a sequel rather than a remake), it seems that the franchise – and the curse – will continue to be discussed for many years to come.

Side note: Craig T. Nelson (Stephen Freeling) found time for one more desecration a few years ago with this creepy and extraordinarily ill-judged commercial for DirecTV.

[MIKA27]

THE SECRET WAR

INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM. FOR YEARS FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.

INSIDE FORT MEADE, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.

This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger.

“What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”

In its tightly controlled public relations, the NSA has focused attention on the threat of cyberattack against the US—the vulnerability of critical infrastructure like power plants and water systems, the susceptibility of the military’s command and control structure, the dependence of the economy on the Internet’s smooth functioning. Defense against these threats was the paramount mission trumpeted by NSA brass at congressional hearings and hashed over at security conferences.

But there is a flip side to this equation that is rarely mentioned: The military has for years been developing offensive capabilities, giving it the power not just to defend the US but to assail its foes. Using so-called cyber-kinetic attacks, Alexander and his forces now have the capability to physically destroy an adversary’s equipment and infrastructure, and potentially even to kill. Alexander—who declined to be interviewed for this article—has concluded that such cyberweapons are as crucial to 21st-century warfare as nuclear arms were in the 20th.

And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment, Stuxnet was aimed at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an industrial control link known as a Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material.

The success of this sabotage came to light only in June 2010, when the malware spread to outside computers. It was spotted by independent security researchers, who identified telltale signs that the worm was the work of thousands of hours of professional development. Despite headlines around the globe, officials in Washington have never openly acknowledged that the US was behind the attack. It wasn’t until 2012 that anonymous sources within the Obama administration took credit for it in interviews with The New York Times.

But Stuxnet is only the beginning. Alexander’s agency has recruited thousands of computer experts, hackers, and engineering PhDs to expand US offensive capabilities in the digital realm. The Pentagon has requested $4.7 billion for “cyberspace operations,” even as the budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies could fall by $4.4 billion. It is pouring millions into cyberdefense contractors. And more attacks may be planned.

Inside the government, the general is regarded with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike J. Edgar Hoover, another security figure whose tenure spanned multiple presidencies. “We jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander—with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets,” says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House, and at the expense of everybody else.”

Now 61, Alexander has said he plans to retire in 2014; when he does step down he will leave behind an enduring legacy—a position of far-reaching authority and potentially Strangelovian powers at a time when the distinction between cyberwarfare and conventional warfare is beginning to blur. A recent Pentagon report made that point in dramatic terms. It recommended possible deterrents to a cyberattack on the US. Among the options: launching nuclear weapons.

He may be a four-star Army general, but Alexander more closely resembles a head librarian than George Patton. His face is anemic, his lips a neutral horizontal line. Bald halfway back, he has hair the color of strong tea that turns gray on the sides, where it is cut close to the skin, more schoolboy than boot camp. For a time he wore large rimless glasses that seemed to swallow his eyes. Some combat types had a derisive nickname for him: Alexander the Geek.

Born in 1951, the third of five children, Alexander was raised in the small upstate New York hamlet of Onondaga Hill, a suburb of Syracuse. He tossed papers for the Syracuse Post-Standard and ran track at Westhill High School while his father, a former Marine private, was involved in local Republican politics. It was 1970, Richard Nixon was president, and most of the country had by then begun to see the war in Vietnam as a disaster. But Alexander had been accepted at West Point, joining a class that included two other future four-star generals, David Petraeus and Martin Dempsey. Alexander would never get the chance to serve in Vietnam. Just as he stepped off the bus at West Point, the ground war finally began winding down.

In April 1974, just before graduation, he married his high school classmate Deborah Lynn Douglas, who grew up two doors away in Onondaga Hill. The fighting in Vietnam was over, but the Cold War was still bubbling, and Alexander focused his career on the solitary, rarefied world of signals intelligence, bouncing from secret NSA base to secret NSA base, mostly in the US and Germany. He proved a competent administrator, carrying out assignments and adapting to the rapidly changing high tech environment. Along the way he picked up masters degrees in electronic warfare, physics, national security strategy, and business administration. As a result, he quickly rose up the military intelligence ranks, where expertise in advanced technology was at a premium.

In 2001, Alexander was a one-star general in charge of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the military’s worldwide network of 10,700 spies and eavesdroppers. In March of that year he told his hometown Syracuse newspaper that his job was to discover threats to the country. “We have to stay out in front of our adversary,” Alexander said. “It’s a chess game, and you don’t want to lose this one.” But just six months later, Alexander and the rest of the American intelligence community suffered a devastating defeat when they were surprised by the attacks on 9/11. Following the assault, he ordered his Army intercept operators to begin illegally monitoring the phone calls and email of American citizens who had nothing to do with terrorism, including intimate calls between journalists and their spouses. Congress later gave retroactive immunity to the telecoms that assisted the government.

In 2003 Alexander, a favorite of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was named the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, the service’s most senior intelligence position. Among the units under his command were the military intelligence teams involved in the human rights abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Two years later, Rumsfeld appointed Alexander—now a three-star general—director of the NSA, where he oversaw the illegal, warrantless wiretapping program while deceiving members of the House Intelligence Committee. In a publicly released letter to Alexander shortly after The New York Times exposed the program, US representative Rush Holt, a member of the committee, angrily took him to task for not being forthcoming about the wiretapping:

“Your responses make a mockery of congressional oversight.”

Alexander also proved to be militant about secrecy. In 2005 a senior agency employee named Thomas Drake allegedly gave information to The Baltimore Sun showing that a publicly discussed program known as Trailblazer was millions of dollars overbudget, behind schedule, possibly illegal, and a serious threat to privacy. In response, federal prosecutors charged Drake with 10 felony counts, including retaining classified documents and making false statements. He faced up to 35 years in prison—despite the fact that all of the information Drake was alleged to have leaked was not only unclassified and already in the public domain but in fact had been placed there by NSA and Pentagon officials themselves. (As a longtime chronicler of the NSA, I served as a consultant for Drake’s defense team. The investigation went on for four years, after which Drake received no jail time or fine. The judge, Richard D. Bennett, excoriated the prosecutor and NSA officials for dragging their feet. “I find that unconscionable. Unconscionable,” he said during a hearing in 2011. “That’s four years of hell that a citizen goes through. It was not proper. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”)

But while the powers that be were pressing for Drake’s imprisonment, a much more serious challenge was emerging. Stuxnet, the cyberweapon used to attack the Iranian facility in Natanz, was supposed to be untraceable, leaving no return address should the Iranians discover it. Citing anonymous Obama administration officials, The New York Times reported that the malware began replicating itself and migrating to computers in other countries. Cyber­security detectives were thus able to detect and analyze it.

By the summer of 2010 some were pointing fingers at the US.

Natanz is a small, dusty town in central Iran known for its plump pears and the burial vault of the 13th-century Sufi sheikh Abd al-Samad. The Natanz nuclear enrichment plant is a vault of a different kind. Tucked in the shadows of the Karkas Mountains, most of it lies deep underground and surrounded by concrete walls 8 feet thick, with another layer of concrete for added security. Its bulbous concrete roof rests beneath more than 70 feet of packed earth. Contained within the bombproof structure are halls the size of soccer pitches, designed to hold thousands of tall, narrow centrifuges. The machines are linked in long cascades that look like tacky decorations from a ’70s discotheque.

To work properly, the centrifuges need strong, lightweight, well-balanced rotors and high-speed bearings. Spin these rotors too slowly and the critical U-235 molecules inside fail to separate; spin them too quickly and the machines self-destruct and may even explode. The operation is so delicate that the computers controlling the rotors’ movement are isolated from the Internet by a so-called air gap that prevents exposure to viruses and other malware.

In 2006, the Department of Defense gave the go-ahead to the NSA to begin work on targeting these centrifuges, according to The New York Times. One of the first steps was to build a map of the Iranian nuclear facility’s computer networks. A group of hackers known as Tailored Access Operations—a highly secret organization within the NSA—took up the challenge.

They set about remotely penetrating communications systems and networks, stealing passwords and data by the terabyte. Teams of “vulnerability analysts” searched hundreds of computers and servers for security holes, according to a former senior CIA official involved in the Stuxnet program. Armed with that intelligence, so-called network exploitation specialists then developed software implants known as beacons, which worked like surveillance drones, mapping out a blueprint of the network and then secretly communicating the data back to the NSA. (Flame, the complex piece of surveillance malware discovered by Russian cybersecurity experts last year, was likely one such beacon.) The surveillance drones worked brilliantly. The NSA was able to extract data about the Iranian networks, listen to and record conversations through computer microphones, even reach into the mobile phones of anyone within Bluetooth range of a compromised machine.

The next step was to create a digital warhead, a task that fell to the CIA Clandestine Service’s Counter-Proliferation Division.

According to the senior CIA official, much of this work was outsourced to national labs, notably Sandia in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So by the mid-2000s, the government had developed all the fundamental technology it needed for an attack. But there was still a major problem: The secretive agencies had to find a way to access Iran’s most sensitive and secure computers, the ones protected by the air gap. For that, Alexander and his fellow spies would need outside help.

This is where things get murky. One possible bread crumb trail leads to an Iranian electronics and computer wholesaler named Ali Ashtari, who later confessed that he was recruited as a spy by the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. (Israel denied the claim.)

Ashtari’s principal customers were the procurement officers for some of Iran’s most sensitive organizations, including the intelligence service and the nuclear enrichment plants. If new computers were needed or routers or switches had to be replaced, Ashtari was the man to see, according to reports from semi-official Iranian news agencies and an account of Ashtari’s trial published by the nonprofit Iran Human Rights Voice.

He not only had access to some of Iran’s most sensitive locations, his company had become an electronics purchasing agent for the intelligence, defense, and nuclear development departments. This would have given Mossad enormous opportunities to place worms, back doors, and other malware into the equipment in a wide variety of facilities. Although the Iranians have never explicitly acknowledged it, it stands to reason that this could have been one of the ways Stuxnet got across the air gap.

But by then, Iran had established a new counterintelligence agency dedicated to discovering nuclear spies. Ashtari was likely on their radar because of the increased frequency of his visits to various sensitive locations. He may have let down his guard. “The majority of people we lose as sources—who get wrapped up or executed or imprisoned—are usually those willing to accept more risk than they should,” says the senior CIA official involved with Stuxnet. In 2006, according to Iran Human Rights Voice, Ashtari was quietly arrested at a travel agency after returning from another trip out of the country.

In June 2008 he was brought to trial in Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, where he confessed, pleaded guilty to the charges, expressed remorse for his actions, and was sentenced to death. On the morning of November 17, in the courtyard of Tehran’s Evin Prison, a noose was placed around Ashtari’s neck, and a crane hauled his struggling body high into the air.

Ashtari may well have been one of the human assets that allowed Stuxnet to cross the air gap. But he was not Israel’s only alleged spy in Iran, and others may also have helped enable malware transfer. “Normally,” says the anonymous CIA official, “what we do is look for multiple bridges, in case a guy gets wrapped up.” Less then two weeks after Ashtari’s execution, the Iranian government arrested three more men, charging them with spying for Israel. And on December 13, 2008, Ali-Akbar Siadat, another importer of electronic goods, was arrested as a spy for the Mossad, according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency. Unlike Ashtari, who said he had operated alone, Siadat was accused of heading a nationwide spy network employing numerous Iranian agents. But despite their energetic counterintelligence work, the Iranians would not realize for another year and a half that a cyberweapon was targeting their nuclear centrifuges. Once they did, it was only a matter of time until they responded.

Sure enough, in August 2012 a devastating virus was unleashed on Saudi Aramco, the giant Saudi state-owned energy company.

The malware infected 30,000 computers, erasing three-quarters of the company’s stored data, destroying everything from documents to email to spreadsheets and leaving in their place an image of a burning American flag, according to The New York Times. Just days later, another large cyberattack hit RasGas, the giant Qatari natural gas company. Then a series of denial-of-service attacks took America’s largest financial institutions offline. Experts blamed all of this activity on Iran, which had created its own cyber command in the wake of the US-led attacks. James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, for the first time declared cyberthreats the greatest danger facing the nation, bumping terrorism down to second place. In May, the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team issued a vague warning that US energy and infrastructure companies should be on the alert for cyberattacks. It was widely reported that this warning came in response to Iranian cyberprobes of industrial control systems. An Iranian diplomat denied any involvement.

The cat-and-mouse game could escalate. “It’s a trajectory,” says James Lewis, a cyber­security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The general consensus is that a cyber response alone is pretty worthless. And nobody wants a real war.”

Under international law, Iran may have the right to self-defense when hit with destructive cyberattacks. William Lynn, deputy secretary of defense, laid claim to the prerogative of self-defense when he outlined the Pentagon’s cyber operations strategy. “The United States reserves the right,” he said, “under the laws of armed conflict, to respond to serious cyberattacks with a proportional and justified military response at the time and place of our choosing.” Leon Panetta, the former CIA chief who had helped launch the Stuxnet offensive, would later point to Iran’s retaliation as a troubling harbinger. “The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber Pearl Harbor,” he warned in October 2012, toward the end of his tenure as defense secretary, “an attack that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life.” If Stuxnet was the proof of concept, it also proved that one successful cyberattack begets another. For Alexander, this offered the perfect justification for expanding his empire.

IN MAY 2010, a little more than a year after President Obama took office and only weeks before Stuxnet became public, a new organization to exercise American rule over the increasingly militarized Internet became operational: the US Cyber Command. Keith Alexander, newly promoted to four-star general, was put in charge of it. The forces under his command were now truly formidable—his untold thousands of NSA spies, as well as 14,000 incoming Cyber Command personnel, including Navy, Army, and Air Force troops. Helping Alexander organize and dominate this new arena would be his fellow plebes from West Point’s class of 1974: David Petraeus, the CIA director; and Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Indeed, dominance has long been their watchword. Alexander’s Navy calls itself the Information Dominance Corps. In 2007, the then secretary of the Air Force pledged to “dominate cyberspace” just as “today, we dominate air and space.” And Alexander’s Army warned, “It is in cyberspace that we must use our strategic vision to dominate the information environment.” The Army is reportedly treating digital weapons as another form of offensive capability, providing frontline troops with the option of requesting “cyber fire support” from Cyber Command in the same way they request air and artillery support.

All these capabilities require a giant expansion of secret facilities. Thousands of hard-hatted construction workers will soon begin erecting cranes, driving backhoes, and emptying cement trucks as they expand the boundaries of NSA’s secret city eastward, increasing its already enormous size by a third. “You could tell that some of the seniors at NSA were truly concerned that cyber was going to engulf them,” says a former senior Cyber Command official, “and I think rightfully so.”

In May, work began on a $3.2 billion facility housed at Fort Meade in Maryland. Known as Site M, the 227-acre complex includes its own 150-megawatt power substation, 14 administrative buildings, 10 parking garages, and chiller and boiler plants. The server building will have 90,000 square feet of raised floor—handy for supercomputers—yet hold only 50 people. Meanwhile, the 531,000-square-foot operations center will house more than 1,300 people. In all, the buildings will have a footprint of 1.8 million square feet. Even more ambitious plans, known as Phase II and III, are on the drawing board. Stretching over the next 16 years, they would quadruple the footprint to 5.8 million square feet, enough for nearly 60 buildings and 40 parking garages, costing $5.2 billion and accommodating 11,000 more cyberwarriors.

In short, despite the sequestration, layoffs, and furloughs in the federal government, it’s a boom time for Alexander. In April, as part of its 2014 budget request, the Pentagon asked Congress for $4.7 billion for increased “cyberspace operations,” nearly $1 billion more than the 2013 allocation. At the same time, budgets for the CIA and other intelligence agencies were cut by almost the same amount, $4.4 billion. A portion of the money going to Alexander will be used to create 13 cyberattack teams.

What’s good for Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a burgeoning sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With those conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking to Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the US spends about $30 billion annually on cybersecurity goods and services.

In the past few years, the contractors have embarked on their own cyber building binge parallel to the construction boom at Fort Meade: General Dynamics opened a 28,000-square-foot facility near the NSA; SAIC cut the ribbon on its new seven-story Cyber Innovation Center; the giant CSC unveiled its Virtual Cyber Security Center. And at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where former NSA director Mike McConnell was hired to lead the cyber effort, the company announced a “cyber-solutions network” that linked together nine cyber-focused facilities. Not to be outdone, Boeing built a new Cyber Engagement Center. Leaving nothing to chance, it also hired retired Army major general Barbara Fast, an old friend of Alexander’s, to run the operation. (She has since moved on.)

Defense contractors have been eager to prove that they understand Alexander’s worldview. “Our Raytheon cyberwarriors play offense and defense,” says one help-wanted site. Consulting and engineering firms such as Invertix and Parsons are among dozens posting online want ads for “computer network exploitation specialists.” And many other companies, some unidentified, are seeking computer and network attackers. “Firm is seeking computer network attack specialists for long-term government contract in King George County, VA,” one recent ad read. Another, from Sunera, a Tampa, Florida, company, said it was hunting for “attack and penetration consultants.”

One of the most secretive of these contractors is Endgame Systems, a startup backed by VCs including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group. Established in Atlanta in 2008, Endgame is transparently antitransparent. “We’ve been very careful not to have a public face on our company,” former vice president John M. Farrell wrote to a business associate in an email that appeared in a WikiLeaks dump. “We don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,”

added founder Christopher Rouland. True to form, the company declined wired’s interview requests.

Perhaps for good reason: According to news reports, Endgame is developing ways to break into Internet-connected devices through chinks in their antivirus armor. Like safecrackers listening to the click of tumblers through a stethoscope, the “vulnerability researchers” use an extensive array of digital tools to search for hidden weaknesses in commonly used programs and systems, such as Windows and Internet Explorer. And since no one else has ever discovered these unseen cracks, the manufacturers have never developed patches for them.

Thus, in the parlance of the trade, these vulnerabilities are known as “zero-day exploits,” because it has been zero days since they have been uncovered and fixed. They are the Achilles’ heel of the security business, says a former senior intelligence official involved with cyberwarfare. Those seeking to break into networks and computers are willing to pay millions of dollars to obtain them.

According to Defense News’ C4ISR Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek, Endgame also offers its intelligence clients—agencies like Cyber Command, the NSA, the CIA, and British intelligence—a unique map showing them exactly where their targets are located. Dubbed Bonesaw, the map displays the geolocation and digital address of basically every device connected to the Internet around the world, providing what’s called network situational awareness. The client locates a region on the password-protected web-based map, then picks a country and city— say, Beijing, China. Next the client types in the name of the target organization, such as the Ministry of Public Security’s No. 3 Research Institute, which is responsible for computer security—or simply enters its address, 6 Zhengyi Road. The map will then display what software is running on the computers inside the facility, what types of malware some may contain, and a menu of custom-designed exploits that can be used to secretly gain entry. It can also pinpoint those devices infected with malware, such as the Conficker worm, as well as networks turned into botnets and zombies— the equivalent of a back door left open.

Bonesaw also contains targeting data on US allies, and it is soon to be upgraded with a new version codenamed Velocity, according to C4ISR Journal. It will allow Endgame’s clients to observe in real time as hardware and software connected to the Internet around the world is added, removed, or changed. But such access doesn’t come cheap. One leaked report indicated that annual subscriptions could run as high as $2.5 million for 25 zero-day exploits.

The buying and using of such a subscription by nation-states could be seen as an act of war. “If you are engaged in reconnaissance on an adversary’s systems, you are laying the electronic battlefield and preparing to use it,” wrote Mike Jacobs, a former NSA director for information assurance, in a McAfee report on cyberwarfare. “In my opinion, these activities constitute acts of war, or at least a prelude to future acts of war.” The question is, who else is on the secretive company’s client list? Because there is as of yet no oversight or regulation of the cyberweapons trade, companies in the cyber-industrial complex are free to sell to whomever they wish. “It should be illegal,” says the former senior intelligence official involved in cyber­warfare. “I knew about Endgame when I was in intelligence. The intelligence community didn’t like it, but they’re the largest consumer of that business.”

Thus, in their willingness to pay top dollar for more and better zero-day exploits, the spy agencies are helping drive a lucrative, dangerous, and unregulated cyber arms race, one that has developed its own gray and black markets. The companies trading in this arena can sell their wares to the highest bidder—be they frontmen for criminal hacking groups or terrorist organizations or countries that bankroll terrorists, such as Iran. Ironically, having helped create the market in zero-day exploits and then having launched the world into the era of cyberwar, Alexander now says the possibility of zero-day exploits falling into the wrong hands is his “greatest worry.”

He has reason to be concerned. In May, Alexander discovered that four months earlier someone, or some group or nation, had secretly hacked into a restricted US government database known as the National Inventory of Dams. Maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, it lists the vulnerabilities for the nation’s dams, including an estimate of the number of people who might be killed should one of them fail. Meanwhile, the 2013 “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” gave the US a D on its maintenance of dams. There are 13,991 dams in the US that are classified as high-hazard, the report said. A high-hazard dam is defined as one whose failure would cause loss of life. “That’s our concern about what’s coming in cyberspace—a destructive element. It is a question of time,” Alexander said in a talk to a group involved in information operations and cyberwarfare, noting that estimates put the time frame of an attack within two to five years. He made his comments in September 2011.

[Fuzz]

And yet Spielberg lived to give unto us the misery that is "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"....

[mazolaman]

Very interesting article Mika, thanks for posting.

[CanuckSARTech]

And yet Spielberg lived to give unto us the misery that is "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"....

I think that's more due to the unwieldly influence of the Great Plaid One, Jar Jar Lucas.

[MIKA27]

And yet Spielberg lived to give unto us the misery that is "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"....

I liked Indiana Jones and Kingdom of Crystal skull.

I don't believe any Indiana Jones flick was ever Non Fiction. They always bordered Fiction more than anything as well as superstition and conspiracy. The Crystal Skull side is based on the mythology (Mayan) that Alien beings had visited this planet thousands of years ago. (True or untrue, I enjoyed the movie a great deal).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_skull

I think if anything, the casting could have been somewhat better, mostly Cate Blanchett (Irina Spalko - Bad Russian accent)

Can't have been that bad considering it made $317,011,114 at the box office.

[MIKA27]

I think that's more due to the unwieldly influence of the Great Plaid One, Jar Jar Lucas.

Lucas is a great visionary but he writes the worst scripts ever IMO. I agree Keith Jar Jar Binks is the worst of all his creations as were the Ewoks. If you were to remove Jar Jar and the Ewoks, the movies could have been less 'Corny'.

[MIKA27]

Very interesting article Mika, thanks for posting.

Thank you for reading Maz

[MIKA27]

The Bermuda Triangle Explained

The dangers associated with sailing through the Bermuda Triangle have been a part of American folklore since the 1960’s. To this day, the myths associated with the Bermuda triangle still hold a place in the hearts of the superstitious. According to the legend, countless planes and ships have gone missing traversing the area south-east of the United States, and no one really knows why. Some hypothesize that the loss of so many ships and planes may be associated with some undiscovered natural phenomenon, alien abductions, or wormholes.

According to the myth, countless ships and planes have disappeared without a trace when travelling through the Bermuda triangle. Surprisingly, however, captains and pilots do not avoid this region. In fact, the area actually sees a great deal of traffic, both in the air and the sea. Every day, commercial flights fly through that region. In reality, a plane or boat hasn’t gone missing in the Triangle in over 10 years.

Larry Kusche, a research librarian at Arizona University, wanted to learn more about the history of the Bermuda Triangle, so he began to research major disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Surprisingly, none of the disappearances were mysterious at all.

The mystery comes purely from misinformation and exaggeration. For example, bad weather was often a cause of accidents, yet writers often mentioned that the ship or plane was traveling in good weather. This was done purely to sensationalize the news and sell newspapers. According to Kusche, no one ever finds the crashed boats or planes because the Bermuda Triangle area is so large that searching for lost ships is like looking for “a needle in a field of haystacks”. Some writers aren’t even in agreement on the size of the haystack. Originally, the area was defined by the triangle formed by a point in Florida, a point in Puerto Rico, and a point at Bermuda, but the number of different definitions is proportional to the number of writers who’ve taken up the topic.

More evidence to suggest that the Bermuda Triangle is not a death-zone for ships and planes is the fact that the US Navy “does not believe that the Bermuda Triangle exists”. The Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard have all conducted extensive investigations on incidents that occurred within the Triangle and have not concluded that there is any mystery to be solved. The Navy report of Flight 19, the incident that is often pointed to as evidence of some mystery around the Bermuda Triangle, is that the planes crashed simply because the planes ran out of fuel, and nothing more.

Furthermore, vessels travelling through the Bermuda triangle are not charged higher rates of insurance. Surely, if so many vessels were being lost, insurance companies would be losing money insuring these vessels. But the fact remains: The rate of damage to ships and planes over the Bermuda Triangle are so low that it would be fraudulent for insurance companies to charge vessels higher rates.

For years, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been used to entertain and to scare travellers. For almost as long, the Bermuda Triangle myth has been refuted, yet it still persists in the world culture due to our fascination with the paranormal.

[MIKA27]

Extensive Ancient Underground Network Discovered Across Europe

Archaeologists uncovered thousands of Stone Age underground tunnels, stretching across Europe from Scotland to Turkey, perplexing researchers as to their original purpose.

German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch, in his book "Secrets of the Underground Door to an Ancient World" revealed that tunnels were dug under literally hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over Europe and the fact that so many tunnels have survived 12,000 years indicates that the original network must have been huge.

In Bavaria in Germany alone we have found 700metres of these underground tunnel networks. In Styria in Austria we have found 350metres," he said.

Across Europe there were thousands of them - from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean.

The tunnels are quite small, measuring only 70cm in width, which is just enough for a person to crawl through. In some places there are small rooms, storage chambers and seating areas.

The Stone Age was the first of the three-age system of archaeology, which divides human technological prehistory into three periods: The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, The Iron Age.

The transition out of the Stone Age occurred between 6000 BC and 2500 BC for much of humanity living in North Africa and Eurasia.

While many believe Stone Age humans were primitive, incredible discoveries such as the 12,000 year-old temple called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, the pyramids of Egypt and other structures such as Stonehenge, which demonstrate extremely advanced astronomical knowledge indicates that they were not as primitive as many believe.

The discovery of a vast network of tunnels indicates that Stone Age humans were not just spending their days hunting and gathering. However, the real purpose of the tunnels is still a matter of speculation.

Some experts believe they were a way of protecting man from predators while others believe they were a way for people to travel safely, sheltered from harsh weather conditions or even wars and violence.

However, at this stage scientists are only able to guess, as the tunnels have not yet revealed all their secrets of the past.

[MIKA27]

Hitler and the Ark

Although the Second World War came to a decisive and bloody conclusion way back in 1945, it was a six-year-long and carnage-filled event that still provokes major discussion and commentary to this very day. One of the many notable reasons for that same commentary relates to the secret, wartime actions of the Nazis in relation to: (a) priceless historical treasures plundered by Adolf Hitler’s hordes as a means to fund its war-effort, and B: Nazi-Germany’s over-riding fascination with religious and priceless artifacts.

Just like the maniacal Hitler himself, a significant body of high-ranking Nazis, such as Richard Walther Darré, Rudolf Hess, Otto Rahn, and Heinrich Himmler had major, unsettling obsessions with matters of a supernatural and mystical nature. Rahn, for example, who made his mark in a wing of Nazi-Germany’s greatly feared SS, spent a significant period of time deeply engaged in a quest to find the so-called Holy Grail, which, according to Christian teachings, was the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the legendary Last Supper.

That the Grail was said to possess awesome and devastating powers spurred the Nazis on even more in their attempts to locate it, and then utilize those same powers as weapons of war against the Allies. Thankfully, the plans of the Nazis did not come to fruition, and the Allies were not pummeled into the ground by the mighty fists of God.

Acknowledged by many historians with being the ultimate driving-force behind such research, Heinrich Himmler was, perhaps, the one high-ranking official in the Third Reich, more than any other, most obsessed with the occult. In 1935, Himmler became a key player in the establishment of the Ahnenerbe, which was basically the ancestral heritage division of the SS.

With its work largely coordinated according to the visions of one Dr. Hermann Wirth, the chief motivation of the Ahnenerbe was to conduct research into the realm of religious-themed archaeology; however, its work also spilled over into areas such as the occult – the latter, primarily from the perspective of determining if it was a tool that, like the Holy Grail, could be useful to further strengthen the Nazi war-machine.

Then there is Trevor Ravenscroft’s book The Spear of Destiny, which detailed a particularly odd fascination Adolf Hitler had with the fabled spear, or lance, that supposedly pierced the body of Jesus during the crucifixion. Ravenscroft’s book maintained that Hitler deliberately started the Second World War with the intention of trying to secure the spear – again as a weapon to be used against the Allies – and with which he was said to be overwhelmingly obsessed.

So the account went, however, Hitler utterly failed. Ravenscroft suggested as the conflict of 1939-1945 came to its end, the spear came into the hands of U.S. General George Patton. According to legend, losing the spear would result in nothing less than death – a prophecy that that was said to have been definitively fulfilled when Hitler, fortunately for the Allies, committed suicide.

But, perhaps not every ancient artifact remained quite so elusive to Hitler. One rumor suggests that an attempt on the part of the Nazis to locate the remains – or, at least, some of the remains – of nothing less than the legendary Ark of Noah was actually, and incredibly, successful. It’s a strange and secret story indeed.

The Bible states: “God said unto Noah…Make thee an ark of gopher wood…And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” A cubit roughly equates to twenty inches – thus making the Ark five-hundred feet in length, eighty-three feet in width and fifty-feet in height.

In addition, it is said the Ark was powerful enough to withstand the cataclysmic flood that allegedly overtook the globe and lasted for forty terrible days and nights. So the legend has it, when the flood waters finally receded, the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.

Precisely why Hitler was apparently hot on the trail of the Ark is tantalizingly unclear; however, that he was certainly after it is not a matter of doubt. Intelligence files generated by Britain’s highly secret MI6 in 1948 state that, in the closing stages of the War, rumors were coming out of Turkey to the effect that German military personnel were then engaged in a secret program that involved flying a sophisticated spy-balloon – based upon radical, Japanese designs – over Mount Ararat, as part of an attempt to photograph the area.

And, if the operation proved successful in locating the Ark, to recover it, or whatever remains still might be left, given the lengthy passage of time and the harsh conditions that exist on the permanently snow-capped mountain.

The secrets of the ancient past may be only a locked vault away, such as depicted in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hey Fuzz....

[MIKA27]

Mystery of the Mary Celeste: Seafaring Superstitions & St Elmo’s Fire

When the US merchant ship, Mary Celeste, was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean without a soul on board by the crew of British brig, Dei Gratia, on 5 December 1872, one of the most baffling maritime mysteries was born.

With the Mary Celeste in good seaworthy condition when boarded by the crew of the Dei Gratia, there appeared to be no plausible reason for the captain, crew and passengers to have abandoned the vessel, along with the six month’s provision of food and water still on board. For the crew of the Dei Gratia, however, one thing was clear – those on board had abandoned the vessel in a hurry.

The question that for many still remains today is why?

The theories as to why the Mary Celeste was abandoned in such a hurry are many and varied. These range from attack by pirates or drunken, murderous sailors through to dubious claims of abduction by aliens or mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle (although the ship did not sail through the Triangle on that voyage). But perhaps the most plausible of all theories is that an explosion in the hold of the vessel, caused by leaking alcohol fumes from a white oak wine barrel, led the captain to order, “Abandon ship!”

But could there be another, somewhat more mysterious, possibility?

Sailors’ Tales of the Supernatural

Adelaide’s The Register, on 2 February 1920, published Sailors’ Tales of the Supernatural. In this article, Clive Holland, described as a much-traveled author, recounted a story he had been told years earlier by an “old God-fearing Scottish sea captain” on a possible encounter with St Elmo’s fire while sailing the Atlantic.

One day the first mate came to him and said that on the previous night, during his watch, he had seen a fearsome shape climbing down the rigging. It had emitted a phosphorescent glow, and was part man, part beast. The captain said, ‘I simply laughed at Jackson, and told him he had taken too much to drink. But the man was very serious, and told me that the helmsman, and one of the watch, had also seen the ‘shape’.

Was this phosphorescent glowing “shape” witnessed by the first mate and helmsman the phenomenon known as St Elmo’s fire?

Whatever it was, the superstitious seafarers aboard the ship, including the captain, were left terror-stricken by its appearance.

“Next night the captain was aroused about 1.30 a.m. by hurried footsteps on deck. The mate, his face distorted with fear, appeared in the doorway of the captain’s cabin, and entreated the latter to come on deck.”

The captain raced to the deck, where he saw for himself the glowing “shape” its phosphorescent rays lighting amidships.

“It was impossible to deny the presence of this terrific and terrifying shape,” the captain told Holland. Feeling his hair rising on his head, and “summoning all my courage,” the captain advanced to meet the “thing”.

“I walked straight through it, feeling at the same instant a chill such as I have never felt either before or since,” the captain recounted.

The next morning, the superstitious crew, headed by the first mate, confronted the captain and vowed that if the glowing “shape” appeared again that night, they would immediately abandon ship.

An Omen of Death?

Another intriguing, yet tragic, incident reinforcing the superstitious fears of seafarers experiencing St Elmo’s fire was recounted in The Capricornian in February 1909.

A curious incident occurred on the Maria before she was wrecked which may be referred to, though it savours of superstition. During the time the Mariawas being driven south by the monsoon, a dancing light was seen on the mast of the vessel, a sort of will-o’-the-wisp. This light the sailors called a ‘ghost-light,’ and stated that it portended some disaster. The light was seen for several nights, and the curious thing about it was that every person could not see it. Mr. Ingham, for instance, failed to see it, though his three mates pointed it out to him again and again. At length one of them said: ‘If you cannot see that light you must be blind.’

Following the appearance of this “ghost light” dancing about her mast, the Maria was soon lost … and the mystery deepened.

“However, Mr. Ingham was by no means the only one who could not see the light, and those who failed to do so could not make the affair out, as the others were so earnest about it. When the eight saved on the raft were on shore, the matter was brought up by Forster, and it was found that all those who had seen the mysterious light, including Ingham’s three mates, were drowned, while none of those saved saw the mysterious light. Mr. Ingham can give no solution of the extraordinary occurrence, but merely tells exactly what occurred.”

Could those on board the Mary Celeste have also witnessed St Elmo’s fire dancing about her mast, and believing this “ghost light” to be an omen of impending death, hastily rushed to the lifeboat and abandoned a seaworthy and well-provisioned ship?