March 30, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Personal protection: Using a car as cover."--Paul Harrell (12 min.)

• Active Response Training has posted this week's Weekend Knowledge Dump. Check it out.
• Also, I missed it earlier this week, but Grant Cunningham had posted his "Your Hump Day Reading List for March 28, 2018."
• For all you reloaders: "Cartridge Case Head Separation"--Aussie Hunter. Nothing lasts forever, and that is true of cartridge cases, especially if you have been loading hot loads. I generally see cracking or splitting at the shoulder of rifle cases, but that is probably because I load a lot more .223 than any other rifle caliber. However, case head separations are probably more common, overall because of the combination of metal fatigue and cases being subject to the strain of being pulled loose by extractors. The author of this article warns: "What you need to look out for is the bright, thin line around the case about 5mm (1/4 inch) above the extraction groove on the case head.  That fine, bright line is the tell-tale sign of the case wall thinning at that location." But he has a simple tool, formed from a simple paper clip, to help you discover this problem before the case head cracks or separates: 

        All it requires is a paper clip, preferably one of the larger size variety.  I actually made mine from a short length of nickel wire, after my paper clip tool went rusty.  I also filed a little chisel edge on the point in order to pick up the faintest beginnings of thinning and crack development.  However, that is nit really necessary; the blunt end of a bent paperclip will work fine.

        It takes no more than a second to check a cartridge case.  Having inserted the bent probe into the case I move it in and out three or four times as I rotate the case in my fingers.  This effectively checks the entire inner surface of the shell.  Any cases that have visible and/or probe detected thinning go into the bin.  There is no fixing them.  The last thing you want is a full separation of the case.  When that happens, the front part of the shell remains wedged tightly in the chamber while the extractor yanks out the separated base.

        This is hard enough to fix at home in the workshop, let alone out in the bush on a hunt.  The key lesson here is to always clean and inspect your fired cases before reloading.

• Some interesting history: "The Concealed Carry Guns Of US Presidents"--Alien Gear Holsters Blog. Quite a few of our presidents have collected firearms or carried a firearm for self-defense. Ronald Reagan, over Secret Service objections, carried a .38 snubbie for the most part, switching it out for a Single Action Army when he was working around his ranch.
• Paging Colin Flaherty: "On chilling video, gunman in ‘Kill Batman’ sweater kills ATM customer"--Miami Herald. Watch the video that accompanies this story carefully. The victim was at an outside ATM at night, getting cash. So, arguably doing something stupid at a stupid time and a stupid place. Although you can see the victim looking to his left and right to check for danger, he never turned to check behind him ... which is from where our perpetrator approached our victim. (I assume the victim's mother, who was sitting in their car, could have seen the perpetrator, but if she did, it doesn't appear that she honked a horn or otherwise warned him).  Anyway, the perpetrator apparently asked for the guy's money, and when the perpetrator fumbled that and dropped it, the victim attempted to use force to subdue him; and, since the perpetrator already had his gun out, the victim was shot for his efforts. Saturday Night Live used to have a video spoof of life advice called "Deep Thoughts" and one I remember was that if you drop your keys into lava, just let them go because they are gone. I have the same general feeling about a wallet or money that you have given a mugger--once you hand it over, just consider it gone. Sure, the victim may have been shot anyway, but the odds of that relative to the perpetrator just walking away are low. 
• "Gunmakers Have Sold AR-15s to Civilians for More Than 50 Years"--Motherboard. Colt started marketing a semi-auto only version of the AR-15 to the public in 1963 ... before they had received contracts from the Air Force or the Army.
• Hypocrite: "16 Interesting Facts About Steven Spielberg You Didn’t Know"--SoPo Blog. Including this one: "He owns one of the largest gun collections on the East Coast."
• Tell us how you really feel: "Every Word Liberals Say About Guns Is A Lie"--Kurt Schlichter at Townhall. Money quote: "They want us disarmed because they want us disenfranchised, discouraged, and no longer disobedient. They want us broken."
• "Dear Parkland Activists: You Admit to Bullying the Shooter, But Have the Gall to Blame Guns and the NRA?"--Louder With Crowder. From the article:

Over the weekend, one of your comrades, Emma Gonzalez, admitted to “ostracizing” the Parkland shooter. As early as middle school. In an event where you, her, and all your other weepy, whining cohorts marched against the Second Amendment rights of Americans who had nothing to do with the events in Parkland. Not only did Emma admit to ostracizing the shooter, she wasn’t sorry for it. An interesting development considering how the young man “turned out.”

• "REVEALED: How ALL of America's 28 mass attackers in 2017 were men who had experienced a huge 'life stressor' in the last five years"--Daily Mail. An article summarizing points from a recently released Secret Service report on mass attackers ("Mass Attacks in Public Places" (PDF)), including drug and gang violence. 
• So the F-35 apparently works: "Report: Israeli Stealth Fighter Jets Fly Over Iran"--Breitbart. I don't know if Israel used an American made electronic warfare package, or their own, but this is an encouraging development. According to the article, the jets flew over Syria and over portions of Iran, at high altitudes, and were not detected.
• The cartels own much of the U.S./Mexican border: "EXCLUSIVE–WATCH: Camo-Wearing Men with Backpacks Stream into U.S. from Mexico"--Breitbart. 
• The wages of sin socialism: "Doctors in violent Venezuela work under threat of death if patients die"--Miami Herald. As Venezuela descends into even greater violence--notwithstanding its strict gun control laws--it has become common for gangs to threaten doctors should their injured compatriots die. The violence and low wages has prompted many doctors to flee to more prosperous climes. According to the article, 22,000 doctors have already fled the country.
• The banality of evil: "The Real Collusion Story"--Michael Doran at The National Review. Q recommended this new article to his readers/followers. It lays out in detail the various actions and decisions taken by members of the Clinton campaign, DNC, FBI, CIA, media, and Congress to, initially, resurrect Clinton's campaign after the DNC email hacks and the unsecured server issue, and how that morphed into a conspiracy to discredit Trump by manufacturing a Russian collusion story. It is a long read, but well worth the time. One thing that will stand out, however, is that there is not evil mastermind behind all this; in fact, it seems rather mundane and petty--almost like how you would expect high school students to act. 
• This is scary: "A Cyberattack in Saudi Arabia Had a Deadly Goal. Experts Fear Another Try."--New York Times. From the article:

         In August, a petrochemical company with a plant in Saudi Arabia was hit by a new kind of cyberassault. The attack was not designed to simply destroy data or shut down the plant, investigators believe. It was meant to sabotage the firm’s operations and trigger an explosion.

      The attack was a dangerous escalation in international hacking, as faceless enemies demonstrated both the drive and the ability to inflict serious physical damage. And United States government officials, their allies and cybersecurity researchers worry that the culprits could replicate it in other countries, since thousands of industrial plants all over the world rely on the same American-engineered computer systems that were compromised.

       Investigators have been tight-lipped about the August attack. They still won’t identify the company or the country where it is based and have not identified the culprits.

* * * 

        The assault was the most alarming in a string of hacking attacks on petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia. In January 2017, computers went dark at the National Industrialization Company, Tasnee for short, which is one of the few privately owned Saudi petrochemical companies. Computers also crashed 15 miles away at Sadara Chemical Company, a joint venture between the oil and chemical giants Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical.

        Within minutes of the attack at Tasnee, the hard drives inside the company’s computers were destroyed and their data wiped clean, replaced with an image of Alan Kurdi, the small Syrian child who drowned off the coast of Turkey during his family’s attempt to flee that country’s civil war.

       The intent of the January attacks, Tasnee officials and researchers at the security company Symantec believe, was to inflict lasting damage on the petrochemical companies and send a political message. Recovery took months.

* * *

        Some technical details of the attack in August have been previously reported, but this is the first time the earlier attacks on Tasnee and other Saudi petrochemical companies have been reported.

       Security analysts at Mandiant, a division of the security firm FireEye, are still investigating what happened in August, with the help of several companies in the United States that investigate cyberattacks on industrial control systems.

        A team at Schneider Electric, which made the industrial systems that were targeted, called Triconex safety controllers, is also looking into the attack, the people who spoke to The Times said. So are the National Security Agency, the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been supporting research into forensic tools designed to assist hacking investigations.

        All of the investigators believe the attack was most likely intended to cause an explosion that would have killed people. In the last few years, explosions at petrochemical plants in China and Mexico — though not triggered by hackers — have killed several employees, injured hundreds and forced evacuations of surrounding communities.

        What worries investigators and intelligence analysts the most is that the attackers compromised Schneider’s Triconex controllers, which keep equipment operating safely by performing tasks like regulating voltage, pressure and temperatures. Those controllers are used in about 18,000 plants around the world, including nuclear and water treatment facilities, oil and gas refineries, and chemical plants.

       “If attackers developed a technique against Schneider equipment in Saudi Arabia, they could very well deploy the same technique here in the United States,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

        The Triconex system was believed to be a “lock and key operation.” In other words, the safety controllers could be tweaked or dismantled only with physical contact.

       So how did the hackers get in? Investigators found an odd digital file in a computer at an engineering workstation that looked like a legitimate part of the Schneider controllers but was designed to sabotage the system. Investigators will not say how it got there, but they do not believe it was an inside job. This was the first time these systems were sabotaged remotely.

         The only thing that prevented significant damage was a bug in the attackers’ computer code that inadvertently shut down the plant’s production systems.

       Investigators believe that the hackers have probably fixed their mistake by now, and that it is only a matter of time before they deploy the same technique against another industrial control system. A different group could also use those tools for its own attack.