The coordinated cyber attack that crippled parts of the internet on Friday highlighted key policy problems, a Stanford cybersecurity scholar said.And while the problems were clear, there are no easy solutions, said Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyberpolicy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lin serves on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

Beginning early Friday morning, several major websites including Twitter and Amazon went down for most of the day, and many other sites were inaccessible. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating what is described as a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. The attacks mainly focused on Dyn, one of the companies that run the internet’s domain name system (DNS).

The following is an interview with Lin:

What happened on Oct. 21?

It was a distributed denial-of-service attack on a major internet services provider. The company operates much of the internet’s infrastructure. It’s not a consumer-facing company, but is in between the user and a company like, say, Amazon. These attacks centered on the domain name system (DNS), which is the service that translates something like stanford.edu into a numerical IP address. People remember Amazon.com, but they don’t remember the numerical IP address (which is actually where a company like Dyn sends web users going to a site like Amazon). What a DOS attack involves is the flooding of this (Dyn) company’s servers with millions of fake requests from sources for service to go to those web sites. Being forced to process all these requests, the company can’t service real people trying to use web sites. On Friday, the millions of sources making these requests appear to have been part of the Internet of Things.

What is the Internet of Things, and how did it factor into the cyberattack?

In this case, they weren’t, by and large, products like your computer or mine, but were mostly smaller things like surveillance cameras, baby monitors and home routers [everyday objects that have network connectivity to the internet]. What makes these things particularly vulnerable is that they are small, they don’t have much computational power in them, and they don’t include many, if any, security features. In fact, a Chinese company just admitted that it didn’t pay enough attention to security, and they recommend users do some things to improve security. But they shipped their products without paying much attention to security, and that’s why this was a vulnerability.

What new public policies could lessen the likelihood of this happening again?

The primary policy recommendation is that we need policy that encourages – or mandates, depending on how strong you want to be about it – at least minimal security measures for devices that connect to the internet, even Internet of Things devices. How you actually promote, encourage or incentivize that without a legal mandate is problematic, however, because nobody quite knows what the market will accept. Also, if you’re going to force manufacturers to pay attention to security, you’re going to reduce the rate of innovation for these products. Then there’s the question of who’s going to buy them, because the unsecure ones will probably be cheaper. The fundamental problem here is that guys who use the Internet of Things, like surveillance cameras, will find those cameras work perfectly fine, even if they were compromised. So they don’t care about security. They have no incentive to do so. Why should they pay more to protect me?

Does this show that our November election is even more vulnerable to hacking?

At this point, it looks unrelated … But I don’t know, it is all just speculation.

Herb Lin's research interests focus on policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, especially regarding the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy. In addition to his Stanford positions, he is chief scientist, emeritus, for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. Prior to this, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. To learn more, read Lin's "An Evolving Research Agenda in Cyber Policy and Security."

MEDIA CONTACTS

Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Caixin Media writes about REAP's research on rural China's epidemic of slow cognitive development, caused by poor parenting. Read the original article here.

Children in rural areas of China suffer from slow cognitive development due to a lack of proper parenting and nutrition, casting a shadow over the future of the country's economy, a Stanford University study shows.

Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Stanford University Rural Education Action Program (REAP), told Caixin that more than half of the toddlers 24 to 30 months old and about 40% of the infants 6 to 18 months old scored below average in IQ tests. The average IQ score for these age groups should range between 90 to 109.

By monitoring the development of 2,500 children across Shaanxi, Hebei and Yunnan provinces in 2015, the REAP study found that the poor development of rural children was mostly due to poor parenting.

Only about 5% of parents in rural areas read books to their children, and 70% of families surveyed possessed only one book, or no books at all, the study showed.

"Chinese families love their children but don't know much about parenting," Rozelle said. "They think reading a book or singing to their babies is silly because they think 'They're just babies.' "

The study also showed that malnutrition also contributed to poor development.

The situation in rural areas could pose a major challenge for China as the country shifts its economy from traditional low-margin manufacturing to services and technology, Rozelle said. If learning difficulties cannot be overcome before a child reaches the age of 3 — a crucial window for child development — hundreds of millions of young people could be in danger of becoming permanently impaired physically and developmentally.

"Ultimately, if China becomes a high-wage, high-income society, a large share of these children will be unemployable," he said.

Malnutrition also contributes to slower intellectual development, the study showed. More than 70% of infants 6 to 18 months old in Yunnan have anemia — a lack of red cells that ferry oxygen around the body. The figure is about 60% in Hebei, and 50% in Shaanxi.

While nutritional supplements could help promote improved cognitive skills, the impact was seen to be relatively small and only aided infants 6 to 18 months old, the study showed.

China’s recent initiatives to deepen health reform, control antimicrobial resistance, and strengthen primary health services are the topics of ongoing collaborative research by the Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and Chinese counterparts. For example, with generous support from ACON Biotechnology and in partnership with the ACON Biotech Primary Care Research Center in Hangzhou, China, AHPP hosts an annual conference on community health services and primary health care reform in China.

The conference, titled Forum on Community Health Services and Primary Health Care Reform, was held in June at the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU) in Beijing. It featured distinguished policymakers, providers and researchers who discussed a wide-range of topics from China’s emerging “hierarchical medical system” for referring patients to the appropriate level of care (fenji zhenliao), as well as the practice and challenges of innovative approaches to primary care and integrated medical care systems. Yongquan Chen, director of Yong’an City Hospital and representative for the mayor’s office of Sanming, talked about health reforms in Sanming City, Fujian Province, a famous example within China. He discussed the incentives and reasoning behind the reforms, which focus on removing incentives for over-prescription of medications, demonstrating government leadership for comprehensive reforms, consolidating three agencies into one, monitoring implementation and easing tensions between doctors and patients. He pointed out the feasibility and early successes of reform by comparing public hospitals in the city in terms of their revenues and costs, reduced reliance on net revenue from medication sales, and other dimensions of performance. Finally, he addressed reform implementation and future plans on both the hospital's and the government's part.

Xiaofang Han, former director of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission, shared her personal views on the challenges patients face in navigating China’s health system (kan bing nan) and the need to improve the structure of the delivery system, including a revision to the incentives driving over-prescription in China’s fee-for-service payment system. She emphasized that patients’ distrust of primary care providers can only be overcome by demonstrating improved quality (e.g. with a systematic training program for general practitioners, GPs), and that referral systems should be based on the actual capabilities of the clinicians, not their formal labels. To reach China’s goal of over 80 percent of patients receiving management and first-contact care within their local communities will require improved training and incentive programs for newly-minted MDs, a more flexible physician labor market, and innovations in e-health and patient choice regarding gatekeeping or “contract physician services” (qianyue fuwu).        

Guangde County People's Hospital Director Mingliang Xu spoke about practices and exploration of healthcare alliances and initiatives to provide transparent incentives linking medical staff bonuses to metrics of quality. Ping Zhu from Community Healthcare Service Development and Research Center in Ningbo addressed building solid relationships between doctors and residents and providing more patient-centered services.        

Professor Yingyao Chen from Fudan University School of Public Health discussed performance assessment of community health service agencies based on his research in Shanghai. He introduced the strengths and weaknesses of the incentives embedded in the assessment system for China’s primary care providers, and concluded with suggestions for future research. Dr. Linlin Hu, associate professor at Peking Union Medical College, discussed China's progress and challenges of providing universal coverage of national essential public health services.

Professor Hufeng Wang of Renmin University of China discussed China’s vision for a “hierarchical medical system”– bearing resemblance to “integrated care,” “managed care,” or NHS-like coordination of primary and specialized care – with examples of pilot reforms from Xiamen, Zhenjiang and Dalian cities. Dr. Zuxun Lu, professor of Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, also discussed hierarchical medical systems and declared that China currently had a “discounted gatekeeper system.”

Dr. Yaping Du of Zhejiang University presented his research on mobile technology for management of lipid levels and with the help of a volunteer, demonstrated “Dyslipidemia Manager,” a mobile app-based product for both patients and doctors. Innovative strategies for primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases in low- and middle-income countries were the focus of remarks by Dr. Guanyang Zou from the Institute for Global Health and Development at Queen Margaret University, including its connections to international experiences with China’s current efforts in that area.  

In sum, the 2016 Forum elicited lively, evidence-based discussions about the opportunities and challenges in improving primary care and sustaining universal coverage for China.  Plans are underway for convening the third annual ACON Biotech-Stanford AHPP Forum on Community Health Services and Primary Health Care Reform in June 2017 at SCPKU. Anyone with original research or innovative experiences with primary care in China may contact Karen Eggleston regarding participation in next year’s Forum. 

Researchers in the Korea Program regularly contribute to Korean media on the Korean affairs ranging from education and economics to politics and North Korea nuclear issues. The articles are in Korean language.

Nationalist Populism in South Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, August 18, 2019)

The Ambiguous Boundary Between Korean Wave and the Anti-Korean Sentiment (Joyce Lee, May 2, 2019)

Restoring the Dignity of South Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, April 18, 2019)

Happiness and Productivity (Yong Suk Lee, March 21, 2019)

Softness Overcomes Hardness  (Joyce Lee, March 6, 2019)

What should the Hanoi Declaration lay out? (Gi-Wook Shin, February 20, 2019)

What Would an Aged Society Look Like? (Yong Suk Lee, January 23, 2019)

Confront the lure of populism or risk economic failures and the coming of a far-right extremist regime (Gi-Wook Shin, January 17, 2019)

Only a drastic measure towards denuclearization can resolve the current stalemate with North Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, interview with Korea Times, January 10, 2019)

Looking After Myself (Joyce Lee, January 9, 2019)

2018, The Moon Jae-In Government's Progress Report (Gi-Wook Shin, December 27, 2018)

Rethinking North Korean Economy? (Yong Suk Lee, November 29, 2018)

The Dark Side of the Korean Culture of Hierarchy (Joyce Lee, November 14, 2018)

Trump's Second Half (Gi-Wook Shin, November 7, 2018)

How Parents Can Help their Children with Career Planning (Yong Suk Lee, October 17, 2018)

Anticipation and Concerns Mount Ahead of the 3rd Inter-Korean Summit (Joyce Lee, September 19, 2018)

Spring on the Korean Peninsula Needs to be hard fought (Gi-Wook Shin, September 5, 2018)

Should we encourage kids to learn coding? (Yong Suk Lee, August 6, 2018)

Some Thoughts on the Korean Value of Saving Face (Joyce Lee, July 16, 2018)

Koreans abroad can play important roles in achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula (Gi-Wook Shin, July 2, 2018)

Withdrawal of US troops from South Korea now becomes an option (Gi-Wook Shin, June 20, 2018)

Trump in Face-Saving Action for Kim (Joyce Lee, June 18, 2018)

South Korea and the U.S. Differ on Priorities for North Korea Policy (Gi-Wook Shin, May 14, 2018)

Is CVID Possible? (Gi-Wook Shin, May 7, 2018)

CVID Faces Challenges (Gi-Wook Shin, May 3, 2018)

The April 27 Korea Summit and the Lingering Question of CVID+α (Gi-Wook Shin, April 30, 2018)

Choices for Your Happiness (Joyce Lee, April 23, 2018)

The Ambiguity of the Moon Government's Goal for the Inter-Korean Summit (Gi-Wook Shin, April 2, 2018)

Korea as a Pacemaker (Gi-Wook Shin, March 13, 2018)

MeToo Movement Should Create Lasting Social Change (Gi-Wook Shin, March 12, 2018)

What's Wrong with Being a Nobody? (Joyce Lee, February 26, 2018)

It's Time to Move Beyond the Political Deadlock of Comfort Women Issue (Gi-Wook Shin, January 15, 2018)

Can the Government Rouse Young Koreans from Their Dreams of Childless Comfort? (Joyce Lee, January 3, 2018)

A Grand Bargain between the US and China Seems More Likely than Ever (Yong Suk Lee, December 25, 2017)

Korea No Longer a Country of Koreans (Rennie Moon, December 11, 2017)

Moon Administration's Diplomatic and Securtiy Strategies (Gi-Wook Shin, November 27, 2017)

Making Little Mr. and Ms. Perfects, But for Whose Sake and at What Cost? (Joyce Lee, November 6, 2017)

Identifying Korea as a Developed Country (Joon Nak Choi, October 30, 2017)

Superficial Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, September 26, 2017)

What Comes After the War of Words Between Trump and Kim Jong-un (Gi-Wook Shin, September 25, 2017)

In the Midst of Rising Fears of War (Joyce Lee, September 12, 2017)

Broken English as the global language (Rennie Moon, August 28, 2017)

'Polifessors' of Moon administration (Gi-Wook Shin, July 24, 2017)

In Anticipation of the Era of Korean Studies (Joyce Lee, July 17, 2017)

Technological Change: Why Korea needs a longer-term perspective on job creation (Yong Suk Lee, June 27, 2017)

Global network of Koreans abroad (Gi-Wook Shin, June 6, 2017)

First summit meeting, not to hurry (Gi-Wook Shin, May 22, 2017)

Korean Americans' love for Korea (Rennie Moon, April 24, 2017)

Trump's anti-immigration stance to be an opportunity for Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, February 27, 2017)

A Labor market by the young, and for the young (Yong Suk Lee, January 30, 2017)

If Korean universities are to succeed with internationalization (Rennie Moon, November 21, 2016)

US presidential election and Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, October 24, 2016)

Political expediency should not block technology innovation (Joon Nak Choi, September 12, 2016)

Strategic policy on inter-Korean relations is essential (Gi-Wook Shin, August 1, 2016)

Is Korea ready to embrace risk and failure? (Yong Suk Lee, June 20, 2016)

Can Pankyo become Silicon Valley in Korea? (Gi-Wook Shin, May 9, 2016)

Jeff Decker knows what war can do to a person. He lived it for four deployments, as an Army special operations squad leader in Iraq and Afghanistan who twice earned the Army Commendation Medal for valorous conduct in combat.

Decker, who now serves as a research assistant in Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation under Joe Felter, is the founder of March on Veteran, an organization that supports veterans suffering from mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. March on Veteran is a free, online program available to any former member of the military.

Decker joined CISAC in September, about a year after he launched March on Veteran. Felter, a special forces veteran, is a senior research scholar who studies counterinsurgencies, terrorism and political violence for CISAC.

Decker, after his military service, struggled with the transition to civilian life due to the anger, anxiety, chronic pain, and sleeplessness that PTSD caused. On top of this, he did not have access to a Veteran Affairs treatment facility. That’s when the native of Buffalo, N.Y. turned to self-educating himself on mental health treatments available to veterans.

“When I studied for my doctorate in Australia, I cobbled together a mental health program to help myself. Now I’m sharing that and making those resources available to other veterans with the same needs,” said Decker, who earned his doctorate in international relations from Bond University, where he wrote his dissertation “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Private Military Contractors.”

So far, about 83 veterans have begun March on Veteran’s pilot program, which is a web-based and self-directed study. Decker handles almost all of the human contact. He is currently expanding the program to incorporate the veteran-to-veteran peer element with the help of other veteran volunteers.

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March on Veteran is, as Decker calls it, “support for veterans by veterans.” It is a recovery program personalized to one’s particular needs and is provided by people who have lived experience. It is not affiliated with any government organization like the VA or Department of Defense to maintain the veteran’s confidentiality. Veterans can access the program or sign-up to meet other veterans online.

“This program focuses on trying to help veterans reach their personal goals instead of focusing on ‘fixing’ them,” Decker said. “We are all about improving veteran quality of life, and a big part of that is connecting with other veterans.”

With Felter, Decker will be mostly working on his Hacking for Defense class project, which uses startup methodology to innovate and find solutions for critical challenges facing America’s defense and intelligence agencies.

Before arriving on campus, Decker conducted national security and international affairs research as a RAND Corporation summer associate for two summers in Washington, D.C.