J. G. Sandom ~ Author

404 — Dutch Man Said to Be Held in Powerful Internet Attack

Sven Kamphuis has been suspected of starting a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack against Spamhaus, the antispam group. Such attacks are a criminal offense under Dutch law. Check out this piece by Nicole Perlroth of the Times.

Sven Kamphuis

Dutch Man Said to Be Held in Powerful Internet Attack

By NICOLE PERLROTH

Dutch authorities say police officials in Spain have arrested a man believed to be connected to an online attack on a spam-fighting site that snarled the Internet last month.

While the authorities did not give the full name of the man in a statement published on a Dutch government Web site, they identified him as “S.K.” A source close to the investigation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the arrested man was Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a 35-year-old Dutch man who has been the spokesman of a group that was protesting a European antispam group’s tactics.

Spanish police arrested the man on Thursday at his home in Barcelona, at the request of the Dutch police, and seized his computers and mobile phones. He is expected to be sent to the Netherlands. Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for Dutch national prosecutor’s office, said “S.K.” was suspected of playing a role in a wave of attacks last month.

His arrest came after an investigation by authorities in the Netherlands and other European countries into Mr. Kamphuis’s involvement in one of the largest attacks on the Internet. Mr. Kamphuis has been suspected of starting a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack against Spamhaus, the antispam group. Such attacks are a criminal offense under Dutch law.

Mr. Kamphuis calls himself the “minister of telecommunications and foreign affairs for the Republic of CyberBunker.” But many consider him to be the Prince of Spam. He runs CB3ROB, an Internet service provider, and CyberBunker, a Web hosting company that in the past has hosted sites like WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay, a site accused of abetting digital content piracy.

Antispam groups say they believe CyberBunker acts as a conduit for vast amounts of spam. Last month, Spamhaus, an antispam group based in Geneva, added CyberBunker to its blacklist, which is used by major e-mail providers to block spam.

In the days and weeks after the blacklisting, Spamhaus was targeted with an DDoS attack, which flooded the site with traffic until it fell offline.

After Spamhaus hired a Silicon Valley Internet security firm, CloudFlare, to defend against the attack, the attackers turned their ire on CloudFlare. When efforts to bring down CloudFlare were unsuccessful, the attackers hit back with a far more powerful strike that exploited the Internet’s core infrastructure, called the Domain Name System, or D.N.S.

Their attack quickly reached previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second, which resulted in slowing Internet traffic for millions of Internet users around the world.

Mr. Kamphuis has denied his role in the attack and said he was only a spokesman for Stophaus, a loose organization set up to take down Spamhaus. Asked about his involvement in the attacks last month, Mr. Kamphuis told The New York Times, “We are aware that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks the world has seen so far, yes.”

But through his Facebook page, Mr. Kamphuis has actively called on hackers to take Spamhaus offline.

“Yo anons, we could use a little help in shutting down illegal slander and blackmail censorship project ‘spamhaus.org,’ which thinks it can dictate its views on what should and should not be on the Internet,” he said on Facebook on March 23.

Dutch prosecutors singled out Mr. Kamphuis because of his vocal role. Greenhost, a Dutch Internet hosting service, said in a blog post that it had found CB3ROB’s digital fingerprints while studying the attack traffic directed at Spamhaus.

Mr. Kamphuis’s arrest in Barcelona was made through the European Union’s judicial collaboration unit, Eurojust.

An anonymous statement was posted to Pastebin, a Web forum for hackers, on Friday, proclaiming Mr. Kamphuis’s innocence and threatening another round of attacks if he is not released. “We demand u to release Sven or we will indeed start the biggest attack u humans have ever experienced toward The Internet, and yourself,” the hacker wrote.

Eric Pfanner contributed reporting.

404 — Officials: Body found in water off Providence, RI, park is that of missing Brown Univ. student ~ Welcome to the world of e-lynching

I was greatly troubled by most of the quick-let's-get-it-out-there-even-if-it's-wrong coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings by the mainstream media, and highly offended by the way in which it was "covered" on the Net (blogosphere, twittersphere, reddit, etc.). Now that the body of 22-year-old Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, who went missing after the Boston Marathon bombings, and who was wrongly accused by the noösphere . . . I mean blogosphere/twittersphere . . . has been found, I am absolutely appaled. Let's call a spade a spade. This was nothing short of an e-lynching. Bad enough that the Boston police had to tell folks not to tweet about their locations during the manhunt (really, people, have you no sense at all!), but to see this boy found dead — either from suicide or murder (I doubt it was accidental) — just makes my blood boil. SHAME ON YOU IF YOU POSTED PICTURES OF ALLEGED SUSPECTS DURING THE MANHUNT. Sunil's blood is on your hands. When will we learn that having brown skin is not a crime!

See this story from the AP which appeared in The Washington Post.

 

Officials: Body found in water off Providence, RI, park is that of missing Brown Univ. student

RIP Sunil

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A body pulled from waters off a Providence park was that of a 22-year-old Brown University student missing since last month, the Rhode Island medical examiner’s office said Thursday.

Sunil Tripathi was identified through a forensic dental exam, but a cause of death has not been determined, said Dara Chadwick, a spokeswoman for the state health department.

The announcement put an end to the mystery of Tripathi’s disappearance, which became doubly painful for his family when amateur online sleuths wrongly identified him as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Tripathi’s family, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., said it was overcome with grief but grateful for the outpouring of support relatives got over the last month.

“As we carry indescribable grief, we also feel incredible gratitude,” the Tripathi family said in a statement on a Facebook page set up to help find Tripathi, who went by Sunny. “To each one of you — from our hometown to many distant lands — we extend our thanks for the words of encouragement, for your thoughts, for your hands, for your prayers, and for the love you have so generously shared.”

Tripathi’s body was found Tuesday by members of the Brown crew team off of India Point Park and was brought to shore by its coach, Providence Police Cmdr. Thomas Oates said. He said the body had been in the water for “some time.”

Tripathi’s family had been searching for him since mid-March with help from the FBI and fellow Brown students. His sister, Sangeeta, said he left his phone, wallet and other belongings in his apartment near campus and simply disappeared. He was on leave from the Ivy League school, where he was studying philosophy, and had been going through a difficult time, she said.

Last week, speculation swirled on Twitter and the website Reddit that Tripathi was the second of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings because some thought he resembled one of the people in photos released by the FBI. That person turned out to be 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, authorities said.

Reddit later apologized to Tripathi’s family for fueling “online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties.”

Tripathi’s family responded to the speculation in a Facebook post that read: “A tremendous and painful amount of attention has been cast on our beloved Sunil Tripathi in the past 12 hours. We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil.”

The family said in its statement Thursday that the last month “has changed our lives forever, and we hope it will change yours too.”

The family went on: “Take care of one another. Be gentle, be compassionate. Be open to letting someone in when it is you who is faltering. Lend your hand. We need it. The world needs it.”

Brown President Christina H. Paxson sent a message to the campus community Thursday, saying Tripathi — the brother of two Brown graduates— would be remembered for his “gentle demeanor and generous spirit.” She described him as an accomplished saxophonist and a “serious, thoughtful, intellectually curious student and a brilliant writer.”

Rainy Afternoon in West Philly — A Song by J.G. Sandom

 

Clouds are rolling in;
it’s getting dark.
I know where you’ve been,
not where you are.

Rain is pouring down;
it fills my heart.
Thunder without sound;
All comes apart.

CHORUS
What is the point if you’re not here?
The world is an empty place, I fear.
All that is left of us are tears
falling down and down and down from the sky.

All things must conclude,
all straight things bend.
Even this black mood
will find its end.

The sun will shine again,
The clouds dissolve.
And the deepest pain
Will be resolved.

CHORUS

Now, you may be gone,
but this I’ve learned:
There’s hope in a song,
a memory burned.

 

 

Please forgive my crappy voice; I am trying to find someone else to sing this tune. (Ahem, Ranwa!) But this should give you a sense of what I had in mind when I wrote this. If you have a good jazz voice and you would like to sing over this music, please give me a shout-out.

(Bass courtesy of Harvey Brooks. Thank you, Harvey!)

 

404 — Campaigners call for international ban on 'killer robots'

This is yet another salvo in the effort to place a moratorium on "killer" robots — autonomous machines designed to kill humans. Check out this story from the BBC.

 

The Taranis is an experimental unmanned combat aircraft designed to attack targets without a pilot in the cockpit

Campaigners call for international ban on 'killer robots'

By Stuart Hughes

A pre-emptive ban is needed to halt the production of weapons capable of attacking targets without any human intervention, a new campaign has urged.

Jody Williams, from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, told the BBC such weapons, which do not yet exist, would be regarded as "repulsive".

But some scientists argue existing laws are sufficient to regulate their use, should they become a reality.

The UK government has said it has no plans to develop such technology.

Weapons with a degree of autonomy, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - commonly known as drones - are already widely used on the battlefield.

"The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems”
                                        Jody Williams, Campaigner

Such weapons are described as "human-in-the-loop" systems because they can only select targets and deliver lethal force with a human command.

But organisers of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots - a global effort being launched on Tuesday - say advances in robotic technology mean it is only a matter of time before fully autonomous "human-out-of-the-loop" systems - capable of firing on their own - are developed.

They argue that giving machines the power over who lives and dies in war would be an unacceptable application of technology, and would pose a fundamental challenge to international human rights and humanitarian laws.

Estimates vary over how long it could be before such weapons are available, but the group says a new treaty is needed to pre-emptively outlaw their development, production and use.

Is a ban needed to prevent robots that can decide when to kill?

'Repulsive'

Campaign leader Ms Williams, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work in bringing about a ban on anti-personnel landmines, told BBC News: "As people learn about our campaign, they will flock to it.

"The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems. People don't want killer robots out there.

"Normal human beings find it repulsive."

But some experts have questioned the need for a ban, arguing instead for an open debate about the legal and ethical implications of such weapons.

"The MoD currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention”
          Lord Astor, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence

Roboticist Professor Ronald Arkin, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, told the BBC: "The most important thing from my point of view is that we do not rush these systems into the battlefield.

"A moratorium as opposed to ban - where we say, 'we're not going to do this until we can do it right' - makes far more sense to me than simply crying out, 'ban the killer robots'.

"Why should we do that now?"

Recent statements by UK and US governments suggest a reluctance to take human beings fully "out-of-the-loop" in warfare.

In March, Lord Astor of Hever - the UK's parliamentary under secretary of state for defence - said the Ministry of Defence "currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention".

And a directive issued by the US Department of Defense in November 2012 stated that all weapons with a degree of autonomy "shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force".

404 — Iran’s Cyberwarfare

An interesting analysis of Iran's Cyberwarfare capabilities from the Epoch Times.

Iranians surf the Internet at a café in Tehran on Jan. 24, 2011, a day after Iran officially launched its cyberpolice unit. Iran has dedicated great effort to increasing its cyberwarfare capabilities.

Iran’s Cyberwarfare

WASHINGTON—Iran has been waging cyberwar against enemies, perceived and real, at home and abroad. 

It defends critical infrastructure while censoring the information its citizens can access. The government restricts domestic traffic of regime opponents and blocks ideas and information from the West. The regime is allegedly attempting to create a separate Iranian communications network and disable Google services within the country. 

Although the regime is generally mum about its operations, it is implicated in serious cyber-attacks, including attacks against several leading U.S. banks. 

Iran will quickly become “a significant player on the cyberspace battlefield,” says cyberwarfare expert Dr. Gabi Siboni, who is head of the Military and Strategic Affairs Program and the Cyber Warfare Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He gave an overview of Iran’s intentions and capabilities in a talk at the Elliott School of International Affairs–George Washington University on April 10. 

Siboni says Iran will attack critical infrastructures in the United States and Israel, while creating a posture of deniability for the attacks. 

Like Russia and China, Iran uses civilian hacker groups with no official connection to the regime to give the appearance of separation between cyber-activities and the state, explains Siboni in his December 2012 paper, “Iran and Cyberspace Warfare,” written with intern Sami Kronenfeld at INSS. Iran uses proxies such as Hezbollah, which established Cyber Hezbollah, to expand its cyber warfare capacity.

These hacker groups engage in cyber-attacks “causing Internet crashes, inserting pro-Iranian material, steal information, committing credit card fraud, damaging service providers, and rerouting Internet traffic,” Siboni says.

The most insidious goal of the regime is its control of intra-state cyberspace and information flow. It has invested heavily toward this end. The regime, through its state-owned telecommunications corporation, purchased a surveillance system from the Chinese ZTE Corporation for an estimated $130 million, says Siboni. He explains that ZTE’s products enable “voice communications eavesdropping, text message surveillance, and monitoring of Web surfing.”

Siboni quotes Jim Lewis, a former U.S. foreign service officer, who told Reuters: “It’s like the nuclear program: it isn’t particularly sophisticated, but it moves forward every year.”

Iran Gets Defensive

Iran has been at the receiving end of a major cyber-attack: Stuxnet. Launched in 2009 and 2010, and possibly as early as 2008, Stuxnet shut down more than 1,000 centrifuges used in the Iranian uranium enrichment program in Natanz. It set Iran back in its ability to develop a nuclear weapon by an estimated three years, according to Wired.com. 

Stuxnet must have taught Iranian leaders the hard lesson that their cyberspace defense was vulnerable, says Siboni. 

Experts say the Stuxnet worm had to be the work of a nation-state, as the attack required the command of great resources. It is widely believe that Israel and the United States were responsible for Stuxnet, but neither has admitted to it. 

“As the victim of one of the world’s most destructive cyber-attacks,” writes Siboni, “one may assume that Iran fully understands the potential inherent in this realm, and accordingly will work to develop similar capabilities of its own.”

Attacks on Internet Security Companies

In 2011, an Iranian attack targeted Comodo, which issues Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. SSL certificates are used to encrypt communications between a user’s Internet browser and a website—they ensure the secure transmission of private information. 

PCMag.com explains: “Someone who slips a fake high-level certificate into the system can reroute secure traffic to their own servers and collect authentication data, including usernames and passwords.”

Comodo found nine fraudulent certificates, appearing to come from Google, Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft, and others. Comodo removed the certificates before any damage could occur, according to the company’s incident report. Comodo concluded that the attack originated in Iran based on the IP address, and that it likely involved a state organization.

Iran had much more success in harming major Dutch SSL provider, DigiNotar. 

From June to August 2011, “531 certificates were stolen and fabricated and … most stolen permissions were used to penetrate user’s email accounts, especially in Iran,” writes Siboni, citing an analysis commissioned by DigiNotar.

The fake certificate to verify the Google.com domain permitted the attacker to reroute Gmail servers. Over 300,000 computers were penetrated—more than 99 percent were Iranian. 

Apparently, the focus of the attack was domestic, for internal security purposes.

DigiNotar shut down as a result of the attack. 

Attacks on U.S. Banks, Saudi Oil Company

In March, Iranian Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyberspace Fighters claimed responsibility for the attacks on six leading U.S. banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase, testified Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute, before the U.S. Department of Defense Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies.  Cilluffo was also the moderator for Siboni’s talk at George Washington University.

They were distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, meaning the attackers overwhelmed the websites with external messages, interrupting or slowing down the system so legitimate users couldn’t access the banks’ services.

Iran also attacked several major U.S. financial institutions last year, including Bank of America, Morgan Chase, and Citigroup, writes Siboni, citing a Huffington Post report from September 2012. Most of the victims were not, however, the large banks, but small and medium businesses and small banks, writes Siboni. 

He gives an analysis of the Iranian viral attack on Saudi oil company Aramco and on Qatari natural gas company ResGas. Iran, which may have had help from Hezbollah, used a computer virus called Shamoon. Siboni says international sanctions against Iran on its petroleum exports likely motivated it to attack the Saudi company. 

It was “one of the most devastating attacks” against a single company, writes Siboni. The motives were not espionage or intelligence gathering like other Iranian attacks—it was just “total destruction of data and target computers.” 

Overview of Iran’s Cyberspace Structure

Iran has an extensive and unique organizational structure to carry out multiple cyber-activities, both defensive and offensive, according to Siboni. At the top, is the Supreme Cyberspace Council, headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Two central organizations that work mostly in a defensive posture are the Cyber Defense Command and the Center for Information Security. 

The Committee to Identify Unauthorized Websites controls internal Iranian cyber-activities. It blocks access to sites that are inimical to the regime’s requirements. 

The police have their own cybercommand, the Cyber and Information Exchange Police (FETA). FETA is authorized to arrest political criminals and anyone who poses a security threat. It monitors Internet users, especially in Internet cafés. 

The Revolutionary Guards (a branch of Iran’s military founded after the Iranian Revolution) conducts0 offensive cyberspace warfare. 

In 2008, it employed 2,400 professionals and had a budget of $76 million. Linked to the Revolutionary Guards is also the hacker group Ashiyane Digital Security Team. The Ashiyane hackers attack the regime’s perceived enemies. They are also involved in criminal enterprises, such as credit fraud, identity theft, and infiltration of financial institutions, says Siboni. 

The Cyber Army, which targets Western websites, is also linked with the Revolutionary Guards.

Rounding out the list of entities engaged in cyberwarfare are the lower level hackers and bloggers for the Iranian Basij militia, which is subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards. The Basij Cyberspace Council was created in 2010. These are the tens of thousands of pro-regime bloggers who spread pro-Iranian propaganda in cyberspace.

What's New from author J.G. Sandom In April, 2013

It seems that I can't click on a site these days, pick up a newspaper, or listen to NPR without hearing another story about cyber-attacks from China or Iran â€” a domninant theme in my new novel, 404.

But, before we get to some examples of recent cyber-mayhem -- we're saving this for next month -- it's fitting that we first look at a very different sort of attack: the Boston Marathon Bombing which occurred mid-April.

To ease us into this topic, here are a couple of shorts. Close your eyes and let the cinema lights dim around you.

The first is about Big Data from Tim Smith.

 

 

For a scarier view of the world, here is a new nano-drone that can fly in formation. Similar to the drones in my new novel, 404, these Quadrotors are scarier than a swarm of hornets.

 

 

But I would be remiss in not speaking about the terrible tragedy in Boston during the recent running of the marathon.

 

Tamerlan Tsarnaev practiced boxing at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in Boston in this April 2009 photo.

Law enforcement officials identified two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings as brothers Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev (left) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was Tamerlan who was later killed in a confrontation with police.

An undated image of what appears to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev taken from VKontakte, a Russian social media site.

 

Evil-looking, aren't they? They're meant to be. They were designed that way by their own hand, in a wannabe ghetto posturing, airbrushed by sponsored media hype machines, designed to sell more X than Y, and sucked in by a slobbering mob of willing vampiric followers -- the public.

What does it say about the world they found themselves in as they arrived inside this country, immigrants, trying desperately to fit in? How welcoming were we?

Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in Boston in this April 2009 photo.

 

Guilty as charged am I for wanting to see these two young bastards burn. I hate to admit it, but it's true.

I watched them scurry about through Boston village after Boston village, followed the drama as the search continued . . . but only indirectly. I wasn't plugged in. I was plugged in . . . after-the-fact. After-the-fact. That's the key phrase.

You see, it's not the digital IP media that makes me so uncomfortable. Not at all. [How did we live before smartphones, and our ability to look up something instantaneously? Ah, the feeling!]

But, what I like best about the Net is our ability to select the modulation, to decide when to plug in, what to see or read, or listen to, and what to ignore.

- "nothing short of an e-lynching" -

 

I was greatly troubled by most of the quick-let's-get-it-out-there-even-if-it's-wrong coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings by the mainstream media, and highly offended by the way in which it was "covered" on the Net (blogosphere, twittersphere, reddit, etc.). Now that the body of 22-year-old Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, who went missing after the Boston Marathon bombings, and who was wrongly accused by the noösphere . . . I mean blogosphere/twittersphere . . . has been found, I am absolutely appaled.

Let's call a spade a spade. This was nothing short of an e-lynching. An example of Walking-while-Brown. Walking-while-Black. Walking-while-Arab-y-ish. Foreign. The other.

Bad enough that the Boston police had to tell folks not to tweet about their locations during the manhunt (really, people, have you no sense at all!), but to see this boy found dead — either from suicide or murder (I doubt it was accidental) — just makes my blood boil.

RIP Sunil

When will we learn that having brown skin is not a crime? My heart weeps for all those affected by the Boston Marathon disaster . . . and that would mean all.

If you want to read the first book in this series of thrillers — since 404 has yet to come out — check out The Wave. [NOTE:  The protagonist's name has been changed from John Decker (in The Wave) to Jonatan Carlsen (in the sequel, 404), as an homage to my Danish heritage. I've made a few other changes in 404, mostly to characters' names, but Carlsen/Decker is fundamentally the same guy. At some point, when I have the time, I will re-release The Wave (again!), with the corrected protagonist's name, and some additional changes; i.e. I need to cut some sections, and simplify others, once again based on reader responses . . . so thank you! Look for this sometime later this year.]

 

Here's an excerpt from the Kirkus review.

"Sandom’s strength lies in the verve of his story, with writing that has both muscle, in its pacing and violence, and a measure of brains as it goes about knitting Islamic calligraphy into the action, as well as making skirmishes into cryptography, vulcan stimulation and the higher physics of radiation and isotope decay without force-feeding the dense material to the reader...After a rather stately start, punctuated by little flurries of menace and barbarism from the stock bad guys, and a critical massing of feints and distractions, the story races from improbable to crazywild, all in good fun, with Sandom always one step ahead–and who cares if you can’t tell a "temperature-compensated quartz oscillator pressure transducer” from a toaster oven?"

 

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When Cryptanalyst John Decker of the FBI is assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force in New York, he has no idea he is about to be thrust into a deadly plot of eco-terrorism masterminded by El Aqrab, a diabolical killer recently arrested in Tel Aviv whose calling card is to wrap his victims up with incendiary devices designed to produce flames in the shape of Koranic verses.  Some call it aesthetic destruction.

Following the theft of 8 kilos of Highly Enriched Uranium, an ultimatum is issued to the West:  Release El Aqrab or a nuclear bomb will be detonated. But, at the last moment, El Aqrab escapes . . . and the authorities never get the bomb.

While Homeland Security is convinced it's headed for New York, only Agent Decker â€” assisted by brilliant and beautiful oceanographer Emily Swenson â€” believes the bomb’s true destination is La Palma, in the Canary Island chain.

Now, Decker and Swenson have less than six hours to prove their theory, defuse the bomb, and prevent a mega-tsunami from annihilating the Eastern Seaboard.

 

The Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma is currently in a dormant stage, but will almost certainly erupt again. The western half of the volcano has an approximate volume of 500 cubic kilometres, and an estimated mass of 1,500,000,000,000 (that's 1.5 Trillion!) metric tons. If it were to catastrophically slide into the ocean, it would generate a wave with an initial height of about 1,000 metres at the island (3,300 ft or 300+ stories high, if it were a building; i.e. 3 Empire State Buildings tall), and a likely height of around 50 metres (164 ft, or around 16 stories high) at the Caribbean and the Eastern North American seaboard when it runs ashore eight or more hours later. For context, if you are a piano lover, the arriving wave will be about the height of the Steinway building in NYC.

The 16-story Steinway Building in New York City is the same height as the mega-tsunami wave will be when it hits the East Coast of the US.

Tens of millions of lives will be lost as the cities and towns of Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Havana, and countless others along the Atlantic coast in North, Central and South America, plus Africa and Europe, are destroyed, wiped out in seconds.

As Emily Swenson says about the inevitability of the fall of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Agent Decker.  It’s not about likelihood.  It’s a certainty.  The only variable is time.”

At some point in the future, the island will come apart and a mega-tsunami will stream across the Atlantic at the speed of a jet plane, obliterating the entire Easter Seaboard of the United States, killing more than forty million people, thirteen percent of the U.S. population. And hundreds of millions will be injured, one out of every three Americans. It will cause trillions of dollars in damage. The entire U.S. economy will be disrupted for years, if not permanently crippled.

This is not speculation. This is a fact.

The last Cumbre Vieja eruption occurred in 1971. The next? Who knows. Click below to see what it might look like.

 

For an excerpt from The Wave, click here.

To purchase your copy of The Wave, click here.

Click here to check out my Pinterest board. [WARNING:  Some of the images on this board may be disturbing to younger readers.]

 

If you're looking for something uplifting to read on your Kindle, Nook, iPad, smartphone or laptop, check out this short story, After the Great Muskie Hunt, dedicated to my father, Zane, who always found time to take me fishing, and whose memory it honors. Please take a moment to download and read it. It's only around 15 manuscript pages, and it's FREE at Smashwords. [Though I've tried, Amazon won't let me give it away . . . despite the fact they say that if you can show it priced less elsewhere (i.e. free), they'll match the price. No, they won't.]

We live the lives of locusts, gone in a summer's day. I miss you, Dad!

 

"After the Great Muskie Hunt"

When his father loses his job, a young painter from New York offers to take him fishing for muskie — a barracuda-like freshwater fish — at Big Eagle Lake, in Ontario, Canada.

"Haunting and beautiful."

Mainsail Reviews

[Click here to check out my Pinterest board for After the Great Muskie Hunt.]

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KISS ME, I'M DEAD 

 

 BEFORE THERE WAS 9/11 . . . THERE WAS 6/15

On June 15, 1904, over a thousand New Yorkers, mostly German immigrants on a Church outing, died when the General Slocum steamship was set afire and sank in the East River. It was the greatest mass killing in New York City history . . . until 9/11.

When her boyfriend is accused of the crime, an amateur teen detective, Mallory Meer, risks everything to solve the mystery behind the tragedy. Was Dustin guilty? Or was someone else responsible for the fire that killed over a thousand men, women and children â€” including Mallory's own baby sister?

Only Mallory can understand what this crime truly means, because she's not only one of the victims . . . she's one of the dead.

An extraordinary story of revenge, of the quest for justice, and of a love so powerful, not even death could extinguish it.

Mallory Meer is like any other teenage girl. She likes to have fun. She thinks her sister is ridiculous. Her parents drive her crazy. She's got a terrible crush on Dustin and follows him everywhere.

 Mallory even has a summer job — figuring out the truth about the fire on the General Slocum steamship, the disaster that killed her sister. Mallory is determined to get to the bottom of it, to find out who's guilty, and to finally bring them to justice.

Sometimes Mallory gets angry, very angry, and strange things happen when Mallory gets angry.

Yes, Mallory is like any other teenage girl . . . except Mallory is dead.

Twilight meets Titanic

Ranked one of the Top Ten Children's Books of the year by the Washington Post, Kiss me, I'm Dead was named a Notable Book for Teens by the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, a Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Teen's Top Ten, and nominated for a Cybils literary award, a Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) by the American Library Association (ALA), and recently added to Horn Book’s list of Recommended American Historical Fiction.

The Washington Post said, "(J.G. Sandom) writes with a precision and delicacy unusual for YA fiction," and called the book, "A subtle gem." School Library Journal said, "Kiss Me, I’m Dead tells a remarkable story in a remarkable way." Horn Book Magazine called the work, "A decidedly unconventional ghost story . . . (and) a tightly wound novel." Kirkus Reviews termed it, "A remarkable account." Romantic Times said, "Kiss Me, I’m Dead is a book you shouldn't pass up." Midwest Book Review termed it, "a wonderfully different kind of ghost story." And Bookslut.com said, "Kiss Me, I’m Dead scores on several levels, most notably as a drama that blows apart all preconceived notions of how history can be retold."

Click here to purchase your copy of Kiss me, I'm Dead!

Click here to check out my Pinterest board for Kiss me, I'm Dead.

CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BODY SNATCHER

The beggar children of London are vanishing. They're disappearing . . . right off the streets.

Some say it's got something to do with the business of body snatching, grave robbers digging up corpses and selling them to doctors for medical research.

Some say it's far worse.

Now, racing against time, only Victor — a poor immigrant boy recently ship-wrecked and sold into the bondage of beggary â€” can uncover the identity of the ghoulish murderer at the heart of London’s furtive trade in human trafficking.

They killed his best friend.

They kidnapped the girl that he loves.

Now, there's only one thing worse than their finding him . . . and that's him finding them first. 

Oliver Twist meets Breaking Bad

Previously named a Junior Library Guild selection, Publishers Weekly called Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher, “A haunting tour of London's underclass during the 1830s . . . Teens will likely be both captivated by Victor's harrowing story as well as his ability to prevail in the face of harsh injustices." VOYA said, "Teen readers will thoroughly enjoy the hair-raising suspense in this historical thriller." Kirkus Reviews called Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher perfect for, “audiences that relish historical fiction." KLIATT said, "Like M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, this look at sinister events in history makes the era come alive and lingers in the memory." And School Library Journal said, “Part historical fiction and part adventure story, the novel brings excitement to Victorian England . . . Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”

Click here to purchase your copy of Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher.

Click here for the Pinterest board.

 

And if that isn't enough, BOTH titles are also available in
Two Teen Terrors — A Cornucopia Press Collection FOR JUST $1.49!

 

Click here to purchase your copy of Two Teen Terrors!

 

STILL LOOKING FOR THAT PERFECT TITLE?

 

Meanwhile, The God Machine continues to reach new theo-thriller fanatics. . . especially as an eBook.

Caroline Thompson (author of Edward Scissorhands) said, "Move over, Dan Brown . . . All hail J.G. Sandom . . . (The God Machine) is a thrilling and breathless, rapturously-written and mind-blowing read. It’ll keep you up all night, turning pages as fast as your little fingers can manage."  BookPage said, "Sandom has a knack for combining legendary gospels, ancient secrets, star-crossed lovers and Masonic puzzles to create a simmering stew of conspiracy, intrigue and danger that keeps the plot pot boiling until the very end." And the Historical Novels Review said, "History galore, violence, and intrigue fill the pages of this tightly plotted, twisting and turning adventure story . . . Those who love numbers, physics, and a truly unpredictable, suspenseful mystery will relish the facts and ponderings replete in this well-written, mysterious spin-off of The Da Vinci Code. The God Machine is a very impressive historical thriller!"

The Church insisted it didn't exist.

They lied.

They said it was just a Masonic legend.

It wasn't.

A two thousand year old secret.

Revealed.

The coded journal of Benjamin Franklin. A hidden map. A legendary gospel. These are the first pieces to an ancient puzzle so powerful it could destroy the very foundation of Christianity.

 

Once before, Joseph Koster unearthed one of the Church's most deeply buried secrets . . . and it almost cost him his life. But some treasures are too hard to resist. And as Koster puts the pieces of Franklin's puzzle together, he discovers something even more startling . . . and infinitely more deadly.

  

Now, along with beautiful Indian high-tech mogul Savita Sajan, Koster must race to decode Franklin's journal before it falls into the hands of those who would do anything, kill anyone to suppress it. But in a world of secret societies, ancient conspiracies and Masonic puzzles, locating the prize is one thing . . . staying alive, another.

 

For as Koster and Sajan are about the learn, the same key that unlocks the doorway to Heaven . . . could open the portals of Hell.

For an excerpt from The God Machine, click here.

To purchase your copy of The God Machine, click here.

Click here to check out my Pinterest board for The God Machine.

The novel has just come out in Spanish from LA FACTORÍA DE IDEAS. It's available in Europe and Latin America, as well as in the the US. Later this year, look for it in Turkish too!

Spread the good news.  If you liked The God Machine, please pen a review at Amazon, BarnesAndNoble.com or Goodreads.