The Risk of Disruption or Destruction of Critical U.S. Infrastructure by an Offensive Cyber Attack (PDF)

A look at the national security risk posed by a cyber-attack. The research topic was chosen in response to the recent hyperbole on cyber-attacks causing a catastrophic power outage in New York City. This assignment was for INTL634 – Threat Analysis.

I read a lot and I like keeping my reading notes in OPML; it’s great for the structured content of a book. Authors have Books, Books have Chapters, etc. I also like to highlight/markup my books.

After resisting for a long time, I broke down and bought some Kindle books that I read on two different computers (desktop & laptop) and an Android tablet. My highlighting addiction has been interrupted by reading Kindle books because it’s a pain to keep up my OPML reading notes while also highlighting across multiple devices. Amazon does a good job of syncing reading positions and highlights created on multiple devices, so that my personal notes (highlights) are eventually combined and kept in the cloud but there’s a headache also — I can’t export them out of Amazon and I want them in OPML.

What I ended up having to do to get my highlights (reading notes) into OPML was to copy the text out of the Kindle app on the PC and paste into the OPML Editor and then I went back and selected the same text and added a highlight — it was obnoxious. It also failed on Android where there isn’t an OPML Editor.

Enter Greasemonkey. I cooked up a script that adds two images to the top left of the Kindle page that shows my highlights (per book) one to capture the highlights and format as OPML (true markup that I could save to file and open in the OPML Editor) and one that formatted as plain text (indented that I could copy and paste directly into the OPML Editor).

Now I just highlight as much as I want across multiple devices and then eventually reformat using the Greasemonkey script in order to save my highlights as OPML from the Amazon Kindle website.

The Amazon page with the Greasemonkey inserted images:

The Amazon page formatted as OPML:

The Amazon page formatted as text:

The content in the OPML Editor:

Here’s the Greasemonkey Script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Amazon: Kindle Highlights to OPML
// @namespace      havagan.amazon.kindle
// @include        https://kindle.amazon.com/work/*
// @include        http://kindle.amazon.com/work/*
// ==/UserScript==

var $;

// Load jQuery library
(function(){
if (typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == ‘undefined’) {
var GM_Head = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0] || document.documentElement,
GM_JQ = document.createElement(‘script’);

GM_JQ.src = ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js’;
GM_JQ.type = ‘text/javascript’;
GM_JQ.async = true;

GM_Head.insertBefore(GM_JQ, GM_Head.firstChild);
}
GM_wait();
})();

// Check if jQuery is loaded
function GM_wait() {
if (typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == ‘undefined’) {
window.setTimeout(GM_wait, 100);
} else {
$ = unsafeWindow.jQuery.noConflict(true);
doMain();
}
}

// All your GM code must be inside this function
function doMain() {
addOpmlButton();
addTextButton();
}

function addOpmlButton()
{
$(‘body’).append(“<div id=’createOpml’ style=’position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px; margin:25px;’><img id=’opmlLogo’ src=’http://static.opml.org/images/opml.gif’ /></div>”);
$(“img#opmlLogo”).click(function () {
createOpml(getBookAuthor(), getBookTitle(), getBookHighlights());
});
}

function addTextButton()
{
$(‘body’).append(“<div id=’createOpml’ style=’position:absolute; top:50px; left:0px; margin:25px;’><img id=’textLogo’ src=’http://www.havagan.com/images/text.gif’ /></div>”);
$(“img#textLogo”).click(function () {
createText(getBookAuthor(), getBookTitle(), getBookHighlights());
});
}

function createOpml(bookAuthor, bookTitle, bookHighlights)
{

// wipe the page
wipeContent();

// recreate the page
$(‘head’).append(‘<title>’ + bookTitle + ‘ (‘ + bookAuthor + ‘)</title>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘<pre>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘&lt;?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”http://havaganserver/opml/opml.xslt” version=”1.0″?&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;opml version=”2.0″&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;head&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;title&gt;’ + bookTitle + ‘ (‘ + bookAuthor + ‘)&lt;/title&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;dateCreated&gt;&lt;/dateCreated&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;dateModified&gt;&lt;/dateModified&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;ownerName&gt;&lt;/ownerName&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;ownerEmail&gt;&lt;/ownerEmail&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;expansionState&gt;&lt;/expansionState&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;vertScrollState&gt;&lt;/vertScrollState&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;windowTop&gt;&lt;/windowTop&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;windowLeft&gt;&lt;/windowLeft&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;windowBottom&gt;&lt;/windowBottom&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;windowRight&gt;&lt;/windowRight&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;/head&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;body&gt;</br>’);
// create author/title elements
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;outline text=”‘ + bookAuthor + ‘”&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘            &lt;outline text=”‘ + bookTitle + ‘”&gt;</br>’);
// append highlights.
$.each(bookHighlights, function(index, value) {
$(‘body’).append(‘                &lt;outline text=”‘ + (index + 1) + “. ” + bookHighlights[index] + ‘” /&gt;</br>’);
});
// end highlights.
$(‘body’).append(‘            &lt;/outline&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘        &lt;/outline&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;/body&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘    &lt;/opml&gt;</br>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘</pre>’);

}

function createText(bookAuthor, bookTitle, bookHighlights)
{

// wipe the page
wipeContent();

// recreate the page
// create author/title elements
$(‘head’).append(‘<title>’ + bookTitle + ‘ (‘ + bookAuthor + ‘)</title>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘<div style=”text-indent:0em;”>’ + bookAuthor + ‘</div>’);
$(‘body’).append(‘<div style=”text-indent:0em;”>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;’ + bookTitle + ‘</div>’);
// append highlights here.
$.each(bookHighlights, function(index, value) {
$(‘body’).append(‘<div style=”text-indent:0em;”>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;’ + (index + 1) + “. ” + bookHighlights[index] + ‘</div>’);
});

}

function getBookTitle()
{
return $(‘div.bookInfo div.title’).text().trim();
}

function getBookAuthor()
{
return $(‘div.bookInfo div.author’).text().trim().replace(“by “, “”);
}

function getBookHighlights()
{
var bookHighlights = new Array();
$(‘span.highlight’).each(function(idx, item) {
bookHighlights.push(item.innerHTML.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm,”").replace(/(\”|\”)/gm, “\’”));
});
return bookHighlights;
}

function wipeContent()
{

// start with a blank canvas; rebuild on a clean foundation.
$(‘head’).empty();
$(‘body’).empty();

}

I like to archive news articles to PDF so that I can add highlights, comments and markup to the document. Unfortunately, web pages rarely archive well and that led me to start using Readability. After they redesigned their service and added clutter to the top, bottom, and left margin it became less Readable. I cobbled together a Greasemoney script to remove this clutter and leave a simple black and white page for easy archiving. The script also tags the URL and date accessed to the bottom of the page — needed elements for citing the document in Turabian style.

Here’s an original web page:

And the same page after Readability + Greasemonkey:

Here’s the script (it uses jQuery):

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Readability
// @namespace      havagan.readability
// @description    Tweaks Readability output to better print to PDF for archiving.
// @include        https://www.readability.com/articles/*
// @include        http://www.readability.com/articles/*
// ==/UserScript==

var $;

// Load jQuery library
(function(){
if (typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == ‘undefined’) {
var GM_Head = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0] || document.documentElement,
GM_JQ = document.createElement(‘script’);

GM_JQ.src = ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js’;
GM_JQ.type = ‘text/javascript’;
GM_JQ.async = true;

GM_Head.insertBefore(GM_JQ, GM_Head.firstChild);
}
GM_wait();
})();

// Check if jQuery is loaded
function GM_wait() {
if (typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == ‘undefined’) {
window.setTimeout(GM_wait, 100);
} else {
$ = unsafeWindow.jQuery.noConflict(true);
doMain();
}
}

// All your GM code must be inside this function
function doMain() {
// Order of function calls is important.
removeReadLaterButton();
createFootnotes();
recreatePage();
appendHyperlinksToFootnotes();
}

// I don’t use the Read Later button.
// I read now and archive to PDF.
// Remove the element prior to recreating the page.
function removeReadLaterButton()
{
$(“a#read-later-button”).remove();
// the entire container for the read later button can be removed using $(“aside#rdb-article-meta”).remove() but
// this also removed the author and date posted information (if any was found in the original article).
// When citing this article using Turabian, the date posted and author is required information.
}

// Readbility no longer outputs the links as footers and “printing” the PDF does not print the hyperlinks for some reason.
// create the footnotes with links for all anchor tags.
// Add any new elements you want prior to recreating the page.
function createFootnotes()
{
// Create the container for the footnote data.
// The parent container can be either “rdb-article-content” or “rdb-primary”
$(“section#rdb-primary”).append(“<div id=’havagan_footer’><strong>Article Hyperlinks</strong><ul></ul></div>”);

// Readability now hides the original URL in the browser window,
// so append the original URL as a link for reference purposes.
var url = $(“a#article-url”).attr(“href”);
$(“div#havagan_footer ul”).append(“<li><div class=’reference_title’>” + $(“h1#article-entry-title”).text() + ” (Original Article, Accessed On ” + getDateAccessed() + “)</div><div class=’reference_url’><a href=’” + url + “‘>” + url + “</a></div></li>”);

}

function recreatePage()
{
// capture the important page content.
title = $(“#article-entry-title”).html();
meta = $(“#rdb-article-meta”).html();
article = $(“#rdb-article-content”).html();
links = $(“#havagan_footer”).html();
// start with a blank canvas
$(“head”).empty();
$(“body”).empty().removeAttr(“id”).removeAttr(“class”);
// add information to the head element.
$(“head”).append(“<title>” + title + “</title>”);
$(“head”).append(“<style>body { font-family: ‘Adobe Garamond Pro’, Calibri, Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; color: black; margin: 50px; } img { display: block; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; } .title { font-family: ‘Adobe Garamond Pro’; Garamond; font-size: 24pt; font-weight:normal; margin-bottom: 25px; } .meta { font-size:10pt; font-style: italic; display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; } .links { margin-top: 25px; } div#article a { text-decoration: none; color: black; font-weight: bold; } div#links a { font-style: italic; color: black; } div#links li { margin-top: 10px; } </style>”);
// keep only the important page content.
$(“body”).append(“<div id=’title’ class=’title’>” + title + “</div>”);
$(“body”).append(“<div id=’meta’ class=’meta’>” + meta + “</div>”);
$(“body”).append(“<div id=’article’ class=’article’>” + article + “</div>”);
$(“body”).append(“<div id=’links’ class=’links’>” + links + “</div>”);
}

function appendHyperlinksToFootnotes()
{
// Append each hyperlink in the document to the footer.
// Todo: Add special tags for mailto: and twitter.com URLs.
$(“div#article a”).each(function(idx, item) {
if (isValidHyperlink(item) == true) {
$(“div#links ul”).append(“<li><div class=’reference_title’>” + item.text + “</div><div class=’reference_url’><a href=’” + item.href + “‘>” + item.href + “</a></div></li>”);
}
});
}

function isValidHyperlink(item)
{
// Ignore javascript/ajax empty anchor (#) links.
if ((item.text == null) || (item.text.length <= 0)) { return false; }
// Ignore NYTimes “topics” keyword search hyperlinks. indexOf returns -1 if the value is not found.
if (item.href.toLowerCase().indexOf(“topics.nytimes.com”) >= 0) { return false; }
return true;
}

// Return the current date (formatted).
function getDateAccessed()
{
var d = new Date;
return d.toLocaleString();
}

One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter (PDF)

Key Drivers of Terrorist Behavior (PDF)

Analyze the NYPD Counter-Terrorism Program (PDF)

The Threat of Failed and Failing States (PDF)

Four individual essays that were assigned as part of INTL650 – Counterterrorism.

The Validity of Analysis on Democratic Islam in Turkey (PDF)

A review of early analysis that focused on the Freedom and Justice Party (AKP) in Turkey and its effect on democracy. This assignment was for INTL506 – Analytics II.

The Ongoing Failure of Intelligence – A study of the East Turkistan Islamic Party (PDF)

A literature review focusing on open source intelligence (OSINT) collection on the East Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP). This literature review assignment was for INTL502 – Collection.

Interrogation Effectiveness – Military Interrogations or Law Enforcement Interviews (PDF)

A literature review focusing on whether interrogations by intelligence agencies or Mirandized law enforcement interviews are more effective in extracting information from terrorism suspects. This literature review assignment was for INTL502 – Collection.

Is the Director of National Intelligence Ineffective? (PDF)

A literature review focusing on whether the position of Director of National Intelligence is ineffective. This literature review assignment was for INTL501 – Strategic Intelligence.

Guantanamo, A less-than-tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda (PDF)

A literature review focusing on whether Al Qaeda uses Guantanamo as a major recruiting tool. This literature review assignment was for INTL500 – Research Methods in Security and Intelligence Studies.

As I work on a Masters degree at American Military University (AMU), I will occasionally post literature reviews and research papers here. Comments are disabled on all posts.