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Medicine EU Government

About 24 US Govt Officials in Vienna, Austria Report 'Havana Syndrome' Symptoms (newyorker.com) 82

"Since Joe Biden took office [in January], about two dozen U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats, and other government officials in Vienna have reported experiencing mysterious afflictions similar to the Havana Syndrome," reports the New Yorker: U.S. officials say the number of possible new cases in the Austrian capital — long a nexus of U.S. and Russian espionage — is now greater than the number reported by officials in any city except for Havana itself, where the first cases were reported...

The exact cause of the ailments in Vienna, which U.S. government agencies formally refer to as "anomalous health incidents" or "unexplained health incidents," remains unknown, but in response to the surge the C.I.A., the State Department, and other agencies are redoubling their efforts to determine the cause, and to identify the culprit or culprits...

The Havana Syndrome derives its name from the Cuban capital, where C.I.A. officers and State Department employees first reported experiencing strange sensations of sound and pressure in their heads in 2016 and 2017. Some of the patients said the sensations seemed to follow them around their homes, apartments, and hotel rooms in the Cuban capital. Some of the patients described feeling as though they were standing in an invisible beam of energy. Many of them suffered debilitating symptoms, from headaches and vertigo to vision problems. Specialists at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Brain Injury and Repair used advanced MRIs to study the brains of forty of the original patients from Havana. They found no signs of physical impact to the patients' skulls — it was as if they had "a concussion without a concussion," one specialist told me — and the team detected signs of damage to their brains.

Senior officials in the Trump and Biden Administrations suspect that the Russians are responsible for the syndrome. Their working hypothesis is that operatives working for the G.R.U., the Russian military-intelligence service, have been aiming microwave-radiation devices at U.S. officials, possibly to steal data from their computers or smartphones, which inflicted serious harm on the people they targeted. But American intelligence analysts and operatives have so far been unable to find concrete evidence that would allow them to declare that either microwave radiation or the Russians were to blame.

The article also points out that the CIA's director has privately called the incidents "attacks" rather than incidents or illnesses.
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About 24 US Govt Officials in Vienna, Austria Report 'Havana Syndrome' Symptoms

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  • Shouldn't be too difficult to detect the source if they tried looking for it. I guess nobody wants to write DB queries for them anymore?

  • What's the current government employee disability pension benefit (for high GS level staff posted abroad)? Asking for a friend.

  • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @05:13PM (#61592603)

    I've been pretty suspicious of this idea that russia/china/cuba/whoever have been using some sort of Dr Evil headache machine to harrass embassy workers. There just doesn't seem to be a plausible motive. Goverment espionage as a rule tries not to irritate its target. Leave the diplomatic incidents for the diplomats, so to speak.

    But the idea that its some sort of clumsily designed information stealing system, with some side effects, tats a bit more plausible. Though I struggle to think of what possible information could be obtained that way.

    • Re:Motives (Score:5, Insightful)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @05:39PM (#61592681) Homepage

      It seems to affect US facilities in other countries. And so far, ZERO citizens of other countries, I believe. It could very well be our own equipment, not a weapon, that is malfunctioning and causing the illness. Maybe something involved in surveillance.

      • I think some Canadian diplomats in Cuba have reported being affected. One thing I have difficulty understanding is that, if as widely believed, we are dealing with high power microwaves, it should be very easy to detect the signals, even if one is not in the mainlobe of the radiation pattern.
        • Re:Motives (Score:5, Funny)

          by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @06:38PM (#61592821) Journal

          Just walk around with a bag of microwave popcorn till it starts popping.

        • Re:Motives (Score:5, Informative)

          by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:45PM (#61593343) Homepage Journal

          >it should be very easy to detect the signals

          It is. I've spend enough time in RF labs to know this is pretty trivial to achieve with $30K of equipment. You could probably do it with a $50 SDR and nice antenna if you were handy.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            At the power you'd need to cause some of the reported symptoms, like audible sound, you could probably use the bag of popcorn the guy above you suggested.

            • And how do you come to the silly idea pop corn would "pop" but your body would not get server burns?

              • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                I was being facetious, but the line between microwave triggered auditory phenomenon and severe burns is pretty slim. Presumably if someone indoors was hearing things, anyone outdoors or a little closer to the transmitter would be screaming as their ocular fluid boiled.

                So I guess you could omit the popcorn and just look for the exploding eyeballs. Popcorn would be kinda cool though.

              • but your body would not get server burns?

                I frequently get burns when my server gets too hot.

      • Maybe something involved in surveillance.

        Some thing . . . ?

        How about The Thing [wikipedia.org] . . . ?

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Here is how it works. You tell everyone, watch out, I want you to report the slightest symptoms because we suspect the Russians are using radiation weapons on embassies that cause brain cancer. Any of the slightest symptoms, immediately report them or you could die.

        Put that in a memo and the slightest symptom, head ache, ear ache, drank too much last night and "OH MY GOD", I am going to die from brain cancer, fear panic and you will make yourself really quite sick, probably even trigger you immune system t

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        Our own equipment. Or maybe an interaction between inoculations given to US citizens traveling abroad and something in the environment there. There is a link in a previous post about countries using organophosphates to combat Zika. It's possible that each on their own produce no ill effects, so the local populations have no symptoms.

        • Or maybe an interaction between inoculations given to US citizens traveling abroad and something in the environment there.

          Stop it with the COVID vaccine / 5G activation conspiracy theories.

    • Re:Motives (Score:4, Insightful)

      by F.Ultra ( 1673484 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @06:45PM (#61592837)
      Yeah it makes no sense for a foreign power to do this, I mean what would it achieve? Sounds more like it's some form of Nocebo spreading among the workers due to fear, which could also be the reason why no one is looking deeper into this.
    • My working guess is that this is a resurrection of the old Soviet passive bug https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) [wikipedia.org]. To be causing all these biological effects at distance, the Tx power must be pretty substantial, though.
    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Really? Putin having opponents whacked, supporting chemical weapons use in Syria, etc. makes you somehow have faith he and his cronies wouldn't do such a thing?

    • It affects no one but US government employees abroad.

      Maybe "long exceptionalism"?

  • ... in the software used by US diplomats, why should a foreign intelligence agency bother to stage complicated never-before-seen-death-ray attacks to "steal secrets" instead of just exploiting the gaping holes?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 17, 2021 @05:28PM (#61592647)

    US citizens' bodies aren't used to the dense cell-phone coverage and free WIFI in foreign countries.

  • and by we, i mean the general public.

    there is no doubt that the agencies whose acronyms end in A have been looking at this, no matter how improbable it is that it's actually the result of an attack. I'm not saying that it's unlikely that it's an attack, but that there would be an investigation even if the evidence was not that strong, because if it is intentional targeting they would be desperate to know what's going on.

    The attacker must be quite the sociopaths.

    why attack so many people ? i suspect it's to

    • even if the CW signal might not do damage there is some amount of evidence that modulating such a strong signal at certain modulating frequencies could have significant biological effects. No, none of those biological effects would be good.

      So, Doc, does this mean I’ve got superpowers?

      No Timmy, it means you have cancer.

  • Trump (Score:1, Troll)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 )

    Trumpo took no action when this happened, so it obviously emboldened our enemies. Just another item in the long list of things Trump got bamboozled by. Everything from the virus -- which if engineered by China shows what a massive doofus he is, to getting his ass handed him in the election. Why would he come back in 24 to get his ass tricked again? What a fucking disgrace.

    • you're assuming it was something like microwaves or other exotic weapon and not something simpler like sewer gas, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde in older construction materials, etc.

      microwaves would be trivial to detect

    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      Reports of the so-called Havanna syndrome among American embassy personnel go back well before Trump took office, and very little (nothing) was done back then either. So while there are many legitimate criticisms of the Trump presidency, and many reasons why another one would be disastrous, his lack of apparent reaction to this certainly isn't one of them.

      • Reports of the so-called Havanna syndrome among American embassy personnel go back well before Trump took office, and very little (nothing) was done back then either.

        Well before? Yes, the reports of unexplained health problems in diplomatic personnel date all the way back, all the way back, to possibly as much as few months before President Trump was sworn in... and nothing was done. Thanks Obama! But seriously, if you have any references to anything like Havana Syndrome prior to late 2016, let's see them.

      • and very little (nothing) was done back then either.
        That is wrong. There was a very long and deep investigation. Was even covered here on /.

  • by BobCov ( 6498174 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @05:48PM (#61592699)
    Time to put on the tinfoil hats because in this situation, they might actually help.
    • OK, so we have a hypothesis: Russians are using microwaves to listen/disrupt communications or affect the health of the personnel.

      Why not line the embassy with grounded aluminum foil and see if that blocks the symptoms? What are they waiting for? Slashdot came up with this idea when we first heard about it. What's the delay?
    • Maybe the ultimate goal is American officials walking around Vienna with tin foil hats. That feels like a win for Russia.
  • I'm an electronics geek with training in. and practical application of (9 years Naval aviation, 7 years refinery analyzers), electronics including troubleshooting down to the component part.

    We used to build sweeping oscillators that looked for a match in local radio frequency interference.

    When the local oscillator hit a match, the two signals added or subtracted, depending on the phase, and we could see it on an oscilloscope.

    I apologize for calling anyone Shirley, but surely a microwave signal could

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      I'm kind of sick of this story and wish they'd shut up until they get their act together enough to actually get some evidence and come up with a motive because right now this makes no sense - what's the motive for randomly attacking people in such a way that gains you nothing but risks war or sanctions if you are caught.

      It all makes about as much sense as the Chewbacca defense.

    • The microwave source must be very high power - they can see the results via MRI scan of those impacted. As such, it must be highly focused and likely pulsed. By the time you notice it is there it will already be turned off. So what you would require to detect the source is multiple RF detectors situated throughout your working environment. You would require far more then a few due to the highly focused nature of the signal.

      If they had the correct equipment then tracking down the source of the transmi

      • How about a glass of room temperature water with thermometer inside and outside and recording both temperatures?
        If there are microwaves around average temp of water should be bigger then air around for some time before equilibrium.

      • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        It doesn't even matter if you figure out where it's coming from, you still can't go get them because you're surrounded by foreign territory. If the host country doesn't want to take it up, you'd have to play dirty and risk a war.

        • Maybe we can't get them, but we can certainly relocate.

          • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

            How does that help? No matter where you go, you'll be surrounded by hostile territory. The effort of moving is far larger than the other side's cost of relocating when you have to move an entire embassy, and all they need to do is roll a few vans.

  • by MrKevvy ( 85565 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @07:34PM (#61592941)

    Actual evidence was found in 2019 that it was caused by organophosphate pesticides used to control Zika [ottawacitizen.com]

    Neuro imaging done as part of Friedmanâ(TM)s study suggested that some kind of neurotoxin could be the culprit to the syndrome often described as concussion symptoms without a concussion. Subsequent tests revealed traces of an insecticide used in Cuba against mosquito larvae in some of the diplomats and families who had been exposed.
    Authors of the study said their results confirm brain injury in areas that suggest exposure to neurotoxins. They hypothesized organophosphorus insecticides as a âoelikely sourceâ, noting that Cuba was aggressively fumigating to slow of the spread of Zika in 2016 and later.

    I'll take that over political speculation.

    • The fact that the same thing is occurring in multiple locations indicates that insecticides are probably not to blame. Too bad, it did sound like a reasonable explanation at the time.

      The hacking angle is a new one but it actually does make sense. I could see someone remotely logged into a computer with no access due to being an unprivileged user. So they call their buddy who is physically close to the computer and request they hit it with a pulse of high power microwaves. The goal is to cause some so

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        So they call their buddy who is physically close to the computer and request they hit it with a pulse of high power microwaves.
        This doesn't really make sense... Unless the computer contains some kind of backdoor that was already implanted that allows arbitrary data or code injection by microwaves: computer operating systems don't just cede privileged access upon any random hardware failure -- it would take very specific manipulation of certain memory areas or processor elements.

      • >they hit it with a pulse of high power microwaves. The goal is to cause some sort of hardware fault that will then allow them to bypass security.

        Those of us who build secure hardware have thought of that one before. It won't work.
        There are simpler and more effective ways of barging into a computer.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The fact that it is happening in multiple countries suggests that it's probably not an attack either.

        It would require a quite substantial transmitter to send out a signal that could do physical harm. That would he hard to hide close enough to target a single building. It's also implausible that it could be brought into the country without being noticed, and go undetected by the very capable systems available to US intelligence services. It would also have to have been very effectively kept secret, despite b

        • "The common factor is America"
          The Canadian embassy in Havana was affected.

        • The common factor is mass psychology. Simple anti russia hysteria. Everybody trying to come up with new 'russia done it' theories and everyone craving attention knows what to do to get it. The result is one big pile of garbage.

    • Which raises the question of why noone else is affected if it's some parasite / insecticide.

      • The locals are just used to it. Some people get symptoms like this from MSG, but nobody in Asia does.
        • In which case other diplomats, tourists and assorted visitors will be showing similar symptoms I think.

          It can't be just people from North America, who happened to be based in very specific locations who have problems.

  • Have they looked into the possibility that it could be a disease carried by kangaroos and koalas?

  • why.
    to stir up some grave shit.
    brain damage does not repair.
    as soon as those responsible are outted.
    why.
    will be a question worthy of responding to

  • Own equipment (Score:4, Informative)

    by sxpert ( 139117 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @09:10PM (#61593143)

    The US has the possible culprit in their own arsenal. 2kW 2.4GHz CW emitter CTX4000
    https://commons.m.wikimedia.or... [wikimedia.org]
    Stop blaming othersâ¦

  • The CIA/NSA should do the same thing they did recently with evidence for Russian hacking. Offer a big reward ($10M USD) for definitive info. Someone somewhere knows something. You offer them enough money to rebuild their life somewhere else, they'll flip and tell you what's going on.
  • I though I read here on Slashdot that the cause was determined to be insecticide poisoning and there are other news reports to that effect?
    https://www.technologynetworks... [technologynetworks.com]

  • Havana Syndrome = Paranoia Syndrome
    • Exactly. The story continues to be propagated by a willing media that uses unreliable sources. The people who were actually affected never actually respond to the media, except for one random guy who used to work at an embassy.

      Complete and utter garbage. But it shows that people respond to claims nowadays and nobody really ever investigates the claims themselves nowadays.

  • It is disappointing when one political party gets infected with viral fake news, but at least we have the other party to shake things out.

    But this nonsensical fake news story continues to resurface every once in a while, and is embraced by both republicans and democrats. I would normally figure this to be liberal leaning because it blames Russia, not China, but conservatives seem to be parroting this Havana Syndrome garbage as well.

    The important lesson here is that fake news trusted by both parties does not

  • That's one I haven't heard about, and I know quite a bit about Tempest and such like.

    Does anyone have a reliable source on how it works to steal data with a microwave transmitter?

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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