Estimate of full capacity magazine ownership. SVG File Malware.

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, an estimate on full capacity magazine ownership.

700 Million+ Full Capacity Mags in Private Hands

Reader H.L. sent us this: Americans Own 700 Million+ Mags With Greater Than 10-Round Capacity. JWR’s Comments: That equates to just two magazines per citizen. Really? Based on the number of magazines that I own, my estimate of the number that my friends and neighbors own, and what I see available at gun shows, I believe that this published estimate is quite low. In fact, it is probably understated by at least half. And of course the NSSF data did not include the huge number of magazines released as military and police department surplus. I’d estimate that there are actually 1.5 to 2 billion magazines now in private hands, here in the States. For further research, see the original NSSF report.

Be Prepared — The Grid Is Going Down

A few months ago, Tucker Carlson interviewed Dennis Quaid: Be Prepared. The Grid Is Going Down.

Burma War Causing Refugee Dislocation to Thailand

Linked over at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site was this news piece from FRANCE 24 – English: Myanmar’s war on rebels: Junta loses key town on Thai border. JWR’s Comments: Please pray for the safety of the Hmong and Mien hill tribes of Burma, who always seem to get caught in the middle of this.

Real Meat is Healthier Than Fake

Over at RedState: Schadenfreude – Real Meat Turns Out to Be Healthier Than Fake. An excerpt:

“The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that people who ate a diet high in fake meats like Beyond burgers and Impossible burgers for eight weeks had higher blood sugars than those who ate real meat.”

Pipe Damage at Glen Canyon Dam

From the UK’s Daily Mail, via MSN: Damages to major US dam could spark water crisis.

Hackers are Loading SVG Files with Multi-Stage Malware

By way of MSN, there is this news from the editors of TechRadar: Hackers are loading SVG files with multi-stage malware in new phishing attack. The article begins:

“A sophisticated new phishing attack was spotted in the wild, leveraging a wide variety of tools to bypass antivirus protections and ultimately deliver different Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware.

According to cybersecurity researchers at Fortinet, an unidentified threat actor was seen sending phishing emails, stating a shipment has been delivered, and attaching an invoice. This attachment, however, is a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file which, when run, triggers the infection sequence.

The SVG file drops a ZIP archive created with BatCloak – a tool designed to help malware bypass antivirus protection. This archive unpacks a ScrubCrypt batch file, which is another antivirus-evading tool which, in turn, sets up persistence, and bypasses AMSI and ETW protections to deliver the Venom RAT.”