speakers, Joseph and Ilya, who will be talking about how bootloaders are broken and how to sort of look into them. Please give them a warm round of applause. Hello. Does this sound okay? Okay. Cool. Yeah. So, welcome to Boot to Root, auditing bootloaders by example. I'm Joseph Tartaro. I hack things for IOActive, and this is my second time at Congress, so I'm really excited to be back here. Hi. I'm Ilya. This is my 18th or 19th time at Congress. Happy to be back here, too. I spoke here, I think, seven or eight times before, and I'm very excited to speak here together with Joe. We've been working together on bootloaders last year in change, and this is minus the NDA coverage stop. This is some of the things we've observed and seen, so I'm very excited to do this. Yeah. So, the expected audience for this talk would be embedded systems engineers, security people who are interested in embedded systems, and just curious security people. Just a caveat, we're going to be quickly going through about, like, 70 slides or so, and a lot of it's just, like, examples of C source code, so if you did not realize you were signing up for an hour of that, feel free to walk out. We're not going to be offended. And then another caveat would be this isn't really trying to flex and show, look at all the bugs we found. The purpose of this was to kind of show people, hey, if you have not looked at bootloaders before, this is our recommended, you know, areas of attack surface that are interesting. This is probably where you should get started, and in some examples of nobody's really looking at them. So, quickly we're going to talk about what we're going to be talking about. What are bootloaders? Why? What are they? What are they? What are they? What are they? What are they? What are they? So, a wide interpretation of bootloader. So, just to be clear, that's an area that's in your security chain, and you haven't had experience with these, or you have a boot chain, you can kind of take it from an operating standpoint of user land calling into kernel space. You'll have a lot of people calling into this stuff, and that's kind of what you're looking for, is pivots and when they're processing, you know, those data for security. It's a key component of your security process, and it's very obvious that a lot of devices are burning, limiting attack surface. And what we mean by that is a lot of the devices we've looked at over the last year or so are flying devices that have, like, full network stacks, even though they don't really make sense why they're not limiting all that attack surface.  We were going to the baseball game, I was trying to get to the baseball, and we were talking about Ibu to get a phone, and then I went out on GitHub, Ibu. And we found some bugs and we thought, maybe it's worth doing this thing. There was a previous presentation that was about the issue of the Bethesda loaders, and we were going to touch on that a little bit. We didn't look at it for the first time. There are a number of people who have inspired us. And we recommend it if you enjoy it. If you like it, you can look at these people if they released some articles and published articles. And where are the loaders? They are almost everywhere, on servers, on consoles, on TV, on tablets, on phones. Almost everywhere. Obviously, the security of the loaders is very important. So, with that said, we basically started looking at open source bootloaders. For example, it's Uboot, Corboot, Grubb, Seabass, Cafe, IPXE, Tineco. We're just looking at what's on GitHub, what we've looked at in your real world scenario of course, all these devices, they're going to be heavily modified. They're going to be custom drivers and things like that. So, again, we're not here to discuss the possibility of how we can easily store bugs in these things. We're here to show people, developers, what they should think about and what they should look at. So, let's look at Uboot. Uboot is a terribly, very widespread loader. It's a very good customized config. There's a lot of variable loaders, Shell, and there's even some problems for shell injection and so on. An interesting feature of this Uboot is the stack of the network stack, the file system, and they're also going to load from the next level different images, like Ethernet, hard disk and so on. And they're going to use the built-in Uboot. Uboot is designed for modern operating systems. They don't support BIOS. It's used in Chromebooks and pretty interesting things that happen from Google. And they don't use it to load other things, they just implement their own functions and keep SNM grab. Obviously, all of you know these loaders, and they support just a ton of files. The main problem is probably the multi-boot, and there are interesting things that are used here. So, it's kind of like your Uboot, the verset group grab, and then CBIOS, this is a standard BIOS for QM and QVM, so you can see that the old BIOS calls, and it also supports TPM, which is kind of interesting, and it also has a module for UFE, and then CAFE, and then this Broadcom, it's used in various routers, TV's, and obviously, all the main bugs will be connected to the stack, and you can work with other stuff. IPX is an open source loader for IPX, and it's signed by UFE, TANACOR, there's really no introduction needed here, there's a huge number of people who have been doing everything to this thing for the last 15 years, and the most stocked loader that we have, and there's a lot of... there's a lot of limitations that were built based on TANACOR, for example, Qualcomm, XBL, and so on, you have the main base of TANACOR and all the rest is built based on it. And then related to bootloaders, we have things related to bootloaders, and as I said earlier, there's two worlds, safe and less safe, and you probably want to look in the safe world, and not safe, you have some secrets and so on, and you can put the bootloader on a variable that will be used for the next load, for example. You can take a picture of this because there's a certain function here, how to assemble it, how to look at it, and you can delay it and start programming for the bootloader. Let's quickly look at how the secure boot works, how the chain of trust works, how the boot drum works, how the loaders are at different levels, sometimes there's TPM, sometimes there's HostOS, depending on the host and operating system, and different load configurations. The boot drum itself is probably the first level that you've probably seen, it's the root, it's very important, because it can't be lost, it can't be found, if it's found at some extent, and it's very early in the stage of loading, so it's very small, it makes very small initialization, memory, low-level things, sometimes things like the fastboot, like maybe the USB stack, USB stack, which is a clear goal of different types of attack, and then it's transferred to the next level. And then the loaders start at the next level, and there are things like Wi-Fi stacks, SMM handlers, encirclements, some hardware environments are in some encircles of the hardware, there's Armastron, HP, there's Hypervisor, and the bootloader will send it further. And in the end, the operating system is loaded, it's checked, and in the end, it's running, and we're having fun. Everything that we were looking at was with an open-source code, and everything is pretty privileged, there's no userland, there's no food, there's no isolation, there's some, for example, some propryter loaders, they used to limit the privilege, but what we looked at did not have anything like that, but maybe we'll see this list of attack surfaces that people should focus on, and it will be interesting, it's in VRAM, file system, Stag, different tires, like USB, SPI, SMM, DMA, and other stuff for the hardware. Usually, developers are engineers for... Usually, if they use USB, we have to check it, but we don't. So, in VRAM, there are some variables that can be configured from runtime for the next load. So, the user user data is used, there are interesting functions in every loader, which you can look at, environment get, and you can see how they work, how they levelize some data, and so on. For example, there will be a boot, for example, NV get from boot BI, and as you can see, I just copy it without checking the size. We thought why not use this activity, and we tried, and we sent some package, just like this, boot P, and we sent some raw packages, and it wasn't very realistic but it was very simple and interesting, and we decided to look at something else, and quickly set up an environment, and we'll get into a little bit of an exploration. As you see, we're using hostname, and the same pattern as we see, we copy it without checking the length, we use stercup, it's copied from multiple times in different parts. The code is not very cool, to be honest. We thought that maybe we could find other bugs, we'll take a variable, and some part of this variable, and without checking the length, we continue to use it as a code. Yes, for example, we can look at an example. The scenario will be you have a device with an environment, and you'll see a variable which is very long, and that's the address. You just file a system of JFF, and it will be executed. So, hey, it's just a shell code. Obviously, if you've never looked at this stuff, you should start poking at it because it's not that cool. It's pretty fun. Okay, let's take a look. These were the attacks on NVRAM which are the most fun to play with them. But in terms of in terms of in terms of attacks, it's not very interesting. String copies, copying from some lines, it's not very fun. There's not only NVRAM, but there's also other playability in this place. Another interesting thing is the file system, because you need to find where to load it, how to manage it, and how to do it. Often, the file system doesn't check the integration check, and so, sometimes the file system would be a fat file system if, you know, loading a USB drive and, for storage, then the device that we're loading, it's going to be fat, or it may use X2 or X2, or some other file system, but it's a good attack on the surface of the attack. There's also files that you might not be able to verify, so you're interested in that, and if you're eager to work with any product, then it's a good idea to recommend how to start phasing these files. It will be interesting. In a number of bootloaders, we'll cover X2, we'll discuss X2 in Graby. I think the examples of where there could be bugs, but those two we'll cover. So this is Grub, and this is Grub X2, and Grub X2. This is the sim link code, so it puts the file, and it says, okay, how do I parse the sim link, and it says, hi, I'm sim link, and I'm so long, I'll allocate that with size, and I'll analyze a certain number of bytes. So this is a classical implementation of Integer. It's a very perfect example of the index of the element of the zero-size buffer, and obviously that's going to cause every corruption, and it will cause damage to the memory. So this particular read function, actually, if it stops reading, it stops reading, so it only reads, let's say, a thousand bytes, or a hundred bytes, even if it causes memory corruption. So this is a bitmap splash screen parser, and I don't know the ending about bitmap parser, but this is an example of a bug in bitmap parsing for splash in the map. If you have a 4-bit BMP, then you have a certain palette that when you have a 4-bit BMP, then you have a palette of 16 numbers, but you can send more colors, and this will be a problem. The other aspect is TCP-IP, and let's see what we've looked at locally, and what we can do with the remote. In the modern world, TCP-IP and some certain services that you use, connect to most likely DHCP, DNS, iSCSI, NFS, or IPsec, HTTP, HTTPS, ITFTP. Of course, there's a code for parsing TCP-IP. You need to do good because you can't do anything. If you take a step back and say, let's take a step back and see what is parsing to LV. There's reading outside the border and a lot of things like that. If you look at the protocol here, DNS, DHCP, you get some attacks on the web, such as a cat's poison, or a rent theft, predictable IDs, poisoning, ceiling attacks, and so on. There's also what we'd like to look at is bugging memory damage. If something goes wrong in parsing, you can do bugging on memory damage. Also, for example, when hard bleed leaks about some kind of information, some kind of thing is responsible for something. And sometimes, I can show you are looking for these kind of bugs in a... I would highly recommend fuzzing them. I highly recommend fuzzing them for network stacks. For example, you can use isic, which is pretty old, but pretty useful for that. So with that said, for example, for example, Ubud. For example, it's a DNS code for Ubud. There's a TID, this is a DNS ID. There's a static DNS ID of one. And because Ubud is... Ubud's environment is pretty simple, and it's always the same. It's a Coffee, it's a parcer of DCTP, and there's a buffer for junk, for any garbage. And there's a function that gets the value of this thing. So it reads and gets the stack damage. If you look at in the TTP part, it's also a very similar thing. So he copies the entire buffer into this sweetener, to 1,500 bytes in this 512-size massive. And again, we get some memory memory, because it has such a beautiful code. So it's a pretty cool code. And this has a really cute sort of a nice thing. It's IP-free, it's no problem. Since they're receiving, it sends a ping, and it's easy to receive it. And it waits until it finds the right one. And it waits for a packet when it finds the right one. And because it has a loop, it has a cycle, it has a timeout. But it also timed out at the exact same time. It frees that packet twice. And if two things happen at the same time, timeout and getting a packet, then we get memory damage. So the IP-handling-coffee, and if anybody has an IP which they have, do you know it has an IP? I have two different lengths. But coffee validates either the IP-header length or the total length. So these are missing with the IP-header. So that was sort of a quick overview of TCP and TCP-related bugs. So let's say we've got that covered, and let's say, you know, okay, what's the next thing? What more should we do now? I think we've got 11. Yeah, we have 8211, that's our Wi-Fi stack. Don't have anything to do with it at all. It's one of those kinds of things. We didn't get to having this feature yet, but we will at some point. And obviously we're not going to use this function, but at some point we're going to use this function. Well, I think I did want to mention that. If you look at it, if you look at it on Wi-Fi, depending on the size you haven't printed, depending on the type of radio you're using, in which case the stack is kind of covered because what I hope it is where the radio does a bunch of validation. If you use an adapter, what kind of adapter do you use for Wi-Fi? Because this adapter can do a lot of things that are inside of it. And from the point of view, if you look at the attacker in the bootloader, then you're most likely interested in the inside of the bootloader.  That's right. So just think about it. You're most likely looking for SSID from the Internet. So that is 32 plus one. And it has this where it sort of goes over IE that it gets. And then when it comes to IE, it says OK, we'll take this IE, and we'll do IE length, and IE length is 25, and it says SSID, IE into the SSID length. And it copies this buffer from Beacon and causes damage to the memory when you get the Beacon package, the frame. The next one, if you're thinking networking would be Bluetooth, we're just looking at the support of Bluetooth. Unfortunately, we can't talk about those bugs because we have politics of non-disclosure at the moment. We can't give you examples of bugs in Bluetooth in bootloaders, but we can look at what we can understand, what it might be, what we think might be bugs in this bootloader. Usually for HID device, right? This is our keyboard mouse. This is our keyboard mouse. I didn't generalize this, I'm looking for any kind of parsing bugs and you would probably look at some bugs in parsing. There's three recurring teams that we saw when we looked at about three often-repeating schablon problems that can happen. And this is usually related to usually connected to some very long frames and frames can be up to about 65,000 bytes. And frames can be up to 65 kilobytes. And when you can fill up to the end, I don't know if you create very, very, very short frames. You know, less than what something is expecting. That tends to blow up. Also, if you send a frame that is less than expected, and every fragment can be X amount of bytes, but the whole thing can be up to 65,000 bytes a byte. 65,000 number of bytes. So if you start playing around with the fragmentation, do you use that simple map again? I wish I could have shown an actual bug. I wasn't able to find any open source bootloader, but this is what USB does. This is that prime-tack surface in bootloaders. Obviously, it has shown up in a versace. There are some devices that, at least up till recently, I think was sort of under-ordered, or sort of people didn't quite care about it. So sometimes that's the thing. Every time I listen to what they say about USB bootloader, obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is USB bootloader and January. I think I use it for storage or, you know, things like, you know, dongles, or something like that. So basically, if you start looking at how USB works at a slightly lower level, you can see how USB is pretty low-level. It's more packet-based. So what's interesting, when a device is closed, the device is asked for, and these descriptors say certain things about your device. Each device has its own descriptor, and it's very often realized incorrectly, because this device sends descriptors to any of the things that are happening, and what class you are, and what functionality you expose, and all these kinds of things. So generally, we often see some sort of overflow or some sort of double hatches or some sort of double hatches that are pre-added to the headers of these packages. The question is, is it possible to read the protocol without reading it and just get the header? If you re-write the initial length of the header, then the first time you get a header with the correct length and the second time with the wrong length, if it wasn't validated, it could have been a bad thing. No one is expecting this. This is an example of a grab, where it goes and gets a descriptor, and the descriptor says, here are my configurations, go into configuration, and go into all these configurations. And there is a certain array of these configurations that are supposed to go through. It just always assumes that the config count is always connected to the array. So it's always connected to the array, and I know your arrays are two bytes, they're two elements, but I'm going to give you 64 configurations. It's always assumed that there is a certain size of this array. And what if I send it much bigger, if it's bigger than, for example, if it's between two? And in the Taiana Core there was a similar bug, and the descriptor uses the length, and the descriptor length is a U and 8, so it can set up to 25 bytes, and so that would have smashed and also cause memory damage, because the buffer is pretty small. And the idea is that it's not necessarily checking the borders, you can just make the buffer bigger, because the descriptor length is just 8, that is, 8 bytes. This is an example of CBIOS, for example, a typical double fetch, and it doesn't verify the length, and because that verification is here, whoever calls this sting can no longer trust WTotalLength, because it could be... It doesn't check WTotalLength. As I said, USB to me is one of the most obvious attack options in Secureboot, and there were a lot of problems with the useability of them, connected to Tegra, or something like that, because they're not compatible by the USB port, that basically, you know, you give it a length that's not validated and then a memcop, and then a size that's not verified. There were also problems with the iPhone, with the CheckM8. Obviously, there's a set of certain machine that uses it as an interesting attack surface. If the chain uses these MTV-shines, ASPI, SDIO, I2C, and then this is an interesting attack, the VectorAttack, it's also very interesting if you have a TPM, because it also fits there. So this is, for example, what happens by memory. For example, CBIOS, and it goes and gets this structure and you can set it less than what you expect. And then, see, the size of the structure is less than what it actually is, less what they expect, and so that causes an integer underflow which ends up in the size of the integer, and malloc internally has the underflow, so that really big size then becomes a very small size, and memory copying takes place and so that's how memory is reflected. And this is the malloc internals of CBIOS, which I don't have, which I don't have inside malloc. I don't want to go into details because this is a training for the audience where there's a bug with an integer underflow. So another service, attack service that is interesting, but often overlooked on devices is system management mode. And the last decade, last five years, there were a lot of interesting research on SMM, and it was a bad house game for years, you know. Somebody breaks something and it was a bad house game for years, you know. Somebody breaks something and then Ufi fixes it and then somebody breaks it again and then Ufi fixes it and so on and so forth. And occasionally people find bugs, but by the launch, you can hear a little amount of SMM handling. Third party stuff that still breaks occasionally will be damaged. Now, what we're doing is X86, but you're going to screw it up and it will take you, and you're going to screw it up and it will take you another 15 years to get it right. But I guess if you were to try the first time, this is what Coreboot does and they said we should range check it. We have an input and we're going to check the range on the diposon. And they're going to check the diposon. Okay. So, now, I talked about a bunch of buses and the thing to me that sort of separates that from all things, because DMA has been around for as long as DMA has been around. The idea is that there's no limit to trust and so what we have is an AMMU. If there is such a thing, DMA can be stopped, controlled and you can implement the limit of trust with an AMMU. Not that many people are doing this, right? You should. Because it's not so simple. There are different AMMU on different architecture. It's like Intel VTD, AMD, ARM, SMMU and all of them. If you use one of these, DMA is not the end of the world. What if you have an attack on the AMMU itself? What if you use a driver that was written before using these limits before AMMU, written without taking into account these limits? You should look at all the drivers that were written and see if everything is written correctly and what to do. For example, you did it all correctly, but because you have these limits of trust, you can't just open two devices, right? You should clean up your memory before you use it. Well, now you still have a dependency on the AMMU because you are assuming the AMMU is perfect when it probably isn't, right? You suggest that the AMMU is ideal, although there may also be certain bug attacks. My plans in the future are to look at the AMMU and find bugs there. I understand that there will be attacks on the external channels and so on. So, this is what this is going to be today, in the final where that's what we're trying to do. If you look at the spec from Ufie to the next stage, Ufie basically boots up and very early configures the AMMU and makes sure that the device is loaded and initializes the AMMU and then it controls the operational system. Well, I don't know if the next guy would undo all the AMMU program it does but every time it does it doesn't know what's going to be next, so it uses the AMMU and then does the reverse operation to fix this for new devices. This is for the future but it takes a while because you're going to get the time because you're going to get some kind of specification. Yeah, now this is where hand back over to Joe. I think it's a pretty good idea but we thought it would be a nice thing to mention to people. Well, it would be very naive not to mention our presentation. It's glitching, with glitching you have like fault injection and a lot of times people go after things like the signature verification stuff and very often people look at the signature verification for example fail overflow for PS4 on Cisco. Very interesting blog post that you should go to debug mode or something and it would say that's not enabled, infinite loop and then there's glitch out of it and it initializes debug mode and then it goes into the debug mode with timing discrepancies for example, there's different timing different time time time time energy problem with the processor and so on. There's also chipsack it's going to be a very complicated attack which opens a very complicated attack which produces extraction of different things from chips but it's not our presentation that's about this is kind of presently it's still expensive equipment now not so many people have so many expensive things to produce such attacks but pretty soon probably soon in the garage ordinary hackers can do this when all this equipment becomes more accessible and so it's not worth worrying about that I'm not going to be worried about these difficult attacks and also noticing the integrity of the code it's very difficult to do it right because it's a very weak cryptography weak algorithm problems with blocks when there's a list when you have a signed grub there's Kaspersky I published a bug in a signed grub you can load this thing and you can put them into your boot and in this way you can list it in the black list as a loader to but the block list can not always be updated and it can also be a problem and sometimes some execution files are not checked the conclusions are just the top of iceberg and a lot of work we really we really it was as soon as we decided we have an hour, let's see what's in there we found a bug we looked just in the list and until we found one bug we stopped we were surprised how bad the quality of the code is in the loader and if you want to look at the proprietary loader you need to sign some NDA it's not going to happen and if you want to do resource engineering or look at some problems you need to solve and some tips that we can give to minimize the image and turn off the functions that you don't need, for example, the network, the USB and the final system and the environment which is insane is like these little embedded devices that are running Linux and they have more drivers than our desktop at home and they use Linux and they use much more things than our usual computer about some protection against such things as you saw from the example before this morning, just really quick in the morning and that's it there's no SLR there's no support and the whole thing is about the code and Taiana Korova is pretty ahead of everyone and it's pretty cool what's going on and it's a call to action a little call to action if you haven't seen this before and you were not sure then just take it and start doing it and I'll have a workshop that you can watch and we can help you and we can do a little exploit or something like that and it's clear that there's no code for all of these things and it has to happen and we really looked at this code we sometimes just took some device to see if it breaks or not that's all we have thank you thank you now we have about 10 minutes of questions and we'll start right after the internet thank you, has the grub issue been fixed yet? was there a problem with the grub? I don't think it's been fixed yet and I don't think it was already fixed this was from whatever the official grub repository was it was from some official if you have a question in the room please line up at the microphone if you have any questions then turn to the microphone you said you wanted to build a more secure laptop so that everything is compiled inside and that there are no modules and what if someone tries to break or get into maybe DMA access because you somehow access the network device that has some special firmware to optimize the traffic or something and that this thing if there is some kind of an adapter that goes through it that's what you're talking about that's what you're talking about that's what you're talking about that's what you're talking about and that you're going to have and then just put without drivers static core that just loads all of this in the flash there are some problems that you can fix that can be recorded in memory through DMA because they have access yes, we had a problem we always used DMA and it was always a big problem so now we use AMMU it depends on if you can scan AMMU or not you can protect your device with AMMU I think that answers your question it's all you can do about these attacks if you want to make a hard laptop that you use in hostel environment right, I mean I think it's a really useful tool that you can use because there will be bugs there too but I think that's the best I can come up with yeah I mean you minimize the attacks when you have it as minimal as possible then you just kind of You don't want to do anything there. Oh, you mean the corbots on the host? Yeah, I mean, let's say you have a corbot on the Linux... For example, you have a Linux and a corbot. And you may be taken... And you may be taken after the talk. Okay, after the talk. What is your favorite... What is your favorite... ...signal angel that you use by reverse engineering the bootloaders? We just looked at a source code. Yeah, we didn't do reverse engineering. We just looked at a source code. I mean, for this particular case... In this particular case, except for the... ...we didn't have much need for it. I mean, we didn't have to do some reverse engineering. I guess a little bit of GDB engineering. Maybe we needed GDB for the bootloaders. We played a little bit with Hydra. It looked promising. We just needed a lot of eyes. GDB is pretty bad, but... ...in general, I... I have two questions. What is your opinion on the... ...the... ...the... ...the zone. I worked with it. And I was just shocked. How complicated this thing is. Should we also question the... ...the boot ROMs? What... ...the boot ROMs are often very bad. Maybe we need to... ...to strengthen some other things. It's like you're working on this? Yeah, it looks like you're doing this. So... Well, your first question was what again? Do you think about the... ...the... ...the first question was what you think about the... ...the zone. I... ...I touched upon it and a few engagements. Like you, I just tried something. I can't talk about it, because... ...it's... ...it's... ...NDA. Yeah, and there are some things that cause... ...some suspicions, problems. Yeah, the problem is that you can't just... ...start a bug, but you need... ...to try to minimize it.  But you can't fix that. But you can minimize... ...the amount of stuff in the boot ROM that's coming in. But you can't minimize all of it. I mean, there's gonna be some of it. I mean, there's gonna be some of it. I mean, there's gonna be some of it. I mean, there's gonna be some of it. But I don't know if any... ...I just wanna say this kind of touches on... ...when we said people underestimating... ...reverse engineering... ...reversed engineering. And, you know, when somebody finds a way... ...to dump a boot ROM, they start looking at it... ...then they just see, you know... ...but you just need to stack it up... ...and that's what you do. And I don't know where... ...the first thought is... ...I would say it would make more sense... ...to do more... ...open. And I would say that.... ...it would make more sense to do more... ...open. And I would say that... ...it would make more sense to do more... ...open. But in forma... ...we didn't see a way to... ...seeター. You need more eyeballs... ...to actualize...那麼, лучше 얼마나 speculation, ...but, you need more eyeballs... ...to actualize. I think there will be some eyes that might be interested in this process. We have another question from the Internet. Yes, are you okay? Are you good? And maybe even free bootloaders? Do you know any good bootloader phasers? No, not at all. I actually don't. I've shown some places. If you're doing any kind of file-based stuff and you can want to look at some of these things with a file-based system, then I think you should take a look at the Wi-Fi phasers and DNS phasers and so on. Yeah, I would say the best way, in my opinion, would be to pull out the interesting things that you're saying, and the stuff you're concerned about in front of you for that.  Yeah, so it allows the way to go all the way to a whole separate piece of this code, just as a kind of tool-place. We're using the occurrence of such errors by using another programming language, like FTO ModSecure, things that compile time or during run time, like maybe RAST. problems. If yes, then there are some other things, other projects that are not used, I use other languages. I think we can reduce the number of bugs. If we get used to Rust, we can reduce memory damage. There are some extreme cases that can not be found. Often memory damage does not exist, but also some things that were developed at some level disappear. There is a runtime for Go, in the beginning of being researched and being worked on. I think it's very interesting, I think that we can go into, I think that we can look at it, I think that there is something there, but at the moment it seems to be very early for this. There are a number of bugs that are going to be there. There are a number of bugs that are going to be there, because of memory damage. Basically, there are bugs in iron, bugs in logic, etc. But this will definitely help us. And that's it, we have run out of time. Thank you to the speakers.


Right now cars have flooded homes or you know everybody's just in despair so thank God we came out to Waco and I had to evacuate it from Katrina, Rita, Ike, all of the other storms and the DAV is definitely on the scene. I thank you guys for the things that you do. I just have never met such generosity before. But I found as a veteran's wife we also have unique people because we will somehow unconsciously find each other and help each other. I hope anybody that could give to the DAV in any way whether it's your service, your money, whatever that you would do it does help veterans, it helps veterans lives like me. It means a lot. It means a lot. My family is away but I've been adopted by the DAV.


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One of the most influential books that I recently read is The Dip by Seth Godin and One of the main reasons why it was so influential is because through my life I already try I went on numerous endeavors of opening up my martial arts school instead of Dean University Then I made my main YouTube channel of the Martial Arts Journey which is which now now has more than one hundred thirty five Hundred thousand subscribers it keeps growing So that was a big endeavor, but but initially there was a moment where I decided to close my school completely shed away my previous profession, which was martial arts specifically Aikido and yoga close my martial arts school and restart my education in martial arts in a different field and Focus on becoming a professional youtuber. So that was a big endeavor as well and now eight months ago I started this channel The Journey and It was a big endeavor as well because starting a new channel on YouTube even if you have an established channel before it turns out it's a big challenge and What what Seth Godin talks about in his book happened to me every time and I realized what he's talked about is They true and the main concept main idea behind the book the dip is That whenever you start something big whenever you start a new project a new direction Especially if it's on your own shoulders if your own if it's your own project You're you're responsible for your success by yourself, but even applies to different fields to One example I have my girlfriend is a professional singer and now she is On the path to to get to the next level. So she definitely relates to whatever said in that book as well And as I said, I went through that process myself multiple times. So whatever Seth Godin was talking about completely Resonated me and I think I I keep coming I keep talking in circles not specifically saying what that is So let's get there the main concept behind the book the dip is that when you start that new endeavor Even if things in the beginning seem like they're kind of going smoothly their things are slowly growing but initially as soon enough you will Hit what he calls and I think very fairly a dip It's a drop in in any type of more or less like any type of positive feedback any sense of growth You start to feel like nothing is working anymore. No one is interested in you Whatever you do. There's no significant feedback. There's no There's I wonder if you're hearing music Anyway, so there's no significant progress basically and you keep on grinding you keep on doing things But but just things don't move and that's a place where it's very easy to start to panic And again, I've been there a number of times myself and It's a scary place to be but the brilliance of the book the dip because Seth Godin explains and I think justly That it's a place which is unavoidable That's a place which is is almost like a must Must experience to have Thing is and what Seth Godin again says and I entirely agree with him through my from my experience for what I explored And through my life I always loved exploring stories of successful people people who made something significant made a change And it always comes down to the dip. There's the dip is evident. It's there But if you don't know about it, if you don't know that the dip is inevitable And you drop into the dips place then you start to easily freak out and again What wouldn't what said golden emphasizes and that relates to my experience is that human beings? We are not programmed to feel comfortable at Difficult experiences basically we're not programmed to feel good And stay in situations which are uncomfortable for us Our mind is basically bound to avoid discomfort and being in the dip is not a comfortable feeling We want encouragement. We want a feeling of success. We want affirmation We want the confirmation that we're on the right path but being in the dip most of times you don't get that and it seems it's easy to come to a conclusion that it's pointless and I was challenged with that and I what's what's up coding explains is that most of us we go through that process and The beauty of the book again is that when you read about it and when you come to a conclusion when one step Don't really proves that it's an inevitable. It's an inevitable experience and you set yourself up for it You gear yourself up for it and you realize, okay, this is the dip. It's inevitable. I do have to pass this This is not a bad sign because then again, that's that's where people I think Make a mistake they feel like okay. I'm feeling bad things are not doing It's probably a sign that this is not the right path. I shouldn't pursue this This is this is this is not for me. That's a mistake. Seth Godin encourages you to To realize and recognize that you have to live through the dip You have to spend quite a bit of time there and the longer the more time you spend there The the better outcome you'll have At the very end of it and and again now there's a very important moment to stress and Seth Godin does that really well, too Is that just spending the time in the dip is not enough? It's not just about okay?  Nobody's watching my video and then I just wait For people to praise and celebrate my video and it's all about waiting No, it is not and Seth Godin again clarifies that Overcoming the dip is not only about time like time is a significant factor Most likely it will take a while until people will become interested in what you do They will start to recognize your work. They will start to trust you They will buy into you it most likely will take a while, but it's not just about waiting it out It's also about continuously grinding and doing your best improving yourself and trying new things He he Specifies really well that it's not just about doing the same thing over and over again But the dip because we feel so uncomfortable It feels bad to be in that place where you don't feel any progress That also encourages you to try new things and to try to be innovative to to try to come up with new solutions with with different Different perspectives different different approaches and if you are Going through that way if you keep on trying something new and you don't give up There it is much more likely that given the right amount of time Eventually you'll hit the spot eventually you'll come up with a solution Which will work and then people will be like whoa look if you take an example of YouTube That happens with people like even Ramsey Dewey some of you might be following him He is I guess like hundred fifty K right now subscribers also martial arts related to my main channel From what I know of his story He kept publishing videos for a while, but there was not a lot of recognition there, but then one day Joe Rogan watched one of his videos and talked about it and on his podcast and suddenly Everybody will went what went to watch that video and they also discovered. Oh, there's plenty of wonderful amazing videos there already He's a great guy and then suddenly it just blew up But the thing is he already put in the work It wasn't just one video that made a difference the whole his whole hard work paid up till that point So clearly, you know, he had to go through that dip as well But once he reached that end and that's the point which which Seth go and again makes is that The longer the dip takes the harder the dip is to overcome The more successful you will be at the end because so few people stay there if it's incredibly a it's if it's a really really tough dip So potentially let's let's use from what I know of startups have a friend of mine a good friend of mine working with startups and We keep talking about that and he really knows you know how they work He says there's so it's so likely that startups will fail But if your startup does work and become a unicorn then it's oh my goodness, you know There's so much money involved and and the success rate, you know, it just blows up But the chances that you will make it through it's not only a long dip. It's also a very difficult dip to navigate It's one where you really need to push things forward and you really need to create something Which will be the game changer, but if you do You know, you're you're you're good for the rest of your life Basically, if you're talking financially and obviously we're not only interested our first time not only interested in financial success But that's you know, that's part of the game and if you look at many of the stories of successes Again, I recognize that whatever Seth voting says in the book is true. The dip exists. It's inevitable It's not only about waiting through But the more and again, that's what Seth says to himself the better you understand that you are in the dip and It may take time You will need to put in the work. You will need to keep on working Trying out different solutions, but the better your your understanding is that the dip that you're in the dip It's not a bad sign. It's natural the better you understand that Sorry coffee greens, I'm just saying something the better you understand that That's it's part of the deal that you have to feel bad for a while that that that lack of feedback is normal The easier it is it will be for you to overcome the dip. So that is why I highly recommend the book the dip I said going it's it's only like two and a half hours on on audible Really short book quickly quick read quick listen, but but a brilliant book, you know I said the main basics, but it's still great to hear it from the master himself So going is in general a great writer. I read a number of his books really like them Just go and listen to it. It's it's pretty cheap actually an audible and I'm not getting money for saying this And the very last few words, this is the very first book review that I'm doing in my life You might know this from my name from a more channel from my previous video that I decided that While I currently am investing a lot of energy in my own personal growth And I thought that once in a while just share with what cool stuff I'll I come up with I come You know, I discover so let me know what you think about this video Did you enjoy the preview was useful any feedback you have for me to improve it? Should I do more I probably will do more whatever, you know in this regarding what people will say But but if everybody will say this sucked then I'll be like well, maybe I'm doing something wrong So so give me some feedback. I appreciate I'll appreciate it and yeah Thank you for listening and I hope you will read that book and or listen to it and let me know what you think By the end of it. So it was nice to hang out and see you next time


We could talk about Mockingjay part one in a minute or less. I think we could probably both speed run our thoughts through it So let's do it like okay, literally all I have to say about Mockingjay part one President money pops in right president coin pops in she's got the Ava Max card. She's got a love. She Bobbed so hard that she loved and not enough people talking about that She's serving with those contacts like I'm all about her visuals in the suit as well her vibe is sort of immaculate It's like she's a little bit she's like she's here to get the job done Like she woke up and turned up to work and she's getting the job done But she's also like a little bit like oh you're giving me bad vibes president coin I hope that doesn't turn into anything but in like the whole movie I feel like could have been squashed into five minutes my ten minutes I agree I think that the Mockingjay part one suffers from the classic part one syndrome It's you know every part one is a part one for a reason There's so much set up for the world that we're building you're no longer in the games that we've already built for We're now going into a war torn world and honestly, why does every single big franchise and in war I? Do have some thoughts about like the capital having the capital vlog squad like escaping the capital and like choosing to film the propaganda Like that was definitely it is Interesting also like why was there so many like all we needed was one camera We did not need two cameras when I was watching Mockingjay part one and they start seeing it And they start the district start fighting back the peacekeepers and they're like singing it as our margin And the background is just like And then they go to the dam to release the explosion on it. I Almost started crying Like when they're going up and all of them like they're just getting shot down And it's just a full-blown suicide mission of them going in and releasing the bombs to only like fall on the bridge Like I was crying. I was literally crying. I thought that was so sad. It was something serious It was something serious. I feel like they shot it so well and like showed the impact of Katniss as the Mockingjay singing her little tune Are you are you come into the tree and like Cressida did a big one with the editing on that like she really like She got on the trending page she got in the pan-M trending page For that little singing clip started the uprising broke the Dan power goes out snows mad as hell. He's like How my hologram gonna get up guys I need to update my Katniss updates account after Seneca died He took the log in For Katniss crave because he was obsessed with Katniss. He was obsessed He was like the full-time hater. That's basically a fan like he was so much of a hater. He was a fan Like you could not help but love her because you hated her so much like he kept up with everything Katniss was doing obsessed like literally obsessed like he was like we got her.    What a sassy old man Like is honestly he we are all victims of the sassy man apocalypse from snow himself like he the sassy man Just like if you think about the sassiness required to jump on this zoom call with Katniss at 3 a.m When Katniss is like trying to distract him. He's like Anyway, hey Katniss. How are you? Good to see you.   I'm like, where was this energy in the hunger games? Like why were you so passive in the hunger games when like you very clearly have this ability to be like Strong in terms of choking like why don't you choke anyone out in the games? Wanted to show me out anything to say On the record is Peter your man He's like side Peter or Phinik Phinik Peter or Hamid Peter Peter or Sinner Peter Sinner or Caesar Peter the way that wasn't even an Sorry, maybe he is my man then the way I was like Sinner or Caesar Peter I was like like you can't stop thinking about Like you're crazy for that. Okay last one Caesar or snow Caesar I lied Peter or Joanna Joanna Joanna or Phinik Right, I've seen what I needed to see like you have taste and you have class mags or Effie Effie Why are you surprised by that answer mags or snow snow? What you would pick mags.   Yeah ill okay But I'm like I'm sticking with my choices video is sponsored by parade if you don't know parade is parade makes super cute and comfortable undergarments for anyone and Everyone parades best sale of the year is finally here for Black Friday and Cyber Monday parade is giving everyone 30% off But with my code trend dash BF you can get 50% off store-wide This is the product that I've been recommending to basically all my girlfriends basically anyone who will listen to me is these seamless invisible Underwears they are so comfortable. 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I've been really into the trend of falconet bras I feel like they're very very good for anyone who is small chested like me It just holds it up without doing too much because sometimes I want to wear no bra But sometimes I'm not feeling confident enough to wear no bra and the falconet bra gives that effect of Kind of having a little bit more of a lax fit It's not so tight and it's not so pushed in and it just lets my like my girls sit And if any of the products that I just mentioned is just doing the slightest bit Don't worry because I'm giving you guys access to the black Friday parade sale and last year's 2022 lightning sale was 70% off and this year for 2023 It is 80 the lightning sale starts from November 17th and ends on November 29th But the lightning sale is 80% off the site wide sale is 30% off But with my code you can get 50% off site-wide black Friday and cyber Monday sales can be Overwhelming to shop for to say the least it is a lot of sales being thrown in your faces But one thing that I'll say for gifts or for yourself.  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So maybe correlation implies causation But she wears it during the first game in the second game No, it's for Prim like she gives it to Prim and then prims it give Prim gives it back to her to wear during the games.  Well, yeah, that's why I pram got like blown up right So it's her fault Gail Can die in a hole agree? Gail in this movie like it really does like go from zero to a hundred like he's He's not likable in the other three movies in this movie from one of the very First scenes that he has with Katniss He says they're helping the enemy if they have to die I can live with that and he's like this is how he justifies killing children of the Capitol When Katniss is like with that kind of thinking you can send off kids to the Hunger Games to keep the districts in line. I was like Gagged him gagged him and then he thinks he ate he thinks he ate when he says this he goes sometimes killing isn't personal Coming from someone that has not killed anyone So volunteer for the Hunger Games. He's literally he said I'm only on my third day out here being a soldier and He's literally talking to the girl that survived two Hunger Games talking about you're talking to the girl on fire The girl on fire who witnessed innocent children go into the Hunger Games and be Murdered and he's like sometimes it's not personal If I could kill you I would do it in a second be for real Gail Also, maybe he was hooking up with president coin on the low honestly when when he's like oh Like we have to go talk to coin. I'm like we Since when are you allowed in the HQ since when and Gail becomes such a vital part of this story He's not anything special. It's like he did not know about district 13 until they came to save him when the capital came for district 12 But then suddenly after like two weeks. He's in the HQ running his mouth It's like you're not Hamich Hamich not to bring it back to my man Hamich, but Hamich like Again, he's about his business. He's important. Like he has influence. He has power. He's important to being in the HQ So it's blue tug. Why is Gail there?  That's it. Like yeah, he saved some people I think we all saved some people but his save count doesn't It doesn't even out with his kill count. Can we please talk about? The okay mocking Jay part one and two not my favorites, right? Like if I'm giving scores It's four and a half for the first movie five stars for the second movie Then like three and a half three and a half for mocking Jay one and two maybe three three and a half right But then the scenes in mocking Jay part two where they're like making their way through the capital and like dealing with all the traps Loved it because it's like Hunger Games s been exciting those like Monsters, which by the way, how are they just monsters? Like in the monsters in the Hunger Games, they're fake because they're in the arena But it's like oh you can just make them in real life. Well, I was asking someone what those were those are mutt So that's what Peta is referring to all the time when he's like, I'm a mutt.  I did like the traps and like what they set up I also think it's kind of a scapegoat for like Telling like it's supposed to be about the revolution and you're making another Hunger Games, bro Like for sure for sure But I loved it was I entertained. Are you not entertained? No, I was entertained also Phoenix dying Pissed me off. I was like kill Katniss.  He's so expendable. I will say in terms of strength Phoenix if Phoenix had the mocking J How say movement behind him he could totally do it But in terms of strength and like actually being a vital role in like survival Like he definitely does outnumber Peta in that sense like he definitely does beat him Yeah, I mean, I Just can't get past like the same way gale Does that shit to Priam like he orders that thing that he's But the fact that the reveal of that is from snow to Katniss is Gag city, it's gag nation. He literally is like gag city today Gag city tomorrow Gag city forever. I Love it when he goes. We both know I'm not above killing children. We both know I'm not above killing children. Oh Like Sassy that's sassy He was literally like he and he goes I'm afraid we've both been played for fools He because he was literally like he was like she kind of gagged me with that Like she kind of gagged me by like putting it through capital like Signals like it looks like capital parachutes falling down.  He's so often hammer like that I I can't confirm or deny. I can't confirm or deny that at all. Maybe we could find out by reading the book We could find some more information. Maybe we need to find more information on that.   Like she's a weird lady and then Katniss like does the little into like President coin she falls down the thing gag Like a hundred percent gag like and like snow starts laughing You need to look back. It's happening. You need to look back. I'm going to insert it here for everyone to see what I'm talking about snow when he's on the execution when he's on the pole for the execution is Is this what you want? He's literally this moment. He's literally like this. He's like You better not be president so certainly on the execution pole when I get there you I'm like he's like lean to the side. He's like President coin falls down and he's like dang. She listened to me.  No, she waxed coin snow has a giggle snow gets demolished See I watched this epilogue scene She run they run away. Hamish gets her an out of the capital They say she'll be pardoned for her crimes when things have died down. She escapes She goes to the victor's village in district 12 And then she finds pita there And it really does Not I like it that they are safe and happy I Wish she looked a little bit more sad. I will be honest go sub president science like they're holding hands I wasn't dead. Well people that have criticized it. They've been like she looks too sad in that ending scene I think she should look more sad She's talking to her child about how she makes a list of happy things in life So she remembers them because all she has lived up to this point has been so awful Like that is insane Side track jumping back within the film Why was her hair like eating the entire movie? Like she goes through like she gets strangled by pita and she has a fresh blow out We need to talk about that because The thing about Katniss, she was not gonna be she's so snow-coated in the fact that She was never going to be caught lacking in the hair department And she had so many hairstyles. She had the pony down the side that she had right now She had the curtain bangs from catching fire. She had the blowout mid choke Like she was always serving a visual and like no one wants to talk about that like we do because it's like During the time like I mean, I guess like she was really leading a revolution She needed to like serve or else who would follow someone That's why president coinine had so many followers because she was serving love What did you think about their happy ending? um Like well, it's like you weren't even like a big fan of their romance period Like not really i'm like i'm happy for them i'm happy for them It's like saying like a facebook engagement from someone i went to high school with like i'm happy for them But like are you? Like sure am I invested not really But it's like good on you I'm glad she like got her means It does kind of like make you almost feel like you're part of the capital and part of the problem when i'm like They're not killing each other anymore. It's not fun Maybe that's Purposeful, I mean let's ask you that I can't I couldn't tell you the exact thing that is missing and maybe someone that read the book could enlighten us Source material and why I don't like it uh myself There's something Like i'm seeing like It's almost like like um Like a puff pastry like it's like I can see the outer shell But it's crumbling if I try to like pick it up. Yeah, like my ranking is Mockingjay part one Mockingjay part two hunter gangs catching fire and I think that's like a reasonable I think that's very reasonable. Yeah, I think so too And I agree with that completely Well, thank you Thank you, Seneca. Where's the Seneca law? Where's the Senna law?  Yeah, where are all these lures that probably do have lures within the books that we haven't read It's a lawless Panem today panem tomorrow panem forever


The next item of business is a statement by Fergus Ewing on an update on the work of the National Council of Rural Advisers. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement, so if anybody wishes to ask a question, please press your request to see buttons now and I call on Fergus Ewing. In January last year, the Parliament agreed to establish an independent group involving relevant stakeholders to provide advice as to the principles and policies that should underpin options for appropriate rural support beyond 2020. A National Council of Rural Advisers was duly established with 14 individual members, drawn from a variety of backgrounds, and appointed on the basis of their expertise in operating and supporting rural enterprise. It was important to me that we appointed as many women as men. Their voices and experiences are often wrongly absent from rural policy debate, and that a number of younger people were involved. That approach was embodied in the appointment of co-chairs in Alison Milne and Lorne Creer. The National Council was asked to provide advice for government on the implications of Brexit for rural Scotland, as well as recommendations on future rural policy and support. The paper produced last November largely confirmed what we knew that the implications will be far reaching and extremely challenging, particularly through the loss of people and skills and that continued membership of the single market and customs union is the least damaging Brexit outcome. That finding is reinforced in the discussion paper that was published on Tuesday. I agree wholeheartedly with the National Council's conclusion that Brexit weighs heavily on the future of our industries. The paper also makes it clear that rural Scotland is capable of building on its inherent resilience and creativity to overcome such barriers and challenges. As the National Council puts it, with the right focus and energy, we can achieve a new rural economic strategy that puts people at its heart. One of the core strengths of the Council's approach has been this willingness through 11 rural things workshops held around Scotland and engagement with stakeholder organisations to listen closely to others. That process, backed by the evidence, suggests that there are strong and resolute foundations upon which to drive forward Scotland's rural economy. Research that is produced by the Scottish Government to better understand the rural economy shows that the strongest economic growth in Scotland between 2007 and 2015 was not in urban areas but in what is termed mainly rural areas, with strong growth in the value of goods and services also in island and remote rural areas. The National Council challenges us to produce a better way of measuring economic growth in rural areas, and it is a challenge that I readily accept. The National Council's call for a defined and ambitious strategy for Scotland's rural economy that develops natural and human capital, competitiveness, robust infrastructure and social inclusion is compelling. Its discussion paper identifies three key themes for that strategy—vision, people and infrastructure. The vision on which a strategy is based must accentuate the many positives and strengths in the rural economy, as well as acknowledge the barriers and address the challenges. I particularly welcome the focus on inclusive growth and tackling inequalities in the rural labour market and creating quality job opportunities. That is key to attracting people to move or return to live and work in rural Scotland and to developing the talents of those who live and work there currently. Through the current Scottish Government campaign, Scotland is now, we will continue to do all we can to make clear that Scotland is a positive and inclusive country. For example, migrant workers are welcome to make their lives here and contribute to our rural economy. Rural Scotland needs people to stay on the land and in our remote communities in order to thrive. As the National Council has uncovered, the best people to lead rural Scotland are the people who live there already. That is why the Government is already investing in its skills and talents. We co-fund Scotland's rural college, UHI and all its associated colleges. The University of Glasgow's Crichton campus in Dumfries and the University of West of Scotland's campus in Aire, as well as providing rural campuses with a £9 million rural premium. The 21 regional action groups for developing the young workforce cover all of rural Scotland. We have introduced a rural supplement to training providers delivering modern apprenticeships in remote and rural areas. We have funded almost 1,400 modern apprenticeship new starts in land-based frameworks over the past three years. The third theme of infrastructure also matters or, as one rural thinks participant puts it, multilevel connectivity. The Government is already working hard to create the physical infrastructure Scotland's rural economy needs. We are making the biggest public sector investment of any Government in the UK in broadband, providing £600 million to deliver access to superfast broadband to 100 per cent of homes and businesses by the end of 2021. The Reaching 100 programme prioritises the most remote and rural areas of Scotland that currently have the least access to broadband connectivity. We are building over 50,000 new homes, with £25 million specifically dedicated to housing in rural and island communities. Since this weekend, we committed to creating a further 3,000 homes through the Building Scotland Fund. We are creating Scotland's first dual electric highway on the A9. The Aberdeen bypass will be completed later this year. We will undertake a feasibility study into improvements to the A75, and we continue to provide support to Highlands and Islands airports and lifeline ferry services. Through the food processing and marketing contract since 2015, grants have been made to invest in the supply chain infrastructure for rural businesses. Like the £4.5 million grant that was announced in a visit that I made last week for ABP to develop further its facilities in Perth. We are investing in communities' own capacity, transferring assets to local communities from the national forest estate, including the three projects that were just announced yesterday, investing in fisheries local action groups in coastal communities, seeking to support more women into farming through the Women in Agriculture Task Force, as well as providing more than £71 million to Highlands and Islands Enterprise to provide economic development support and to establish a new enterprise agency for the south of Scotland. However, I also accept the need to ensure that rural areas enjoy the same opportunities and access to services as urban areas, and that we need more streamlined and cohesive support mechanisms to better help businesses. What we support in the rural economy in the future and how we do that must reflect Governments' aspirations and objectives, but must also be informed by real evidence of what the public values as the agriculture champion state or, as one recent rural thinks participant put it, that policy is driven by people. I can announce that the National Council's work will continue over the summer, with a consultation on nine key questions arising from those key themes in the discussion paper. That consultation, which was opened on Tuesday, marks the start of the rural civic conversation that the agriculture champion called for. The National Council will use the information gathered alongside evidence that is already collected to refine its recommendations, and I anticipate that its work will be complete in the autumn. The National Council and its 14 members have already made a significant contribution to our discourse on the future needs and interests of Scotland's rural economy. I have found them to be insightful and willing to challenge questioning the status quo and generating fresh ideas. I must thank them all for what they have achieved to date and for their enormous effort and contribution to that task. Supporting their work to continue over the summer will allow them to complete their deliberations and produce comprehensive recommendations to help to create the vibrant, sustainable and inclusive rural economy that we all wish to see. Thank you very much. We now move to our questions starting with Edward Mountain. Thank you Presiding Officer and I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for sight of his statement. I'd also like to refer members to my register of interest. I'd like to welcome the work of the National Council of Rural Advisers, who have identified many of the challenges that rural Scotland already recognises. Many Highlanders and indeed the Cabinet Secretary, I'm sure, will take huge issue with this report, where it suggests on page 16 that Urquhart Castle is in the Cyle of Loch Alsh. I think that we both know that it's not, but this is a report that has no hint of a strategy or a policy, which the Cabinet Secretary suggested only last week there would be. So I have to ask how long it will take to get one. Well, there's going to be a six-week consultation, probably followed by a six-week period to analyse the responses, and then probably six weeks for the Cabinet Secretary to consider that analysis, and if we're generous to the Cabinet Secretary at least another 16 weeks to come up with a policy. That's eight and a half months in total from today to draft a rural strategy. So we probably won't have any ideas from this Government until February 2019. Frankly, Cabinet Secretary, that's too long. So I'm going to ask the Cabinet Secretary, when will we have a plan, when will he stop delivering, dithering and start deliver a plan for our farmers and the rural economy? Cabinet Secretary? Well, I'm pleased, I guess, that Mr Mountain welcomed the work that the National Council have done, although that was really the end of any positive content of his remarks. I would have thought that it behoved the Scottish Conservative Party to recognise that these are 14 individuals with no political perspective, but rather the viewpoint and perspective of those who have contributed enormously to the rural economy in Scotland and whose efforts should therefore be appreciated. I would also point out that the NCRA is a group that I was asked, indeed instructed, to appoint by this Parliament. Therefore, it seems to me to be childish to say that we should pre-empt the work that Parliament has asked us to do by ignoring its work and its recommendations, which will be forthcoming in the autumn. I can assure the member that, of course, we shall respond to that final report when we receive it, as well as to the report of the agricultural champions that we have last week. However, I think that it is really rather negative that Mr Mountain completely ignores the offering that is produced in this excellent discussion paper from people who, some of whom are actually here today listening to this—just bear that in mind—an excellent paper with the slogan, together we can and together we will. That's a positive slogan, and perhaps that's why the Scottish Tories aren't keen on it, since the three main activities that they appear to be interested in are nitpicking, natbashing and power grabbing. Colin Smyth Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement and to thank the National Council of Rural Advisers for the work that they've done on what is a very positive and important report. For those of us who represent and live in rural areas, the report asks, however, whether we are very familiar with it. It also reflects, I have to say, a disappointing progress that has been in building strong, sustainable rural communities over the past decade, even without the challenges that we face of Brexit. The cabinet secretary says that he's particularly welcome out of the focus on inclusive growth, but the reality is that we've had not one but two Government economic strategies that gave commitments to regional equity but have failed to deliver that equity with low pay, for example, still rife across rural Scotland. The report also highlights the digital divide where the roll-out of fibre broadband and recent years left and still leaves many rural communities behind. There's also emissions in the report and the cabinet secretary's response today. There's no mention, for example, of the utter scandal of rural poverty and there isn't enough emphasis on the value of our natural environment. Tackling poverty and protecting environment must be key principles at the heart of agriculture and rural support post-Brexit. Can the cabinet secretary give us an exact timetable when this Government will set out a shared vision of what Scotland wants that post-cap support to look like and take that case to the UK Government instead of waiting for the UK Government to tell us what to think? In other words, when will the Scottish Government stop waiting and start leading when it comes to supporting our rural communities? I'm pleased that Colin Smyth acknowledges the good work that the advisers have done. I think that that is genuine and welcome. In respect to the timescale, I confirm what I've already made clear, that the final report from the NCRA will be available in the autumn. That will be considered by us and then we will respond to it in detail along with the work of the champions. Bear in mind that this is a consultation document. We want to hear what the public have to say. If you read the document, it says repeatedly—well, there's lots of heckling, as usual, and there's sort of negativity coming from that direction as per the norm. However, on the positive side, what people have said in the 127 people that took part in the 11 rural things meetings throughout Scotland—a huge commitment to work incidentally by those people—was thought to be welcome. They have said that they want policy to be made listening to people. We are going to listen to the people and then make the policy, not devise policy without doing that, particularly since Parliament has asked us to do that. I don't accept the premises of the assertions that Mr Smyth has made. We are doing a considerable amount of work, as I said to the Wreck Committee last week, in order to prepare policy making in the future. Of course, that is a very serious task, but until such time as we know what the budget will be, what the tariffs will be and what the costs will be, it is impossible for anyone who is to produce a plan with figures and clarity. However, I can assure all members that we are dealing with all of those matters on a daily basis, and I hope to say more about that relatively soon. Emma Harper is to be followed by Peter Chapman. I remind members that I am the PLO to the cabinet secretary. I welcome the report and its central recommendation to create a rural economic strategy and agree absolutely that people living and working in rural Scotland need to be involved in policy making. Can the cabinet secretary advise how the civic conversation that is being launched with this consultation will ensure that women's voices and the views of young people are heard and listened to? That is an important part of the response. We are keen that we should hear from from females in rural Scotland and young people and young females. Emma Harper is aware of the Women and Agriculture Task Force, which I co-chair with Joyce Campbell and which is addressing some of the gender inequality issues. As the discussion document highlights, the disparity between the average female and median male earnings is quite extreme in parts of rural Scotland. We will, of course, throughout the process of the consultation, wish to encourage people throughout rural Scotland to respond to it and to submit their views. I hope that they will and I expect that they will. We want to see what they want to say and study that carefully and take that into account when we move forward. Well, here we are, a whole year after the council was formed. This is all we have, a document with no answers, only questions. Frankly, this is very disappointing. The cabinet secretary mentioned just a few seconds ago that he has no idea about budgets. Let me tell him categorically that, in the DEFRA document, health and harmony, it states categorically that funding for pillar 1 and pillar 2, farm support, will be delivered at the same rate until at least 2022. So I ask again, when is the cabinet secretary going to give any positive ideas for a rural economy and start to deliver a plan for a farmer's future? I must, I'm afraid, correct, Mr Chapman. It's not correct to say that the Scottish Government has received assurances that pillar 2 payments beyond those contracts that have been entered into prior to Brexit day will be honoured. No such commitment has been made, as Mr Chapman should know, so his assertion that that is the case is a fact incorrect. It follows, therefore, that the conclusions that he draws from that are also, sadly, wrong. Secondly, and I think perhaps more importantly, because we've gone over all this ground, ad infinitum, endless hours of parliamentary proceedings, gone over the same old negative moaning and whining from those Conservatives. What's more important and what's really disappointing is Mr Chapman's assertion that there's nothing positive in this report, and either he hasn't read it or he's unwilling to hear what it says. I mean, there's a whole series of recommendations about how rural Scotland goes forward. The emphasis, though, is on looking at the successful ventures that are created by business in rural Scotland, to look at the positives, to look at the opportunities, to see how we can help people achieve even more by addressing the three strands, the vision, the people and the infrastructure. And I set out in my opening statement, of course, many, many ways in which the Scottish Government is doing that, and I'm not going to repeat them now, you'll be pleased to hear, Presiding Officer. Of course, this is an excellent, positive report, and I'm really quite shocked to hear Mr Chapman's incorrect and quite insulting characterisation of it. Graham Dey to be followed by Rhoda Grant. Thank you. If anything demonstrates the damaging impacts of Brexit that the report has highlighted, it's the issue of migrant workers being able to continue to contribute to our rural businesses and wider economy. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that the Tories have an utter brass neck to be carping about the time being taken to deliver the rural strategy when they have had two years, two years, since the Brexit vote to address worries over access to seasonal workers and they have done nothing? I do, and the National Council of Rural Advisers confirmed that migrant workers make an enormous, positive contribution to this country. From visits that I have made and Mr Dey represents Angus Grores, I spoke to many of the migrant workers. I can say that many of them were genuinely concerned about whether or not they would be welcome here. I think that that's a quite appalling predicament to put people in. I think that it's unsavory. Of course, we didn't vote for this in Scotland anyway, did we? No. I would point out again, in conclusion—well, they're laughing at this, I don't think that it's very funny—but I would point out once again that Mr Gove undertook when he spoke to the NFU south of the border earlier this year that he would come forward. There would be a scheme and he announced that it would be brought forward relatively quickly thereafter. It hasn't. I've asked him about that at the meetings and I'm afraid that his scheme has not come forward. Rather than berate us for something that is not a devolved responsibility, why don't they join with us in saying that this Parliament should have the power to deal with these matters? Plainly, the UK Government has got no appetite or intent to do so. Rhoda Grant, to be filled by Mark Ruskell. The cabinet secretary alluded to the gender pay gap before, but if I can just quote from the report, it says, women living in remote rural Scotland have the lowest annual income of any group and the largest median gender pay gap at £5,076 when comparing annual median wages. That means that in remote rural Scotland women earn 17 per cent less on average than men. I believe that that is down in part to seasonal part-time and low-paid work and also falling public sector employment. The cabinet secretary says that he is committed to tackling inequalities. Perhaps he would like to tell us what action he is going to take to tackle the gender pay gap. Cabinet secretary. That was indeed the section of the NCRA report to which I was leading earlier, so I am pleased that Rhoda Grant has identified it. Actually, it is useful that we have had the benefit of this report in order that we can see that these are the situations that we need to address. There are many, many things that we need to do to address pay inequality. The Government is doing a great many of them because they cover a whole range of issues about childcare, employment, access to opportunities and training and about transport, but we are, and it is fair to say, committed across the whole of the Government's responsibilities to do what we can to tackle those matters in a fairer way and do our very best to reduce that inequality gap over time. I welcome the report as a starting point in the conversation, although there are more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese. There are no mentions of the environment that underpins our rural economy, no mentions of the future of the SRDP and no mention of issues that affect people in rural areas such as access to childcare. In spite of the uncertainty that we have seen over Brexit, the Welsh Assembly has produced a vision for rural support post-Brexit. When are we going to see the Scottish Government's vision for rural support for the SRDP post-Brexit? I think that it is a bit unfair to say that the work of the NCRA does not recognise those things. I am aware that they do and, of course, if you look at their interim recommendations last November, you will find that I think that they have done so in many respects. I welcome the contribution from the member and his party to this consultation. I hope that there is a good response to that. I can assure you that the NCRA is absolutely committed to the twin imperatives of agriculture in terms of producing food and looking after attending the landscape and doing so in an environmentally friendly fashion, and that is an extremely important element of the approach that the Scottish Government has taken and will continue to do. I have made clear repeatedly that my vision for the rural economy is to use our natural assets to best advantage and, as far as farming is concerned, to ensure the primacy of producing high-quality food in a way that is sympathetic to our landscape and to use our people, the best resource of all. I have made that clear on countless occasions and I will continue to do so. However, what I am particularly pleased about in conclusion is that the NCRA has come up with a vision that is entirely aligned with that, which we have already set out. Mike Rumbles is to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. It is the question of vision, cabinet secretary. Can you tell us what your vision is for the future of Scottish agricultural financial support for Brexit, without referring to the UK Government criticising them? We can all do that, but what is your vision for the future? I have already set out in response to Mr Ruskell, an abbreviated version of the vision that I see for rural Scotland. I will continue to do so. I want to see the financial support for rural Scotland continuing to be provided at the level that we were promised during Brexit by all the Brexit years, which is currently £500 million. I also want to see the £160 million that was intended for Scottish farmers paid back to Scotland that was siphoned off by UK treasuries under Conservative leadership, with a bit of help from the Liberals, as I recall Mr Rumbles's term in the Treasury. That money has been siphoned off by the Tories with a bit of help from the Liberals. I want that money back for the Scottish rural community. It was intended for them. I will conclude with this. The ridiculous situation that next year, the amount per hectare in financial support for Scotland will be at the lowest level of any of the EU countries or states. That is what happens if you allow the Conservatives to run Scotland. There are still six more members who wish to ask questions about less than, well, two minutes left. Stewart Stevenson, to be followed by Jamie Greene. I draw members' attention to my agricultural holding and the fact that I will be an R100 beneficiary. In that connection, Cabinet Secretary, I wonder if, in looking at the contracts for the R100, preference will be given to those who have future proofing, so that, when the backhaul is eventually upgraded, we can have 300 megabit and a 1 gigabit delivery to rural locations, thus enabling us to have an advantage over urban areas where, presently, we have a disadvantage. Mr Stevenson makes a good point. The answer is yes, the way in which the contract is being taken forward in the procurement stage is to anticipate the future need and desire to move from superfast to ultrafast. My understanding is that the use of fibre is an enabler of that process to take place. That therefore forms part of our thinking about, although we cannot mandate one technology over another because of state aid rules, to encourage and to score the tender in terms of points by reference to the extent to which the achievements are reached by provision of fibre rather than other methodologies, precisely because of the point that Mr Stevenson makes. That then empowers rural Scotland, in some cases perhaps to an even greater extent than those urban dwellers, by having ultrafast broadband in years to come. Jamie Greene The cabinet secretary talks about improving connectivity in Scotland's rural communities, but the reality is that a catalogue of failures recently on the CalMac network has left many island communities far from connected. CalMac itself admits that there is zero resilience, no additional capacity and a significant risk of further breakdown this summer. So what does the cabinet secretary have to say to those communities who have been so badly let down in recent months and can he tell the chamber today what immediate steps have been taken to ensure that ferry services to every island in Scotland will be safeguarded this summer? I am not quite sure what this has got to do with the National Council of Rural Advisers. It is a little bit insulting that members just choose to ask anything they wish, in any topic they wish, instead of addressing the good work that these individuals have done. I think that it really is quite insulting. I cannot really recall anything quite like it, but there we are, that is the conservatives for you. To answer his question, of course, we have provided resources to the CalMac in terms of the tender which have allowed them to expand. We are providing extra vessels. We have dealt with difficult situations that arose, and of course part of those difficulties are the problems of success, the success of the growing economies in the islands, growing tourism, growing population, RET, leading to more people choosing to use the ferries. Those are the problems of success. The Scottish Conservatives would not know much about that. Thank you. I apologise to those four members who would wish to get in, but I am afraid that we are not running out of time. I would just use this opportunity to remind members to keep their questions short, ministerial replies equally succinct and we will actually get through more questions in the time allocated. However, we will now move on to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion 12730, in the name of Claire Hockey. We will just take a few moments for the ministers and others to change seats.


Where does Scotland get its money from? Most Scottish taxes are collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs or HMRC. Scotland receives the majority of its funding in the form of a block grant from Her Majesty's Treasury. The block grant is roughly £30 billion each year. How is the block grant calculated? Since 1978, most changes to the block grant have been determined using a formula called the Barnett formula. Each year changes to the grant get added onto the previous year's grant, thus creating a new baseline for the next 12 months. The Barnett formula provides Scotland with a share of the changes in some of the UK government's public expenditure. To understand what the Barnett formula applies to, you need to be aware of how government spending is broken down. The amount the government spends is called total managed expenditure. This is split into two. One amount goes to government departments and is known as departmental expenditure limits or DELL. DELL is set over a period of years. Departments include education, health, transport, local government and business innovation and skills. The other amount is referred to as annually managed expenditure or AME. This is demand led expenditure such as welfare payments and pension schemes. AME is set annually. The Barnett formula calculates how much funding is available each year in Scotland's DELL. The Scottish government then decides how to distribute this money to its different departments. The formula includes three elements. Firstly, the annual change in each UK government department. Secondly, a comparison between UK government services and those partly or fully devolved to the Scottish government. For example, education is fully devolved in Scotland, so the comparability factor is 100%. Thirdly, Scotland's population as a proportion of England, England and Wales or Great Britain depending on the coverage of each department. For example, the Home Office covers England and Wales, so Scotland's population is calculated as a percentage of the population of England and Wales. The Scottish Parliament is about to get new tax powers. Revenue from these taxes will fund the Scottish budget and the block grant will decrease as a result. For more information on the Scottish budget, please go to scottish.parliament.uk forward slash scottish-government-budget