Hello, welcome to everyone for the next capsule of international relations for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today we are talking about the assumption of the chairmanship of the G20 by India, specifically Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There is some jubilation in India about this particular position that India has acquired at a critical time in history. But we should remember that this was just a matter of alphabetical order after Indonesia, India. But sometimes in history, it happens that this kind of rotation sometimes lands the right country in the right place at the right time. So this particular election or nomination of India as G20 president at this time is full of significance because in the most difficult situation, the most difficult problem that G20 is addressing is the Russia-Ukraine war. And India's position on the war has been criticized by some, but it is getting greater acceptance in the last few weeks. And therefore, the fact that India is now the chairman of G20 is seen as a good omen. And this was demonstrated by the fact that the recent Bali summit where India was designated as the president of the G20, India played a very significant role. Even though G20 was established to deal with economic issues, it cannot escape from the political consequences and economic problems arising out of political situations. So G20 is emerging as a major force in the world because all the important countries of the world are there. About 80% of the population is represented and the wealth is represented in G20. And like the Security Council, there is no veto in G20. And you may recall that in 2008-2009, when there was a big economic meltdown, it was G20 and the contribution made by Dr. Manmohan Singh, which helped the world to come out of that particular crisis. So India has enjoyed considerable clout in G20. And this time in Bali, where the last summit was held, the main point of discussion was Russia-Ukraine war. And of course, most members of the G20 are totally against Russia and they all voted against Russia in the Security Council and the General Assembly. The only two countries who were abstaining on this issue were India and China. In fact, we were criticized for voting with China on this issue, but we stuck to it till the last point. And India and China for different reasons took a neutral stand. And both of them are now also convinced that the war must end. So the general feeling in the G20 was to condemn Russia. The point of the Bali summit became to finding a solution via mediation or arbitration or negotiations. Some solution, because if you're dealing with the economic system of the world, the end of the war was absolutely essential to save the world from the crisis, the food crisis and the energy crisis, which will aggravate very much if this goes beyond one year. It's already almost a year. Just in three months, by February, it will be a year. And before that, ending the war is an important objective. So you will find in the communique that was issued at G20, the emphasis is not on condemnation of Russia, which of course it is there. It says that most of the members of the G21 criticized or deplored Russia. But the main thrust of the G20 communique was that this war should end and the G20 should exert efforts. And the people are looking at Mr. Narendra Modi as the man who may be able to find some kind of a way. And therefore, what the G20 declaration, if you read it, you will find that most of the words they are used are from India's statements. Because India has always been emphasizing the need for peace, negotiation, democracy etc. rather than war. The famous words that Prime Minister Narendra Modi used when he met Putin, this is not the era for war, it is the era of reconciliation, democracy and negotiations. He said this to President Putin's face when they met and it was reported very widely. And these words have been actually put into the communique as the advice of the entire G20. This is no small accomplishment. The White House, the State Department said soon after the summit that India's contribution to the formulation of the joint communique was very significant. And on top of that, President Biden himself has spoken yesterday about the big role that India played at the G20 in the context of the Ukraine-Russia war. So this is the first time that the United States and others are saying something good about India's position. So far they have been saying that India is betrayed, the cause of sovereignty, betrayed, non-aggression, such principles. So that is really the reason why people are very hopeful. And Mr. Narendra Modi himself has said that he will be, of course, as chairman of the President of the G20, he will have a continuing role till next year, till next December. And he will exert all his efforts to end the war, particularly if both the parties request him to do so. Whether they will request him to do so at this point is not known. But with the cloud of G20, perhaps India may be able to play a big role in the solution of this war. This expectation is what has made people in India somewhat jubilant. Some people say this is because of the personal qualities of the Prime Minister. Some people say no, this is a result of what India has done ever since its independence. We have always argued for peace in our advocated war, etc. So the political game is going on and the BJP is thinking that this will also do good for them in the 2024 elections. Anyway, that apart, the opportunity that India has got in this context is a golden opportunity. But at the same time, full of challenges. So it is an opportunity, but a lot of challenges because there will be so many important levels. First one is the situation on the ground because reports show that Russia has been forced to retreat from Kherson, which they had occupied. And they have lost a lot of soldiers and Ukraine is in a kind of jubilant mode, even though they are also losing people and money and buildings every minute. But they also feel that they are on the verge of victory. And with the approval of President Biden, having maintained the majority in the Senate, that gives him an opportunity to give more money to Ukraine and others also might follow. So generally in the NATO camp, there is a certain amount of jubilation. And that may not be a good opportunity for negotiations because if Russia is feeling the pinch of having to withdraw from occupied Ukraine territories, Putin is likely to be more adamant and more aggressive and he may actually increase the strength, the power, the force of the war. That is one reason. Secondly, China is also in the same position as India. And China will not look kindly at India taking the lead and if India is victorious, the kind of position that India will gain in the international community is a matter of concern for Xi Jinping because Xi Jinping went to Bali as a life president, life leader of China. And everybody was very keen to shake hands with him and talk to him and take photographs, etc. So he was a big hero there. So side by side with Mr Modi was become the president. There is also this aspect that China would not like India to gain prominence or importance in the next year. So China is likely to do things which would preempt India from doing a few things. So for both these reasons, the situation is very complex and nobody can say whether any solution can be found. President Putin has given no indication of any change in his policy while Mr Zelensky is already saying that he should be declared a winner or should become a winner. And repeatedly Zelensky called G20 as G19 because Russia was not there. I mean Russia was there in the sense that the foreign minister was there but Mr Putin naturally did not go. And the foreign minister was in great trouble because everybody was attacking him, sneering at him, looking at him and all this. And he actually left towards the end of the session criticizing everybody and he left from there. So Zelensky seems to have an upper hand. This may not be true militarily. So this is the atmosphere that we are entering into. Like the famous saying that we tread in, some people are tread into areas where angels we are to tread in. So I mean we have not sought this, we have not asked for it. This was some kind of a combination of circumstances which has thrust this on us. So we can only hope for the G20 meeting we are planning in a big way. The next one year we will have more than 100 meetings in different parts of India to discuss various issues and come to compromises, concerns, etc. And we have our machinery and we are very good at protocol and the meeting will be very, very successful. But whether it will be able to solve the problem of Russia, Ukraine war, there is no guarantee of certainty. So that is the situation in which we are. But I am sure India will do its best to do what it can. If you look at the Bali Summit you will notice that the person who has assumed great significance in the international community is Xi Jinping himself. And even Mr. Narendra Modi walked up to him and shook hands with him. And he had meetings with several people. President Biden spent a long time with him and the discussions were the first time they are meeting after the pandemic. And so they had very good conversation and it looked as though both of them agreed to recent relations between US and China. And that is an important development which has significance for everybody. In fact, President Biden even said that he does not feel that China is about to attack Taiwan. I don't know on what basis he said that, but after the conversation he said that to improve the atmosphere. So there is an improving atmosphere in China-US relations. But at the time of the summit, at the same time a report came that some missiles, Russian missiles hit the border of Poland and killed two people. And the immediate suspicion was this was Russia. And therefore the G7 countries called emergency meeting to consider this and this put Russia in even a bigger difficulty. But luckily for Russia, it was conceded by the Poles that these were not Russian missiles. They were actually Ukrainian missiles which had lost their way and landed in Poland. So that was a retrieve for Russia. Otherwise they should have aggravated the situation even more because there will be suspicion that Russia is spreading the war beyond Ukraine. So that was a good sign. The others dealt with China. They all spoke to them. Australia, which is at loggerheads with China, Prime Minister had a meeting. Except UK, UK Prime Minister had a meeting with Chinese President but he did not attend it for some reason. And other than that, most people who wanted meetings got it. And Xi Jinping even criticized publicly Prime Minister Trudeau for revealing the conversation that he had with him. And Canada had been having some difficulties ever since the chief executive officer of a big Chinese company was arrested and jailed in Canada. So it may have been related to that. So what he publicly chided him, as it were, for releasing this content of their discussion. Of course Trudeau was very conciliatory. He said, no, Mr. President, we can talk again. But then he walked away because after shaking hands with him, he said, let the atmosphere improve. So he was being tough with Canada, which shows his mindset. And so he has gone back with a new incarnation, having got international recognition. But how he'll behave in the G20 meetings in the next one year, how many of them he will attend, how much support he will give to India is yet to be seen. So unless there is some solution on the areas which have become problematic on the line of actual control, the relationship between India and China will remain estranged. And therefore that question will arise. And on top of it, there is also India becoming the chairman of SCO, Shanghai Cooperation, which is led by China. So it's important that China should also cooperate. And therefore all of them welcomed the Prime Minister of India's assumption of the leadership of G20. Looking at the declaration by the G20, which is a long one about 52 paragraphs and so on. So as usual, they have listed all the issues before the world and how to tackle them. But because everybody is so preoccupied with the Russia-Prene War, what has been put in there are all ideas, no new ideas there. Things which have been said already in other declarations. Like for example, coming to climate change, which is a serious problem. And at the same time, there was a COP 27 taking place in Egypt. Still in the declaration, there is very little about climate change, except to say that we will try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is like motherhood, nobody can question it. And also on other issues like the pandemic, the question of supply chains. So issues on which there are serious consideration. Prime Minister said we now have a fertilizer shortage and this will become a food shortage very soon and an energy shortage very soon. So he stressed that it's very important for us to be so. But these things have also not been very clearly established there. But obviously the delegates do not have time to discuss all this. So the declaration also is more about Ukraine and Russia than about anything else. But the agenda of the G20 is large and we will devote attention to that. We have designated several officials and also designated certain places where these meetings will be held on different aspects of G20. So G20 will definitely be a success in India. Even if the Russia-Ukraine war is not resolved, but if it is not resolved, G20 will not have much of a success. And that may affect us if we are not able to do it. So on the one hand, it's a matter of privilege that we have the President of G20. On the other hand, the dangers are too many. But the good thing is that the Western countries have softened their attitude towards India. Because last few months it has been a tug of war between India and European Union and NATO. And our Foreign Minister was very forthright in answering and telling them the truth about purchasing oil or dealing with Russia. But President Biden by saying that India supported and played a big role in formulating the G20 declaration is evidence that there has been some relaxation and some value has been found for India's neutrality. So there the only competitor with us will be China, who also will want to appear to be reasonable. In fact, President of France Macron has asked China rather than India to start a mediation effort. And he has also suggested that he would want to visit Beijing if the pandemic situation permits it. He would like to visit China next year. So there is a certain rivalry there. But if everything falls in place, it will be an important victory for India. And at the same time, the championship of SEO provides a lot of opportunities for us to even improve relations with China. Pakistan has said that it may not go to SEO meeting in India because of the present situation. But the Chinese have not said so. And in fact, there is some expectation that India's championship will be helpful. So we are reaching a kind of turning point in our role internationally. This is significant because increasingly people are looking at G20 as an alternative to the security comes.  And mercifully there is no veto in G20. So it is assuming greater importance in the international field because when things are vetoed in the Security Council, instead of going to General Assembly to simply have a symbolic resolution, they would go to the G20 and try to reach consensus. So that is a hope which people are expecting. But of course in international relations, nothing can be permanent. So we have to be very watchful. So what I wanted to underline was that the importance that India has assumed and the elements of G20 and the possibilities of India resolving some of these issues must be on your mind when you go to the examination. Because by next year, G20 will be over and maybe by the time your examination comes there will be new developments. So you must certainly follow the developments in G20 from now to November 2023. So from Bali to Delhi is what we have to watch for. Thank you. That's a very legitimate question. But issue now is not diversion of missiles. The issue is survival of that nation, that is Ukraine. But what could have happened would be that they will be more careful in what they hand over to Ukraine. But actually the demand is for more and more lethal weapons to be handed over to Ukraine. I suppose they have had some training in these things because NATO has been supporting them suspiciously in the past. These things will not happen. This was not a very serious incident. It was only killed two people and hundreds of thousands are being killed. Two people dying from pollen will also not be considered as a grave mistake. And therefore I don't think there will be any change on the part of USA and NATO in its policy towards supplying of weapons to Ukraine. Because the Prime Minister will soon, the President Biden will soon be going to the Senate for more money for Ukraine. And that is the only policy that they feel will work in weakening Russia. Nobody can say, even President Putin will not be able to say that. There is always a chance, there is always pressure on them both from internally and externally. So it can happen but nobody can predict it. Well, that's obvious, isn't it? NATO is a military alliance and this is just a grouping of countries. That's a big difference. But many NATO countries are in it together with developing countries also. So it's a highly representative body though nobody has really, it was created by G7. G7 found that they could not resolve the issues, the most powerful seven countries of the world. So during the 2008 economic crisis, that is when G7 felt the need to have a bigger grouping. And that is how they invited many important developing countries to join and so G20 was formed. Of course G20 was formed earlier at a ministerial level but it became a summit level only in 2008, 2009. And so it has that capacity and that's the difference between NATO and G20. I don't know really how Australian FTA will affect us. But the Australians became estranged with China in the recent past just before the pandemic. But the Australian Prime Minister met Jingya Ping and they seem to have had a friendly discussion. Actually, Australian President was much stronger against China than we were hours ago. And so Australia was a very good partner. But how it will affect Indian economy? I simply don't know. We have to find out. We are also seeing trade agreements from other countries like UK for example. It looks as though UK is not ready, USA is not ready. And so I have explained many times before because of the interference situation politically around the world. People are reluctant to enter into long-term agreements. That is the mood. But in some cases it may happen and the Australian FTA agreement may come into force. And there are also other trade agreements in South and Southeast Asia for which we are not party. So all this will have a play as far as our economy is concerned. But I have no economics to explain how it will specifically affect. So when it happens, then we'll get back to it. Yes, so we are not talking to that. That's our policy, isn't it? But we must be in touch in some form or the other. It's not that we are not communicating with them at all. But formally our position is that we will not negotiate whatever is the issue. Well, that is our assumption always. And that is why except for that one agreement that Bangkok, which was held in Bangkok from which we walked away. In all other agreements, other FTAs, we have been in favour of it. But we also have some rethinking because we feel that globalization has not helped us as much as we expected. And so we are also moving towards Atmanar Bar Marath, which means that more and more self lands rather than trade agreements, etc. But it's a mix and this applies to us also in the sense that we also are not ready to jump into agreements. But USA and UK, we had reached a stage of completing it. And so that came as a disappointment and when this will be restored, we will know. Okay then, thank you very much. See you again. Bye bye.


The first thing to not do is try to force it. There's, this usually is what most women that come into our community want to do. They want to try to force or manipulate a man into having the kind of relationship that they want to have with them. And so they'll use games, they'll use manipulation tactics, they'll use just all kinds of different techniques and tactics in order to try to trick this guy or force him to get into the relationship that they want him to be in. And I'm just gonna tell you that's a bad way to go. If he figures out what you're doing, he is going to lose all of his trust for you and he might start playing games with you or he might just leave and never wanna talk to you again because being in a relationship based on games sucks. So the second thing that you don't wanna do is wait it out and hope you end up in a relationship together. And I just told you we've had women that have spent a long, long time in situations where it was going nowhere and you don't wanna be one of those. The third thing that you don't wanna do is try to convince him logically that you're good together or that you should be in a relationship together or show him all the different things by telling him about how your genetics would be really great with children or how you guys have so many things in common and that you shouldn't ever leave each other or any of the other logical arguments that you have about why you guys should be together, that does not work and it only puts you in a position of weakness and looking needy and the guy's like, oh, okay, this is where we're going now, right? So you don't wanna do that and you don't wanna shame him or attack him for not wanting more with you, right? You set yourself up to be in this situation and it was a mistake and he was just doing what he was doing and you allowed him to get into this kind of situation with you instead of making sure that you're taking care of your own needs and it sucks, however, attacking him and shaming him isn't gonna get you anywhere. It might make you feel better but if all you wanna do is feel better then you wouldn't be watching this video anyway. So here's what you need to do instead. You need to, and so if you have questions about anything, make sure that you end up putting those questions in the chat. I'm gonna be answering questions at the end of this video. If you have questions, put them in the chat. If you're here, make sure that you say hi and tell us where you're from and also if you want to get, if you wanna get help and advice, personalized help and advice and lots of great information on how to have the relationship that you want, go to thegoddyscommunity.com and you can join our community for free there.


What's up everybody, Jason here with jazzy's case brace.com. So that's the 19-20 pinning, core Kings basketball four box picker team number 17 Just sold out and again, we're randomizing the pelicans to one customer in the break All you had to do is buy a team in this break and you get randomized to win the pelicans So you buy two teams you get two entries you buy three teams you get three entries, etc, etc all-card ship So here's the customer names in the break itself. We're gonna copy this name list names Put paste them here on the random.org randomizer. Let's roll the dice It's a four to four eight the hard way number one gets it after eight times one two three four five six seven and eight eight times and Matthew s congratulations After eight times There you go, just one the pelicans that there and that's ripped guys So switch it up Tyler You just have to announce it before the break starts and Get people to realize that number one's not gonna win it Tyler I think people would riot if they wouldn't read the read the item description or read the Read the title and it says last place wins Imagine that you're getting in because you're just so used to it that number one wins And you actually get number one this time and then all of a sudden you find out that It's last place that wins it and every other time you've come in last Well, that'd be crazy Here you go. I've done randomizers in the past when I did my own thing where like top and bottom one You know the top gets gets a spot number 29 or 30 get a spot, which is pretty cool Yeah, I think he would be so pissed I was what we'll do here guys Four boxes right here is one break. This is one break That's one break. This is one break. So four different breaks are here One through four. So it'd be one two three four if I roll a five or six, I'll just re-roll it again four One two three four this one over here. All right. Go go beatatze level one and a Bible we got PJ Washington, Jr. Relic to 179 you got a Deandre Hunter rookie autograph fresh court or fresh print. Sorry It's a 49 by Sir Luga Donchich and first steps Rui Hachimura Very nice. There you go. Dallas Marbles gonna receive Washington Wizards gonna Brandon and a level two Rui got Jordan Poole and first steps John Morant. Wow That's gonna be numbered guys. Those first steps numbered actually go for some good money Remember Zon Wilson went for pretty well And it is seven out of one 49 Very nice Grizzlies That is going to Brandon. There you go, man Take a look on eBay and see what these are going for a little first steps John Morant Very nice You got Ty Jerome Well, how about an on-card autograph of John Morant heir apparent numbered 41 out of 49 Kobe white and a Rui Hachimura level three man. You've been on like three different levels of Rui Deiren Fox apprentice artists Kobe whites our next box. Is it really? Yeah for love. We're gonna break it now Nick was like, hey, man I took out three spots. They want to sell out that pack break tonight We'll give away those three spots in the pack break As an early bird. I said, all right, cool. No problem. We are Carson Edwards Princess artist Niko Lomeli Joel and B 76ers number 299 I'm Josh Bruce We got to 125 heir apparent Deandre Hunter Let it hot to go to Brandon. My stroll Eric Passall and Kobe whites Wow, it's a level four Kobe white for the Bulls Haven't really seen so many level fours before That's nice Nice break right there for the bulls as well. So you just open this box already last box is PJ Washington, Jr. And Aaron Gordon No magic to 49 Gonna Ben Simmons patch our relics are Number 299 we got Daniel Gafford autograph for the bulls Impressionist ink 249 PJ Washington, Jr. Maestro and a Kellan Johnson Level two. All right guys, and there you go. That was the four box break of court Kings Very very nice stuff coming out of here level for Kobe whites Deandre Hunter Kobe white level three Rui Jameran auto first steps to 149 We have to more level to Maestro look at Donchich We have to more up first steps and Deandre Hunter And all these other ones are here as well Appreciate it guys. Jasper's case breaks calm nice Stephen K


Do you know how easy it is to hijack a Kubernetes cluster? Apparently fairly easy. In this talk, Nico will demonstrate how easy it is to hijack a Kubernetes cluster as well as how following basic security best practices can help protect you from being hijacked. He will also cover how implementing zero trust can prevent malicious workloads from being executed in the hijacked cluster. Nico is a Docker community leader, as well as a GitLab hero, frequently sharing his passion for cloud native and Kubernetes at various conferences and user group events. Nico is available on chat as well as all of our other speakers, so do feel free to chat with Nico, other speakers as well as the GitLab team members right now. Over to you, Nico. Hey, everyone, and welcome to my talk, how GitLab can save your Kubernetes environment from being hijacked. My name is Nico Meissenzahl. I'm senior cloud a different consultant at Witec. I'm located in Germany. I'm a GitLab hero, Microsoft MVP and Docker community lead, and my work is focused around Kubernetes, containers, cloud native, and DevOps technology. So yeah, the agenda for my talk today, first of all, we do a demo, and I will show you how easy it can be to hijack a Kubernetes cluster. And then we talk about how GitLab can help to prevent such attacks, and we will round up with some container and Kubernetes security best practices, some general stuff. Okay, so before I jump right into the demo, just some information or details on the demo itself. First of all, yeah, we will access a web application using our browser and then we'll try to check some code into the container, and basically then I'm able to somehow, yeah, in check even further from the container into the Kubernetes cluster gaining some privileges, yeah, high access level and stuff like this, and see what we can do. Okay, with that, let me switch to my demo application. So here, we basically have, yeah, our demo application, it's small application, small web app, the only thing the application is doing, I put in an IP address here, hit the go button, and what will happen is that the container or the application will run the ping command in the container and will output the details of the ping here. So pretty simple. So let's see, we're doing a ping command, we provided an IP address and we're getting an output. So it somehow looks that it's really just the ping command executed in the container. So maybe there's some security issues and maybe we can somehow, yeah, in check another command. So maybe let's try to check an echo. So we're doing just the IP address and then the semicolon and then doing an echo, I was here. Let's see if it works. Hit and go. And once again, we're seeing our command, we're seeing our ping output, and we're also seeing the output of our echo. So here we're seeing an I was here. So what you learned, we are somehow able to inject another command into our application and getting executed inside the container. So pretty cool. So with that, we somehow can try a bit more. So get back to the ping app and let's see if we can, yeah, verify whether there's a shell or a bash available in our container. So this time, we're just skipping the IP address because we don't want to ping, we just want to somehow inject into the container. So starting with the semicolon and just doing a witch and bash to see whether a bash is available in the container and if we can execute it. Okay, also looks good. So output is bin bash. So we haven't been and bash available under slash bin slash bash. So pretty cool so far. So with a bash, we would then now be able to get further and checked into our container by using a reverse shell. So basically open up a shell in our container, but doing this reverse. So not as you know, let's say it was an SSH or so you're connecting to the machine. And then executing commands, we're doing that the way around. So we will open up a port on a different machine. And then we will connect the container using ECROS traffic to our machine. And with this, we might get access into container and get a bash instead of the container. So let's let's try this. For this, we of course need a public access point. Just clear this one up here. So basically I just provided an virtual machine. It's on Azure. We have a public IP for this one so that we have an endpoint connect to here we'll use basically net cut. We need to execute this with misudo rights and just open up a port on port 80 with net cut. So now our application of our virtual machine is listening on port 80 on any IP addresses. So now we some only to inject the reverse shell and started inside our container to connect to our virtual machine. This is pretty easy. So here we will use this command. Once again, we have a semicolon, then we're starting a bash. And in that this bash, we are starting another bash. But this time, we are redirecting the bash to a TCP address and port. And this is basically the IP address of our virtual machine of our port 80. We just opened up and basically redirecting everything in there. If we're now starting while hitting the go button, it's loading and loading and loading. So somehow it looks like the application is broken. But let's see if it worked. And here we see we now have a bash open. We're getting some kind of errors here, but it doesn't matter. We now have a bash. And if I'm doing a list, we are in our container. So now we have the reverse shell open into our container. And from here, we can somehow dig a bit deeper. So let's see. Basically we are running on Kubernetes. So basically we somehow should have a service account available. So let's do an LS. We have a service account. We are seeing our certificates. We're getting our namespace. And we are full talking. So let's try to somehow talk to the Kubernetes API server. Maybe we have some Excel threads. OK. So first of all, we need to expose some stuff. First of all, we're exposing a token. So just doing a cut on the token file here. Then maybe just do an echo to see if everything is fine. So an echo on the token variable looks good. So we have a token here. Let's do the same one on certificate. Also doing a cut on this one here. We also have a certificate. Pretty fine so far. So let's try to connect to the Kubernetes API and see if we might have some Excel. Yeah. This time we do not have Qubectl at the moment. So we need to do it with Kerl.  We are providing a header, also a station header with our barrier token from the token above. And then we actually are doing a get command on our Kubernetes service host and Kubernetes service ports. There is environments available inside our container without exposing it at all and then slash API. So let's see if it works. OK, we're getting some feedback. At least we do not get a deny. So at least we have somehow read access on our API. So in Kubernetes, which is pretty good. Because from there, we might be able to get some further details. So let's see. Next one, let us export the namespace and see which namespace we are running in. Or if it's default, or if it's another namespace. OK, so doing an echo in the namespace, we have the sample minus namespace, we are running in the container. We check that it's running in. OK, cool. So let's try if we can list the parts in this namespace. So maybe our results account has access to list them. So once again, we're doing a Kerl, providing our certificate, providing the barrier token. And here we do a get against APIs, version one, namespaces, providing namespaces from our variable above. And then try to get the parts. So let's execute this one. OK, here we're getting forbidden. So status is failure, part is forbidden, user, system, service account, sample minus namespace default. So basically, we're using the default account in the sample namespace. And this one does not have access to list pot resources in the namespace, sample minus namespace. And once again, we get the HTTP code, which basically tells us that we do not have access. So we are not able to list the parts in this namespace. Yeah, but hey, every Kubernetes last day has a default namespace. So maybe there was something misconfigured, some role bindings, roles somehow misconfigured. So let's try if we have access with this service account into the default namespace. So maybe this works. So we're doing exactly the same command. And just, yeah, instead of providing the namespace here, we are just going to the default namespace and executing this one. OK, this looks better. So we get some feedback. We do not get a deny. And we're almost here, yeah, part definition here. So we have some parts available here. Pretty cool. But it's a little bit hard to read. So let's see if we somehow get a nicer work and if we're able to somehow install or use kubectl. So first of all, let's see which user we are in this container. Ah, cool, we have root. So we have pretty high rights in this container. Let's do another check. And if we can curl Google, this also works. OK, so our container, we have write access and we have somehow access to the internet. So we can do an ECRS connection. So let's try to just download kubectl. Maybe it works. And then we would need to use curl anymore. We can do kubectl. It's pretty nice and so on. So we're downloading the latest release, making it executable and moving it to user bin. So let's see if this works. OK, download worked. So we now should have kubectl available. So then let's do kubectl.getPots into the default namespace because we saw we have access to the default namespace and see if we can get some feedback. And here we go. We have another container, another app running in our default namespace. And we are somehow at least able to see it here. So maybe let's dig a bit deeper and check out some of the configurations. So here we're doing kubectl.get.  So maybe we have some nice environment variables, user names, passwords, something like this. So let's see. Oh, OK, we have an environment variable which is called db underscore string. So it's not in clear text here, but somehow it's in secret. It's mounted into the container. OK, so two more options. We either check if we have access to the secret or we're trying if we can do an exec into the container and just read the environment variable. So let's try the second one.  So let's see if we are able to exit it. Hey, cool, it worked. And now we have the environment variable and the secret here. So with this, we can now try to connect to this database, try to export data, at least read data, maybe dump the data and upload it somewhere else. So pretty fast, so far. Cool, so we have the db string. So let's try something further. Let's try to schedule container in the cluster and see if we are able to somehow schedule containers and run our own workload in this Kubernetes cluster. We don't have access to. OK, so we also know that it's some more work that we are able to connect to the internet. So let's try to get the Ubuntu image from Docker Hub. And of course, we don't would like to just have an Ubuntu running with root access. Also, let's try to run it with privilege mode. So with this, we would have even further access rights. And there we're just starting a bash. And you're starting it in the background, then it's running. And we do need to care about updating the entry point and stuff like this. So just executing this one here. Also looks good. So let's see if we are seeing the pot here. It's the Ubuntu pot we just launched 10 seconds ago. And it's ready, and it's running. Cool, so this also worked. So let's do an exec here. And we're doing open up a bin bash in this container. So we now jump from our hijack container into our Ubuntu container. So here we have now a full Ubuntu available. We can install the tools and so on. And we also have privilege mode here. So with privilege mode, one option could also do is we could mount the file system from our node. From the Kubernetes road, this pot is running on. So let's do this one. We're having the mount command. We're just grabbing together the disk here from the node and mountain it into the container on slash TMP. Executing this. And now doing a list on TMP and see whether this works. Cool. Here we go, our file system from the Kubernetes node. We are running on. And here we can now have many, many more access. So we're doing maybe an list on TMP, ETC Kubernetes or the ETC Kubernetes directory of our node. And here we see we have an Azure JSON, for example. This one contains some secrets and client IDs and stuff, how the Kubernetes is talking to Azure. So we could even expose further into our public cloud environment, for example. We're getting certs, manifests and other information with those we could even further and check, or high check our Kubernetes cluster starting container outside of Kubernetes, maybe getting further access to the Kubernetes node and stuff like this. So we are pretty far into our Kubernetes cluster. OK, this was the short demo. And basically I would like to show you how easy it is to get access if there is somehow a security issue in a web application and you have not a really good protected Kubernetes cluster. Then it's really easy to get further access to use privileged service accounts if they are available to get even further. So I'm not a security expert. So this is just basic stuff. If you really know about Linux and Kubernetes and security, you can go even even further. So let's sum up. So what have we did? First of all, we injected some custom code in the text box of the web application, played around a bit, and then we opened up a reverse shell into the container. And from there, we used the privileged default service account to inspect secrets to schedule even a privileged pod. And from there, we could have gone even further. Very important, with this privileged pod, we would be able to access the node, we would be able to access the control pane, or even cloud resources, depending on the Kubernetes configuration. So I know if we would have secured this cluster, most of the text wouldn't work at all. But most of the time, if you are a customer site or a reviewing cluster, this is basically what you will get. A pretty open Kubernetes cluster, and then you will need to make sure that it's running secured and the application is also secured. Yeah, and this is where GitLab comes into place, because GitLab has many features which can help you to print lots of attacks. And this is I would like to talk about now. First of all, the GitLab features are combined in a whole DevOps strategy. So we have different DevOps stages, like plan, create, release, protect, and monitor, and some others. All of those stages, GitLab provides you with nice features which can help you to secure your whole application lifecycle and also secure your application, but also your Kubernetes cluster. So let's get some details here. For the create stage, basically, Justin, best practice, use pair programming. So make sure that the code you're committing or you're merging is the best as possible. So make sure maybe you're finding an anti-pattern or something, your colleague, you're working with together, directly finds it, you can fix it, even before somebody reads the metric as, for example. And to be honest, the security issue we used in this verification, pretty sure a senior developer would have found it directly. Second one, required match request approvals. This is a feature of GitLab where you can make sure that the match request needs an approval before it gets merged into the main branch, for example. So you can really make sure that somebody reviewed it. This set, it's a premium or ultimate feature. Optional match request approvals are available in all GitLab versions. Yeah, then we have the queue stage with lots of nice features we can use. First of all, we have secret detection. So we can GitLab verifies our Git history and find leaked secrets and passwords and stuff like this. So we make sure that we do not have any passwords and secrets on our code. And we have dependency scanning. So GitLab can analyze our dependencies and find vulnerabilities and make sure we are fixing them or updating our dependencies. This is also an ultimate feature. We have static application secure testing, which analyzes our source codes for security issues. Also, this one would have found our security issue in our web application. So basically, we would have found this bug in our, let's say, a CI pipeline, for example. We have dynamic application security testing. So once the further, basically, GitLab analyzes your running application and tries to find some security issues. This one is also an ultimate feature. And then last one, release from API fuzzing, which also helps to protect and test web APIs by fuzzing them, also an ultimate feature. But we have plenty of features and tools which can use to secure and test our application even before it's deployed into an environment. Yeah, and then we have the configure stage. Configure stage can help us scanning our containers. So we can basically, after we're building our containers, we can scan them and make sure that there are not any security issues, vulnerabilities, and stuff like this included. And we have autodefops, autodefops is a great feature which helps you basically to reduce complexity and basically start with all the nice features I showed you and integrate them as a pipeline, basically ready to go. So you get all the nice features out of the box. You just need to enable it. Yeah, pretty nice feature with autodefops, yeah. But we have even more stages available, protect stage. So here we basically have our running application, but in our Kubernetes cluster, but still GitLab provides us with features we can use. For example, the web application firewall. So web application for basically monitors and filters HTTP requests and attacks. So with this also based on our web app app we saw earlier, the code injection we did was a semi-core long and maybe echo or something. This would have been found by the web application firewall and we could have denied the request before it hits our container. We have container host security, also pretty nice feature. So basically it's also based on open source and basically prevents and detects commands and binaries executed in our container. And so with this we would have seen that somebody tries to run an echo or tries to run a bash in our container. And we could further deny this request. And also container network security, which is basically the same thing just for the network. So with this we could make sure that our container is not able to contact Google or to contact GitHub to download Qubectl. Or even if we somehow got access to the database secret, we could have make sure because this is a secret from a different container that the container we are in is not able to connect to the database. So even with the secret, we could have make sure with container network security that this container we are running in is not able to connect to the database. Yeah, so these are some of the GitLab features which could have you in this use case or it could have you to protect your applications, to protect your Kubernetes cluster. But basically to run up in the talk I would also would like to give you some container and Kubernetes best practices here. Yeah, basically first of all, understand the manifest you apply into your cluster. So the issue we had was having a default service account in Kubernetes having somehow access in a different namespace. This is basically nothing you would do because you shouldn't share any service accounts and even not if they have privileges to access the Kubernetes API. So most of the time I think this somebody applying any manifest he or she found on GitHub or in any documentation which are not production ready or something just could be pasted and implementing or they're applying some role bindings, roles and stuff like this. This is how those issues come up. You should deny untrusted registries. So basically we downloaded or pulled the Ubuntu image from Docker Hub. So we could deny the Docker Hub or other registries beside our own for example. We could enforce rootless containers so that we do not have root access inside our containers. We could have enforced read-only file systems at runtime. So basically with a read-only file system we wouldn't be able to execute all the stuff we did in our container. We could deny privileged container to make sure that we are able to mount or work against our Kubernetes nodes for example. We could have denied our ecosystem to not be able to talk to Google or to GitHub to download Qubectl for example. And even further if possible we could just use this rule as containers. So basically containers not containing Ubuntu distribution not containing a shell and stuff like this but just containing the parts the application needs. With this rule as container we wouldn't have ever started a bash inside our container to further get access to our Kubernetes cluster. Yeah, so basically this is some container Kubernetes bash practice really just the basic ones but to give you a better understanding what is important you have to run secure workload on a secured Kubernetes cluster. Yeah, with this my slides are available on Slideshare. All the code and how to set up the demo application is all available on GitLab. I also linked to the GitLab features and if you have any questions feel free to contact me via mail, via Twitter or everything else. With this, thanks for joining my talk and have a great day.


Hello, and welcome to Oregon State University Foundation's final webcast of the 2020 Knowledge Break Series. My name is Casey Farm, and I am the director of alumni relations for OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences, and I will be your host for tonight's talk on zinc. For tonight's webcast, I am pleased to announce we've had over 1000 people register. So a very big welcome to each of you attending this evening. Before I introduce our featured presenter, I am pleased to introduce OSU's Provost, Ed Phaser, who would like to share his greetings from the university. Ed. Good afternoon. I'm Ed Phaser, Provost and Executive Vice President of Oregon State University, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Knowledge Break's webcast sponsored by the OSU Foundation. Today, we'll learn about how diet can help us lead healthier lives with a specific focus on zinc. OSU's research in health and wellness can be found in every corner of the university and in all of our colleges, from fields like pharmaceutical sciences to bioengineering to nutrition to public policy into many other fields. What makes our work in this area particularly impactful is its deep connection to community outreach. Our College of Public Health and Human Sciences, for example, is one of the only such colleges to combine public health and human sciences under a single academic home with community outreach programs built in through its linkages to OSU extension. Our connection with OSU extension then enables students and faculty to join hands with thousands of people across Oregon and every county and in many global communities to support public health and wellness. Today, you'll hear from Emily Ho, Executive Director of the Linus Pauling Institute, who will talk about the institute's cutting-edge programs in nutrition and its community outreach programs. Our research and outreach at OSU is made more impactful and better through our partnership with the OSU Foundation and with the support from many alumni and donors like you. I thank you for contributing to our scholarship at OSU. You help us achieve our land-grant research mission. I'll now turn it over to the moderator, but let me say thank you for being with us today and I hope you enjoy the talk. Thank you, Provost Fazer. As I mentioned earlier, we have a sizable audience tonight and many of you have already submitted questions for our speaker during your registration process. She will get to as many as she can in addition to those that will be asked during tonight's live Q&A portion by the end of her presentation. Speaking of which, if you look at the bottom of your screen, you will find a Q&A chat button and you are welcome to type questions at any point in time throughout the talk. Let's get started. This summer, Dr. Emily Ho became the endowed chair and the director of the Linus Pauling Institute, OSU's internationally recognized research center on vitamins and micronutrients. Dr. Ho came to Oregon State in 2003 after completing her doctorate in human nutrition at Ohio State University and her postdoc at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute and UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty of the College of Public Health and Human Sciences and became a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute. And for the last past eight years, she was the endowed director for the Moore Family Center for whole grain foods, nutrition and preventative health. Dr. Ho's path into nutrition research began when she was an undergrad student back in Ontario, Canada. She is an animal lover and had entered school with the plan of becoming a veterinarian. But it was a summer research project that steered her into the field of antioxidants and the idea of potentially preventing disease by eating the right foods. Today, Dr. Ho is internationally recognized for her research on nutrients and chronic disease. In fact, her work helped drive dietary recommendations for micronutrients, including zinc. It is my pleasure to welcome Dr. Emily Ho. Welcome, Dr. Ho. Thank you very much for being with us. And we look forward to your talk this evening. Great. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone. One of the silver linings of 2020 is the proliferation of virtual technology and events like this that's allowed us to bring so many more of you here to Oregon State and the Linus Pauling Institute. So, so thank you for joining us. I'm actually at the Institute currently. If you see here on the slide, the, the, this is a picture of our building and I'm right here on the third floor. So welcome. So at the Institute, one of our main missions is know how do we promote optimal health through cutting edge and nutrition research and trusted public outreach. I'm really excited to be able to share with you some of the, the research that we're doing here at the, at the Institute where researchers, including myself are both highly committed to discovering and enabling individuals and communities to tip the balance towards optimal health. So, we really embody the, the passion and the essence of our founder Linus Pauling, and this is a quote from him, talking about how optimum nutrition is really the medicine of tomorrow. So today, I can convince you that some of these nutrients that we get in our diet are really critical to maintaining our health, both today and for many years to come. So today, I'm going to talk to you more specifically about one of my favorite nutrients. So zinc is one of our essential nutrients so it's required. It's our bodies require when we need to get it from either foods and or supplements. I often try to joke with my, my students I teach here at Oregon State University in the nutrition program and I often kind of tell them, if you're on jeopardy. And the answer is this mineral is critical to X function. Your answer should always be what is zinc. So zinc is an essential part of over 300 different enzymes in the body. It's associated with additional several thousand proteins and transcription factors. And it's really critical for them to do their job. So zinc is part and important in a whole host of systems them in the body and again, it's hard to think of a function that doesn't in some way need zinc. At the cellular level, I think it's really essential because it's part of so many of these proteins and transcription factors that it's important so every cell that needs to divide needs zinc. It's important in cell growth. It's also plays an essential role in enzymes that help our bodies and our cell metabolize nutrients. It's also important for factors that help ourselves communicate with each other through cell cell signaling. So when we think about the systems, the bodily systems that think of facts, the ones that are highly dependent on saying tend to be those systems that have a higher requirement for either cell division or cell differentiation. During growth, during reproductive systems in our brain, several behavioral and parts of our brain needs zinc as well. Wound healing is another essential zinc containing process. And today I'm going to focus a little more specifically on how zinc is important for immunity and how it's a really a critical factor in our immune system. So let's talk a little bit about about things specifically. So what is zinc. So again, it's a mineral. So I have here so if you can flash back to your high school chemistry classes, zinc is a metal or a mineral or a metal so it's found in the periodic element table. So it's here in the middle. You'll notice it's right beside another mineral copper, which it shares a lot of similarity with and I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later in terms of some antagonism that they have because of their similarities. But zinc, you'll notice this yellow block are a grouping of elements called the transition elements. So most of these elements transition and that they donate electrons and transition between states. Zinc is a little bit unique in this that it is one of the few transition elements that actually don't transition. So it doesn't lose electrons. And this special property of zinc really gives it some uniqueness is in terms of its ability to work and in particular, because of this non transitioning. It acts as a factor that really helps with stability. So help stabilize a lot of these enzymes so they can do their job. So things like transcription factors can bind to DNA. So again, they can do their job. And the cells and the body really rely on the stability for maintaining optimal function. Another big function that's related to the stability is the fact that zinc is a strong antioxidant. And we've known you've probably heard about antioxidants in terms of their importance and health to help combat against free radicals and oxidative stress. But even before we knew about the role of antioxidants and health, we've known that zinc is a great antioxidant for for decades and centuries. So let's look at something like this picture. So this is a picture of Gavin galvanized steel, and all gal steel this deal is, is that shiny layer is a zinc layer. So that zinc that overlays the iron is basically keeping that metal shiny and helping prevent oxidation, i.e rust by acting again as this, the stabilizing factor. So we're protecting the iron from oxidation, preventing rusting. And we can kind of think of it analogous to what zinc is doing in our body. As we get older, as we are exposed to stresses that zinc is really essentially helping protect ourselves and our bodies from slowly rusting aging and leading to dysfunction. That's definitely a bit of an oversimplification that something to think about in terms of how housing functions. We also, so where do we get zinc?   And zinc, again, is known to be a pretty effective antioxidants. But it's one of the few antioxidants that you actually don't think green leafy vegetable as a great source. Zinc actually follows, food sources of zinc tend to be protein rich. So zinc in our own bodies and in a plant or other food sources tends to complex with protein. So the tendency is for protein rich foods, regardless of whether or not they're from animals or from plants, tend to be sources that have more zinc. So things like lean meats, seafood, nuts, and legumes, whole grains and cereals. Again, these are vegetarian sources that tend to have more protein that tend to be the sources that have a little bit more zinc. One thing to note, though, the vegetarian sources or plant based sources also tend to have another compound in them called phytate, which is a little bit of an anti nutrient in that it will bind, bind zinc in your gut and make zinc a little bit less absorbable and bio available. So there is some thought that if, for example, you're a vegetarian or a vegan and all your sources come from plant based sources that you actually need to increase that the amount you eat by about 50% to account for this decrease in bioavailability. So for female, that means instead of making sure you get eight milligrams in your diet, you actually need 12 milligrams. Consume 12 so your body will be receiving that eight. So for another little bit of nutrition trivia, if you want to know what the food that has the highest amount of zinc is, they're oysters. So if you ever want to come visit me here at Oregon State, I can take you out to the coast, we can have a couple oysters, and that's easily your, your, your RDA or your requirement for zinc for the day. So, why do we care about zinc? For the average person you might not have thought about zinc in terms of something that you need to worry about in terms of not getting enough. And hopefully after my presentation, this is something that you are going to think a little bit more about. So the World Health Organization, the WHO estimates that across the entire world, zinc deficiency affects about one third of the population. That's a lot of people. Developing countries are the ones that are hardest hit. But even in developed countries like North America, United States, zinc deficiency is an issue. In the United States, we don't see as much severe zinc deficiency. We see more of a more subtle, what's called marginal zinc deficiency. But it is fairly prevalent. So it's estimated that about 12% of the population does not consume what they need in terms of getting enough zinc. And I'll talk a little bit later. If you're over the age of 55, that number skyrockets up to 40 to 45% of the population is not getting adequate zinc. And one thing that I want to point out, again, zinc deficiency isn't often something that isn't on a lot of people's radars. And hopefully again, after you listen to me that it'll be on your radar a little bit more. But one thing that I'm going to talk about in terms of the studies and one of the limitations is currently we don't have a reliable sensitive marker for zinc deficiency. So even if you are concerned about zinc deficiency, the doctor will order plasma or serum zinc. And I'll show you some data in a little bit that it is not a great marker and will miss a lot of this marginal zinc deficiency. So a lot of zinc deficiency may in the clinic is likely to be largely underreported. And I'll show you some data as well that I have that clearly shows that even this marginal deficiency has some pretty functional consequences on your cellular health. And especially that could be relevant to your immune system. So here, so what happens when your cells don't get enough zinc. So these are some studies that were done in the lives Pauling Institute, we simply took cells and fed them a low, low zinc food. And this first graph shows, I have a marker for oxen stress. So again, remembering that zinc is a good antioxidant. And we can show that when we don't have enough zinc in the cell, there's a massive increase in oxidants. So lots of oxen stress. When we look to see what that's doing to the cell, we don't see some great things. So this is, so this slide shows this is an assay that I use in my laboratory. That is the called it's called the comet assay, because these things kind of look like comments. What this assay does is you take cells, you put them into a basic or alkaline solution and that allows all the DNA to unwind. You put it under an electric field. DNA is quite negative. So if you turn on the electricity, DNA will start to migrate to the positive, the positive field. And if the DNA is broken, so if it's damaged, you'll see this comet form. So comet in this case means bad. And what we can clearly see is on the left, we have cells that are again fed the normal adequate amount of zinc. And then when I take away zinc from what they're being fed, we can see a significant increase in in comments, which shows that the cells are being damaged. And one thing that I want to point out is that the immune cells in particular are sensitive to this damage and when these cells become damaged, they're no longer able to function properly. The other thing that we also know is ourselves actually get damaged all the time. We have lots of different stresses. And we have several checks and balances in place in terms of systems to help repair that damage. One of those proteins that does this, this helping is a protein called p 53, which is shown here. So we can see what these blogs show is amount of p 53. And we can see that in response likely to this damage that the blob is getting bigger, which says the cell is responding and able to up regulate the protein that helps repair itself. But the problem is, so this is a picture what p 53 looks like. So this is the p 53 for for this protein to work what it does is it needs to bind to DNA. And then that is a signal that tells the cell, make repairs stuff and help repair the cell, this little dot is zinc. And what we find is when the cells don't have zinc, that this process doesn't happen the protein doesn't bind to the DNA properly.  In essence, this is the total double whammy, where when you lose the zinc, not only do you create conditions that create more damage, but you also create conditions that the cell is not able to repair. So again, it's a big double whammy that ultimately ends up in more and more damage. And again, what I want to emphasize is that the immune cells in particular are highly sensitive to to this damage. So who needs to worry about zinc deficiency. As I mentioned before, a lot of the systems that really requires zinc are ones of times of rapid growth and rapid cell division. So there certainly is an increased susceptibility in childhood, for example, especially during high growth phases during pregnancy is another area of time where the susceptibility to zinc deficiency is higher. But I also want to talk a little bit about what happens with zinc as we get older, because there's some unique things that happen as we as we age that are specific to zinc. And they already had told you that that prevalence of, of eating less zinc seems to be higher as we get older as well again, think sense to be in more of these protein rich foods, and that those types of foods do tend to to decrease as we get older. Another thing that we also see is that there appears to be an age related loss of ability to utilize and absorb zinc so this slide shows as we age there tends to be a drop in plasma zinc levels. That again, even if you are consuming a little bit more more zinc that you as an older individual may not retain it or absorb it as well. So again, it's this concept of another double whammy older individuals do tend to decrease the amount of zinc that they're eating in their diets and the same time, they're not utilizing it and that can have some pretty significant consequences, especially on the immune system. We already know that as we get older age is associated with a compromised immune system, and that immune system dysfunction falls into several different categories and that there are things that are not working as well. At the same time, there's things that are becoming overactive and both have have ill consequences. So, we have a decrease of immune diversity and development. At the same time, that causes individuals to be more susceptible to infections, bacterial viral infections, and it also makes you as an older individual less responsive in terms of vaccinations. At the same time, there are also components of the immune system that are overactive. In particular, the overactivity we see is related to inflammation. So chronic inflammation or this overactive immune system also occurs. So again, with aging we see increased susceptibility to infection, reduced vaccination, efficacy, and then increased chronic inflammation, which all can lead to core morbidities, increased sickness and decreased quality of life. The interesting thing is if I substituted zinc deficiency here, all these same symptoms would occur. So we have been very interested in terms of the interrelationship between zinc and age-related immune dysfunction. So right now, currently in the US and North America, the current recommendations for zinc that 8 to 11 milligrams is the same if you're 18 or if you're 100. And we at the Institute are trying to establish that maybe similar to calcium and vitamin D need to have an age-specific requirement that's maybe a little bit more elevated to compensate for this loss. When we think about the immune system, the immune system is highly complex. There are three basic categories of how the immune system functions. So the first is a prevention mechanism. So this is what's called barrier function. So these are things like the membranes in our nose and our skin and our gut that help prevent microorganisms, bacteria or viruses to get into our system. The second category of defense mechanisms are more defense, and they can be put into two subcategories. One, general defense.  Some of these cells literally spit out little bits of bleach into your system to help, you know, fight off bacteria and viruses or they engulf them and kind of chew them up. The other system is a little bit more specific. So these are things like antibody producing cells that help more specifically target specific organisms. The bottom line is that zinc is critical for all of these functions. So again, the multi facets of zinc applies to even within a single category. And again, if you're not getting enough zinc, you're going to have issues in terms of your immune system defenses at many, many, many different levels. So one of the things that we've been able to show. So this is a study that we've done again here at the Institute looking at young and old animals. So here, these are mice that are either two months old or 20 months old. Mice tend to live about two years old. So a 20 month old mouse is a fairly old mouse. And what we can show is, on the left, I have plasma zinc levels. So we are in the green feeding these animals what we think is a zinc adequate diet. And these aged animals have a decreased level of zinc. So even though we're giving them what we think is enough zinc, they look like they're zinc deficient. We can also show on the right, looking at inflammatory markers that those older animals have a significant increase in inflammation. What's interesting is, if we in the yellow, give them a little bit of a zinc boost, a zinc supplement, that we can raise those plasma zinc levels back to their young counterpart parts. And at the same time, we can see that we can repair or restore their their immune function. And we see a rapid decrease in that age related inflammatory processes. So the zinc is helping boost back the immune system back to more normal in a specific case. So, again, zinc is highly required for the growth and development of our immune cells. So maintaining a healthy immune system, you need to make sure that you're getting enough zinc. Zinc is a critical factor for all those three components that I talked about. And especially if you're an older individual, getting enough zinc for your diet might not be enough. There's also some known effects of zinc as specifically an antiviral. Most of the work has been done in cold viruses. I'll talk a little bit more about other viruses in a moment where it appears to have a little bit or some anti viral activity by decreasing viral replication. So if you feel a cold is coming on early, if you take zinc, you may be able to slow down the progression or decrease the time of symptoms. The one thing though is that you can get too much of a good thing. So the upper limit is 40 milligrams of zinc a day. And you should really try not to get more of that in the combination of supplements and your diet. What higher levels of zinc will do, so zinc by itself, again, it's a pretty stable molecule, not highly reactive. It by itself actually is relatively non-toxic. But the problem is that zinc is, again, kind of similar to that copper. And what happens at high dose zinc, so over this 40 milligrams, is that you can start to block the ability of your body to absorb copper. So all the toxicity that's associated with zinc excess is copper deficiency. And if you're not getting enough copper in your body as well, that is also an important factor in your immunity as well. So you can get too much of a good thing. The other thing that I want to mention, so I can't emphasize enough, it's quite essential for you to be able to make sure you're getting enough zinc. What we don't know as much about is whether or not, if you already are zinc adequate, if you supplement more, that's really going to boost your immune system anymore. So identifying populations that are a risk for zinc deficiency is really critical. Unfortunately, we don't have a great marker for zinc yet. And I'll show you some, so we did some studies in people where we, in this case, took healthy men, they're adults here, and gave them a zinc adequate diet for about two weeks. And then we transitioned them to a zinc deficient diet for about six weeks. And then we gave them back zinc again for an additional couple weeks as well and we measured plasma zinc and various other things. So one thing I want to point out, so here is the plasma zinc. So this is again what your doctor will look at if they are concerned about your plasma zinc levels. And you can clearly hopefully see here that across all the dietary periods, the zinc levels are the same. So again, in this middle area, I know that these individuals are not getting enough zinc, they're consuming a diet that's about four milligrams of zinc. So definitely too low. And that plasma marker that we're relying on to identify people that are at risk for zinc deficiency is not working well. However, when I look at some of that, so we did that same comet assay, looking for DNA damage, you can see, so starting at the green here. So this is over time during the deficiency period and you can see that that DNA damage is so even though the test says the person isn't zinc deficient. They're seeing some ill consequences of that low zinc diet, and namely increases in DNA damage, and that DNA damage is in those white cells that I talked about previously that are important in the immune system. Good news. As soon as we gave them back sink, the damage went away. So this damage is reversible.  The other thing I want to show you for the study. The other big thing that we saw was this big decrease here in this two week period. So in this study what we try to do is recruit people that we didn't think were zinc deficient. But what we used was plasma zinc levels. So we think what were happening here is a high proportion of our subjects probably were zinc deficient and we just didn't know it. And then when we gave them that two weeks in adequate diet were able to correct some of that DNA damage. And it just illustrates that we need to find some better biomarkers and again the importance of, even if the clinical test doesn't show that you're zinc deficient to make sure you're getting enough sink. In some cases that may be a little bit of an insurance policy by taking a multivitamin or multi mineral that contains zinc. And that's really all that you need to do. So again, why do you should you take extra. We don't have great biomarkers. So a lot of zinc deficiency may go on diagnosed. You can take zinc especially if you have symptoms of a cold coming on as well. You don't need to take anything special though you do need to look, though, at the multi taking your zinc as part of your multivitamin or with that as part of your multivitamin and multi mineral is perfectly fine. There's a lot of different forms of zinc. Some are a little bit better absorbed than others but to be honest the difference is generally 5% or less so it's not a huge difference between all the various forms of zinc. But you do need to look at your label. There are quite a few multivitamin multi mineral formulations that actually don't have thinking them. My husband, once had the gall of coming home with a multivitamin that didn't have a zinc with it so he very quickly was shoved back into the car back at the store, returning it for me. So you do need to look at your labels zinc unfortunately does have some it's a metal and doesn't have a great taste. So some formulations intentionally take it out because of the taste characteristics so you do need to take a look. When or how should you take it again form doesn't seem to matter too much. Similar to iron and copper can make your tummy upset a little bit so generally it's not good to take on an empty stomach and that's nothing to do with how it's absorbed it's it does tend to give you more of a tummy ache though. I usually take my multivitamin actually in the evening, rather than first thing in the morning to ensure that I have food in my stomach before taking the multivitamin. Again, make sure though to watch the amount you can get too much of a good thing, and that can have a serious consequence on lots of various functions and especially your immune system. So stay under that 40 milligrams higher amounts are okay short term, but no more than a couple days. So, last thing I want to point out, and I know it's a question that I've been getting a lot and many are interested, you know, what about zinc and coven 19. What's the evidence is zinc beneficial for about infection, the evidence is yes. Again, making sure that you get adequate zinc is critical to support your immune system zinc also appears to have some effects in terms of viral replication. So making sure you you're not deficient is extremely important. Again, whether or not if you already are zinc adequate and super adding more zinc whether or not that has a boosting effect is unclear but certainly making sure that you prevent deficiency that is more than you think is important can zinc prevent or treat coven 19. So a lot of the work with zinc and viruses has been done more in both the cold. So the cold is either a coronavirus or rhino virus and influenza. We don't have the data yet in terms of how it affects coven 19. And so it's a big maybe at this point, we definitely know again, maintaining a healthy immune system which is going to be a critical in terms of either preventing and reducing the severity of coven 19 is going to be important. And specifically on coven 19 is still still a little bit limited. I will say I did do a clinical trial search before this talk and there's currently about 10 different clinical trials looking at zinc either alone or a combination of things, specifically with coven 19. So the evidence that the premise is there, but we just don't have the evidence especially in people yet in terms of specific impacts but bottom line maintaining zinc for your immune system which is going to be one of the big building blocks to help stop coven 19 is is going to be important. So, the facts are, make sure that you're getting enough think bottom line. You can take that zinc as a supplement. Again, but make sure that you're not getting too much is is kind of the, the take home message. So zinc is important for the immune system again, but zinc alone is not ever going to be enough to prevent or cure coven 19. We still have a lot to learn about zinc and flu colds and corona viruses, and we are learning more every day. Again, there's some, there's definitely some scientific premise and promise, but we're just not quite there yet in terms of the evidence and the data, but again, number one thing that you can do is make sure that you're getting enough think combination diets and again it's a little bit of insurance. Take a supplement. Just make sure, again, you don't need to don't take too much and there's nothing crazy that you need to do in terms of your zinc. I emphasize there's a lot of things that are going on in terms of your immune system so zinc is just one of the tools in terms of maintaining immune system. This is taken from an article from the micronutrient information center and I'll show this but these are some other nutrients they're going to be really critical for maintaining your immune system. Sometimes in particular that you might want to consider in terms of making sure you special attention that you're getting enough of zinc of course is one vitamin D is another that you might not be getting enough from your diet. VHA is another one that people tend to be a little bit more limited in terms of their diet and then vitamin C is another one that you might want to consider in terms of a little bit more. But again, generally a multivitamineral is going to be fairly sufficient in terms of helping you meet these needs. The bottom line is a lot of the work that we're doing here the lines Palling Institute is again with taking your inspiration lines Palling and trying to help you take back charge of your your health and help you live better longer. I'm able to you as well. Here's some of the resources that I pulled from our micronutrient information center if you haven't seen it is a fabulous resource in terms of lots of information on zinc and many of the other micronutrients. We have a couple of special articles on immunity and on COVID specifically here as well here are those links. And lastly, I just want to thank you for your time and attention. We'll have a time for a few questions as well but again here are some resources, you know, visit our website. The micronutrient information center that I just mentioned is celebrating its 20th year. So, you know, take, take a look in terms of a resource. I would like to, you know, support the micronutrient information center or support our research at the at the Institute as well. There's mechanisms on our website to get more information and ways to support us. So thank you. I am going to call Casey back, and we can look at getting through some of these questions that you all have. Fantastic talk. Thank you. I will say that why I was in my void. I laughed out loud about the story about your husband coming home and he had the gall to bring the wrong multivitamin and that in your world that would absolutely be a no-no. So I'm glad that you had sent him back out to grab the correct one. So it was really funny. I really liked that story. Also, I had no idea about oysters and I think that's just a great pub trivia question that you know at some point in time that's going to get asked and someone's like I now know that. Thanks for this reason. So I want to talk about that a little bit along with some other good food sources for zinc when you're talking about oysters are you talking about raw or cooked. Does it matter and how many are how many is too many. Yeah, no, that's a great question. So for zinc, again, it's really stable. So cooking doesn't affect the zinc levels. We do know though, for example, in the grains that as you process, you start to lose the zinc as well. So more processed foods do tend to have less zinc in terms of the oysters. So the oysters you definitely if you ate a half dozen of oysters every day you're going to be around above that 40 milligrams per day. So for lots of reasons I wouldn't recommend eating six oysters every every day all the time. But average, like I said one, two to three oysters would give you a little bit above that RDA of 11 milligrams. Got it. And some other good food sources for zinc that you would recommend for those huge oyster fans. Yeah, so again, think protein.  Okay, thanks. Yeah, I know you touched on this a little bit but I wanted to dive a little bit deeper we had a few questions from people who are at or over the age of 50 and and at or over the age of 70 about zinc supplements. And are there any, are there any modifications I know you had talked about, in case you're not getting some of that animal protein about up and up, but what about as far as as you continue on in those age brackets. Is there an appropriate change for the recommendation based on age as you continue to go. So currently there isn't an official recommendation in terms of an age specific requirement for zinc. I definitely recommend though, for most of my friends and colleagues that are older over the age of 50, as you mentioned, to probably just as insurance, take that that multi vitamin multi mineral that that contains zinc. I usually ballpark 10 to 15 milligrams is a good place to try to hit in terms of a supplement that usually will mean between the foods that you eat and the supplements that you're not at risk of going over over too much. Okay, you know I know you had mentioned some some similarities between zinc and copper, and a few of our listeners have asked a little bit more about too much zinc and effect copper levels I used to talk about that. Can you go a little bit further into the relationship to zinc and copper. Yeah, so it's all about what happens in your in your gut and the absorption. So when you take when you take a high dose of zinc for example induces a very specific protein called Mattel finding that's in your gut, and it will suck up the copper.  So you won't absorb it. So then all that copper that you have won't get into your body properly. And you'll start to see signs of copper deficiency. And can you take more copper to counter the effects of too much zinc or are you just piling on at that point in time. And then three from a chemical standpoint yes from biological standpoint, largely because there's a log full difference in zinc and copper levels. So to kind of overcome it the amount of copper that you would have to take may in itself have have issues in terms of your biology. Okay, that makes sense. I know you had already touched on it as well as zinc and COVID that's something that people are really really curious about. You know during COVID people have been interested in zinc and as ionophores. Two people have asked about you know I'm going to butcher these I'm going to try to my best quercetin and hydro oxychloroquine. Can you comment in relation to zinc. I know I get this a lot because there's been a lot of press about these zinc ionophores so first off, what is the zinc ionophore. So these are on a four is can be put into two different categories. One are kind of channel openers to kind of think of that as a door opening that will allow zinc to come into the cell. And then there's like other category of ionophore that so chloroquine falls into that category. The other one is sequestin falls in the category of ones that bind zinc and help is help carry zinc potentially into the cell. So the premise is that, again, because zinc plays such an essential role in your immune system and potentially had some antiviral effects if you could get more zinc inside the cell, you may be able to slow down. The issue is that the premises there, but we still don't know enough in terms of if it actually is that if that strategy is doing that job, we can see it work well in a controlled system cell culture, but we don't really know have the whole picture in terms of what happens in the whole body. So someone the analogies that I that I use is for the for Clark for these ionophores for example. So those of you who do know me know I have a dog his name is Bruno, and he has a very high affinity for slippers. So the thought the premises if my feet are cold, he should very efficiently be able to grab that slipper and get it to me, and my feet will be warm. For all of you who are dog owners know very well that if I need my slippers. I am not certain that Bruno will bring it to me when I need them. I'm also not certain if he's going to even bring it to me at all may take it somewhere else. And three, I also don't know if he's going to give up the slipper and give it to give it to me. And all these are same things apply to these ionophores as well. And whether or not again we know that if we get more zinc into the cell that's going to be a benefit. But whether or not that ionophore is is the key item or whether or not I just need to put slippers in every room of my house and have more slippers to keep my feet warm is the better strategy. So there's still a lot of questions bottom line. Yeah, and I'm with Bruno I'm all for slippers as well so I like that. You know let's let's let's stay in on a similar topic. When it comes time to zinc and colds and I know you talked about with COVID that there's still a lot of data that needs to be out there but let's so let's stick like with colds. Whether I'm taking a lozenge form or whether I'm doing a nasal spray. Does it really matter about when along the point in time where I first start noticing symptoms how far deep can I really go before you know it no longer really has any kind of effect doesn't matter when in that process I'm taking zinc. So two things there. So when earlier is better. It's kind of like with any disease disorder that the earlier you can get your systems up and going again is going to be more beneficial. And as you go further in the continuum of severity is going to be harder to fight. The other thing you'd mentioned nasal. So I do not recommend any zinc, going up your nose that there's been clear studies that show that intranasal zinc does potentially cause irreversible loss and taste and smell. So those forms do appear to be viable and get zinc potentially close to the virus and close to those immune cells that barrier function again. But there are some serious side effects. So these intranasal zinc is not something that I recommend. Okay, so I'm trying to use any brand names here so like anything you know you recommend the laws has been definitely not the spray from whatever that zinc brand name would be. Similar to some things. Some things just don't belong up your nose directly. I'm going to leave that one there are our children at risk for any kind of zinc issues. Yes, so as I mentioned because of the high growth needs and children are susceptible to zinc deficiency and actually worldwide. Especially severe is zinc deficiently children are the ones that are that are most susceptible and are susceptible especially to diarrheal diseases and gut infections and that's a major issue in some of these developing countries. There's been some links with low zinc intake with growth trajectories as well failure to thrive, as well as immune system effects. There's also been some work in terms of brain and cognitive function as well so absolutely children do also need to make sure they're getting enough think as well. You know there are many forms of zinc found in supplements is there a best form in your opinion. Yeah, and I had mentioned this so there are lots of different forms of zinc, there are there's zinc salts, like the zinc gluconate that are in those losses. There are chelated forms of zinc. There are also forms that are bound to amino acids that tend to be a little bit better absorbed. Again, the difference between all these forms is generally not that big 5% or less. So, paying for the more absorbable one isn't really making a that much of a selective advantage. I will also say that the more absorbed ones also tend to taste more metal like. So there is definitely kind of the push and pull in terms of do I actually want to take this for that little bit of increased absorption. Are there any drugs interfere with the absorption of zinc. Um, there are so any drug that affects your GI tract may potentially affect your ability to absorb zinc. But there aren't a lot of there are some conditions so some anti-malarial drugs for example that help move iron also interfere a little bit with zinc. But for the most part, unlike some of other micronutrients there aren't as many drug interactions that you need to worry about. So a lot of our participants that are living in the Northwest right now don't necessarily have to deal with this next question right now but definitely in the future zinc sunscreens. Can it be absorbed through the skin. Is there a negative effect with zinc absorbed through the skin through sunscreen. Is there a positive effect that way. Yeah, that's a tricky question so is zinc from a sunscreen that you put on your skin absorbed answer is yes, but not that much. You could not rely on diaper rash cream, which is a zinc oxide sunscreens as a means to make sure you're getting enough of zinc bottom line. The only zinc oxide topical that has been correlated with some zinc toxicity are denture solvents. But a lot of that also gets it's not just the topical it's the fact that you also consume a little bit because in your mouth as well. But in terms of using a zinc based sunscreen very little risk in terms of zinc toxicity. You know I know you talked a little bit about zinc with food. Is it okay to take it on an empty stomach. I know you had said that you try to take it with food one to two hours. Is it okay to take with an empty stomach or do you really recommend like yeah make sure that our two after breakfast lunch or dinner or whenever you're having that that's the best way to go about it. So in terms of absorption, there's not a big, a huge difference in terms of how much zinc your body will take in zinc does begin because it does follow protein. If you're consuming it with your shortly after meal and you still have protein kind of in your body that will enhance absorption. One reason is, if you are someone that does get a tummy ache, as a result of taking zinc, which a high portion of people do, you're going to more likely get that tummy ache if it's on an empty stomach. Does zinc work well really in tandem with other vitamins such as vitamin D your vitamin C gives you an extra boost in some way shape or form. Absolutely, in a lot of different ways. So again, thinking about the immune system on the immune system is pretty complex. So taking a whole complement of your essential micronutrients zinc, vitamin D, C and a, they all hit the different parts of the system. Together help the whole whole system. But again, of those 300 proteins that zinc's a part of a lot of them are things that metabolize or help vitamins or other minerals do their job as well. So there is definitely some interrelationship between between them, both directly and indirectly. And last question Emily and this one will probably be the most soft ballish but then again you've handled each one of these fantastically. Where can people go if they want more information on zinc and maybe perhaps you'll know about some other places for other vitamins as well. Absolutely so I'd mentioned the micronutrient information center at the Linus Pauling Institute is is my go to resource for any of the micronutrients, including zinc. The Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institute of Health also has a great page in terms of information on supplemental lots of things including zinc. I believe we'll have a lot of the links available to both the zinc article at the micronutrient information center and some of these in the in the micronutrient information center you can also search on conditions as well so if you're worried about heart disease, your immune function. You can go to those as well and then look at the host of nutrients that affect or you can go the other way, look at a specific nutrient and see what processes that it's involved in. So I know we got a lot of questions beforehand we have a lot of questions in the live chat people are really really into zinc more so than I ever knew. Again, email lpi at Oregon State.edu if you didn't get your question. Thank you for your time today, but Dr. Hoth thank you very much for your time, and thank you to everyone for your fantastic and engaging questions. We will be sending up a follow up note that includes a link to this recording of this webcast that's recorded so you can share with your family or friends who weren't able to join with us today. Additionally, we will also send a very quick and easy survey. We greatly appreciate your feedback so we can continue to bring you this type of content that you want to see more from OSU via the Alumni Association and the OSU Foundation. So those two things, again, more things come in your way but the survey is really really helpful for us. Thank you. All right, you head over to the OSU Alumni Association's website and register for the next webcast of the change makers series taking place on December 14 at 5pm for a conversation with indigenous activist and assistant director of the OSU Native American Longhouse. For more information, please visit OSUalum.com. We always have a lot more things going on between the Foundation Alumni Association and our partners on campus. That is all for tonight. So on behalf of Emily and the rest of us here, please have a very safe and happy holiday season. I and the rest of my colleagues look forward to seeing you all again in the new year. Please take care. Bye bye. Thank you all. Thanks, Inc.