Twitter: A Security Breach
October 21, 2016
Several years ago, the Beyond Search Twitter account was compromised. I received emails about tweets relating to a pop singer named Miley Cyrus. We knew the Twitter CTO at the time and it took about 10 days to fix the issue. At that time, I knew that Twitter had an issue.
I read “Passwords for 32 Million Twitter Accounts May Have Been Hacked and Leaked.” I learned:
the data comes from a Twitter hack in which 32 million Twitter accounts may have been compromised. The incident and the news comes from a rather unusual source that lets you download such data and even lets you remove yourself from the listing for free.
No word about how many days will be consumed addressing affected accounts.
Stephen E Arnold, October 21, 2016
What Lurks in the Dark Web?
October 20, 2016
Organizations concerned about cyber security can effectively thwart any threats conditionally they know a threat is lurking in the dark. An Israeli SaaS-based startup claims it can bridge this gap by offering real-time analysis of data on Dark Web.
TechCrunch in an article Sixgill claims to crawl the Dark Web to detect future cybercrime says:
Sixgill has developed proprietary algorithms and tech to connect the Dark Web’s dots by analyzing so-called “big data” to create profiles and patterns of Dark Web users and their hidden social networks. It’s via the automatic crunching of this data that the company claims to be able to identify and track potential hackers who may be planning malicious and illegal activity.
By analyzing the data, Sixgill claims that it can identify illegal marketplaces, data leaks and also physical attacks on organizations using its proprietary algorithms. However, there are multiple loopholes in this type of setup.
First, some Dark Web actors can easily insert red herrings across the communication channels to divert attention from real threats. Second, the Dark Web was created by individuals who wished to keep their communications cloaked. Mining data, crunching it through algorithms would not be sufficient enough to keep organizations safe. Moreover, AI can only process data that has been mined by algorithms, which is many cases can be false. TOR is undergoing changes to increase the safeguards in place for its users. What’s beginning is a Dark Web arms race. A pattern of compromise will be followed by hardening. Then compromise will occur and the Hegelian cycle repeats.
Vishal Ingole, October 20, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Twitter: Hitting the Character Limit
October 19, 2016
I read “Why Twitter is Dying.” I liked the write up. Unlike some of the twits twittering about the throttling of Twitter, the write up delivers useful analysis.
The article points out that some big names do not want to buy the darling of the Sillycon Valley set. Why? The author offers three possibilities:
- Either someone is trying to pull down Twitter’s price so that they can buy into it cheap or possibly take it over, salvage it.
- It is certainly not growing at a pace comparable to that of its new challengers.
- Today’s Twitter so very different from what they had originally signed up for that they are switching out.
Okay, MBA analysis. I circled in passionate purple this passage:
But worse than what the politicians have done to Twitter is what business has done. Sponsored trends and paid-for tweets are the biggest turn-off on today’s Twitter. What was once the world’s most charming flea market has now been hijacked by big business. With Trump loudly trumpeting his views to his 12 million followers, how can you hear the voice of the Dalai Lama who, in any case, speaks in hushed whispers? This brings me to my last question: Have we lost the ability to build and sustain new utopias? The virtual worlds we build are eventually becoming an exact replica of our own dystopian society. In the fall of Twitter lies that tragic realization.
Twitter reflects the modern world. Who would have guessed amidst the Kardashian-, Trump-, and other important matters of today?
We tweet headlines of the stories in Beyond Search. I know from examining usage reports, no one in the mass world cares much about the topics I find interesting. Some folks will miss Twitter if it flames out. Geofeedia is but one example. Then there is the business model. I know, “What business model?”
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2016
Fama Technologies: HR Gets Social
October 19, 2016
I read “The Tech That Hiring Managers Are Using to Screen All of Your Social Media Posts.” The “all” is a bit of an annoyance. There are social media posts which commercial enterprises may have some difficulty accessing. A couple of quick examples include forum comments placed in Dark Web discussion groups, certain encrypted messages, and content posted under a false identity (sock puppet or legend).
Moving on, the write up points to a company doing business as Fama Technologies. I circled this passage as a key point:
Los Angeles-based Fama Technologies has software that automates social media and web analysis to help companies make hiring decisions. The company uses artificial intelligence to pick up on any “red flags” that exist within a person’s online persona.
The idea is that before a person gets hired, companies are apparently now figuring out that looking at social media provides useful information. My thought: Why the big rush? Social media’s been around for more than a week or two.
What’s the cost of the Fama system? Subscriptions ring the cash register between $15,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
The company, according to the write up, has raised $1.7 million.
My goslings tell me that filtering “all” social media will require lots of money and some nifty work arounds. Mapping a false identity to a real person can be a difficult task. And there is that “all” notion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2016
Artificial Intelligence Is Only a Download Away
October 17, 2016
Artificial intelligence still remains a thing of imagination in most people’s minds, because we do not understand how much it actually impacts our daily lives. If you use a smartphone of any kind, it is programmed with software, apps, and a digital assistant teeming with artificial intelligence. We are just so used to thinking that AI is the product of robots that we are unaware our phones, tablets, and other mobiles devices are little robots of their own.
Artificial intelligence programming and development is also on the daily task list on many software technicians. If you happen to have any technical background, you might be interested to know that there are many open source options to begin experimenting with artificial intelligence. Datamation rounded up the “15 Top Open Source Artificial Intelligence Tools” and these might be the next tool you use to complete your machine learning project. The article shares that:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest areas of technology research. Companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon are investing heavily in their own R&D, as well as buying up startups that have made progress in areas like machine learning, neural networks, natural language and image processing. Given the level of interest, it should come as no surprise that a recent artificial intelligence report from experts at Stanford University concluded that ‘increasingly useful applications of AI, with potentially profound positive impacts on our society and economy are likely to emerge between now and 2030.
The statement reiterates what I already wrote. The list runs down open source tools, including PredictionIO, Oryx 2, OpenNN, MLib, Mahout, H20, Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit, Deeplearning4j, CNTK, Caffe, SystemML, TensorFlow, and Torch. The use of each tool is described and most of them rely on some sort of Apache software. Perhaps your own artificial intelligence project can contribute to further development of these open source tools.
Whitney Grace, October 17, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Online and without Ooomph: Social Content
October 15, 2016
I am surprised when Scientific American Magazine runs a story somewhat related to online information access. Navigate to read “The Bright Side of Internet Shaming.” The main point is that shaming has “become so common that it might soon begin to lose its impact.” Careful wording, of course. It is Scientific American, and the write up has few facts of the scientific ilk.
I highlighted this passage:
…these days public shaming are increasingly frequent. They’ve become a new kind of grisly entertainment, like a national reality show.
Yep, another opinion from Scientific American.
I then circled in Hawthorne Scarlet A red:
there’s a certain kind of hope in the increasing regularity of shamings. As they become commonplace, maybe they’ll lose their ability to shock. The same kinds of ugly tweets have been repeated so many times, they’re starting to become boilerplate.
I don’t pay much attention to social media unless the data are part of a project. I have a tough time distinguishing misinformation, disinformation, and run of the mill information.
What’s the relationship to search? Locating “shaming” type messages is difficult. Social media search engines don’t work particularly well. The half hearted attempts at indexing are not consistent. No surprise in that because user generated input is often uninformed input, particularly when it comes to indexing.
My thought is that Scientific American reflects shaming. The write up is not scientific. I would have found the article more interesting if:
- Data based on tweet or Facebook post analyses based on negative or “shaming” words
- Facts about the increase or decrease in “shaming” language for some “boilerplate” words
- A Palantir-type link analysis illustrating the centroids for one solid shaming example.
Scientific American has redefined science it seems. Thus, a search for science might return a false drop for the magazine. I will skip the logic of the write up because the argument strikes me as subjective American thought.
Stephen E Arnold, October 15, 2016
Image-Based Search Technology Gains Steam
October 10, 2016
If you need to do a bit of smartphone photos clean-up, now is a good time. More websites are integrating photo-based search technologies according to Pinterest Will Let You Snap Photos To Find Real-Life Products Online. This piece from Forbes explains camera search will be available in the coming months and will allow users to snap a photo of, for example, a purse they see someone else carrying down the street, and find similar products on Pinterest. They’re calling these products “buyable pins”. According to the article,
Users make 130 million visual searches on Pinterest per month and about 2 billion total searches. Now, more than 10 million products can be purchased without leaving Pinterest from more than 20,000 retailers, up from 2 million products when “buyable pins” launched about a year ago. When a user sees a product on Pinterest, they are two times more likely to buy it in-store. And if a merchant promotes the pin, users are five times more likely to buy the item in person, the company said. In testing “buyable pins,” Pinterest said a third of purchases made on the web were first discovered on mobile. More than 80% of users access Pinterest on mobile devices.
Some applications for this search technology, may not be well-poised to monetize this, but according to a survey cited in the article 55 percent of respondents already consider Pinterest as e-commerce. Currently, the platform sees itself as a “bridge between inspiration and making it part of your real life.” This is essentially the role of any brick-and-mortar shop amenable to window-shopping. So, while it may work, we certainly can’t say the strategy is new.
Megan Feil, October 10, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Design of Our Future
September 26, 2016
An article at Co.Exist suggests we all pause to consider what we want our world to look like, in “We Need To Spend More Time Questioning Our Technology-Driven Future.” Along with the boundless potential of today’s fast-evolving technology come consequences, many of them unforeseen. Writer Ben Schiller cites futurist Gerd Leonhard, author of the book, Technology vs. Humanity. Far from a modern Luddite, Leonhard is a consultant for Google and a daily advocate for the wonders of advancing technology. His thorough understanding of the topic allows him to see potential pitfalls, as well.
The shape of technology today calls for society to update the way it approaches doing business, says Leonhard, and move past the “industrial-age paradigm of profit and growth at all costs, or some outmoded technological imperative that may have served us well in the 1980s.” He also points to the environmental problems created by fossil fuel companies as an example—if we aren’t careful, the AI and genetic engineering fields could develop their own “externalities,” or problems others will pay for, one way or another. Can we even imagine all the ways either of those fields could potentially cause harm?
Schiller writes of Leonhard:
The futurist outlines a philosophy he calls ‘exponential humanism’—the human equivalent of exponential technology. As a species we’re not developing the necessary skills and ethical frameworks to deal with technology that’s moving faster than we are, he says. We may be able to merge biology and technology, augment our minds and bodies, become superhuman, end disease, and even prolong life. But we’re yet to ask ourselves whether, for example, extending life is actually a good thing (as a society—there will always be individuals who for some reason want to live to 150). And, more to the point, will these incredible advances be available to everyone, or just a few people? To Leonhard, our current technological determinism—the view that technology itself is the purpose—is as dangerous as Luddism was 200-odd years ago. Without moral debate, we’re trusting in technology for its own sake, not because it actually improves our lives.
The write-up gives a few ideas on how to proactively shape our future. For example, Facebook could take responsibility for the content on its site instead of resting on its algorithm. Leonhard also suggests companies that replace workers with machines pay a tax that would help soften the blow to society, perhaps even with a minimum guaranteed income. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But in a future with fewer jobs and more freely-available products, a market-driven economy might just be doomed. If that is the case, what would we prefer to see emerge in its place?
Cynthia Murrell, September 26, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
Social Media: Forever?
September 24, 2016
I love categorical affirmatives. These are statements which apply a concept to an infinite class of objects, entities, and actions. Forever is a long, long time, and it is one of my favorite words to read in high-technology analyses by wizards. Consider “5 Ways Social Media Has Changed Business Forever.” Let me be clear. I have difficulty with the concept forever. Infinity was enough of a challenge when Miss Martens, my freshman math teacher, introduced the concept of performing mathematical operations on collections of infinitudes.
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Grecian urn versus Snapchat. Which is forever? How about neither?
But for social media, forever it is.
The write up identifies five consequences of communication. For me, social media is communications. Granted the mechanisms are not face to face yapping over the fence. But I will suspend disbelief and highlight the five “forever” changes that social media hath wrought:
- Targeted advertising. I assume this means the ads I see when I visit a Web site using cookies which “know” me. Note that we use a variety of methods to make some of our online activity slightly less transparent. Details of some of the methods will appear in our forthcoming Dark Web Notebook, which if you want a copy can be reserved by writing benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
- Organic marketing “like never before.” Another categorical. I recall that Genghis Khan did some organic marketing which worked quite well. True, he did not have an online connection, but the social folks diffused his message quickly.
- Fears of being trashed on social media by social media users. I understand fear. Ah, Columbia and other far off lands. Believe me. Social media criticism can appear on the fear scale, but the key difference is the ease and speed with which negative information diffuses. But whispering worked pretty well for some folks in Stalin’s social construct. Perhaps there is “fear” and “FEAR.”
- Real time customer service. Give me a break. What customer service? A chatbot may not be able to answer my questions about dead links in iTunes or where my lost suitcase is.
- Flexibility in content “dissemination.” I love flexibility. But when I worked in my first “real” job at Halliburton Nuclear, we had paper. We had fax machines. We had film-based transparency “presentations.” We had conference calls. We had face to face meetings. We had jet travel to whisk us really lucky types from New York to lovely Cleveland in a nonce. We had a PR firm to talk, spam, and fast dance. I am not sure how much more flexible I would be if I did not have the censoring services intermediating life for today’s marketers.
Forever. Think of this statement by John Keats:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Social media is just like a hand crafted, old fashioned Grecian urn. Well, maybe a tweet, a Facebook post, or a Snapchat may not last a few millennia. Close enough for millennials.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2016
For the Paranoid at Heart: New Privacy Concerns from Columbia University and Google
September 23, 2016
The article on PhysOrg titled Location Data on Two Apps Enough to Identify Someone, Says Study illustrates the inadequacy of deleting names and personal details from big data sets. Location metadata undermines the anonymity of this data. Researchers at Columbia University and Google teamed up to establish that individuals can easily be identified simply by comparing their movements across two data sets. The article states,
What this really shows is that simply removing identifying information from large-scale data sets is not sufficient,” said Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab who was not involved in the study. “We need to move to a model of privacy-through-security. Instead of anonymizing data and making it public, there should be technical controls over who gets access to the data, how it is used, and for what purpose.
Just by bringing your phone with you, (and who doesn’t?) you create vast amounts of location metadata about yourself, often without your knowledge. As more and more apps require you to offer your location, it becomes less difficult for various companies to access the data. If you are interested in exploring how easy it is to figure out your identity based on your social media usage, visit You Are Where You Go.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
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