Open Source Academic Research Hub Resurfaces on the Dark Web
March 11, 2016
Academics are no strangers to the shadowy corners of the Dark Web. In fact, as the The Research Pirates of the Dark Web published by The Atlantic reports, one university student in Kazakhstan populated the Dark Web with free access to academic research after her website, Sci-Hub was shut down in accordance with a legal case brought to court by the publisher Elsevier. Sci-Hub has existed under a few different domain names on the web since then, continuing its service of opening the floodgates to release paywalled papers for free. The article tells us,
“Soon, the service popped up again under a different domain. But even if the new domain gets shut down, too, Sci-Hub will still be accessible on the dark web, a part of the Internet often associated with drugs, weapons, and child porn. Like its seedy dark-web neighbors, the Sci-Hub site is accessible only through Tor, a network of computers that passes web requests through a randomized series of servers in order to preserve visitors’ anonymity.”
The open source philosophy continues to emerge in various sectors: technology, academia, and beyond. And while the Dark Web appears to be a primed for open source proponents to prosper, it will be interesting to see what takes shape. As the article points out, other avenues exist; scholars may make public requests for paywalled research via Twitter and using the hashtag #icanhazpdf.
Megan Feil, March 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How-To Overview of Building a Data Platform to Handle Real-Time Datasets
March 11, 2016
The article on Insight Data Engineering titled Building a Streaming Search Platform offers a glimpse into the Fellows Program wherein grad students and software engineers alike build data platforms and learn cutting-edge open source technologies. The article delves into the components of the platform, which enables close to real-time search of a streaming text data source, with Twitter as an example. It also explores the usefulness of such a platform,
On average, Twitter users worldwide generate about 6,000 tweets per second. Obviously, there is much interest in extracting real-time signal from this rich but noisy stream of data. More generally, there are many open and interesting problems in using high-velocity streaming text sources to track real-time events. … Such a platform can have many applications far beyond monitoring Twitter…All code for the platform I describe here can be found on my github repository Straw.”
Ryan Walker, a Casetext Data Engineer, describes how these products might deliver major results in the hands of a skilled developer. He uses the example of a speech to text monitor being able to transcribe radio or TV feeds and send the transcriptions to the platform. The platform would then seek key phrases and even be set up to respond with real-time event management. There are many industries that will find this capability very intriguing due to their dependence on real-time information processing, including finance and marketing.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
CounterTack Partners with ManTech Cyber Solutions for a More Comprehensive Platform
August 13, 2015
A new acquisition by CounterTack brings predictive capability to that company’s security offerings, we learn from “CounterTack Acquires ManTech Cyber Solutions” at eWeek. Specifically, it is a division of ManTech International, dubbed ManTech Cyber Solutions International (MCSI), that has been snapped up under undisclosed terms by the private security firm.
CounterTack president and CEO Neal Chreighton says the beauty of the deal lies in the lack of overlap between their tech and what MCSI brings to the table; while their existing products can tell users what is happening or has already happened, MCSI’s can tell them what to watch out for going forward. Writer Sean Michael Kerner elaborates:
“MCSI’s technology provides a lot of predictive capabilities around malware that can help enterprises determine how dangerous a malicious payload might be, Creighton said. Organizations often use the MCSI Responder Pro product after an attack has occurred to figure out what has happened. In contrast, the MCSI Active Defense product looks at issues in real time to make predictions, he said. A big area of concern for many security vendors is the risk of false positives for security alerts. With the Digital DNA technology, CounterTack will now have a predictive capability to be able to better determine the risk with a given malicious payload. The ability to understand the potential capabilities of a piece of malware will enable organizations to properly provide a risk score for a security event. With a risk score in place, organizations can then prioritize malware events to organize resources to handle remediation, he said.”
Incorporation of the open-source Hadoop means CounterTack can scale to fit any organization, and the products can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. Cleighton notes his company’s primary competitor is security vendor CrowdStrike; we’ll be keeping an eye on both these promising firms.
Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, CounterTack was founded in 2007. The company declares their Sentinel platform to be the only in-progress attack intelligence and response solution on the market (for now.) Founded way back in 1968, ManTech International develops and manages solutions for cyber security, C4ISR, systems engineering, and global logistics from their headquarters in Washington, DC. Both companies are currently hiring; click here for opportunities at CounterTack, and here for ManTech’s careers page.
Cynthia Murrell, August 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Social Media Litigation Is on the Rise
August 6, 2015
When you think about social media and litigation, it might seem it would only come up during a civil, domestic, criminal mischief, or even a thievery suit. Businesses, however, rely on social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to advertise their services, connect with their clients, and increase their Web presence. It turns out that social media is also playing a bigger role not only for social cases, but for business ones as well. The X1 eDiscovery Law and Tech Blog posted about the “Gibson Dunn Report: Number of Cases Involving Social Media Evidence ‘Skyrocket’” and how social media litigation has increased in the first half of 2015.
The biggest issue the post discusses is the authenticity of the social media evidence. A person printing out a social media page or summarizing the content for court does not qualify as sufficient evidence. The big question right now is how to guarantee that social media passes an authenticity test and can withstand the court proceedings.
This is where eDiscovery software comes into play:
“These cases cited by Gibson Dunn illustrate why best practices software is needed to properly collect and preserve social media evidence. Ideally, a proponent of the evidence can rely on uncontroverted direct testimony from the creator of the web page in question. In many cases, such as in the Vayner case where incriminating social media evidence is at issue, that option is not available. In such situations, the testimony of the examiner who preserved the social media or other Internet evidence “in combination with circumstantial indicia of authenticity (such as the dates and web addresses), would support a finding” that the website documents are what the proponent asserts.”
The post then goes into a spiel about how the X1 Social Discovery software can make social media display all the “circumstantial indicia” or “additional confirming circumstances,” for solid evidence in court. What authenticates social media is the metadata and a MD5 checksum aka “hash value.” What really makes the information sink in is that Facebook apparently has every twenty unique metadata fields, which require eDiscovery software to determine authorship and the like. It is key to know that everything leaves a data trail on the Internet, but the average Google search is not going to dig it up.
Whitney Grace, August 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Instagram’s Search Feature Is A Vast Improvement
July 27, 2015
Instagram apparently knows more about your life than you or your friends. The new search overhaul comes with new features that reveal more information than you ever expected to get from Instagram. VentureBeat reviews the new search feature and explains how it works: “Hands-On: Instagram’s New Search And Explore Features Are A Massive Improvement.”
Many of the features are self-explanatory, but have improved interactivity and increased the amount of eye candy.
- Users can Explore Posts, which are random photos from all over Instagram and they can be viewed as a list or thumbnails.
- The Discover People feature suggests possible people for users to follow. According the article, it dives deep into your personal social network and suggests people you never thought Instagram knew about.
- Curated Collections offer content based off pre-selected categories that pull photos from users’ uploads.
Trending tags is another new feature:
“Trending Tags is Instagram’s attempt at gauging the platform’s pulse. If you’ve ever wondered what most people on Instagram are posting about, trending tags has the answer. These seemed very random and oddly insightful.”
Instagram is quickly becoming a more popular social media platform than Facebook and Twitter for some people. Its new search feature makes it more appealing to users and increases information discovery. Be sure that you will be spending hours on it.
Whitney Grace, July 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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