Australian Software Developer Revealed the Panama Papers
May 23, 2016
The Panama Papers have released an entire slew of scandals that sent out ripples we will be dealing with for years to come. It also strikes another notch in the power of software and that nothing is private anymore. But how were the Panama Papers leaked? Reuters reports that a “Small Australian Software Firm Helps Join The Dots On The Panama Papers”.
Nuix Pty Ltd. is a Sydney-based software development company that donated its document analysis program to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to delve through the data from Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm that leaked the documents. Reporters have searched through the data for some time and discovered within the 2.6 terabytes the names of politicians and public figures with questionable offshore financial accounts.
“By using the software, the Washington-based ICIJ was able to make millions of scanned documents, some decades old, text-searchable and help its network of journalists cross reference Mossack Fonseca’s clients across these documents. The massive leak has prompted global investigations into suspected illegal activities by the world’s wealthy and powerful. Mossack Fonseca, the firm at the center of the leaks, denies any wrongdoing. The use of advanced document and data analysis technology shows the growing importance of technology’s role in helping journalists make better sense of increasingly bigger news discoveries.”
Nuix Pty is a ten-year-old company and their products have been used to conduct data analysis in child pornography rings, people trafficking, and high-end tax evasion. Another selling feature for the company is their dedication to their clients’ privacy. They did not allow themselves to have access to the information within the Panama Papers. That is an interesting fact, considering how some tech companies need to have total access to their clients’ information.
Nuix sounds like the Swiss bank of software companies, guaranteeing high-quality services and products that guarantee results, plus undeniable privacy.
Whitney Grace, May 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook and Law Enforcement in Cahoots
May 13, 2016
Did you know that Facebook combs your content for criminal intent? American Intelligence Report reveals, “Facebook Monitors Your Private Messages and Photos for Criminal Activity, Reports them to Police.” Naturally, software is the first entity to scan content, using keywords and key phrases to flag items for human follow-up. Of particular interest are “loose” relationships. Reporter Kristan T. Harris writes:
“Reuters’ interview with the security officer explains, Facebook’s software focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.
“The scanning program looks for certain phrases found in previously obtained chat records from criminals, including sexual predators (because of the Reuters story, we know of at least one alleged child predator who is being brought before the courts as a direct result of Facebook’s chat scanning). The relationship analysis and phrase material have to add up before a Facebook employee actually looks at communications and makes the final decision of whether to ping the authorities.
“’We’ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it’s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate,’ Sullivan told Reuters.”
Uh-huh. So, one alleged predator has been caught. We’re told potential murder suspects have also been identified this way, with one case awash in 62 pages of Facebook-based evidence. Justice is a good thing, but Harris notes that most people will be uncomfortable with the idea of Facebook monitoring their communications. She goes on to wonder where this will lead; will it eventually be applied to misdemeanors and even, perhaps, to “thought crimes”?
Users of any social media platform must understand that anything they post could eventually be seen by anyone. Privacy policies can be updated without notice, and changes can apply to old as well as new data. And, of course, hackers are always lurking about. I was once cautioned to imagine that anything I post online I might as well be shouting on a public street; that advice has served me well.
Cynthia Murrell, May 13, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Intersection of the Criminal, Law Enforcement and Technology Industries
February 26, 2016
A ZDNet article covers Arrests made over Bitcoin laundering scheme, Dark Web drug deals
Dutch police made several arrests related to laundering of criminal profits orchestrated through an unindexed section of the web called the Dark Web. The article says suspects allegedly laundered up to 20 million euros from online drug deals. With the information originating from Reuters, this article summarizes the arrests made by Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service and public prosecution department:
“According to the publication, some of the men arrested are traders, while others are “Bitcoin cashers” — traders of Bitcoin online who cash these funds then withdraw money from ATMs. It is possible to find cashers online who run shadow services which exchange “dirty” coins for clean currency. Law enforcement in the United States, Australia, Lithuania and Morocco also participated in the raid.”
Just as criminal offenses are taking place increasingly online, so too must the law enforcement industry have turn to technology to aid its efforts. As the case unfolds, it will be interesting to uncover how these suspects were identified. Perhaps something innovative will be at the source.
Megan Feil, February 26, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Yandex Takes on Google with Anticompetitive Business Practices
November 30, 2015
Google is the dominate search engine in North America, South America, and Europe. When it comes to Asia, however, Google faces stiff competition with Yahoo in Japan and Yandex in Russia. Yandex has been able to hold a firm market share and remains stuff competition for Google. Reuters says that “Russia’s Yandex Says Complained To EU Over Google’s Android” pointing to how Yandex might be able to one up its competition.
According to the article, Russia has petitioned the European Commission to investigate Google’s practices related to the Android mobile OS. Yandex has been trying for a long time to dislodge Google’s attempts to gain a stronger market share in Europe and Asia.
“The new complaint could strengthen the case against Google, possibly giving enough ammunition to EU antitrust regulators to eventually charge the company with anti-competitive business practices, on top of accusations related to its Google Shopping service. The formal request was filed in April 2015 and largely mirrors the Russian company’s claims against the U.S. company in a Russian anti-monopoly case that Yandex won.”
The Russian competition watchdog discovered that Google is trying to gain an unfair advantage in the European and Asian search markets. Yandex is one of the few companies who voices its dislike of Google along with Disconnect, Aptoide, and the FairSearch lobbying group. Yandex wants the European Commission to restore balance to the market, so that fair competition can return. Yandex is especially in favor of having mobile device users be able to select their search engine of choice, rather than having one preprogrammed into the OS.
It is interesting to view how competitive business practices take place over seas. Usually in the United States whoever has the deepest pockets achieves market dominance, but the European Union is proving to uphold a fairer race for search dominance. Even more interesting is that Google is complaining Yandex is trying to maintain its domiance with these complaints.
Whitney Grace, November 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Faces Sanctions over Refusal to Embrace Right to Be Forgotten Ruling
October 2, 2015
The article on Reuters titled France Rejects Google Appeal on Cleaning Up Search Results Globally explores the ramifications of Europe’s recently passed Right to be Forgotten law. The law stipulates that search engines be compelled by requests to remove information. Google has made some attempts to yield to the law, granting 40% of the 320,000 requests to remove incorrect, irrelevant, or controversial information, but only on the European version of its sites. The article delves into the current state of affairs,
“The French authority, the CNIL, in June ordered Google to de-list on request search results appearing under a person’s name from all its websites, including Google.com. The company refused in July and requested that the CNIL abandon its efforts, which the regulator officially refused to do on Monday…France is the first European country to open a legal process to punish Google for not applying the right to be forgotten globally.”
Google countered that while the company was happy to meet the French and European standards in Europe, they did not see how the European law could be globally enforced. This refusal will almost certainly be met with fines and sanctions, but that may be the least of Alphabet Google’s troubles considering its ongoing disapproval by Europe.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 02, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How to Search the Ashley-Madison Data and Discover If You Had an Affair Too
August 26, 2015
If you haven’t heard about the affair-promoting website Ashley Madison’s data breach, you might want to crawl out from under that rock and learn about the millions of email addresses exposed by hackers to be linked to the infidelity site. In spite of claims by parent company Avid Life Media that users’ discretion was secure, and that the servers were “kind of untouchable,” as many as 37 million customers have been exposed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge number of government and military personnel have been found on the list. The article on Reuters titled Hacker’s Ashley Madison Data Dump Threatens Marriages, Reputations also mentions that the dump has divorce lawyers clicking their heels with glee at their good luck. As for the motivation of the hackers? The article explains,
“The hackers’ move to identify members of the marital cheating website appeared aimed at maximum damage to the company, which also runs websites such as Cougarlife.com andEstablishedMen.com, causing public embarrassment to its members, rather than financial gain. “Find yourself in here?,” said the group, which calls itself the Impact Team, in a statement alongside the data dump. “It was [Avid Life Media] that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it.”
If you would like to “find yourself” or at least check to see if any of your email addresses are part of the data dump, you are able to do so. The original data was put on the dark web, which is not easily accessible for most people. But the website Trustify lets people search for themselves and their partners to see if they were part of the scandal. The website states,
“Many people will face embarrassment, professional problems, and even divorce when their private details were exposed. Enter your email address (or the email address of your spouse) to see if your sexual preferences and other information was exposed on Ashley Madison or Adult Friend Finder. Please note that an email will be sent to this address.”
It’s also important to keep in mind that many of the email accounts registered to Ashley Madison seem to be stolen. However, the ability to search the data has already yielded some embarrassment for public officials and, of course, “family values” activist Josh Duggar. The article on the Daily Mail titled Names of 37 Million Cheating Spouses Are Leaked Online: Hackers Dump Huge Data File Revealing Clients of Adultery Website Ashley Madison- Including Bankers, UN and Vatican Staff goes into great detail about the company, the owners (married couple Noel and Amanda Biderman) and how hackers took it upon themselves to be the moral police of the internet. But the article also mentions,
“Ashley Madison’s sign-up process does not require verification of an email address to set up an account. This means addresses might have been used by others, and doesn’t prove that person used the site themselves.”
Some people are already claiming that they had never heard of Ashley Madison in spite of their emails being included in the data dump. Meanwhile, the Errata Security Blog entry titled Notes on the Ashley-Madison Dump defends the cybersecurity of Ashley Madison. The article says,
“They tokenized credit card transactions and didn’t store full credit card numbers. They hashed passwords correctly with bcrypt. They stored email addresses and passwords in separate tables, to make grabbing them (slightly) harder. Thus, this hasn’t become a massive breach of passwords and credit-card numbers that other large breaches have lead to. They deserve praise for this.”
Praise for this, if for nothing else. The impact of this data breach is still only beginning, with millions of marriages and reputations in the most immediate trouble, and the public perception of the cloud and cybersecurity close behind.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 26, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
CSC Attracts Buyer And Fraud Penalties
July 1, 2015
According to the Reuters article “Exclusive: CACI, Booz Allen, Leidos Eyes CSC’s Government Unit-Sources,” CACI International, Leidos Holdings, and Booz Allen Hamilton Holdings
have expressed interest in Computer Sciences Corp’s public sector division. There are not a lot of details about the possible transaction as it is still in the early stages, so everything is still hush-hush.
The possible acquisition came after the news that CSC will split into two divisions: one that serves US public sector clients and the other dedicated to global commercial and non-government clients. CSC has an estimated $4.1 billion in revenues and worth $9.6 billion, but CACI International, Leidos Holdings, and Booz Allen Hamilton might reconsider the sale or getting the price lowered after hearing this news: “Computer Sciences (CSC) To Pay $190M Penalty; SEC Charges Company And Former Executives With Accounting Fraud” from Street Insider. The Securities and Exchange Commission are charging CSC and former executives with a $190 million penalty for hiding financial information and problems resulting from the contract they had with their biggest client. CSC and the executives, of course, are contesting the charges.
“The SEC alleges that CSC’s accounting and disclosure fraud began after the company learned it would lose money on the NHS contract because it was unable to meet certain deadlines. To avoid the large hit to its earnings that CSC was required to record, Sutcliffe allegedly added items to CSC’s accounting models that artificially increased its profits but had no basis in reality. CSC, with Laphen’s approval, then continued to avoid the financial impact of its delays by basing its models on contract amendments it was proposing to the NHS rather than the actual contract. In reality, NHS officials repeatedly rejected CSC’s requests that the NHS pay the company higher prices for less work. By basing its models on the flailing proposals, CSC artificially avoided recording significant reductions in its earnings in 2010 and 2011.”
Oh boy! Is it a wise decision to buy a company that has a history of stealing money and hiding information? If the company’s root products and services are decent, the buyers might get it for a cheap price and recondition the company. Or it could lead to another disaster like HP and Autonomy.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Expert Systems Acquires TEMIS
June 22, 2015
In a move to improve its product offerings, Expert System acquired TEMIS. The two companies will combine their assets to create a leading semantic provider for cognitive computing. Reuters described the acquisition in very sparse details: “Expert System Signs Agreement To Acquire French TEMIS SA.”
Reuters describes the merger as:
“Reported on Wednesday that it [Expert System] signed binding agreement to buy 100 percent of TEMIS SA, a French company offering solutions in text analytics
- Deal value is 12 million euros ($13.13 million)”
TEMIS creates technology that helps organizations leverage, manage, and structure their unstructured information assets. It is best known for Luxid, which identifies and extracts information to semantically enrich content with domain-specific metadata.
Expert System, on the other hand, is another semantically inclined company and its flagship product is Cogito. The Cogito software is designed to understand content within unstructured text, systems, and analytics. The goal is give organizations a complete picture of your information, because Cogitio actually understand what is processing.
TEMIS and Expert System have similar goals to make unstructured data useful to organizations. Other than the actual acquisition deal, details on how Expert System plans to use TEMIS have not been revealed. Expert System, of course, plans to use TEMIS to improve its own semantic technology and increase revenue. Both companies are pleased at the acquisition, but if you consider other buy outs in recent times the cost to Expert System is very modest. Thirteen million dollars underscores the valuation of other text analysis companies. Other text analysis companies would definitely cost more than TEMIS.
Whitney Grace, June 22, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Pooling the Pangaea Ad Pool
April 2, 2015
In order to capitalize more on Internet ads, some of the biggest news published have pooled their resources to form the Pangaea Alliance, says Media Post in the article, “Premium Publishers Including Guardian, Reuters, FT Launch Programmatic Alliance.” The Pangaea Alliance includes CNN International, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Reuters, and The Economist. Combined all these publishers have an audience over 110 million users. The Pangaea will make ad inventory available to advertisers using programmatic buying.
All participating members will pool their audiences and share their data with each. This is very big news, considering most companies keep their customer list a secret.
“ ‘We know that trust is the biggest driver of brand advocacy, so we have come together to scale the benefits of advertising within trusted media environments,’ stated Tim Gentry, global revenue director at Guardian News and media and Pangaea Alliance project lead.”
Rubicon Project will power the Pangaea Alliance. The alliance feeds into the demand for premium programmatic advertising venues on a massive scale. The biggest problem it faces will be the customers. They might have a large combined clientele, but will they actually want to pay for these outfits’ information?
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Rakuten Goes Into OverDrive
April 1, 2015
If you use a public library or attend school, you might be familiar with the OverDrive system. It allows users to download and read ebooks on a tablet of their choice for a limited time, similar to the classic library borrowing policy. According to Reuters in the article, “Update 2: Rakuten Buying eBook Firm OverDrive For $410 Million In US Push” explains how the Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc. bought the company.
Rakuten has been buying many businesses in the “sharing economy,” including raising $530 million for Lyft. OverDrive is a sharing company, because it shares books with people. It is not the only reason why Rakuten bought the company:
“Another reason for the purchase is the firm’s reach in the U.S. market, [Takahito Aiki, head of Rakuten’s global eBook business] said. Rakuten has been on a buying spree in recent years to reduce reliance on its home market in Japan. In October it bought U.S. discount store Ebates.com for about $1 billion.”
What does this mean for the textbook industry, though? Will it hurt or help it? When Amazon and other online textbook services launched with cheaper alternatives, the brick and mortar businesses felt the crunch. The cup may be either half full or half empty. Publishers may not be familiar with the sharing economy and may have an opportunity to learn first hand if this deal goes down.
Whitney Grace, April 1, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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