To Search the Dark Web
February 11, 2016
If you have wondered how, exactly, one searches for information on the Dark Web, take a gander at “The Best TOR Search Engines of 2016” at Cyberwarzone. Reporter CWZ writes:
“On the TOR network you can find various websites just like you find on the ‘normal web.’ The websites which are hosted on the TOR network are not indexed by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, but the search engines which are listed below, do index the TOR websites which are hosted via the TOR network. It is important to remember that you do need the TOR client on your device in order to access the TOR network, if you cannot use a TOR client on your device, you can use one of the free TOR gateways which are listed below in the web TOR providers tab.”
The article warns about malicious TOR clients, and strongly suggests readers download the client found at the official TOR website. Four search engines are listed— https://Ahmia.fi, https://Onion.cab, https://onion.link/, and http://thehiddenwiki.org/. CWZ also lists those Web TOR gateways, through which one can connect to TOR services with a standard Web browser instead of using a TOR client. See the end of the article for that information.
Cynthia Murrell, February 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Encrypted Enterprise Search
February 3, 2016
Another enterprise software distributor has taken the leap into a proprietary encrypted search engine. Computer Technology Review informs us that “VirtualWorks Releases Its Encrypted Enterprise Search Platform ViaWorks Built On Hitachi Technology.” VirtualWorks’s enterprise search platform is called ViaWorks and the company’s decision to release an encrypted search engine comes after there has been a rise in data security breaches as well as concern about how to prevent such attacks. We will not even mention how organizations want to move to the cloud, but are fearful of hacking. More organizations from shopping in person on the Internet, banking, healthcare, government, and even visiting a library use self-service portals that rely on personal information to complete tasks. All of these portals can be hacked, so trade organizations and the government are instituting new security measures.
Everyone knows, however, that basic rules and a firewall are not enough to protect sensitive information. That is why companies like VirtualWorks stay one step ahead of the game with a product like ViaWork built on Hitachi’s Searchable Encryption technology. ViaWorks is a highly encrypted platform that does not sacrifice speed and accuracy for security
“ViaWorks encrypted enterprise search features are based on AES, a worldwide encryption standard established by NIST; special randomization process, making the encrypted data resistant to advanced statistical attacks; with key management and encryption APIs that store encryption keys securely and encrypt the original data. ViaWorks provides key management and encryption APIs that store encryption keys securely and encrypt the original data, respectively. Users determine which field is encrypted, such as index files, search keyword or transaction logs.”
VirtualWorks already deployed ViaWorks in beta tests within healthcare, government, insurance, and finance. Moving information to the cloud saves money, but it presents a security risk and slow search. A commercial encrypted search engine paired with cloud computing limits the cyber risk.
Whitney Grace, February 3, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Customize Your News with Semantic Search
January 28, 2016
There are many apps available that can aggregate news stories that cater to your interests: Feedly, Google News, Pulp, and other RSS feeders. While these apps have their strengths and weaknesses, one question you need to ask is: do they use semantic search? If you want a news app designed specifically to bring you news stories using semantic search there is “Algo: Semantic Search Engine For Customizable News” and it can be purchased on iTunes.
SkyGrid developed Algo and Apple named it a “Best News App”. It has earned a 4.5 star rating. Algo was designed to keep users up-to-date on news, follow topics of interest, and your favorite publications to create your own personalized newspaper.
Algo is described as:
“The only true real-time news aggregator. Simple, fast, and reliable, Algo is the only place to follow all of your favorite topics and interests. Search for anything you want! From people to TV shows to companies to finance, follow your interests on Algo. Set notifications for each topic and be notified as information updates in real-time.”
Other Algo features are ability to share articles on any service, save favorite articles, notification settings, and up-to-date news in real time. Algo’s reliance on semantic search is one of the reasons why it has gained such favor with Apple and iTunes users.
Whitney Grace, January 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Beware: Spyware Disguised as Search
January 27, 2016
Do you know how when you type an incorrect Web address into the search bar and you are redirected to a search page saying it could not find the address? According to PCRisk one of these redirected pages could mean you serious harm, “Snjsearch.com Redirect.” If you have ever heard of snjsearch.com, you should get off the page as quickly as possible.
Snjsearch masquerades as a legitimate Internet search engine with more relevant results than Google. However, this is a false claim! The Snjsearch.com developers include spyware within an installation packet to track browsing history and other sensitive information.
The biggest question you are probably asking is how snjsearch.com gets installed on your computer?
“This deceptive website is promoted as a ‘bundle’ with other software. The developers know that many users do not pay enough attention when downloading and installing software. Therefore, bundled applications (or in this case, modification of browser settings) are usually concealed within the ‘Custom/Advanced’ settings. Many users rush these processes and skip virtually all steps, leading to inadvertent installation of potentially unwanted programs. This exposes their systems to risk of further infection and compromises their privacy.”
The easiest way to avoid downloading snjsearch.com is to monitor all downloads, making sure that snjsearch.com is not included in an installation bundle. Another preventive measure would be to know where you download an item. Remember the saying, “don’t take candy from strangers”? Well, do not take free downloads from strange Web sites.
If you believe you have snjsearch.com on your computer, the article contains steps to remove it. If you are a curious person, do not experiment with snjsearch.com unless appropriate precautions are taken; namely, using a separate, non-work computing device not connected to an office or work related network.
Whitney Grace, January 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
DtSearch in the Cloud
January 18, 2016
Enterprise- and developer-search firm dtSearch now offers a platform for the cloud. PR.com informs us, “New .NET Solution Uses dtSearch with Microsoft Azure Files and RemoteApp.” The solution allows users to run the dtSearch engine entirely online with Microsoft Azure, ensuring their security with Microsoft’s RemoteApp. The press release elaborates:
“The solution enables cloud operation of all dtSearch components, leveraging Microsoft’s new Azure Files feature for dtSearch index storage. Searching (including all 25+ dtSearch search options) runs via Microsoft’s RemoteApp. Using RemoteApp gives the search component the ‘look and feel’ of a native application running under Windows, Android, iOS or OS/X. Developers using dtSearch’s core developer product, the dtSearch Engine, can find the solution on CodeProject, including complete Visual Studio 2015 .NET sample code.”
See the thorough write-up for many details about the product, including supported formats, search and classification options, and their terabyte indexer. We note, for example, the capacities for concurrent, multithreaded search and for federated searches with their dtSearch Spider.
Founded in 1991, dtSearch supplies search software to firms in several fields and to numerous government agencies around the world. The company also makes its products available for incorporation into other commercial applications. dtSearch has distributors worldwide, and is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland.
Cynthia Murrell, January 18, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Duck Quacks 12 Million Queries
January 14, 2016
DuckDuckGo keeps waddling through its search queries and quacking that it will not track its users information. DuckDuckGo has remained a small search engine, but its privacy services are chipping away at Google and search engines’ user base. TechViral shares that “DuckDuckGo The Anti-Google Search Engine Just Reached A New Milestone” and it is reaching twelve million search queries in one day!
In 2015, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion search queries, showing a 74 percent increase compared to the 2014 data. While DuckDuckGo is a private oasis in a sea of tracking cookies, it still uses targeted ads. However, unlike Google DuckDuckGo only uses ads based on the immediate keywords used in a search query and doesn’t store user information. It wipes the search engine clean with each use.
DuckDuckGo’s increase of visitors has attracted partnerships with Mozilla and Apple. The private search engine is a for profit business, but it does have different goals than Google.
“Otherwise, it should be noted that although he refuses to have the same practices as Google, DuckDuckGo already making profits, yes that’s true. And the company’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, stop to think it is necessary to collect information about users to monetize a search engine: ‘You type car and you see an advertisement for a car, Google follows you on all these sites because it operates huge advertising networks and other properties. So they need these data for search engines to follow you.’ ”
DuckDuckGo offers a great service for privacy, while it is gaining more users it doesn’t offer the plethora of services Google does. DuckDuckGo, why not try private email, free office programs, and online data storage? Would you still be the same if you offered these services?
Whitney Grace, January 14, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Scientific Research Has Turned into a Safe Space
December 31, 2015
The Internet is a cold, cruel place, especially if you hang out in the comments section on YouTube, eBay forums, social media, and 4chan. If you practice restraint and limit your social media circles to trusted individuals, you can surf the Internet without encountering trolls and haters. Some people do not practice common sense, so they encounter many hateful situations on the Internet and as a result they demand “safe spaces.” Safe spaces are where people do not encounter anything negative.
Safe spaces are stupid. Period. What is disappointing is that the “safe space” and “only positive things” has made its way into the scientific community according to Nature in the article, “‘Novel, Amazing, Innovative’: Positive Words On The Rise In Science Papers.”
The University Medical Center in the Netherlands studied the use of positive and negative words in the titles of scientific papers and abstracts from 1974-2014 published on the medical database PubMed. The researchers discovered that positive words in titles grew from 2% in 1974 to 17.5% in 2014. Negative word usage increased from 1.3% to 2.4%, while neutral words did not see any change. The trend only applies to research papers, as the same test was run using published books and it showed little change.
“The most obvious interpretation of the results is that they reflect an increase in hype and exaggeration, rather than a real improvement in the incidence or quality of discoveries… The findings “fit our own observations that in order to get published, you need to emphasize what is special and unique about your study,” he says. Researchers may be tempted to make their findings stand out from thousands of others — a tendency that might also explain the more modest rise in usage of negative words.”
While there is some doubt associated with the findings, because it was only applied to PubMed. The original research team thinks that it points to much larger problem, because not all research can be “innovative” or “novel.” The positive word over usage is polluting the social, psychological, and biomedical sciences.
Under the table, this really points to how scientists and researchers are fighting for tenure. What would this mean for search engine optimization if all searches and descriptions had to have a smile? Will they even invent a safe space filter?
Whitney Grace, December 31, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
SEO Tips Based on Recent Google Search Quality Guidelines
December 30, 2015
Google has recently given search-engine optimization pros a lot to consider, we learn from “Top 5 Takeaways from Google’s Search Quality Guidelines and What They Mean for SEO” at Merkle’s RKG Blog. Writer Melody Pettula presents five recommendations based on Google’s guidelines. She writes:
“A few weeks ago, Google released their newest Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, which teach Google’s search quality raters how to determine whether or not a search result is high quality. This is the first time Google has released the guidelines in their entirety, though versions of the guidelines have been leaked in the past and an abridged version was released by Google in 2013. Why is this necessary? ‘Quality’ is no longer simply a function of text on a page; it differs by device, location, search query, and everything we know about the user. By understanding how Google sees quality we can improve websites and organic performance. Here’s a countdown of our top 5 takeaways from Google’s newest guidelines and how they can improve your SEO strategy.”
We recommend any readers interested in SEO check out the whole article, but here are the five considerations Pettula lists, from least to most important: consider user intent; supply supplementary content; guard your reputation well; consider how location affects user searches; and, finally, “mobile is the future.” On that final point, the article notes that Google is now almost entirely focused on making things work for mobile devices. SEO pros would do well to keep that new reality in mind.
Cynthia Murrell, December 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
DuckDuckGo Grows in 2015
December 30, 2015
Do you not love it when the little guy is able to compete with corporate giants? When it comes to search engines DuckDuckGo is the little guy, because unlike big search engines like Google and Yahoo it refuses to track its users browsing history and have targeted ads. According to Quartz, “DuckDuckGo, The Search Engine That Doesn’t Track Its Users, Grew More Than 70% This Year.” Through December 15, 2015, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion queries up from twelve million queries received during the same time period in 2014. DuckDuckGo, however, still has trouble cracking the mainstream..
Google is still the biggest search engine in the United States with more than one hundred million monthly searches, but DuckDuckGo only reached 325 million monthly searches in November 2015. The private search engine also has three million direct queries via desktop computers, but it did not share how many people used DuckDuckGo via a mobile device to protect its users’ privacy. Google, on the other hand, is happy to share its statistics as more than half of its searches come from mobile devices.
“What’s driving growth? DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, reached via email, credits partnerships launched in 2014 with Apple and Mozilla, and word of mouth. He also passes along a Pew study from earlier this year, where 40% of American respondents said they thought search engines ‘shouldn’t retain information about their activity.’… ‘Our biggest challenge is that most people have not heard of us,’ Weinberg says. ‘We very much want to break out into the mainstream.’”
DuckDuckGo offers an unparalleled service for searching. Weinberg stated the problem correctly that DuckDuckGo needs to break into the mainstream. Its current user base consists of technology geeks and those in “the know,” some might call them hipsters. If DuckDuckGo can afford it, how about an advertising campaign launched on Google Ads?
Whitney Grace, December 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cyber Threat Intelligence Across the Enterprise
December 28, 2015
A blog series from iSightPartners aims to help organizations make the most of Cyber Threat Intelligence. The series is introduced in, “How CTI Helps Six Groups Do Their Jobs Better: A New Blog Series!” Writer Christina Jasinski explains:
“The importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has become more widely recognized in the past year. But not many people realize how many different ways threat intelligence can be utilized across an enterprise. That’s why now is a good time to drill down and describe the wide range of use cases for employing threat intelligence for many different functions within an IT organization.
“Are you a CISO, SOC Analyst or an Incident Responder? Stay tuned….
“This is the first post in an iSIGHT Partners blog series that will delve into how IT security professionals in each of six distinct roles within an organization’s information security program can (and should) apply threat intelligence to their function. Each post will include 3-4 use cases, how CTI can be used by professionals in that role, and the type of threat intelligence that is required to achieve their objectives.”
Jasinski goes on to describe what her series has to offer professionals in each of those roles, and concludes by promising to reveal practical solutions to CTI quandaries. Follow her blog posts to learn those answers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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