Dawn of Blockchain Technology
November 24, 2016
Blockchain technology though currently powers the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, soon the technology might find takers in mainstream commercial activities.
Blockgeeks in an in-depth article guide titled What Is Blockchain Technology? A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners says:
The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.
Without getting into how the technology works, it would be interesting to know how and where the revolutionary technology can be utilized. Due to its inherent nature of being incorruptible due to human intervention and non-centralization, blockchain has numerous applications in the field of banking, remittances, shared economy, crowdfunding and many more, the list is just endless.
The technology will be especially helpful for people who transact over the Web and as the article points out:
Goldman Sachs believes that blockchain technology holds great potential especially to optimize clearing and settlements, and could represent global savings of up to $6bn per year.
Governments and commercial establishment, however, are apprehensive about it as blockchain might end their control over a multitude of things. Just because blockchain never stores data at one location. This also is the reason why Bitcoin is yet to gain full acceptance. But, can a driving force like blockchain technology that will empower the actual users can be stopped?
Vishal Ingole, November 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
First Surface Web Map of the Dark Web
April 15, 2016
Interested in a glimpse of the Dark Web without downloading Tor and navigating it yourself? E-Forensics Magazine published Peeling back the onion part 1: Mapping the Dark Web by Stuart Peck, which shares an overview of services and content in this anonymity-oriented internet. A new map covering the contents of the Dark Web, the first one to do so, was launched recently by a ZeroDayLab key partner, and threat intelligence service Intelliagg. The write-up explains,
“But this brings me to my previous point why is this map so important? Until recently, it had been difficult to understand the relationships between hidden services, and more importantly the classification of these sites. As a security researcher, understanding hidden services, such as private chat forums and closed sites, and how these are used to plan and discuss potential campaigns, such as DDoS, Ransom Attacks, Kidnapping, Hacking, and Trading of Vulnerabilities and leaked data, is key to protecting our clients through proactive threat intelligence.”
Understanding the layout of an online ecosystem is an important first step for researchers or related business ventures. But what about a visualization showing these web services are connected to functions, such as financial and other services, with brick-and-mortar establishments? It is also important to that while this may be the first Surface Web map of the Dark Web, many navigational “maps” on .onion sites that have existed as long as users began browsing on Tor.
Megan Feil, April 15, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Search, Jr.
April 6, 2016
As a kid friendly society, we cater to the younger generations by making “child friendly” versions of everything from books to meals. When the Internet made headway into our daily lives, kid friendly dashboards were launched to keep the young ones away from pedophiles and to guarantee they only saw age-appropriate content. The kid protocols sucked, for lack of better terms, because the people designing them were not the greatest at judging content.
With more tech-savvy, child wise Web developers running the show now, there are more kid friendly products with more intelligence behind their design. One of the main Internet functions that parents wish were available for their offspring is a safe search engine, but so far their answers have been ignored.
The Metro reports there is now a “New Search Engine Kiddle Is Like Google For Children-Here’s What It Does.” Kiddle’s purpose is to filter results that are safe for kids to read and also is written in simple language.
Kiddle is not affiliated with the search engine giant, however:
“Kiddle is not an official Google product, but the company uses a customized Google search to deliver child-friendly results. Kiddle uses Google colors but instead of the traditional white background has adopted an outer space theme, fit with a friendly robot. It will work in the same manner as Google but its search will be heavily filtered.”
The results will be filleted as such: the first three sites will be kid friendly, four through seven will be written in simple language, and the remaining will be from regular Google filtered through by the Kiddle search.
Kids need to understand how to evaluate content and use it wisely, but the Internet prevents them from making the same judgments other generations learned, as they got older. However, kids are also smarter than we think so a “kid friendly” search tool is usually dumbed down to the cradle. Kiddle appears to have the best of both worlds, at least it is better than parental controls.
Whitney Grace, April 6, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Forget World Population, Domain Population Is Overcrowded
April 5, 2016
Back in the 1990s, if you had a Web site without a bunch of gobbidly-gook after the .com, you were considered tech savvy and very cool. There were plenty of domain names available in those days and as the Internet became more of a tool than a novelty, demand for names rose. It is not as easy anymore to get the desired Web address, says Phys.org in the article, “Overcrowded Internet Domain Space Is Stifling Demand, Suggesting A Future ‘Not-Com’ Boom.”
Domain names are being snapped up fast, so quickly, in fact, that Web development is being stunted. As much as 25% of domains are being withheld, equaling 73 million as of summer 2015 with the inability to register domain names that would drive Internet traffic.
“However, as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has begun to roll out the option to issue brand new top-level domains for almost any word, whether it’s dot-hotel, dot-books or dot-sex – dubbed the ‘not-coms’ – the research suggests there is substantial untapped demand that could fuel additional growth in the domain registrations.”
One of the factors that determine prime Internet real estate is a simple, catchy Web address. With new domains opening up beyond the traditional .org, .com, .net, .gov endings, an entire new market is also open for entrepreneurs to profit from. People are already buying not-com’s for cheap with the intention to resale them for a pretty penny. It bears to mention, however, that once all of the hot not-com’s are gone, we will be in the same predicament as we are now. How long will that take?
Whitney Grace, April 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Paywalls Block Pleasure Reading
April 4, 2016
Have you noticed something new in the past few months on news Web sites? You click on an interesting article and are halfway though reading it when a pop-up banner blocks out the screen. The only way to continue reading is to enter your email, find the elusive X icon, or purchase a subscription. Ghacks.net tells us to expect more of these in, “Read Articles Behind Paywalls By Masquerading As Googlebot.”
Big new sites such as the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are now experimenting with the paywall to work around users’ ad blockers. The downside is that content will be locked up and sites might lose viewers, but that might be a risk they are willing to take to earn a bigger profit.
There used be some tricks to get around paywalls:
“It is no secret that news sites allow access to news aggregators and search engines. If you check Google News or Search for instance, you will find articles from sites with paywalls listed there. In the past, news sites allowed access to visitors coming from major news aggregators such as Reddit, Digg or Slashdot, but that practice seems to be as good as dead nowadays. Another trick, to paste the article title into a search engine to read the cached story on it directly, does not seem to work properly anymore as well as articles on sites with paywalls are not usually cached anymore.”
The best way, the article says, is to make the Web site think you are a Googlebot. Web sites allow Googlebots roam freely to appear higher in search engine results. There are a few ways to trick the Web sites into thinking you are a Googlebot based on your Internet browser, Firefox or Chrome. Check them out, but it will not be long before those become old-fashioned too.
Whitney Grace, April 4, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Now Has Dowsing Ability
March 16, 2016
People who claim to be psychic are fakes. There is not a way to predict the future, instantly locate a lost person or item, or read someone’s aura. No scientific theory has proven it exists. One of the abilities psychics purport to have is “dowsing,” the power to sense where water, precious stones or metals, and even people are hiding. Instead of relying on a suspended crystal or an angular stick, Google now claims it can identify any location based solely on images, says The Technology Review in the article, “Google Unveils Neural Network With ‘Superhuman’ Ability To Determine The Location Of Almost Any Image.”
Using computer algorithms, not magic powers, and Tobias Weyand’s programming prowess and a team of tech savvy people, they developed a way for a Google deep-learning machine to identity location pictures. Weyand and his team designed PlaNET, the too, and accomplished this by dividing the world into 26,000 square grid (sans ocean and poles) of varying sizes depending on populous areas.
“Next, the team created a database of geolocated images from the Web and used the location data to determine the grid square in which each image was taken. This data set is huge, consisting of 126 million images along with their accompanying Exif location data.
Weyand and co used 91 million of these images to teach a powerful neural network to work out the grid location using only the image itself. Their idea is to input an image into this neural net and get as the output a particular grid location or a set of likely candidates.”
With the remaining 34 million images in the data set, they tested the PlaNET to check its accuracy. PlaNET can accurately guess 3.6% images at street level, 10.1% on city level, 28.4% country of origin, and 48% of the continent. These results are very good compared to the limited knowledge that a human keeps in their head.
Weyand believes that PlaNET is able to determine the location, because it has learned new parents to recognize subtle patterns about areas that humans cannot distinguish, as it has arguably been more places than any human. What is even more amazing is how much memory PlaNET uses: only 377 MB!
When will PlaNET become available as a GPS app?
Whitney Grace, March 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Its Official: Facebook and the Dark Web
February 5, 2016
A piece from Nextgov suggests just how ubiquitous the Dark Web could become. Published as Facebook is giving users a new way to access it on the ‘Dark Web’, this article tells us “a sizeable community” of its users are also Dark Web users; Facebook has not released exact figures. Why are people using the Dark Web for everyday internet browsing purposes? The article states:
“Facebook’s Tor site is one way for people to access their accounts when the regular Facebook site is blocked by governments—such as when Bangladesh cut off access to Facebook, its Messenger and Whatsapp chat platforms, and messaging app Viber for about three weeks in November 2015. As the ban took effect, the overall number of Tor users in Bangladesh spiked by about 10 times, to more than 20,000 a day. When the ban was lifted, the number dropped back to its previous level.”
Public perception of the darknet is changing. If there was any metric to lend credibility to the Dark Web being increasingly used for mainstream purposes, it is Facebook adding a .onion address. Individual’s desire for security, uninterrupted and expansive internet access will only contribute to the Dark Web’s user base. While the Silk Road-type element is sure to remain as well, it will be interesting to see how things evolve.
Megan Feil, February 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Metadata Could Play Integral Role in Data Security
February 2, 2016
A friend recently told me how they can go months avoiding suspicious emails, spyware, and Web sites on her computer, but the moment she hands her laptop over to her father he downloads a virus within an hour. Despite the technology gap existing between generations, the story goes to show how easy it is to deceive and steal information these days. ExpertClick thinks that metadata might hold the future means for cyber security in “What Metadata And Data Analytics Mean For Data Security-And Beyond.”
The article uses biological analogy to explain metadata’s importance: “One of my favorite analogies is that of data as proteins or molecules, coursing through the corporate body and sustaining its interrelated functions. This analogy has a special relevance to the topic of using metadata to detect data leakage and minimize information risk — but more about that in a minute.”
This plays into new companies like, Ayasdi, using data to reveal new correlations using different methods than the standard statistical ones. The article compares this to getting to the data atomic level, where data scientists will be able to separate data into different elements and increase the analysis complexity.
“The truly exciting news is that this concept is ripe for being developed to enable an even deeper type of data analytics. By taking the ‘Shape of Data’ concept and applying to a single character of data, and then capturing that shape as metadata, one could gain the ability to analyze data at an atomic level, revealing a new and unexplored frontier. Doing so could bring advanced predictive analytics to cyber security, data valuation, and counter- and anti-terrorism efforts — but I see this area of data analytics as having enormous implications in other areas as well.”
There are more devices connected to the Internet than ever before and 2016 could be the year we see a significant rise in cyber attacks. New ways to interpret data will leverage predictive and proactive analytics to create new ways to fight security breaches.
Whitney Grace, February 2, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Trust and Security Lessons Offered by the Dark Web
January 27, 2016
Spreading lessons about trust is not what most people think when they think of the drug dealers, hackers and cyber criminals of the Dark Web, but an article from Medium begs to differ. Let’s hear it for the bad guys: What the Dark Web can teach us about trust focuses on the idea that these “bad guys” are successfully and efficiently making transactions, ultimately based on trust. The article states:
“Crucially, they offer the same kind of reliability of experience rather than ripping people off, thus creating a sustainable business model. Transactions are made using digital currency Bitcoin and are recorded and verified through a distributed public ledger called the block chain. In this way, such sites build trust by offering a straightforward transaction built on transparency, albeit achieved with complete anonymity.”
This trust may be seen as missing from many internet sites where collection of personal data is the price of admission; the Dark Web offers an alternative with the promise of information not being tracked. Ironically, the issue of information being collected, albeit through other means, and sold through channels in the Dark Web means the problem of security is not eradicated.
Megan Feil, January 27, 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
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