The Ins and Outs of the Black Market Economy
March 24, 2015
The article titled The Cybercrime Economy: Welcome To The Black Market of The Internet on ZeroFox discusses the current state of the black market and the consequences of its success. The author delves into the economy of the black market, suggesting that it, too, is at the mercy of supply and demand. Some of the players in the structure of the black market include malware brokers, botnet “herders,” and monetization specialists. The article says,
“So what’s the big deal — how does this underground economy influence the economy we see day to day? The financial markets themselves are highly sensitive to the impact of cyber crime… Additionally, fluctuating bitcoin markets (which affects forex trades) and verticals that can be affected through social engineering (the Fin4 example) are both targets for exploitation on a mass scale….There is a good reason cyber security spending surpassed 70 billion in 2014: breaches are costly. Very costly.”
As for how to upset the economy of the black market, the article posits that “cutting off the head” will not work. Supply and demand keep the black market running, not some figurehead. Instead, the article suggests that the real blame lies on the monopolies that drive up prices and force consumers to look for illegal options.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 24, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Modus Operandi Gets a Big Data Storage Contract
March 24, 2015
The US Missile Defense Agency awarded Modus Operandi a huge government contract to develop an advanced data storage and retrieval system for the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Modus Operandi specializes in big data analytic solutions for national security and commercial organizations. Modus Operandi posted a press release on their Web site to share the news, “Modus Operandi Awarded Contract To Develop Advanced Data Storage And Retrieval System For The US Missile Defense Agency.”
The contract is a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), under which Modus Operandi will work on the DMDS Analytic Semantic System (BASS). The BASS will replace the old legacy system and update it to be compliant with social media communities, the Internet, and intelligence.
“ ‘There has been a lot of work in the areas of big data and analytics across many domains, and we can now apply some of those newer technologies and techniques to traditional legacy systems such as what the MDA is using,’ said Dr. Eric Little, vice president and chief scientist, Modus Operandi. ‘This approach will provide an unprecedented set of capabilities for the MDA’s data analysts to explore enormous simulation datasets and gain a dramatically better understanding of what the data actually means.’ ”
It is worrisome that the missile defense system is relying on an old legacy system, but at least it is being upgraded now. Modus Operandi also sales Cyber OSINT and they are applying this technology in an interesting way for the government.
Whitney Grace, March 24, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
SharePoint’s Evolution of Ease
March 24, 2015
At SharePoint’s beginning, users and managers viewed it as a framework. It is often still referred to as an installation, and many third party vendors do quite well offering add-on options to flesh out the solution. However, due to users’ expectations, SharePoint is shifting its focus to accommodate quick and full implementation without a lengthy build-out. Read more in the CMS Wire article, “From Build It and Go, to Ready to Go with SharePoint.”
The article sums up the transformation:
“We hunger for solutions that can be quickly acquired and implemented, not ones that require building out complex and robust solutions. The world around us is changing fast and it’s exciting to see how productivity tools are beginning to encompass almost every area of our lives. The evolution not only impacts new tools and products, but also the tools we have been using all long. In SharePoint, we can see this in the addition of Experiences and NextGen Portals.”
SharePoint 2016 is on its way and there will be addition information to leak throughout the coming months. Keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com for breaking news and the latest releases. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of all things search, including enterprise and SharePoint, and his dedicated SharePoint feed is a great resource for professionals who need to keep up without a huge investment in research time.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 24, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Tombone Explains Smart Software Approaches
March 23, 2015
Baffled by smart software, machine learning, and related buzz words. “Deep Learning vs Machine Learning vs Pattern Recognition” does a good job differentiating each of these disciplines. The write up is approachable and lamentably does not include the math jargon that crops up in textbooks and learned journals. Here’s an example of the information available in the article. This passage comes very close to revealing the secret sauce for Autonomy’s DRE and IDOL “inventions”:
Sometime in the early 90s people started realizing that a more powerful way to build pattern recognition algorithms is to replace an expert (who probably knows way too much about pixels) with data (which can be mined from cheap laborers). So you collect a bunch of face images and non-face images, choose an algorithm, and wait for the computations to finish. This is the spirit of machine learning. “Machine Learning” emphasizes that the computer program (or machine) must do some work after it is given data. The Learning step is made explicit. And believe me, waiting 1 day for your computations to finish scales better than inviting your academic colleagues to your home institution to design some classification rules by hand.
The article is worth a read. Attention, failed middle school teachers, mid tier consultants, and litigious search experts—the article may assist you when you convince clients you are an expert in smart software and great inventions like Watson, which IDC admires.
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2015
Glass: Not Shattered, Not Dead
March 23, 2015
I read “Google Glass Eyewear Isn’t Dead, Eric Schmidt Confirms.” I think of glass and the word “shattered.” My association with the wonky heads up display elicits these memory hooks:
- A shattered life, mental stress, a motivated Xiaomi executive
- A broken marriage
- The multi-named Babak Parviz’s departure for the sunny climes of the Amazon
- The coinage “glasshole”.
The write up does not hit my memory triggers. I learned:
Google Glass is “a big and very fundamental platform for Google,” Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday. Schmidt went on to say that the company’s decision to stop selling the initial version of the controversial gadget gives Google the opportunity “to make it ready for users.”
There you go. Google stands behind its products and services. The Google Graveyard is obviously not hip the meaning of words used by Googlers.
I get it. Google glass is not broken, opaque, or built according to a lost formula discovered by a stained glass window researcher in Milan. Glass lives. Dodgeball, Google Buzz, the Google Catalog, and maybe Google Plus are alive and very well I presume.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2015
Digital Shadows Searches the Shadow Internet
March 23, 2015
The deep Web is not hidden from Internet users, but regular search engines like Google and Bing do not index it in their results. Security Affairs reported on a new endeavor to search the deep Web in the article, “Digital Shadows Firm Develops A Search Engine For The Deep Web.” Memex and Flashpoint are two search engine projects that are already able to scan the deep Web. Digital Shadows, a British cyber security firm, is working on another search engine specially designed to search the Tor network.
The CEO of Digital Shadows Alistair Paterson describes the project as Google for Tor. It was made for:
“Digital Shadows developed the deep Web search engine to offer its services to private firms to help them identifying cyber threats or any other illegal activity that could represent a threat.”
While private firms will need and want this software to detect illegal activities, law enforcement officials currently need deep Web search tools more than other fields. They use it to track fraud, drug and sex trafficking, robberies, and tacking contraband. Digital Shadows is creating a product that is part of a growing industry. The company will not only make profit, but also help people at the same time.
Whitney Grace, March 23, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Data and Marketing Come Together for a Story
March 23, 2015
An article on the Marketing Experiments Blog titled Digital Analytics: How To Use Data To Tell Your Marketing Story explains the primacy of the story in the world of data. The conveyance of the story, the article claims, should be a collaboration between the marketer and the analyst, with both players working together to create an engaging and data-supported story. The article suggests breaking this story into several parts, similar to the plot points you might study in a creative writing class. Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Denouement and Resolution. The article states,
“Nate [Silver] maintained throughout his speech that marketers need to be able to tell a story with data or it is useless. In order to use your data properly, you must know what the narrative should be…I see data reporting and interpretation as an art, very similar to storytelling. However, data analysts are too often siloed. We have to understand that no one writes in a bubble, and marketing teams should understand the value and perspective data can bring to a story.”
Silver, Founder and Editor in Chief of FiveThirtyEight.com is also quoted in the article from his talk at the Adobe Summit Digital Marketing Conference. He said, “Just because you can’t measure it, doesn’t mean it’s not important.” This is the back to the basics approach that companies need to consider.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 23, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Relaxing a Query: PostgreSQL Style
March 22, 2015
If you are a user of PostgreSQL and want to implement fuzzy, relaxed, or “show ‘em something sort of close to the user’s query,” you will want to read “Super Fuzzy Searching on PostgreSQL.” Fuzzy search makes it possible to show a user who is not quite sure how terms appear in an index. Fuzzy is not exactly like “close” in horseshoes. More algorithmic magic is at play in information retrieval systems.
The article explains PostgreSQL fuzzy capabilities and launches into the notion of trigrams. Keep in mind that Manning & Napier (creators of DR LINK) possess some n-gram patents. The old Brainware which may have once been SER) also possesses some n-gram type patents. I recall hearing years ago that Brainware developed a trigram search system which worked reasonably well when looking for similar patent claims. Brainware is now part of a printer company, and I have lost track of the search technology. I suppose I could investigate the Brainware/Lexmark status, but I have other tasks beckoning my attention.
The write up explains how to implement trigrams for PostgreSQL. The code examples are useful and the tips for dealing with large datasets are quite helpful. The author does not mention the n-gram related patents. I assume that the author assumes that the patent holders assume no one is infringing. That is a triple assumption set. int ere sti ngt rig ram coi nci den ce_
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2015
Cable and Enterprise Search: The Problem of “Peak”
March 22, 2015
I read “Peak Cable.” More people think about television than enterprise search in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. After reading this write up, I scanned the passages I highlighted in pale pink. Here’s a favorite:
Disruption theory suggests that once a product over-serves on meaningful bases of value creation (and underserves on value) it opens the door to disruption.
Lucene/Solr have become the go to search systems for many companies. IBM, for example, gussies up Lucene and hypes Watson. Next generation information access vendors use Lucene as a “good enough” keyword search system. And start ups find that open source search, data management, and analytics are suitable for their purposes. Spare money is used for slick interfaces and, truth be told, Uber rides.
Here’s another passage I found interesting:
The same phenomenon occurred with mobile vs. fixed telephony. For several years it seemed that mobile was sustaining to fixed or that fixed was immune due to lock-ins. The fixed telephone incumbents insisted that the data was inconclusive. Then the trickle of abandonment turned into a deluge. The quality of service for mobile kept increasing and, with data, it became clear that the mobile devices could unleash unfathomable functionality and value. And so it goes. A business dies first slowly then quickly. The exact timing is tricky because of the non-linearity of the phenomenon. It’s also hard to declare end-of-life since business zombies are very common. What is clear however is that the economics will change dramatically and the alliances between talent and distribution will shift to entrants and away from incumbents.
Has enterprise search passed its “peak”? If so, cable providers in the US might look at the enterprise search market for a glimpse of its future.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2015
Quote to Note: Google, the FTC, and the Public Good
March 21, 2015
I don’t care too much about the methods Google uses to generate revenue. For more than a decade, I have documented in my books and articles the tools available to a search vendor to perform results shaping, hit boosting, and semantic shading. Heck, I even offer an explanation of the methods available to those outside of Google to accomplish similar ends. I do these lectures for law enforcement and intelligence professionals, so you may have to work through my articles to piece together the who, what, how, when, and why.
I read “Take Google to Court, Staff Report Urged FTC.” Former middle school teachers, self appointed experts, and mid tier consultants have massaged this “revelation” in great and somewhat skewed detail. Suffice it to say, these folks have been uninformed about the GOOG and probably believe that Google enjoys a 65 percent share of North American Web search traffic. Hint: Google’s share of Web search traffic in Denmark and Germany is north of 95 percent. The good old USA is approaching that level of dominance. Take that ComScore and crunch your data again.
In the write up, which you may have to pay to read or go to a library and look for a hard copy of the newspaper, I noted this statement:
“Speculation about potential consumer and competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said in a statement. “Since the investigation closed two years ago, the ways people access information online have increased dramatically, giving consumers more choice than ever before.”
There you go, Foundem, Yelp, and the other Web sites most vocal about Google search results. Google makes it clear that Google is doing great things.
Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2015
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