DarkCyber for August 24, 2021, Now Available
August 24, 2021
The program for August 24, 2021, is now available at this link. This program, number 17 in the 2021 series, contains five stories. These are:
The NSO Group matter has produced some interesting knock on effects.
The consequence of NSO Group’s activities include criticism from the United Nations and Edward Snowden, a whistle blower and resident of Moscow. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan was remarkable.
The core technology for the antagonists is discussed. You will learn about the musician Tankz and his method for making illegal credit card fraud accessible to young people in the UK and elsewhere. In addition to alleged financial crime, Tankz sings about Pyrex whipping. Ask your children what this is and then decide if you need to take action.
The program includes another reminder than one can find anti-security actors on the Regular Web and the Dark Web. The challenge is to make sure you do not become the victim of a scam.
The US government created an interesting report about nuclear war. It is not clear how lo9ng this document will remain available from a public Web server. You can check the link in the DarkCyber video for yourself. Tip: The document explains how the US may select a target for a nuclear strike.
The final story reports that the drone called Avenger has a new capability: Autonomous decision capability enabled by track and follow electronics. No human operator needed when a target is identified.
DarkCyber is produced by Stephen E Arnold and the DarkCyber research team. New programs appear every two weeks unless one of the video distribution services decides to remove the content derived from open sources of information. Tankz and a fellow traveler named DankDex, purveyor of the Fraud Bible, appear to post without pushback.
Kenny Toth, August 24, 2021
Remember Who May Have Wanted to License Pegasus?
August 20, 2021
Cyber intelligence firm NSO, makers of Pegasus spyware, knows no bounds when it comes to enabling government clients to spy on citizens. Apparently, however, it draws the line at helping Facebook spy on its users. At his Daring Fireball blog, computer scientist John Gruber reports that “Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware to Monitor iOS Users.” We learn that NSO CEO Shalev Hulio has made a legal declaration stating he was approached in 2017 by Facebook reps looking to purchase certain Pegasus capabilities. Gruber quotes Motherboard’s Joseph Cox, who wrote:
“At the time, Facebook was in the early stages of deploying a VPN product called Onavo Protect, which, unbeknownst to some users, analyzed the web traffic of users who downloaded it to see what other apps they were using. According to the court documents, it seems the Facebook representatives were not interested in buying parts of Pegasus as a hacking tool to remotely break into phones, but more as a way to more effectively monitor phones of users who had already installed Onavo. ‘The Facebook representatives stated that Facebook was concerned that its method for gathering user data through Onavo Protect was less effective on Apple devices than on Android devices,’ the court filing reads. ‘The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users.’”
We are glad to learn NSO has boundaries of any sort. And score one for Apple security. As for Facebook, Gruber asserts this news supports his oft-stated assertion that Facebook is a criminal operation. He bluntly concludes:
“Facebook’s stated intention for this software was to use it for mass surveillance of its own honest users. That is profoundly [messed] up — sociopathic.”
Perhaps.
Cynthia Murrell, August 20, 2021
Silicon Valley Neologisms: The Palantir Edition
August 19, 2021
Do you remember the Zuckerland metaverse? (Yes, I know he borrowed the word, but when you are president of a digital country, does anyone dare challenge Zuck the First, Le Roi Numérique?)
Palantir Technologies (the Seeing Stone outfit with the warm up jacket fashion bug) introduced a tasty bit of jargon-market speak in its Q2 2021 earnings call:
Palantir’s meta-constellation software harnesses the power of growing satellite constellations, deploying AI into space to provide insights to decision-makers here on Earth. Our meta-constellation integrates with existing satellites, optimizing hundreds of orbital sensors and AI models and allowing users to ask time-sensitive questions across the entire planet. Important questions like, where are the indicators of wildfires or how are climate changes affecting crop productivity? And when and where are naval fleets conducting operations? Meta-constellation pushes Palantir’s Edge AI technology to a new frontier.
I think meta-constellation is a positive contribution to the American Silicon Valley-Denver lingo.
One of the interesting factoids in the write up is that the average customer “invests” lots of money in the firm’s software and services. The average customer yields $7.9 million. Let’s assume there was a touch of spreadsheet fever whipping the accountants. Chop that down to a couple of million, and the cowboy outfit is doing okay. Now the job is to corral those customers so there is sustainable, recurring revenue and generous profits going forward like little doggies heading to the meat processing facility.
Also, deploying the Palantirians’ system is as easy as cooking some of Cowboy Ken’s beans in an iron pot over a wood fire. The transcript faithfully reports:
In just two days, we were able to deploy an entire solution for this customer, leveraging our out-of-the-box functionality built in foundry, a time line previously unthinkable in the eyes of the customer. And frankly, it would have been unthinkable to us even three years ago, where an equivalent project might have taken three months. This is only possible because of our product. Innovations from software-defined data integration are driving the marginal cost of data integration to 0, archetypes and our no-code technologies that are driving the marginal cost of application development to zero.
Those data cowboys are moving faster than a branded calf on a crisp April morning.
The most interesting factoid is contained in this statement:
Given our strong cash flow position, we repaid our outstanding $200 million term loan facility and are currently debt-free. After paying off the debt, we ended the quarter with $2.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
I don’t want to raise a touchy subject, but this chart caught my attention:
That yellow line means that the company is losing money if I am interpreting the Google Finance graph correctly.
It may be helpful to consider that Palantir has never turned a profit. Let’s hope those Colorado transplants can covert expensive cows into hard cash after more than a decade grazing on the range. No digital cows, please. Leave those for the Facebook metaverse which is less than a meta-constellation in JRR Tolkien fantasy space.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2021
A Simple Question: Just One Cyber Security Firm?
August 17, 2021
There are quite a few cyber security, cyber intelligence, and cyber threat companies. I have a list of about 100 of the better known outfits in this business. Presumably there are dozens, maybe hundreds of trained analysts and finely tuned intelware programs looking for threats and stolen data 24×7.
I read “Secret Terrorist Watchlist with 2 million Records Exposed Online.” The write up states:
July this year, Security Discovery researcher Bob Diachenko came across a plethora of JSON records in an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that piqued his interest.
Here’s my question: Why was a single researcher the only expert aware of this serious breach (if indeed it is valid)?
My hunch is that the Fancy Dan 24×7 smart systems and the legions of developers refining smart intelware have produced systems that simply don’t work. If they did, numerous alerting services would have spotted the alleged do not fly data. The “single researcher” would have been late to the party. He wasn’t. Thank goodness for this research, Mr. Diachenko.
Those systems, as far as I know, did not. The question remains, “Maybe these commercial services don’t work particularly well?” Marketing is really easy, even fun. Delivering on crazy assertions is a different sort of job.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
NSO Group: Okay, Now the UN Is Agitated. Good Job!
August 17, 2021
Once upon a time, intelware was essentially unknown. I think back to the late 1990s when relationship diagrams were talked about quietly in rooms with tinfoil on the windows.
Those halcyon days are gone. The go-go-go MBA-thinking masters of the universe decided that public conferences, online advertisements, and explaining their systems to academics with bobble heads was a spiffy idea.
Where are we now?
“Spyware Scandal: UN Experts Call for Moratorium on Sale of Life Threatening Surveillance Tech” is a high-water mark for the flood-lit specialized software and services sector.
Outstanding!
The write up says:
UN human rights experts* today called on all States to impose a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of surveillance technology until they have put in place robust regulations that guarantee its use in compliance with international human rights standards.
How’s this going to work out? Is there a marketing time machine which will undo the conference publicity? Is there a way to undo the content outputs about what should have been secret software and systems? Is there a way to get those investigative journalists redirected to issues like the homeless and gray market gun sales?
Nope.
The UN may not be a pace-setter in many things. But the organization is quite good at outputting reports and news which can ripple through the deciders in more than 190 member states. That pretty much looks like a global reach.
Remarkable, and I am not sure the Berkeley negotiators are going to deal with the problems of this digital Pandora’s box. Whose fingers will get smashed as fixer uppers try to get the lid locked down?
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Quote to Note: When Is the Best Time to Snag Mobile Data?
August 17, 2021
I read “We’re Late Closing the Barn Door on Pegasus.” The write up contains a statement I found interesting. Here’s the passage I noted:
Intelligence agencies around the world have shifted from collecting data in transit to collecting data at rest, since encryption uptake has made the former less fruitful. Sniffing packets in the air or over the wire has traditionally been the first choice for intelligence agencies only because it was the easiest. Intelligence agencies historically targeted devices, too, but usually only for their top targets. But now that so much traffic is encrypted, it makes more sense to focus on its endpoints.
This may seem obvious to some. The point is that specifically articulating a method in mass media is probably not high on my list of communication musts. This is one more example of the knock-on effect of the NSO Group’s media magnetism. I wish I could say that the NSO Group matter was lost in the ever decreasing news cycle. I cannot.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Peraton: Some Notes
August 16, 2021
Peraton received another juicy Federal contract. “Peraton Wins Nearly $1B DOD Contract” reports:
Herndon-based Peraton Inc., a national security contractor, won a nearly $1 billion task order to provide the U.S. Department of Defense’s U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) and its mission partners with operational planning, implementation and assessment services (OPIAS). USCENTCOM directs military operations with allies in the Middle East.
Peraton is, to some degree, the Harris Corp’s government unit. Backed by Veritas Capital, the contract winner is an example of the shift taking place in cyber intelligence.
The company is active in a number of government centric sectors; for example, digital forensics, cyber crime, and mission operations and analysis.
What work will Peraton perform? I don’t know and it is highly unlikely that the company will follow NSO Group’s method for generating publicity. I mention this Israeli firm’s misstep because it is continuing to send shockwaves through the intelware sector.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2021
Palantir Pushes Beyond What Any Other System Can Do It Seems
August 13, 2021
I believe everything I read online. Don’t you. I spotted this interesting article: “Palantir: Revolutionizing Big Data Analytics.” The write up shows a Covid dashboard and focuses on what’s called “data integration.” Putting information in an index or series of indexes so a user or software can run a query across that which has been placed in said indexes is sometimes called “federation”. Without entering a rabbit hole, let’s accept the “data integration” idea and ignore the buzzwords like “cross function collaborations.”
The Palantir system has a four step “process flow.” These steps include:
- Aggregating data
- Transforming data
- Securing data
- Empowering data.
I track with the first three steps, which have been required by policeware and intelware systems for decades.
The baffler is “empowering” data. I think this means that Palantir data are more valuable, potent, or muscular than data in a system for which I was a consultant many years ago. That was the i2 Analysts Notebook from the late 1990s.
That’s neither here nor there because Palantir did the Silicon Valley thing and found inspiration in that pioneering i2 system, which is now owned by IBM.
But here’s the statement in the write up that left me scratching my head:
Palantir is different from traditional business intelligence solutions like Tableau, Alteryx, or Cloudera, as it’s able to answer questions that a regular model isn’t able to. Questions such as “What steps should be taken if there’s another global pandemic”, or “How to increase margins in the most effective way”.
The companies cited in the passage are not intelware or policeware centric. Second, Palantir seems to be able to process natural language queries, extract on point facts and data from the aggregated and transformed data, and deliver answers.
As far as I know, NLP system do not reliably field ad hoc questions about general business issues or warfighting/intelligence issues. If systems did, there would not be the grousing about training, complexity, and disused intelware due to complexity and instability.
I don’t want to suggest that Palantir cannot deliver NLP which works. I would like to gently suggest that this just may not work in a way which would be useful in certain situations.
I understand the reasons “traditional” intelware fails. Managing data and logic together is tricky and made more challenging and expensive because real time streams can be ingested into some intelware systems. Specialists exist to deal with the real time challenge, and I am not sure Palantir has the robustness of Trendalyze, for example.
The data integrity issue is a big deal. Palantir makes it possible to know who input data. But the integrity issue is larger than than a single person. There are vendors who assemble data sets. Automated data sets work okay too, but when a stream is lost from an authorized intercept, the data set takes a hit. Plus, there is just bad data; for example, variable mechanisms for counting Covid deaths. Has Palantir whipped this garbage in problem? Maybe.
One weakness of Palantir’s competitors is described this way:
The inability to define key business metrics transparently in a common data foundation
This is an ambiguous statement. Most managers don’t know what they need or want. A case in point is a cyber security vendor offering phishing protection to clients. What happens if phishing techniques rely on auto generated emails with smart software crafting the pitch and the inclusion of valid links to the recipient’s company’s Web site. How is an employee to recognize these malformed email? We know phishing systems are not working because of the notable breaches in the US and elsewhere in the last six months of 2021. Senior managers want answers, and hopefully the answers are “good” or at least don’t lead to a diplomatic crisis or a severe business impact. Has Palantir cracked the problem of people who say, “I know what I want when I see it.” In my experience, quite a few CxOs rely on this method. Unfortunately this is not 1690 in Rhode Island where the vigilant are on the look out for irritated Native Americans. Recognizing that eye ball glimmering in a bush is not something intelware systems are able to do in a reliable, economical, speedy way.
Finally, the Palantir competitors “lack flexibility due to rigid data assets.” I remember the sales pitch of MarkLogic, a vendor of slicing-and-dicing content systems. The idea is that XML was almost magical. Input parameters and one gets output like a book made up of relevant content from the objects in the database. XML is a useful tool, but based on my experience with intelware systems, most of them use structured files, open source software, and the same popular algorithms taught in CompSci 401 around the world. The flexibility issue is a big one because now intelware must make sense of audio, video, pictures, gifs, database files, proprietary files from legacy systems, consumer file types like Word, and numeric streams. The phrase “rigid data assets” does quite capture the nuances of the data chaos facing most organizations.
Net net: This is an interesting write up, but I think it needs evidence, and substantive information. Palantir certainly has magnetism, but I still ask myself:
Why is Palantir funding SPACs and allegedly requiring these firms to agree to license the Palantir system?
This is a mystery to me. Because if Palantir whipped NLP, for instance, or the data chaos problem, the company would the hottest thing since i2 Analysts Notebook.
Stephen E Arnold, August 13, 2021
NSO Group: Let Loose the Legal Eagles
August 13, 2021
I was dismayed to read “More Journalists File Legal Complaints after Being Targeted by Pegasus Surveillance Software.” Outrage and finger pointing are obviously not enough. According to the article:
The list of legal challenges against NSO Group continues to mount after 17 additional journalists from seven countries have filed complaints with prosecutors in Paris, France. To date, international media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and two French/Moroccan journalists have filed cases in court over serious concerns that their governments were spying on them due to their work as journalists, carrying out vital public interest investigations. The latest journalists to file complaints include Sevinc Abassova from Azerbaijan, Szabolcs Panyi and Andras Szabo from Hungary, and others from India, Togo, and Mexico. Among the other complainants are Shubhranshu Choudhary, an RSF correspondent in India, and two RSF Award Winners, Hicham Mansouri from Morocco and Swati Chaturvedi from India.
I am not an attorney. I have enough challenges just being a retired, chubby consultant. Several points seem salient to me:
- NSO Group is essentially the intelware equivalent of the protagonist in Nat Hawthorne’s zippy thriller, The Scarlet Letter.
- The legal process is tough to manage when it involves a single matter in a single jurisdiction. A pride of filings exponentiates the complexities and the likelihood of some intriguing decisions. Say “hello” to high risk litigating.
- The ripple effect of the intelware disclosures is going to intersect with an unrelated security action taken by Apple Computer. The NSO Group matter will raise the stakes for the trillion dollar company everyone once associated with user privacy.
Net net: Excitement ahead. Buckle up.
Stephen E Arnold, August 13, 2021
NSO Group: Origins
August 11, 2021
I read “Israel Tries to Limit Fallout from the Pegasus Spyware Scandal.”
I noted this statement which is has been previously bandied about:
Israel has been trying to limit the damage the Pegasus spyware scandal is threatening to do to France-Israel relations. The Moroccan intelligence service used the software, made by an Israeli company with close ties to Israel’s defense and intelligence establishments, to spy on dozens of French officials, including fourteen current and former cabinet ministers, among them President Emmanuel Macron and former prime minister Edouard Phillipe.
The write up reports:
There were reasons for Macron’s irritation: The NSO Group was established in 2009 by three Israelis — Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio, and Omri Lavie. Contrary to popular belief, the three were not veterans of the vaunted Unit 8200, the IDF’s signal intelligence branch (although many of the company’s employees are). It is generally accepted by intelligence services around the world that many Israeli high-tech companies share information they glean from their contracts abroad with the Israeli security services, if they think such information is vital to Israel’s security (this is why the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, has been reluctant to allow Israeli cyber companies access to the U.S. market).
Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2021
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