Factualities for February 20, 2019
February 20, 2019
There’s nothing like numbers, opaque data about sample size, and zero information about statistical methods to make one long for spring. Ponder these outputs, please.
800. The number of people terminated after Activision Blizzard announced record income for 2018. Source: Variety
620 million. The number of stolen accounts from 16 Web sites now offered on the “Dark Web.” Source: The Register
127 million. The number of additional stolen accounts offered by the bad actor who stole 620 accounts. Source: TechCrunch
33 percent. The percentage of businesses which can protect themselves from data breaches. Source IT Pro Portal
33 percent. Success of fishing Federal Housing Finance Agency employees. Source: Government Computer News
26. The number of key algorithms advancing post-quantum cryptography. No, ah, a post quantum something. Source: NIST
67 percent. The percentage of US bankruptcies caused by medical bills. Source: Christian Journal
37 percent. The percentage of Americans who have been harassed online. Source: Wired (pay wall may apply to you)
3,000. The number of Walgreen pharmacies and convenience shops which will accept Ant Financial’s digital wallet. Source: Ecommerce Daily News
6,250. Number of serial killers in a Calgary professor’s database. Source: Archive.org
$50. The amount per computer to get security updates for Windows 7 for one year. Price doubles each subsequent year. Source: ZDNet
$150,000. The amount per infringed movie a pirate must pay if guilty of illegal streaming. Source: Ars Technica
13X. The multiple of growth in marketing companies in the blockchain sector in the last 18 months. Source: Venture Beat
13%. The sales decline for notebook computers in the next 12 weeks. Source: Digitimes
$100,150. Amount an individual paid for a sticker sealed copy of Super Mario Brothers video game. Source: CNet
$9.4 billion. The amount Google allegedly paid Apple to be the default search engine in Safari. Source: Business Insider (pay wall may apply to you)
Until next week, happy analysis with solid data.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2019
For FAANG Can Global Regulations Work?
February 20, 2019
Soon, we predict, there will be a global accord about how the Internet should operate. Not a law, of course, but perhaps guidelines that all nations can follow to make the transition and oversight of online activity more even. This, too, has its consequences, but seems to be heading forward, according to CNBC’s article, “Google’s Policy Chief Calls for Common Rules Globally for Tech Regulation.”
According to the story:
“Governments around the world are trying to figure out how to regulate technology from data and privacy to taxation. But there is a fragmented approach. The biggest piece of legislation has been the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which governs all companies operating in the 28 European Union member states.”
While this idea might help level the playing field for many lagging nations and systems, we worry that it will actually create a buffet for hackers and spies. If there is uniformity, will this allow bad guys to attain a deeper mastery, since they will not have to make adjustments for individual organizations? It’s a question intelligence organizations should be asking themselves now, before it gets too far down the road and there is no way to stop it.
Patrick Roland, February 20, 2019
Google Book Search: Broken Unfixable under Current Incentives
February 19, 2019
I read “How Badly is Google Books Search Broken, and Why?” The main point is that search results do not include the expected results. The culprit, as I understand the write up, looking for rare strings of characters within a time slice behaves in an unusual manner. I noted this statement:
So possibly Google has one year it displays for books online as a best guess, and another it uses internally to represent the year they have legal certainty a book is released. So maybe those volumes of the congressional record have had their access rolled back as Google realized that 1900 might actually mean 1997; and maybe Google doesn’t feel confident in library metadata for most of its other books, and doesn’t want searchers using date filters to find improperly released books. Oddly, this pattern seems to work differently on other searches. Trying to find another rare-ish term in Google Ngrams, I settled on “rarely used word”; the Ngrams database lists 192 uses before 2002. Of those, 22 show up in the Google index. A 90% disappearance rate is bad, but still a far cry from 99.95%.
There are many reasons one can identify for the apparent misbehavior of the Google search system for books. The author identifies the main reason but does not focus on it.
From my point of view and based on the research we have done for my various Google monographs, Google’s search systems operate in silos. But each shares some common characteristics even though the engineers, often reluctantly assigned to what are dead end or career stalling projects, make changes.
One of the common flaws has to do with the indexing process itself. None of the Google silos does a very good job with time related information. Google itself has a fix, but implementing the fix for most of its services is a cost increasing step.
The result is that Google focuses on innovations which can drive revenue; that is, online advertising for the mobile user of Google services.
But Google’s time blindness is unlikely to be remediated any time soon. For a better implementation of sophisticated time operations, take a look at the technology for time based retrieval, time slicing, and time analytics from the Google and In-Q-Tel funded company Recorded Future.
In my lectures about Google’s time blindness DNA, I compare and contrast what Recorded Future can do versus what Google silos are doing.
Net net: Performing sophisticated analyses of the Google indexes requires the type of tools available from Recorded Future.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2019
Gartner Does the Gartner Thing: Mystical Augmented Analytics
February 19, 2019
Okay, okay, Gartner is a contender for the title of Crazy Jargon Creator 2019.
I read “Gartner: Augmented Analytics Ready for Prime Time.” Yep, if Datanami says so, it must be true.
Here’s the line up of companies allegedly in this market. I put the companies in alphabetical order with the Gartner objective, really really accurate BCG inspired quadrant “score” after each company’s name. Ready, set, go!
BOARD International—niche player
Birst—niche player
Domo—niche player
GoodData—niche player
IBM—niche player
Information Builders—niche player
Logi Analytics—niche player
Looker—niche player
MicroStrategy—challenger
Microsoft—leader
Oracle—niche player
Pyramid Analytics—niche player
Qlik—leader
SAP—visionary
SAS—visionary
Salesforce—visionary
Sisense—visionary
TIBCO Software—visionary
Tableau—leader
ThoughtSpot—leader
Yellowfin—niche player
Do some of these companies and their characterization—sorry, I meant really really objective inclusion—strike you as peculiar? What about the mixing of big outfits like IBM which has been doing Fancy Dan analytics decades before it acquired i2 Ltd. Analyst’s Notebook? I also find the inclusion of SAS a bit orthogonal with the omission of IBM’s SPSS, but IBM is a niche player.
That’s why Gartner is the jargon leader at this point in 2019, but who knows? Maybe another consulting firm beating the bushes for customers will take the lead. The year is still young.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2019
DarkCyber for February 19, 2019, Now Available
February 19, 2019
DarkCyber for February 19,2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/317779445. The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes: image analysis applied to hotel rooms used for human trafficking; compromising an iPhone via a text message or email; a new report about digital currency crime; and shipping arms the old fashioned way, via the mail.
Facial recognition systems continue to be criticized for inaccuracy and potential human rights violations. A group of researchers have applied artificial intelligence and image analysis to locate hotels allegedly used for human trafficking and the commission of child sex crimes. Plus the team compiled a database of more than 50,000 hotel rooms. The system matches a known hotel room against a photograph obtained from a human trafficker’s advertisement. By pinpointing the location, law enforcement can direct its resources at that venue. Anyone can contribute by uploading hotel room and short term property rentals to a public website.
The second story focuses on a new way to compromise iPhones produced in the period from 2016 to mid 2017. The technique was allegedly used by former US government personnel working for organizations based in the United Arab Emirates. The Project Raven team used a technique which required only a single email or text message. The payload was sent directly to a target’s iPhone. Once the iPhone received the message, that device was accessible to the Project Raven personnel and allowed text messages, images, and other data to be accessed without the iPhone user’s knowledge. Apple closed the security hole, but the technique was interesting because no clicks, downloads, or other actions on the part of the target were necessary.
The third story describes the free “Crypto Crime Report” available from Chainalysis. This company is one of the leaders in the deanonymization of digital currency transactions, including Bitcoin. With the Dark Web losing traction, Chainalysis reports bad actors have turned to encrypted message apps like Telegram and WhatsApp to conduct advertise and sell their products and services. Customers have shifted from Dark Web ecommerce sites to these distributed, anonymous messaging services. The report includes details of investigative methods used to steal digital currency. The majority of thefts were the work of two gangs. Investigators are engaged in an increasingly fierce game of Whack a Mole.
The final story recounts how a spy stole a secret US missile and shipped the device to Russia in the mid 1960s. Today the same method is used by arms dealers in Europe. Postal services and commercial shipping companies have to identify weapons which are disassembled. The components are then placed in cartons which contain parts for common products like vacuum cleaners and kitchen equipment. The old methods remain valid despite today’s modern technology and knowledge of the methods used by bad actors.
Kenny Toth, February 19, 2019
UK Report about Facebook, the Digital Gangster
February 18, 2019
The hot read this morning is the UK’s report about a highly successful US company, Facebook. You can obtain a copy of the report at this link.
Coverage of the report is extensive, and DarkCyber anticipates more analyses, explanations, and Twitterverse excitement as the report diffuses.
Here are five items to note in the report:
First, the use of the phrase, “digital gangster” is brilliant That’s a superior two word summary of the document and its implicit indictment of the Silicon Valley way and America, the home of the bad actors. The subtext is that the US has fostered, aided, and abetted a 21st century Al Capone who operates a criminal cartel on a global scale. DarkCyber expects more anti-US business push back with “digital gangsterism” becoming a fertile field for study in business school. Who will write the book “Principles of Digital Gangsterism”?
Second, the idea of a linking “data ethics and algorithms” is an interesting one. Like the goal of having software identify Deepfakes (videos and images which depict a fictional or false reality), dealing with a fuzzy concept like data ethics and the equally fuzzy world of algorithm thresholds may lead to a rebirth of old-school philosophical debates. Who will be the 21st-century Plato? The experts who will chop through the notional wilderness of ethics and making money could expose what, for want of a better phrase, I will call “deep stupid.” Like deepfake” the precise definition of deep stupid has to be crafted.
Third, regulation is an interesting idea. But the UK report provides compelling evidence that the digital “cat is out of the bag” with regard to data collection, analysis, and use of information. Regulations can put people in jail. Regulations can shut down a company operating in a country. But regulation of zeros and ones on a global scale in a distributed computing environment boils down to taxes and coordinated direct actions. Will war against Facebook and Facebook-type companies be put on the table? Fines or nano drones with a nano warhead?
Fourth, the document does not focus on what I call a Brexit-scale issue: Destabilizing a country. The report offers no path forward when a country has been blasted with digital flows operating outside of conventional social norms. The message, as I understand it, is, “We have a problem so let’s ignore it.”
Finally, the report itself is proof that flows of digital information decompose, disintermediate extablished institutions, and allow new social norms to grow in the datasphere. Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook is a product of the US business environment. What do these two facts sum to? No pleasant answer.
Let’s check Facebook, shall we?
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2019
Amazonia, February 18, 2019
February 18, 2019
Amazon’s Bezos bulldozer may have driven out of Queens last week. The high profile HQ2 could be on the move. How’s Newark look? Mr. Bezos may be in chess mode, sacrificing one location in order to pull off another Bezos bulldozer maneuver. Other Amazonia which caught our attention is summarized below:
A Mid Life Crisis Moment?
The Telegraph reported that Amazon’s expansion in Saudi Arabia may be lost in the desert. Allegedly there is a “feud” between Mr. Bezos and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Details are few, but when money is at stake, minor differences can be smoothed by Bezos bulldozers properly equipped. The dust up between Mr. Bezos and Mr. Pecker may have some part to play in this alleged issue related to data centers in the Kingdom. Note: You may have to pay to view the “real” news story.
How Big Is AWS?
Amazon expansion into Saudi Arabia in doubt after feud between Jeff Bezos and Crown Prince
Data about the size of Amazon’s cloud business can be fuzzy. Business Insider, however, has the inside skivvy. AWS is bigger than its next four competitors combined. The number seems to be about $26 billion give or take a few billion. Quartz expresses the size in this way:
Amazon Web Services Brought in More Money Than McDonald’s in 2018.
The source does not covert the revenue to Big Macs, a favorite yardstick of some financial wonks.
Slam Dunk: Team Microsoft’s Defense Fizzles
We noted that Steve Ballmer and his Los Angeles Clippers basketball team pulled off a slam dunk. The Clippers smashed home a deal with Amazon for cloud services with Amazon. News of the deal surfaced on February 15, 2019. Ballmer’s Second Spectrum will use AWS to collect and analyze data. Perhaps Azure’s analytics will allow Team Microsoft to determine what went wrong. More details appear in GeekWire. But keep in mind that Microsoft’s Dynamics Suite is available in the Amazon Web Services Marketplace, according to Customer Think. Mr. Ballmer can dribble over and shoot around with a familiar suite of tools.
Eero: Scary?
Amazon’s acquisition of mesh WiFi devices continues to ripple across the home marketplace.
ZDNet stated:
The initial response to this has been mixed, some industry commentators have even called this acquisition “scary”, fearing that the Seattle-based internet retailer and public cloud provider will use Eero’s devices as a way of hoovering more and more information from its customers, with the intention of selling them more of its products.
The threat is that Amazon will leverage its other assets like its advanced machine learning capabilities and create a unified threat management solution at a very competitive price.
UTM from Amazon might blunt some competitors’ sales success and give AWS another advantage in its policeware capabilities.
Scary? Not for everyone. Just some.
About Those Leaky AWS Buckets
The world’s leading online bookstore has released some tips for AWS customers who want to secure their data. Navigate to “Serving Private Content with Signed URLs and Signed Cookies.” The trick is to use CloudFront urls, not Amazon urls. Hmmm.
Amazon Changing Colors?
The Bezos Bugle (aka the Washington Post) reported that Greenpeace thinks Amazon is “wavering on its commitment to renewable energy.” Here’s the nugget:
The [Greenpeace] report also contends that technology companies, particularly Amazon Web Services, which has rapidly expanded its Northern Virginia presence. need to do more to promote renewable energy sources. Amazon committed to moving to 100 percent renewable energy to run its data centers, but the report contends the company appears to be wavering from its pledge.
Amazon ECR and ECS Gain PrivateLink Support
Not familiar with Amazon acronym mania? ECR is the Electronic Container Registry. ECS is Elastic Customer Service. The PrivateLink is a networking technology “aimed to facilitate access to AWS services in a highly scalable and available way.” The poetic phrase comes from an news report in Infoq. These are administrative tools which, in theory, make AWS much more developer friendly. The source article includes a diagram of the bits and pieces one needs to make use of these Amazon offerings.
More Bare Metal Instances
Amazon introduced five new Amazon EC2 bare metal instances. Storage Review summaries the instances in a helpful table. Each delivers 14 gigabits per second.
New AWS Partner
Amazon does not make it easy to locate its Advanced Technology Partners. Wandisco announced that it is now an ATP partner in the APN or Amazon Web Services Partner Network of APN. Wandisco said:
The Advanced Technology Partner designation is the highest tier for Technology Partners that provide software and internet solutions in the AWS Partner Network. WANdisco achieved its status through a rigorous qualification process, based on referenceable customers on the AWS Platform and strict technical guidelines.
What’s Wandisco offer? The company “can enable organizations to seamlessly move large volumes of data with consistent and continuous availability.” More information is at this Yahoo link. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Striim Builds for RedShift
Another Amazon partner is Striim. The company announced that it offerings streaming data pipelines to Amazon Redshift. The idea is that the service can help AWS customers migrate and move enterprise data in real time from a broad range of data sources to Amazon Redshift. The service can speed the adoption of a hybrid cloud architecture running on AWS. More information is available from Yahoo Finance. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Become an Amazon AWS Expert
Geek.com reports that you can become a certified Amazon Web services architect for $35.
Ethical Hacking on AWS
The service introduction is not for everyone, but it is an important addition. According to Softpedia News:
If you want to run BackBox Linux in the cloud, on your AWS account, you should know that the ethical hacking operating system is now available on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) virtual appliance that you can install with a few mouse clicks.
This is another useful component in Amazon’s policeware offerings. How robust are these policeware capabilities? Quite robust in the view of DarkCyber.
Amazon Invests in Rivian
Rivian is an electric vehicle start up. Jalopnik reported that Amazon pumped some amount (maybe $700 million) into the company. Jalopnik said:
And it’s hard to say what Amazon would want with electric cars, if you think of Amazon solely as a supply chain and retail enterprise that exists to crush the spirits and bathroom breaks of its workers.
Amazon supports TuSimple, a self driving truck company. The relationship began in 2018.
Google and Amazon: War of Words Escalating?
We noted that former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian sees Amazon AWS as a threat to the online advertising company. The fix may be hiring more Oracle style sales professionals. Fortune does not explain that “Oracle style” sales can be quite interesting, particularly if one is a customer with insecurities. Fortune included this statement in their report about Mr. Kurian’s plans:
An audience member commented to Kurian that for two years, Google has said it is concentrating on building a formidable sales-and-support staff, but that people “haven’t seen signs of change in the market structure.” Kurian responded by saying that Google has increased its spending on sales and support staff by a factor of four over the last three years, although he didn’t cite a specific number. He said that growing a sales force so quickly would be a challenge for any company, but that when he talks to customers, “they feel we have gone a long way.”
The subtext, in DarkCyber’s opinion, is that AWS is a bit of a problem for the online advertising giant. Mr. Kurian wants to respond to customers, an approach which Google has largely found unnecessary for about a quarter century.
Austin: More Amazon and More Traffic
Ah, Austin. The city has street people, traffic congestion, and soon more Amazonians. According to local TV news outlet KVUE:
Amazon said the 25,000 jobs they expected to create in New York will now go to tech hubs and corporate offices across the country, including in Austin.
Note: Local news outlets often take down their stories.
AWS Outposts Coming Later in 2019
SDX Central Confirms AWS Outposts
SDX Center reports that Amazon’s on premises hardware, known as AWS Outposts, will be available later in 2019. The idea is a single on ramp for cloud services. Cisco may team up with Amazon for certain peripherals.
Mildly Humorous Items
- American Media may pay Amazon to host its online services and data. Source: Geekwire
- IBM software now runs on Amazon’s cloud. Source: Geekwire
- Choice Hotels uses both Google and Amazon. Source: Yahoo Finance
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2019
VPNs Possibly Aid Chinese Intelligence
February 18, 2019
China’s military and intelligence might has grown by leaps and bounds. By some estimates, it leads the world in many categories of defense. While there’s no conclusive evidence, the amount of information being harvested by Chinese online companies is staggering and could prove a connection, as we discovered in a recent Tech In Asia story, “Facebook’s Research App Isn’t The Only VPN To Mine User Data.”
According to the story:
“VPNs are supposed to help you protect your data. But the Facebook flap shows that there’s one party that has full access to everything you’re doing: the VPN provider itself. And it’s a concern with several Chinese-owned VPNs, which reportedly send data back to China.”
With enormous streams of data flowing back to China and the potential for it to be used by intel communities, it’s no shock that the Pentagon recently began revising its artificial intelligence strategy. This comes because China and Russia, specifically, are beginning to chip away at America’s technological edge. It’s exciting to see the US intelligence community take a greater stake on AI and its related strains. We hope this is the beginning of a boom in the industry.
Patrick Roland, February 18, 2019
When Free Fails the Doers, the Dreamers, and the Disillusioned
February 17, 2019
My team and I worked for several “open source software companies,” before I decide to hang up my Delta Million Mile Club name tag. (Weird red tags those puppies are.)
I read “Free Labor of Open Source Developers. Is That Sustainable?” The question caused me to chuckle. The answer is fairly straightforward.
Nope. Not for individuals. For outfits like Amazon, yep.
Under specific conditions, open source software does “work”. Now “does work” translates as “makes money, delivers fame, and/or makes those participating [a] happy, [b] feel like the effort is sticking it to the “man”, [c] proves that a person can actually write code which mostly works, and/or [d] builds a psychic bond with a community.
Some big companies do the open source “give back” and “contribution” and “support” dance. For these outfits, open source software is a part of a business model. Usually the practitioners of this type of marketing and sales offer for-fee widgets, add ins, and digital gizmos. Then the customer who downloads and uses the open source code has the opportunity to use the software and [a] buy engineering services, [b] buy training, [c] pay for “enhanced support,” and/or [d] attend conferences for insiders. I find Microsoft’s embrace of open source amusing.
For individuals, a pet project can provide satisfaction and a job maybe.
The write up does a good job of explaining the idealistic roots of open source software. I must admit, however, that I do not drink alcohol, so the analogy “like free beer” does not make any sense to me. The roots of open source software seem to be anchored in a desire to have software which did not [a] cost money to use, [b] could be modified; that is, not put the users in handcuffs, and [c] was updated on a calendar often wildly out of sync with the needs of the licensees. Proprietary software meant “bad” and the new open source software meant good with hints of revolution and “I just can’t take proprietary software anymore.”
The write up reviews a popular paper about the economics of open source software. I did not spot a reference to a later study which suggested that large companies were the biggest adopters of open source.* If that research were correct, the reason boils down to [a] big companies want to trim their costs for proprietary software’s license fees, mandatory upgrades, mandatory maintenance, and contractual limits on what changes a licensee of proprietary software can make. The researchers pointed out that large companies had [a] the staff and [b] the money to make open source software work for their use cases.
Flash forward to 2016. The Ford Foundation’s Roads and Bridges** makes clear that software development performed for free has a built in flaw. Developers can quit. Dead end? Maybe. Large companies can step in and embrace the project and, of course, the community. Outfits using this method range from the Amazons to the smaller firms which allow employees to work on projects. The open source approach can be overwhelmed or a victim of abandonment.
I am not sure I am convinced that the open source community exists. There are factions and many of them are at war. Consider Lucene/Solr’s contentious history. I also am not keen on the simile comparing open source to a religious community. Once again there are fanatics, and there are those whom the fanatics would like to either [a] imagine roasting in hell or [b] actually burning alive after a presentation at an open source meet up.
Net net: Amazon has crafted a new chapter in the lock in playbook. The approach borrows from IBM’s FUD to the more New Age methods of being famous and getting a “real” job.
If you are tracking the world of open source software, the write up is a useful addition to one’s library of analyses. One suggestion: Keep in mind that “free” open source software is a lure in certain circumstances. Think of it as a form of digital phishing, particularly for marketing oriented outfits.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2019
——–
Note:
* Diomidis Spinellis and Vaggelis Giannikas, “Organizational Adoption of Open Source Software,” Journal of Systems and Software, March 2012, page 666-682, and Stephen E Arnold’s The New Landscape of Search, June 2011.
Cyber Saturday for February 16, 2018
February 16, 2019
Sifting through the information flowing into DarkCyber was less than thrilling. We did spot several items which may presage more cyber excitement in the new world of the Internet.
Security Lapse of the Week
The British newspaper Guardian (paywall) reported that a former US intelligence operative joined Team Iran. The flip exposed information and operatives. The high profile government contractor Booz Allen employed this individual for five months in 2008. Insider threats are a major threat to the security of organizations and individuals engaged in intelligence work. The fancy and expensive software available from numerous vendors may prevent some embarrassing and dangerous activities. Booz Allen was the employer of Edward Snowden, and that company may be a prospect for vendors of next generation insider threat identification systems.
Be Afraid
Deep Fakes is a phrase which is used to described spoofed videos. DarkCyber learned that researchers are allegedly afraid of their own advances in what is called “deep fakes for text.” The Generative Pre Trained Transformer 2 or GPT 2 can punch out content that
comes so close to mimicking human writing that it could potentially be used for “deep fake” content.
You can learn more about DFT and the GPT from Ars Technica.
Plus There Is a Scary Future Arriving
In our weekly DarkCyber video news programs we report about image recognition. In the January 19, 2019, program we explain how making sense of images can be used to pinpoint certain human trafficking hot spots. The Guardian (registration required for some users) explains that pop star Taylor Swift “showed us the scary future of facial recognition.” The focal point of the story is a vendor doing business at ISM. More information about the company is at this link.
Also There Creepy Face Generating AI
Many bad actors attach their images to some social media posts. Some Facebook users have some pride in their law breaking achievements. What happens when the bad actor creates a Facebook account and then posts images with faces automatically generated by smart software? Good question. You can check out the service at this url for “This Person Does Not Exist.”
A Content Treasure Trove for Investigators
That delete button may not work the way you think. Whether you are reselling your old Macbook or deleting Twitter messages, those data may still be around and available for certain types of investigations. Twitter has allegedly retained messages sent to and from deactivated or suspended accounts. Security problem for some; big plus for others. For the Verge’s take, navigate to “Twitter Has Been Storing Your Deleted DMs for Years.”
Online Auction Fraud Group
The US Secret Service took down a gang running an online auction scam. The angle was that ads said:
“I’m in the military and being deployed overseas and have to sell fast.”
To find marks (suckers), the operation unfolded in this way:
Alleged conspirators in Romania posted fake ads on popular online auction and sales websites, including Craigslist and eBay, for high-cost goods (typically vehicles) that ran on air because they were figments of the imagination. They’d con people in the US with, among other lies, stories of how they were in the military and needed to sell their car before being deployed.
Then, according to the Naked Security story:
After their targets fell for it and sent payment, the conspirators allegedly laundered the money by converting it to crypto currency and transferring it to their foreign-based buddies. According to the indictment, the alleged foreign-based money launderers include Vlad-C?lin Nistor, who owns Coinflux Services SRL, and Rossen Iossifov, who owns R G Coins.
And That Fish You Ate Last Night?
An interesting scam has been quantified in Canada by the CBC. Those in the seafood supply chain mislabel their products. Seafood fraud is selling an undesirable species of fish for a more desirable one. How widespread is the practice? I learned:
Oceana Canada, a Toronto-based conservation organization, said it found there was mislabeling with 44 per cent of the seafood samples it tested this year and last in five Canadian cities — and in 75 per cent of cases, cheaper fish were mislabeled as something more expensive.
And, Of Course, Stolen User Data
DarkCyber noted that another 127 million user records have been offered for sale. The vendor previously posted the availability of 620 million records. More about this now routine event at ZDNet.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2019
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