Black Friday On The Dark Web
December 9, 2019
This sounds newsy.
Black Friday not only affects retailers, but it also occurs on the Dark Web. Uazmi reports that “Drug Dealers Offer Black Friday Deals On the Black Web.” Drug dealers want their own slice of Black Friday sales. Digital Shadows, a cyber risk form, discovered 1,600 posts about Black Friday 2019 sales.
Drug dealers on the Dark Web are offering 30% discounts and even more discounts for buyers who spend more than $2,000. People who buy illegal drugs are always looking for ways to leave more green in the their pockets for next hit and sellers are willing to take advantage of that in the spirit of the season.
“‘People are always on the lookout for deals, regular consumer and cyber criminal alike. This is why towards the beginning of November, users on dark web forums typically flock to create threads dedicated to finding and sharing the best Black Friday deals,’ Digital Shadows research analyst Alex Guirakhoo told The Independent.
‘On dark web marketplaces, Black Friday is an excellent opportunity for site operators to increase sales and attract new buyers. Attracting new customers is particularly important, as consistent law enforcement action and repeated exit scams on popular marketplaces have thrown the ecosystem into disarray.’”
At least Dark Web drug dealers do not have to deal with mad mobs of people hoping to buy the hottest toy or fight over a flat screen TV. Black Friday sales on the Dark Web might bring new customers, but it also brings new law enforcement officials looking to catch more bad actors.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2019
AWS Storage Is Evolving
December 8, 2019
This is not your mom’s Simple Storage Service. An article at SiliconAngle describes how “Amazon’s New Storage Chapter Eyes NFS Support, Integrates from the Top-Down.” Writer Betsy Amy-Vogt explores details revealed at the recent AWS Storage Day event in Boston. She embeds some video coverage by theCUBE, her publication’s live streaming studio; see the write-up to view those excerpts.
Demand for easily accessible online storage is growing thanks to the rise of machine learning and edge computing. AWS is adding features to its S3 Glacier and EBS storage solutions, expanding support for file formats like NFS (Network File System), and beefing up security and management tools. Amy-Vogt writes:
“When a customer chooses to move to the AWS Cloud, Amazon takes care of administration, provisioning and maintenance. ‘You literally click three or four buttons to create a file system, and you no longer have to worry about it ever again,’ [AWS’s Wayne Duso] stated. Amazon also promises to maintain data in a secure environment. ‘Security is job number one for us,’ Duso stated. ‘We take care of all the security elements.’ Ease of integration is also a major benefit, especially to companies wanting to take advantage of new intelligent technologies, Duso pointed out. The wide range of AWS’ products means that advanced tools for building and deploying machine-learning models, such as AWS SageMaker, can be integrated with file storage services, such as FSx for Lustre and EFS, bringing even more simplicity to the process. ‘Customers don’t have to worry about storage; they don’t have to worry about sharing; they don’t have to worry about scaling. It’s all there for them,’ Duso said. Cloud brings global scale, but data must remain close to the user to avoid issues with availability and latency. AWS addresses this by creating regions where data is available in multiple locations. ‘Our regions are built to have, at minimum, three availability zones,’ Duso explained.”
Besides reducing latency, storage in multiple locations also serves as a backup. You can see Duso explain the AWS storage strategy at length in one of those videos embedded in the source article. He pledges that customers who use the AWS platform to manage their storage workload free up plenty of time to focus on other parts of their business.
Cynthia Murrell, December 8, 2019
Apple, Google Redraw Maps upon Russian Demand
December 7, 2019
Ukraine, the U.S., the European Union, and most of the world have all refused to recognize Crimea as part of Russia following the 2014 annexation. Apple, though, seems to have taken Russia’s side—at least as far as anyone who uses Apple Maps or Apple’s weather app from within Russia can see. There, Crimea has been cemented as part of Russia in the online references. Everywhere else Crimea shows as a separate territory. The BBC reports, “Apple Changes Crimea Map to Meet Russian Demands.” The write-up states:
“The State Duma, the Russian parliament’s lower house, said in a statement: ‘Crimea and Sevastopol now appear on Apple devices as Russian territory.’ Russia treats the naval port city of Sevastopol as a separate region. The BBC tested several iPhones in Moscow and it appears the change affects devices set up to use the Russian edition of Apple’s App Store. Apple had been in talks with Russia for several months over what the State Duma described as ‘inaccuracy’ in the way Crimea was labelled. The tech giant originally suggested it could show Crimea as undefined territory – part of neither Russia nor Ukraine. But Vasily Piskaryov, chairman of the Duma security and anti-corruption committee, said Apple had complied with the Russian constitution. He said representatives of the company were reminded that labelling Crimea as part of Ukrainian territory was a criminal offence under Russian law, according to Interfax news agency. ‘There is no going back,’ Mr Piskaryov said. ‘Today, with Apple, the situation is closed – we have received everything we wanted.’”
Apple was not the first to cave on this issue, however; we learn Google did the same thing with Google Maps back in March. Why would tech companies agree to support Russia’s claim when most of the world does not? Apple has made no comment on the issue, but it looks like the almighty ruble is indeed a powerful thing.
Cynthia Murrell, December 7, 2019
Gamer Company Provides High School Science Club Management Methods Case Example
December 6, 2019
Razer is an ecommerce and product business serving that wonderful community of online game players. Now the company is the subject of a write up, which may be false, partially false, partially true, or true. Figuring out which these days is difficult.
Razer is in the spotlight which “is a desktop streaming camera with a powerful, multi-step ring light that you can dim or brighten on command.”
“So smile,” says “Razer CEO Berated And Threatened His Staff, Former Employees Say.” The write up reports in the glow of the Razer Kiyo ring light:
Tan [the top dog at Razer] has developed a reputation for being a tempestuous, volatile boss…
The company has a snake mascot. DarkCyber is not sure if the snake is a refugee from a high school science club herpaterium or just an emotion charged symbol like those cataloged by Juan Eduardo Cirlot. In case you are curious, more about Cirlot appears here.
The point of the write up is that Razer’s management approach is remembered by employees as:
- Infused with top down control
- Volatile management behavior
- Demonstrations of management dissatisfaction
- Curse words with a handful of faves recalled by former employees
- Yelling
- Abrupt terminations but the article does not pinpoint major holidays as the best time to allow an individual to find his/her future elsewhere.
Sound familiar?
DarkCyber characterizes the approach to motivating the game hardware company’s professionals illustrates HSSCMM or high school science club management methods.
Why document this approach in DarkCyber? The reason is that a certain very large online advertising company could be amping up its HSSCMM procedures.
There may be some lessons to be learned by studying Razer and streaming the results to the faithful.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2019
Amazon Fraud Detector: Policeware Service?
December 6, 2019
The camel is poking its nose into another tent. Navigate to “Amazon Fraud Detector.” The service makes it easy to identify potentially fraudulent online activities. The service seems to focus on a commercial use case. There may be a government or public sector application or two enabled as well. Which is more important? Both are equally important.
The commercial push is likely to provide a new revenue stream for Amazon from individuals, mid sized sellers, and quite large commercial operations. Equifax-like outfits? Maybe a JPMorgan-like enterprise?
The government push is part of the company’s policeware initiatives. What’s this policeware you reference? If you are curious, I have a free eight page summary of a forthcoming chapter which will appear in a book about blocking in 2020.
To get on the list for the free white paper, just write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. Name, company email, and agency required, however.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2019
Amazon Enterprise Search: Kendra
December 6, 2019
Years ago I worked on a small project for a company connected to the film industry. At one of those Hollywood “lunches”, a person pointed across the restaurant and said, “That’s Kendra.” I had zero idea who or what a Kendra was. It turned out that “Kendra” was famous, a star. She was a Playboy bunny! She looked like most of the other female appearing types in the room.
Amazon’s Kendra is not a Playboy bunny. Kendra is Amazon’s new online enterprise search service. It looks pretty much like all the other online enterprise search services in the room.
There’s a difference. This enterprise search service is mounted on the Amazon platform, and it has open source goodness, some proprietary fashion flair, and hooks into numerous good looking advanced AWS services.
Amazon says in “Amazon Kendra”:
Amazon Kendra is a highly accurate and easy to use enterprise search service that’s powered by machine learning. Kendra delivers powerful natural language search capabilities to your websites and applications so your end users can more easily find the information they need within the vast amount of content spread across your company.
I am not sure what “accurate” means, but it sure differentiates the service from the odd ball results some enterprise search solutions deliver. The “easy” part is also relative and subjective. Which of AWS’s more than 170 functions and services does Kendra get along with? Too soon to tell.
Some observations:
- The enterprise search vendors who have convinced venture capitalists to invest hundreds of millions in enterprise search and retrieval may be curious about Amazon’s sudden aggressiveness
- The enterprise search companies themselves now have to decide: Put services on AWS or go elsewhere despite the costs and resources required
- The AWS customers may want to kick the tires of the AWS service and postpone a procurement of a venture funded old school search engine. (Talking about NLP and machine learning is one thing. Delivering productized services from an AWS dashboard is another.)
Net net: For organizations struggling to federate and provide blockchain centric information access management, Amazon’s Kendra might look quite fetching.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2019
Has Google Trashed Christmas for Kids?
December 6, 2019
Christmas? Ruined by the Google? I don’t believe it, but Metro UK may.
I learned in “Google Ruins Christmas for 1.1 Million Children Every Year Claim Teachers.” If the story is online, isn’t it true?
The write up states:
Research carried out by Exam Papers Plus suggests that each year over a million children are typing into Google whether or not Father Christmas is real.
How is this possible?
1,116,500 children ask Google “Is Santa Real” each year.
Google’s smart search system obviously knows the answer. Kids who do research are informed of the truth delivered by an objective, ad supported online service.
One tip: Don’t make a video for children that espouses untruths or put links in comments sections of video for children. A lump of coal may be placed in one’s stocking. Not just any coal. The lignite stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2019
Arnold Interviewed about Amazon Blockchain Inventions
December 5, 2019
Robert David Steele, former CIA professional and open source intelligence expert, interviewed Stephen E Arnold about Amazon’s blockchain inventions. Arnold recently completed a chapter for a forthcoming academic press book about blockchain. That chapter and its information prompted journalists from the US and France to interview Arnold about his findings. Arnold’s information was included in news stories appearing in the New York Times, MIT Technology Review, and Le Monde.
Steele obtained an exclusive video interview with Arnold about his Amazon blockchain research. Among the topics discussed in the 30 minute program are:
- The “trigger” for the research
- Sources of data and research methods
- The major findings from the 18 month research project
- The likely trajectory of Amazon’s products and services incorporating the company’s more than 12 blockchain inventions.
- How to obtain a summary of Arnold’s research findings.
You can view the video at this link. Steele has compiled links to other Amazon information obtained from Arnold at this link.
Kenny Toth, December 5, 2019
Amazon Trumped?
December 5, 2019
DarkCyber does not have a dog in this fight. The fight? Jeff Bezos versus the President of the United States. If the information in “Trump Bezos Round 2: Amazon Faces Broad Antitrust Probe of Cloud Business” is accurate, lawyers involved in the matter will have a very good chance to generate some billable hours.
The write up reminds the reader that Amazon lost the $10 billion Department of Defense JEDI deal. Amazon then sued on the basis of the President’s pushing back against Amazon.
The write up reports:
But now, as Bloomberg details, investigators at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have been asking software companies recently about practices around Amazon’s cloud unit, known as Amazon Web Services. Specifically, the outreach by the FTC signals that the agency, which is already looking at Amazon’s conduct in its vast online retail business, is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether it could be violating antitrust laws and harming competition.
Interesting. Mr. Bezos has money and a newspaper. The President has presidential things. Will presidential things trump the Bezos bulldozer?
In a comment to the write up, Sticky_Pickles said: “When you try to sue the government…”
But DarkCyber is thinking of the lawyers working on the matter. Winners.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
Alphabet Google: Bail Out Time
December 5, 2019
The future of Alphabet Google is online advertising. Oh, there’s one other challenge rushing toward the company: Litigation.
Who is the new face for lawyers from most of the US states and a clutch of other countries? Sundar Pichai. You can get the Googley story in “A Letter from Larry and Sergey.”
Several observations:
- The legal scrutiny is not likely to be gentle and sweet. The good night may not be so good.
- The likelihood a change from high school science club management to a more McKinsey-like approach will produce some interesting disruptions. Fire people before Thanksgiving? Just a warm up, gentle reader.
- The “new” Google will be stripped of its down home Backrub charm. The influence of Indian high school and IIT will be significant.
Exciting? Probably. Good for lawyers. Absolutely? What about those mom and pop businesses that depend on Google for revenue? Amazon and TikTok are looking better each day.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
