Voyager Labs Expands into South America
October 14, 2021
Well this is an interesting development. Brazil’s ITForum reports, “Voyager Labs Appoints VP and Opens Operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.” (I read and quote from Google’s serviceable translation.)
Voyager Labs is an Israeli specialized services firm that keeps a very low profile. Their platform uses machine learning to find and analyze clues to fight cyber attacks, organized crime, fraud, corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism. Voyager Labs’ clients include private companies and assorted government agencies around the world.
The brief announcement reveals:
“Voyager Labs, an AI-based cybersecurity and research specialist, announced this week the arrival in Latin America and the Caribbean. To lead the operation, the company appointed Marcelo Comité as regional vice president. The executive, according to the company, has experience in the areas of investigation, security, and defense in Brazil and the region. Comité will have as mission to consolidate teams of experts to improve the services and support in technologies in the region, according to the needs and particularities of each country. ‘It is a great challenge to drive Voyager Labs’ expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Together with our network of partners in each country, we will strengthen ties with strategic clients in the areas of government, police, military sector and private companies’, says the executive.”
We are intrigued by the move to South America, since most of the Israeli firms are building operations in Singapore. What’s Voyager know that its competitors do not? Not familiar with Voyager Labs? Worth knowing the company perhaps?
Cynthia Murrell, October 14, 2021
Alleged DHS Monitoring of Naturalized Citizens
September 9, 2021
Are the fates of millions of naturalized immigrants are at the mercy of one secretive algorithm run by the Department of Homeland Security and, unsurprisingly, powered by Amazon Web Services?
The Intercept examined a number of documents acquired by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Muslim Advocates through FOIA lawsuits and reports, “Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship.” Dubbed ATLAS, the software runs immigrants’ information through assorted federal databases looking for any sign of dishonesty or danger. Journalists Sam Biddle and Maryam Saleh write:
“ATLAS helps DHS investigate immigrants’ personal relationships and backgrounds, examining biometric information like fingerprints and, in certain circumstances, considering an immigrant’s race, ethnicity, and national origin. It draws information from a variety of unknown sources, plus two that have been criticized as being poorly managed: the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the terrorist watchlist, and the National Crime Information Center. Powered by servers at tech giant Amazon, the system in 2019 alone conducted 16.5 million screenings and flagged more than 120,000 cases of potential fraud or threats to national security and public safety. Ultimately, humans at DHS are involved in determining how to handle immigrants flagged by ATLAS. But the software threatens to amplify the harm caused by bureaucratic mistakes within the immigration system, mistakes that already drive many denaturalization and deportation cases.”
DHS appears reluctant to reveal details of how ATLAS works or what information it uses, which makes it impossible to assess the program’s accuracy. It also seems the humans who act on the algorithm’s recommendations have misplaced faith in the accuracy of the data behind it. The article cites a 2020 document:
“It also notes that the accuracy of ATLAS’s input is taken as a given: ‘USCIS presumes the information submitted is accurate. … ATLAS relies on the accuracy of the information as it is collected from the immigration requestor and from the other government source systems. As such, the accuracy of the information in ATLAS is equivalent to the accuracy of the source information at the point in time when it is collected by ATLAS.’ The document further notes that ‘ATLAS does not employ any mechanisms that allow individuals to amend erroneous information’ and suggests that individuals directly contact the offices maintaining the various databases ATLAS uses if they wish to correct an error.”
We are sure that process must be a piece of cake. The authors also report:
“Denaturalization experts say that putting an immigrant’s paper trail through the algorithmic wringer can lead to automated punitive measures based not on that immigrant’s past conduct but the government’s own incompetence. … According to [Muslim Advocates’ Deborah] Choi, in some cases ‘denaturalization is sought on the basis of the mistakes of others, such as bad attorneys and translators, or even the government’s failures in record-keeping or the failures of the immigration system.’ Bureaucratic blundering can easily be construed as a sign of fraud on an immigrant’s part, especially if decades have passed since filling out the paperwork in question.”
Worth monitoring. Atlas may carry important payloads, or blow up on the launch pad.
Cynthia Murrell, September 9, 2021
Protonmail Anecdote
September 6, 2021
Protonmail has been mentioned in come circles as a secure email service. Users pay to use the system. I have included it in my lectures about online messaging as an example of a “secure” service.
I spotted this Twitter thread which may be true, but, on the other hand, it may be an example of disinformation. The thread includes a screenshot and comments which may indicate that Protonmail has provided to law enforcement details about a specific user.
The person creating the tweet with the information points out:
I appreciate protonmail transparency on what happened, they provide a onion domain to avoid that issue (and a VPN), every service has to follow the law of the country they are in and a biggest issue here is the criminalization of climate activists by the french police [sic]
Additional information or disinformation may be available from this link.
Stephen E Arnold, September 6, 2021
Palantir: A Blinded Seeing Stone?
August 27, 2021
I try to keep pace with the innovations in intelware. That’s my term for specialized software designed to provide the actionable information required by intel professionals, law enforcement, and one or two attorneys who have moved past thumbtyping.
I am not sure if the article “FBI Palantir Glitch Allowed Unauthorized Access to Private Data” is on the money. The “real news” story asserted:
A computer glitch in a secretive software program used by the FBI allowed some unauthorized employees to access private data for more than a year, prosecutors revealed in a new court filing. The screw-up in the Palantir program — a software created by a sprawling data analytics company co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel — was detailed in a letter by prosecutors in the Manhattan federal court case against accused hacker Virgil Griffith.
Please, read the source document. Also, my personal view is that such an access lapse is not good, but if the story is accurate, I am less concerned that other FBI officials may have had access to content in Gotham or whatever the system is branded these days is less problematic than oligarchs snooping or a Xi Jinping linked tong IT wonk poking around FBI only data.
My thoughts went in a different direction, and I want to capture them. Keep in mind, I don’t know if the access revelation is “true.” Nevertheless, here’s what I jotted down whilst sitting in a lecture about a smart bung for booze lovers:
- Was the access issue related to Microsoft Windows or to the AWS-type services on which some Palantir installations depend? Microsoft is another “here we go again” question, but the AWS question puts the Bezos bulldozer squarely in the security breach spotlight.
- How many days, weeks, or months was the access control out of bounds? An hour is one thing; the answer “We don’t have a clue” is another.
- If — note the if, please — the access issue is due to a Palantir specific feature or function, is there a current security audit of LE, military, and intel related installations of the “seeing stone” itself? If the answer is “yes”, why was this access issue missed? Who did the audit? Who vetted the auditor? If the answer is “no,” what are the consequences for the other software vendors and IT professionals in the “fault chain”?
The article points out that a royal “we” is troubled. That’s nice. But let’s focus on more pointed questions and deal with what might be a digital Humpty Dumpty. Just my opinion from the underground bunker in rural Kentucky.
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2021
Ephemeralism Is a Thing in E2EE Signal Messaging
August 27, 2021
Like that word ephemeralism. Great for some; not so great for law enforcement and intelligence professionals.
One of the worst things about the Internet is that nothing completely disappears on the Internet and stuff comes back to haunt people. Cancel culture rears its ugly head when politicians’ or celebrities’ old sexist or racist posts surface. Nothing ever exists in the moment anymore, especially when it comes to Internet conversations. Signal promises in its blog post, “Embrace Ephemerality With Default Disappearing Messages” to return the now to conversation.
Everything relating to human communication is not meant to last forever. Signal is a message designed with state of the art encryption to protect user privacy. It does not have ads, tracking, nor affiliate marketers. Signal is a non-profit organization, so it is not associated with corporations. It receives its funding from donations and grants. Signal has a new feature, where users can have their messages disappear after a set time:
“Disappearing messages provide a way to keep your message history tidy. When enabled for a conversation, messages will be deleted for the sender and recipients after the specified time. This is not for situations where your contact is your adversary — after all, if someone who receives a disappearing message really wants a record of it, they can always use another camera to take a photo of the screen before the message disappears. However, this is a nice way to automatically save storage space on your devices and limit the amount of conversation history that remains on your device if you should find yourself physically separated from it.”
Before this upgrade, disappearing messages need to be enabled for individual conversations, but now it can be set as the default. Signal also added custom timer durations.
Signal is an popular service for people who want to protect their privacy and manage space on their phones. Journalists and freedom fighters are benefit from Signal, because it allows them to protect their anonymity.
As expected, bad actors take advantage of Signal’s encryption features too. Law enforcement officials are unable to collect evidence on the bad actors and makes it difficult building a case against them.
Whitney Grace, August 27, 2021
Another Perturbation of the Intelware Market: Apple Cores Forbidden Fruit
August 6, 2021
It may be tempting for some to view Apple’s decision to implement a classic man-in-the-middle process. If the information in “Apple Plans to Scan US iPhones for Child Abuse Imagery” is correct, the maker of the iPhone has encroached on the intelware service firms’ bailiwick. The paywalled newspaper reports:
Apple intends to install software on American iPhones to scan for child abuse imagery
The approach — dubbed ‘neuralMatch’ — is on the iPhone device, thus providing functionality substantially similar to other intelware vendors’ methods for obtaining data about a user’s actions.
The article concludes:
According to people briefed on the plans, every photo uploaded to iCloud in the US will be given a “safety voucher” saying whether it is suspect or not. Once a certain number of photos are marked as suspect, Apple will enable all the suspect photos to be decrypted and, if apparently illegal, passed on to the relevant authorities.
Observations:
- The idea allows Apple to provide a function likely to be of interest to law enforcement and intelligence professionals; for example, requesting a report about a phone with filtered and flagged data are metadata
- Specialized software companies may have an opportunity to refine existing intelware or develop a new category of specialized services to make sense of data about on-phone actions
- The proposal, if implemented, would create a PR opportunity for either Apple or its critics to try to leverage
- Legal issues about the on-phone filtering and metadata (if any) would add friction to some legal matters.
One question: How similar is this proposed Apple service to the operation of intelware like that allegedly available from the Hacking Team, NSO Group, and other vendors? Another question: Is this monitoring a trial balloon or has the system and method been implemented in test locations; for example, China or an Eastern European country?
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2021
NSO Group and France: Planning a Trip to Grenoble? Travel Advisory Maybe?
August 3, 2021
The PR poster kid for intelware captured more attention from the Guardian. “Pegasus Spyware Found on Journalists’ Phones, French Intelligence Confirms” reports in “real news” fashion:
French intelligence investigators have confirmed that Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of three journalists, including a senior member of staff at the country’s international television station France 24. It is the first time an independent and official authority has corroborated the findings of an international investigation by the Pegasus project – a consortium of 17 media outlets, including the Guardian.
The consistently wonderful and objective, media hip newspaper provided a counter argument to this interesting finding:
NSO said Macron was not and never had been a “target” of any of its customers, meaning the company denies he was selected for surveillance or was surveilled using Pegasus. The company added that the fact that a number appeared on the list was in no way indicative of whether that number was selected for surveillance using Pegasus.
Is NSO Group adopting a Facebook- or Google-type of posture? I think response to implied criticism is to say stuff and nod in a reassuring manner? I don’t know. The Guardian, ever new media savvy, wraps up the PR grenade with this comment:
The investigation suggests widespread and continuing abuse of Pegasus, which NSO insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.
Should NSO Group professionals consider a visit to France and a side trip to Grenoble in order to ride Les Bulles?
Stephen E Arnold, August 3, 2021
DarkCyber for July 27, 2021: NSO Group Again, Making AWS Bots, How Bad Actors Scale, and Tethered Drones
July 27, 2021
The 15th DarkCyber for 2021 addresses some of the NSO Group’s market position. With more than a dozen news organizations digging into who does what with the Pegasus intelware system, the Israeli company has become the face of what some have called the spyware industry. In this program, Stephen E Arnold, author of the Dark Web Notebook, explains how bad actors scale their cyber crime operations. One thousand engineers is an estimate which is at odds with how these cyber groups and units operate. What’s the technique? Tune in to learn why Silicon Valley provided the road map for global cyber attacks. If you are curious, you can build your own software robot to perform interesting actions using the Amazon AWS system as a launch pad. The final story explains that innovation in policing can arrive from the distant pass. An 18th century idea may be the next big thing in law enforcement’s use of drones. DarkCyber is produced by Stephen E Arnold, who publishes Beyond Search. You can access the blog at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and view the DarkCyber video at this link.
Kenny Toth, July 27, 2021
NSO Group: The Rip in the Fabric of Intelware
July 22, 2021
A contentious relationship with the “real news” organizations can be risky. I have worked at a major newspaper and a major publisher. The tenacity of some of my former colleagues is comparable to the grit one associates with an Army Ranger or Navy Seal, just with a slightly more sensitive wrapper. Journalists favored semi with it clothes, not bushy beards. The editorial team was more comfortable with laptops than an F SCAR.
Communications associated with NSO Group — the headline magnet among the dozens of Israel-based specialized software companies (an very close in group by the way)— may have torn the fabric shrouding the relationship among former colleagues in the military, government agencies, their customers, and their targets.
Whose to blame? The media? Maybe. I don’t have a dog in this particular season’s of fights. The action promises to be interesting and potentially devastating to some comfortable business models. NSO Group is just one of many firms working to capture the money associated with cyber intelligence and cyber security. The spat between the likes of journalists at the Guardian and the Washington Post and NSO Group appears to be diffusing like spilled ink on a camouflage jacket.
I noted “Pegasus Spyware Seller: Blame Our Customers Not Us for Hacking.” The main point seems to be that NSO Group allegedly suggests that those entities licensing the NSO Group specialized software are responsible for their use of the software. The write up reports:
But a company spokesman told BBC News: “Firstly, we don’t have servers in Cyprus.
“And secondly, we don’t have any data of our customers in our possession.
“And more than that, the customers are not related to each other, as each customer is separate.
“So there should not be a list like this at all anywhere.”
And the number of potential targets did not reflect the way Pegasus worked.
“It’s an insane number,” the spokesman said.
“Our customers have an average of 100 targets a year.
“Since the beginning of the company, we didn’t have 50,000 targets total.”
For me, the question becomes, “What controls exist within the Pegasus system to manage the usage of the surveillance system?” If there are controls, why are these not monitored by an appropriate entity; for example, an oversight agency within Israel? If there are no controls, has Pegasus become an “on premises” install set up so that a licensee has a locked down, air tight version of the NSO Group tools?
The second item I noticed was “NSO Says ‘Enough Is Enough,’ Will No Longer Talk to the Press About Damning Reports.” At first glance, I assumed that an inquiry was made by the online news service and the call was not returned. That happens to me several times a day. I am an advocate of my version of cancel culture. I just never call the entity again and move on. I am too old to fiddle with the egos of a younger person who believes that a divine entity has given that individual special privileges. Nope, delete.
But not NSO Group. According to the write up:
“Enough is enough!” a company spokesperson wrote in a statement emailed to news organizations. “In light of the recent planned and well-orchestrated media campaign lead by Forbidden Stories and pushed by special interest groups, and due to the complete disregard of the facts, NSO is announcing it will no longer be responding to media inquiries on this matter and it will not play along with the vicious and slanderous campaign.” NSO has not responded to Motherboard’s repeated requests for comment and for an interview.
Okay, the enough is enough message is allegedly in “writing.” That’s better than a fake message disseminated via TikTok. However, the “real journalists” are likely to become more persistent. Despite a lack of familiarity with the specialized software sector, a large number of history majors and liberal arts grads can do what “real” intelligence analysts do. Believe me, there’s quite a bit of open source information about the cozy relationship within and among Israel’s specialized software sector, the interaction of these firms with certain government entities, and public messages parked in unlikely open source Web sites to keep the “real” journalists learning, writing, and probing.
In my opinion, allowing specialized software services to become public; that is, actually talk about the capabilities of surveillance and intercept systems was a very, very bad idea. But money is money and sales are sales. Incentive schemes for the owners of specialized software companies guarantee than I can spend eight hours a day watching free webinars that explain the ins and outs of specialized software systems. I won’t but some of the now ignited flames of “real” journalism will. They will learn almost exactly what is presented in classified settings. Why? Capabilities when explained in public and secret forums use almost the same slide decks, the same words, and the same case examples which vary in level of detail presented. This is how marketing works in my opinion.
Observations:
1. A PR disaster is, it appears, becoming a significant political issue. This may pose some interesting challenges within the Israel centric specialized software sector. NSO Group’s system ran on cloud services like Amazon’s until AWS allegedly pushed Pegasus out of the Bezos stable.
2. A breaker of the specialized software business model of selling to governments and companies. The cost of developing, enhancing, and operating most specialized software systems keeps companies on the knife edge of solvency. The push into commercial use of the tools by companies or consumerizing the reports means government contracts will become more important if the non-governmental work is cut off. Does the world need several dozen Dark Web indexing outfits and smart time line and entity tools? Nope.
3. A boost to bad actors. The reporting in the last week or so has provided a detailed road map to bad actors in some countries about [a] What can be done, [b] How systems like Pegasus operate, [c] the inherent lack of security in systems and devices charmingly labeled “insecure by design” by a certain big software company, and [d] specific pointers to the existence of zero day opportunities in blast door protected devices. That’s a hoot at ??????? ???? “Console”.
Net net: The NSO Group “matter” is a very significant milestone in the journey of specialized software companies. The reports from the front lines will be fascinating. I anticipate excitement in Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries. Maybe a specialized software Covid Delta?
Stephen E Arnold, July 22, 2021
Smart Devices and Law Enforcement: Yes, the Future
June 28, 2021
I read “Security Robots Expand across U.S., with Few Tangible Results.” The write up highlights Yet Another Security Sales Play or YASSP. The write up states:
Officer Aden Ocampo-Gomez, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said that while the complex is no longer in the agency’s top 10 list for most frequent 911 calls in the northeastern part of the Las Vegas Valley, he doesn’t think all the credit should go to Westy. “I cannot say it was due to the robot,” he said.
No surprise. Crime is a result of many factors; some of which make many, many people uncomfortable. A parent loses a job and steals money from an old timer with a cane. A hormone filled young person frustrated with a person staring decides to beat up the clueless person looking for a taxi. A street person needs a snort of Cisco. Many examples, and I have not wandered into the thicket of gangs, vendettas, psychological weirdness, or “hey, it seemed like fun.”
The write up does bump up a reality for vendors of police-related technology. Here’s an interesting passage:
But the finances behind the police robot business is a difficult one. Last year, Knightscope lost more money than ever, with a $19.3 million net loss, nearly double from 2019. While some clients are buying more robots, the company’s overall number of clients fell to 23, from 30, in the past four years. Plus, the number of robots leased has plateaued at 52 from the end of 2018 through the end of last year. The pandemic certainly didn’t help things. Just two months ago, Knightscope told investors that there was “substantial doubt regarding our ability to continue” given the company’s “accumulated deficit,” or debt, of over $69 million as of the end of 2020. Its operating expenses jumped by more than 50 percent, including a small increase on research, and a doubling of the company’s marketing budget. Knightscope itself recently told investors that absent additional fundraising efforts, it will “not be solvent after the third quarter of 2022.”
Earlier this month I gave a talk to a group on the East Coast affiliated with a cyber crime outfit. One question popped up on the Zoom chat:
What’s law enforcement look like in five years?
As I have pointed out many times, if I could predict the future, I would be rolling in Kentucky Derby winnings. I said something to the effect, “More technology.”
That’s what CNBC is missing in its write up about the robot outfit Knightscope: Enforcement agencies worldwide are trying to figure out how to attract individuals who will enforce laws. Australia has explored hiring rehabbed criminals for special roles. Several years ago, I had dinner with one of these individuals, and I came away thinking, “This is a perfect type for undercover work.”
The major TV outlets in my area of the Rust Belt routinely run interviews with government officials who point out that there are employment opportunities in law enforcement.
The problem is that finding employees is not easy. Once a person is an employee, often that individual wants to work on a schedule appropriate to the person, not the organization. If asked to do extra work, the employee can quit or not show up. This issue exists at fast food outfits, manufacturing plants, and government agencies.
What the write up ignores is that robots will work. Using semi smart devices is the future. Turn ‘em on; devices mostly work.
One can’t say that for human counterparts.
Net net: Without enough humans who will actually work, smart devices are definitely the future. I stand by my observation to the cyber crime seminar attendees. What do you want patrolling your subdivision: A smart device or a 22 year old fascinated with thumbtyping who wants a three day work week and doesn’t want to get involved.
Think about it. Knightsbridge, if I can do anything to boost your company, let me know.
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2021
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