Intelligence Community Deploying Bots for Digital Diplomacy

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botAccording to Oleh Starodubov, Digital Forensic Investigator, Department of Information Security of the Security Service of Ukraine, who spoke over a Skype link from the Ukraine, this approach is part of a continuing and increasing attack on the Ukrainian infrastructure. [1] Previously, the official said, the DOJ National Security Division wasn?t necessarily talking to FBI digital investigators. [2] Getting this right will be crucial to keeping Britain at the forefront of digital security technology.” [3]

The program, called MonsterMind, raises fresh concerns about privacy and the government’s policies around offensive digital attacks,” states an article published by Wired Magazine. [3] The Stuxnet cyber weapon has demonstrated the efficiency of digital weaponry, alone or as an adjunct to conventional attacks. [4] Cyber analysts traced its digital markings to known Russian government hacking groups. [2]

The U.S. Justice Department explained that the changes have been introduced to modernize the criminal code for the digital age as reported by the Reuters. [3] On the eve of a crucial postrevolution presidential vote in Ukraine in 2014, a digital assault nearly crippled the country?s Central Election Commission?s website. [2] Culture Reframed, an organization I founded and currently chair, is pioneering a strategy to address porn as the public health crisis of the digital age. [2] After their meeting Monday, Obama acknowledged tensions over digital espionage and said the United States had strong capability in this area. [2]

This kind of attacks against the Mirai bots would not have helped in the DNS-based DDoS attack against provider Dyn, but it would halt the Layer 7 attack capabilities of the Mirai botnet implemented in the coded leaked online. [3] While it can’t be used to remove the bot from the IoT device, it can be used to halt the attack originating from that particular device. [3] When exploited it will cause a segmentation fault (i.e. SIGSEV) to occur, crash the process, and therefore terminate the attack from that bot. [3] As for the IoT devices that became part of the BOT nets, it was not coding errors that allowed access. [1] When one was found, it was infected with software that turned it into a “bot” that regularly checked with a control server.

[1] He also said there is “a coordinated effort involving Twitter and Facebook and networks of bots to amplify their message. [2] Hacking a bot means to make an unauthorized access to a computer system and such kind of operations have to be authorized by a court order. [3]

The U.S. government is looking to help other governments build bots, with the White House having shared open source code for President Obama?s Facebook Messenger bot. [5] Vulnerable devices are then turned into bots, which together can be used to launch DDoS attacks designed to send so much traffic to a website that it?s knocked offline. [6] SYSTRAN.io is becoming a preferred solution for collaboration bots used on platforms and team messaging apps such as Slack, which offer simplified communication with team members around the world. [7] Automation — in the form of machine learning, robotics, autonomous vehicles, white-collar bots, exoskeletons, and so on — is changing the nature of work to such a degree, and in so many industries, that experts often express concern about the imminent destruction of a large number of jobs. [8] The inventor of the bestselling vacuum cleaner robot has created a bot that cuts weeds. [8] The advantage being now we won’t have to wade through a wall of “progressive” Bots running hypocritical interference for Clinton-Obama as they pursued the same policies. [9] SIGH.if news articles aren’t actually written by bots, they may as well be. [9]

No gentle backstroke for me lapping in the digital transformations that are being written about, this is a hard swim, one I’m not sure I can stay afloat and make headway, yet I must, well actually we all must. [8] The government alleges Martin took documents and digital files containing information that, if disclosed, “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.” [5] Digital economy companies like Apple and Amazon, who were solidly behind Clinton, will probably cut a deal on tax (they’ll pay a bit more) in return for greater help for the security services (i.e. more surveillance). [10] Philip teaches computer security and digital forensics at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, develops new penetration testing and forensics hardware, creates video courses for PentesterAcademy, O’Reilly, PluralSight, and others, and performs penetration tests on a consulting basis. [11] Securing the digital fortress has been a security best practice for the past few decades. [11]

In a blog post over the weekend, Krebs wrote that the so-called Mirai source code?s release pretty much guarantees that “the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders, and other easily hackable devices.” [6] These particular attacks have leveraged video surveillance cameras and digital recorders, satellite antenna equipment, networking devices (including routers, switches, Wi-Fi hotspots and modems) and Internet-connected network attached storage. [6] The UK has a sophisticated and fast growing digital economy, it is expected to account for 12.4 percent of GDP in 2016 – a substantial amount of money and traffic across all industries with an online presence at risk of DDoS attacks.

[6]

Jason Goldman, Chief Digital Officer of the White House, said in a post announcing the open source move: “we?re open-sourcing this White House technology, with the hope that other governments and developers can build similar services–and foster similar connections with their citizens– with significantly less upfront investment.” [5] As technology progressed, we?ve become more and more connected to our digital devices that we?ve become less connected to others and the real world. [8] As a product management director at NCR Corp, he heads the software and services group that addresses customers’ data protection needs. He also trains professionals in digital forensics and malware combat at SANS Institute. [11] Recently I was asked to complete a review of digital transformation, to gauge where it presently is, to take a look at the leading emerging practices and ‘professional ‘wisdom’ and turn these insights into a report due out before the end of the year. [8] The digital platform–connecting people, organizations, and resources in an interactive ecosystem through technology–is taking the business world by storm. [8] Patten has not only put Ocean Aero at the forefront of UAVs, but has also, alongside his talented team, developed a complementary digital platform that can serve up unique analytics and insights across a variety of applications. [7] Well, two animators from the world’s most successful digital animation studio want to change your opinion on just what stories digital animations can tell. [8]

The unconventional battle playing out in the South China Sea — where cyber attacks are taking the place of conventional fighting and other forms of diplomacy — is a new model of warfare. [6] Cory holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a visiting senior lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. [11]

POSSIBLY USEFUL

“These are often very powerful, very exciting and useful new medicines, but they are also very expensive and they expire after a couple years,” says Dr. Tara O’Toole, a former homeland security official who is now at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit that helps bring technological innovation to the U. S. intelligence community. [2] The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has “definitive proof” of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. [2] “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations. [3]

State entities have huge resources, of both time and expertise, and their cyber teams will have access to state-gathered intelligence, the academic community, and other partners. [1] State Entities: there is agreement in the cyber community that national governments, despite protestations to the contrary, are active in cyber attacks. [1] The men — Omar, 21; Hamza Naj Ahmed, 21; Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22; and Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22 — have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit murder outside the U.S. Prosecutors have said they were part of a group of friends in Minnesota’s Somali community who held secret meetings and plotted to join the

Islamic State group. [2] It states in part, “? a school?s Title IX obligation to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of sex requires schools to provide transgender students equal access to educational programs and activities even in circumstances in which other students, parents, or community members raise objections or concerns. [2] California has established strong protections for the LGBTQ community and private universities should not be able to use faith as an excuse to discriminate and avoid complying with state laws.” [2]

There is strong support in the business community for the U.S. to shift to a territorial system in which companies would not be taxed on income earned overseas. [2] “Christian faith is at the heart of that idea, it wasn’t just a secular idea about a government, it was about a community that had never been tried before where people would live in harmony.” [2] “These progressive policies have hit the black community like a nuclear blast and until we reverse this government dependency, that?s what creates all of this and it encourages it by the way, along with some questionable lifestyle choices.” [2] I like to think that EE Journal belongs to all of us as a community. [1] Many also held to the false belief that the disparagements where true/fact because highly respected members of the community declared them so, as you have done by claiming that only “1 error for 30 lines of code is 33 per KLoC and I think was Martyn’s estimate for all software, not software written by skilled engineers, which is only a tiny proportion of code written.” [1] I don?t believe that saying that the public accepts poor quality software is a condemnation of the community of programmers. [1] This sample information sheet is a helpful source of information for communities to share with the public to educate them about the issue facing their schools and community. [2]

CDC personnel are already on the ground in Florida, Frieden said, with more members of the community emergency response team arriving over the next few days. [2] On Sunday morning, community members gathered to help clean up debris from the fires. [2] On the flip side, living in a mostly Muslim community can turn out to be a real challenge for a Christian refugee. [2] “The Christian community in Nepal believes that this is a very serious case,” a Christian pastor from Nepal, who wasn’t named, told ICC. “Although we are working hard to release the prisoners, the people here are nervous after hearing about this case. [2] The gap between the amount and quality of software we need, and the amount and quality of software we as a community of software engineers can produce is enormous. [1] Adding fuel to the fire, unlike many other professions, there is no community enforcement of standards to practice software engineering. [1]

Not long after, the Justice Department said that its Office of Community Oriented Policing Services would begin what is known as a collaborative reform process with the Milwaukee police force. [2] Those in the counseling community say the law as it is written now is so broad that it would allow counselors to turn away patients for virtually any reason.

[2] “The business community, by and large, has constantly communicated to lawmakers at every level that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business.” [2]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security have issued a joint security statement to accuse the Russian government of a series of intrusions into the networks of U.S. organizations and state election boards involved in the Presidential Election. [3] The U.S. intelligence is publicly accusing the Russian government of conducting a wave of cyber attacks on American political organizations in order to gather intelligence and destroy the election. [12] The U.S. intelligence doesn’t believe the Russian hackers will target critical national infrastructure instead it fears Russia could disrupt the presidential election by releasing fake documents or spreading misinformation with PSYops campaigns. [3] Another Republican, Sen. Daniel Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that if Moscow is indeed trying to influence the U.S. election, “such actions would be an outrageous violation of international rules of behavior and cannot be tolerated.” [2] Calls for action have also come from several congressional Democrats and Republicans who serve on defense, law enforcement or intelligence committees, as well as a bipartisan group of 31 security and counterterrorism experts who urged Obama to “take prompt actions” that would “deter foreign actors from pursuing such tactics in the future.” [2] Lawmakers urging a public White House response include the top Democrats on both Intelligence panels, Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, as well as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), top Judiciary Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). [2] “Witnesses will be less likely to cooperate if they feel private statements to investigators may become political fodder for Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. [2]

Russia will continue to deploy highly effective disinformation campaigns, intelligence operations, and cyberwar to weaken Europe and, in unprecedented attacks, the United States. [13] The effort to better understand Russia?s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. [2] “It?s easier to level sanctions than to prosecute someone without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods,” said Michael Vatis, a cybercrime attorney with Steptoe & Johnson and former national security-focused DOJ official, via email. [2]

On the other end, the NSA justifies their approach to the active defense explaining that its hackers regularly penetrate foreign networks to gather intelligence. [3] “U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia‘s electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin’s command systems, making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. deem it necessary, according to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents reviewed by NBC News.” reported the NBC News. [4] The senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed that the U.S. could take action to shut down some Russian systems in case of Russian cyber attacks. [4] According to a senior intelligence official and top-secret documents obtained by the

NBC News, the U.S. hackers have already penetrated Russian electric grid, telecommunications networks and also the Russia‘s command systems. [3] The senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed that the U.S. could take action to shut down some Russian systems in case of Russian cyber-attacks. [3] The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Russian strike on the CIA-linked site was part of a campaign by Russia to pressure the White House to agree to closer cooperation in the Syrian skies, U.S. military and intelligence officials said. [2] Whether Russian intelligence agencies provided the stolen information to Wikileaks, either directly or through middlemen, is now a top issue for U.S. investigators to resolve, the U.S. officials briefed on the probe say. [2] Private-sector cybersecurity experts have said the DNC emails appear to have been pilfered by hackers linked to Russian intelligence agencies, and intelligence officials have privately reached similar conclusions. [2] The revelation raises questions about whether the DNC could have done more to limit the damage done by hackers suspected of working for Russian intelligence. [2] The intrusion so far appears to bear the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation. [2] In the same period, the company launched the Falcon platform, a system that leverages Big Data to carry out a number of “active defense” operations, including “real-time detection of adversary activities, attribution of the threat actors, the flexibility of response actions, and intelligence dissemination.” [3] Expanding the role of NATO to include cyberwarfare operations and act as a central body for intelligence and counter-attack operations should be among the ideas the next administration explores. [14]

The government recently hired Gryphon to do an analysis of how well the stockpile was positioned to respond to a range of scenarios based on intelligence information. [2] In remarks prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brennan says IS has been working to build an apparatus to direct and inspire attacks against its foreign enemies, as in the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels — ones the CIA believes were directed by IS leaders. [2] What if a robot, programmed as a “nannie,” injured a child due to mechanical failure? How far will artificial intelligence enter our personal lives? What are the implications? Pray accordingly. [2] On the other end, the NSA regularly penetrates foreign networks to gather intelligence. [4]

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies, private firms and security companies are publicly discussing the possibility to adopt a new approach to defending their assets from the attacks by hacking back the attackers. [3] The issue has “moved up as a priority” for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency. [2]

Some congressional leaders briefed recently by the intelligence agencies on Russian influence operations in Europe, and how they may serve as a template for activities in the United States, were disturbed by what they heard. [2] A Russian influence operation in the United States “is something we?re looking very closely at,” said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

[2]

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs. [2]

Presenting this evidence in court could also expose valuable secret surveillance footholds in Russian intelligence agencies. [2]

It was equally embarrassing for the U.S. intelligence community, which pays contractors like Booz Allen billions of dollars each year to help run its global operations and keep a tight lid on our country?s more sensitive secrets. [5] Kyle has seven years of experience as a cyber intelligence analyst in the intelligence community and within the healthcare sector. [11] Prior to joining Duo, Mike was a senior member of the technical staff at CERT /CC, where he conducted applied R&D on a variety of cyber issues in support of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence community. [11] Rocky is privileged to have begun his career with the United States Air Force as member of the intelligence community. [11]

Fancy Bear is the same group of hackers that has also been accused by the U.S. Intelligence community of hacking the Democratic National Committee, Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others. [15]

She collaborates extensively with the data science and threat intelligence teams, guiding Endgame?s community engagement with industry, academia, think tanks, and tech. [11] He is currently ThreatConnect?s main contributor for the medical and healthcare community, where he focuses on providing healthcare-specific threat intelligence that can facilitate members? defensive efforts. [11]

The Central Intelligence Agency?s torture of detainees, and the National Security Agency?s warrantless wiretapping of Americans? international communications, were two of the most controversial programs our government implemented after Sept. 11. [5] Prior to his work at Fastly, Maarten managed the Threat Intelligence team at Amazon and worked on the security teams at Google and Microsoft. [11] Through his work at Symantec, iSIGHT Partners, FireEye, and Recorded Future, Allan has helped countless organizations improve their security posture using more effective intelligence. [11]

Currently, he spends his days as a senior cyber intelligence analyst enhancing customer defenses through advanced analysis, customized training, and engineering improvements. [11] “To the degree that foreign hackers could prevent the dissemination of good information around the election, that can be a problem,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. [6] His earlier roles include GM in charge of product engineering and operation, R&D manager, chief scientist, and head of engineering at various companies and the Israeli intelligence, where he focused on high-capacity, large-scale web and network services and cybersecurity systems. [11] Their computers contain the kinds of notes, story ideas and high-powered contact lists coveted by foreign intelligence services. [6]

Walcott has received plaudits for his sudden discovery of tracking back, but I think his game has improved because he’s getting better balls from midfield, even if some of those opportunities arise from the whole team being more effective in pressing (it was telling yesterday that they were reluctant to press high because Spurs’ extra defender meant a greater risk of being isolated – an example of game intelligence rather than a lack of application).

[10] Still classified are between 25 and 30 significant opinions issued between 2003 and 2013 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secretive federal court that interprets the law governing foreign intelligence-gathering inside the United States. [5] When the secret surveillance panel known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court, construed the Patriot Act to allow bulk collection of Americans? phone records, that interpretation became part of the statute?s meaning. [5] Once the stuff of science fiction, artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of our everyday. [8]

This about the person who refused to read the National intelligence estimate before voting for the war. [9] Advanced analytics add a layer of intelligence on top of data to identify patterns of behavior and links among people, things, places and events. [7] Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, and neural networks represent incredibly exciting and powerful machine learning-based techniques used to solve many real-world problems. [8] Lenny Zeltser explains how to gather such open source intelligence. [11] Proper database technology selection is required for data-centric solutions such as SaaS platforms, big data pipelines, analytics platforms, machine learning/artificial intelligence platforms, and so on. [8] With the growing need for seamless communication across borders and language intelligence technology, we anticipate a steady incline for SYSTRAN?s growth. [7]

U.S. intelligence officials have blamed Russia for the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers and subsequent leaks of sensitive information timed to interfere with the U.S. election. [16] U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia of hacking American political sites in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. [17]

“If the federal government can be hacked, and the intelligence agencies have been hacked, as they?ve been then, can any news site say we have better cybersecurity than the FBI or Google?” The media have long been a spy?s best friend. [6]

Specifically, the security community is worried The Associated Press? army of reporters could get hacked and the wire service — the newsroom that produces the results data on which the entire media world relies — inadvertently starts releasing manipulated election tallies or that cybercriminals penetrate CNN?s internal networks and change Wolf Blitzer?s teleprompter. [6] Security people are “only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the intent of the community welfare,” but often the relationship between security and everyone else is fraught. [11] I’m an upstream developer advocate for the OpenStack Foundation, and this work includes bringing new people into the community, making sure members of the community feel valued, and reducing conflict and removing roadblocks to contribution. [5] This event is a bi-annual gathering of OpenStack community members, technology leaders, developers and ecosystem supporters. [5] Alex Rice is a cofounder and chief technology officer at HackerOne, which provides a platform that enables organizations to build strong relationships with a community of security experts. [11] The security community has spent decades trying to define what secure systems look like in theory and how to achieve them in practice.

[11] Bob is a serial tweeter, an avid blogger, the author of Data-Driven Security, a speaker, and a regular contributor to the open source community. [11] Bruce assists in the organization of ShmooCon, an annual computer security conference in Washington, DC. The most recent conference had over 2,000 attendees from a broad cross section of the security community and included presentations by industry professionals on a variety of contemporary security issues. [11] The security community has called for more talent to fuel the roles we have lying empty; however, security has an unusually hardened pipeline that must be improved to support capable candidates getting through to promising security careers. [11]

Austerity doesn’t just mechanically produce more intervention in society – through cuts in services and benefits and the rhetoric of scarce resources – it also encourages a focus on national and community progress (or resistance to decline) in order to occupy political energies while market reform and supranational institution-building are stalled. [10] He is a frequent speaker on secure software practices, a member of the JavaOne Rock Star speaker community, and a volunteer and former board member for the OWASP foundation. [11] What is BarnRaise? BarnRaise is a maker conference that brings together design firms, community organizations, and people interested in designing solutions for the communities in which they live. [8] Christina is also the cofounder of WocintechChat.com, a supportive community for women/nonbinary people of color in tech. [11]

Whether you consider yourself a creative, a maker, an ideas person, or are just plain curious, this is the opportunity to work with a local San Francisco community organization, on a tangible opportunity, while being led by experts in the design process. [8] It’s also part of my job to smooth the path for newcomers just starting to get involved in the community. [5] The Mirai source code leak came to light on Friday via the Hackforums community, Krebs said. [6] Tim is an active public speaker on secure cloud adoption at both internal and external workshops, conferences, and hands-on labs (boot camps) and a community advocate for organization using and promoting cloud technologies. [11] “There will be discussions over the next few weeks to determine how to strengthen the system, and we will continue to work with Ontario?s education community to understand how best to use online assessments to benefit our province?s students.” –Richard Jones, Director, Assessment Last week?s exercise was was a voluntary trial to test the system?s readiness before the regularly scheduled administration of the OSSLT — either online or on paper — in March 2017. [6]

I hold no hope of Trump doing much to address the community’s needs. I am glad the charade of Obama and Democrat party being aligned and truly concerned with our plight is extinguished. [9]

RANKED SELECTED SOURCES
(17 source documents arranged by frequency of occurrence in the above report)

1. (41) Recent blog posts –

2. (23) Speakers: O’Reilly Security Conference, October 30 – November 2, 2016, New York, NY

3. (15) Hacking Back: Exploring a new option of cyber defense

4. (12) Alltop – Top Innovation News

5. (11) ddos-defense | DDoSInfo Information about DDoS and Denial of Service Attacks

6. (10) Cyberwarfare and Cyber Whack-a-Mole

7. (10) Links 18/10/2016: Release Candidate of Leap 42.2, Looking Ahead at GTK4 | Techrights

8. (4) US Govt is ready to hack back if Russia tries to hit Presidential ElectionSecurity Affairs

9. (4) World Trade Center San Diego | San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation

10. (4) Links 11/10/16 | naked capitalism

11. (3) From Arse To Elbow

12. (1) Presidential Election – Russia asks US clarifications for US cyber threatsSecurity Affairs

13. (1) On the Election–IV | by Jessica T. Mathews | The New York Review of Books

14. (1) Cyberwarfare: The Next President?s Most Pressing Battleground | Network Security and Data Protection Software Solutions content from The VAR Guy

15. (1) November 2016 Hacking News Posts Archive The Hacker News

16. (1) The next president will face a cybercrisis within 100 days, predicts report

17. (1) Microsoft: Russian Hackers Exploit Windows Flaw | Enterprise Security Today

 

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