Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

Despite its spotty record on cybersecurity expertise, the FBI is promoting competitors of Kaspersky Lab.

Patrick O’Neill‘s account of the FBI’s efforts, FBI pushes private sector to cut ties with Kaspersky:

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In the briefings, FBI officials give companies a high-level overview of the threat assessment, including what the U.S. intelligence community says are the Kaspersky’s deep and active relationships with Russian intelligence. FBI officials point to multiple specific accusations of wrongdoing by Kaspersky, such as a well-known instance of allegedly faking malware.

In a statement to CyberScoop, a Kaspersky spokesperson blamed those particular accusations on “disgruntled, former company employees, whose accusations are meritless” while FBI officials say, in private and away from public scrutiny, they know the incident took place and was blessed by the company’s leadership.

The FBI’s briefings have seen mixed results. Companies that utilize ISC and SCADA systems have been relatively cooperative, one government official told CyberScoop, due in large part to what’s described as exceptional sense of urgency that dwarfs most other industries. Several of these companies have quietly moved forward on the FBI’s recommendations against Kaspersky by, for example, signing deals with Kaspersky competitors.

The firms the FBI have briefed include those that deal with nuclear power, a predictable target given the way the electric grid is increasingly at the center of catastrophic cybersecurity concerns.

The traditional tech giants have been less receptive and cooperative to the FBI’s pitch.
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leaves the impression Kaspersky competitors are not compensating the FBI for the additional business.

That’s just wrong! If the FBI drives business to vendors, the public merits a cut of those contracts for services rendered. Members of Congress pushing for the exclusion of Kaspersky are no doubt being compensated but that doesn’t benefit the general public.

The only known validation of the FBI’s nationalistic fantasy is the relationship between the US government and US software vendors. Microsoft says it’s already patched flaws exposed in leak of NSA hacks What motive does the NSA have to withhold flaws from US vendors other than to use them against other nations?

Expecting other governments act like the US government and software vendors to be spineless as US vendors makes the FBI Kaspersky fantasy consistent with its paranoia. Consistency, however, isn’t the same as a factual basis.

Free tip for Kaspersky Lab: Starting with your competitors and likely competitors, track their campaign contributions, contacts with the U.S. government, news placements, etc. No small task as acceptance of the FBI’s paranoid delusions didn’t happen overnight. Convictions of incautious individuals for suborning the government for commercial gain would go a long way to countering that tale.

2 Years After Massive Breach, OPM Isn’t Sufficiently Vetting IT Systems by Joseph Marks.

From the post:

More than two years after suffering a massive data beach, the Office of Personnel Management still isn’t sufficiently vetting many of its information systems, an auditor found.

In some cases, OPM is past due to re-authorize IT systems, the inspector general’s audit said. In other cases, OPM did reauthorize those systems but did it in a haphazard and shoddy way during a 2016 “authorization sprint,” the IG said.

“The lack of a valid authorization does not necessarily mean that a system is insecure,” the auditors said. “However, it does mean that a system is at a significantly higher risk of containing unidentified security vulnerabilities.”
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The full audit provides more details but suffice it to say OPM security is as farcical as ever.

Do you think use of https://www.opm.gov/ in hacking examples and scripts, would call greater attention to flaws at the OPM?

The Unfortunate Many: How Nation States Select Targets

From the post:

Key Takeaways

• It’s safe to assume that all governments are developing and deploying cyber capabilities at some level. It’s also safe to assume most governments are far from open about the extent of their cyber activity.
• If you take the time to understand why nation states get involved with cyber activity in the first place, you’ll find their attacks are much more predictable than they seem.
• Each nation state has its own objectives and motivations for cyber activity. Even amongst big players like China, Russia, and the U.S. there’s a lot of variation.
• Most nation states develop national five-year plans that inform all their cyber activities. Understanding these plans enables an organization to prioritize preparations for the most likely threats.

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There’s a name for those who rely on governments, national or otherwise, to protect their cybersecurity: victims.

Recorded Future gives a quick overview of factors that may drive the objectives of government cybercriminal units.

I use “cybercriminal units” to avoid the false dichotomy between alleged “legitimate” government hacking and that of other governments and individuals.

We’re all adults here and realize government is a particular distribution of reward and stripes, nothing more. It has no vision, no goal beyond self-preservation and certainly, beyond your locally owned officials, no interest in you or yours.

That is to say governments undertaking hacking to further a “particular distribution of reward and stripes” and their choices are no more (or less) legitimate than anyone else’s.

Government choices are certainly no more legitimate than your choices. Although governments claim a monopoly on criminal prosecutions, which accounts for why criminals acting on their behalf are never prosecuted. That monopoly also explains why governments, assuming they have possession of your person, may prosecute you for locally defined “criminal” acts.

Read the Recorded Future post to judge your odds of being a victim of a national government. Then consider which governments should be your victims.

Neural networks just hacked your fingerprints by Thomas McMullan.

From the post:

Fingerprints are supposed to be unique markers of a person’s identity. Detectives look for fingerprints in crime scenes. Your phone’s fingerprint sensor means only you can unlock the screen. The truth, however, is that fingerprints might not be as secure as you think – at least not in an age of machine learning.

A team of researchers has demonstrated that, with the help of neural networks, a “masterprint” can be used to fool verification systems. A masterprint, like a master key, is a fingerprint that can be open many different doors. In the case of fingerprint identification, it does this by tricking a computer into thinking the print could belong to a number of different people.

“Our method is able to design a MasterPrint that a commercial fingerprint system matches to 22% of all users in a strict security setting, and 75% of all users at a looser security setting,” the researchers ­– Philip Bontrager, Julian Togelius and Nasir Memon – claim in a paper.
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The tweet that brought this post to my attention didn’t seem to take this as good news.

But it is, very good news!

Think about it for a moment. Who is most likely to have “strict security settings?”

Your average cubicle dweller/home owner or …, large corporation or government entity?

What is more, if you, as a cubicle dweller are ever accosted for a breach of security, leaking fingerprint protected files, etc., what better defense than known spoofing of fingerprints?

Not that you would be guilty of such an offense but its always nice to have a credible defense in addition to being innocent!

For further details:

DeepMasterPrint: Generating Fingerprints for Presentation Attacks by Philip Bontrager, Julian Togelius, Nasir Memon.

Abstract:

We present two related methods for creating MasterPrints, synthetic fingerprints that a fingerprint verification system identifies as many different people. Both methods start with training a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) on a set of real fingerprint images. The generator network is then used to search for images that can be recognized as multiple individuals. The first method uses evolutionary optimization in the space of latent variables, and the second uses gradient-based search. Our method is able to design a MasterPrint that a commercial fingerprint system matches to 22% of all users in a strict security setting, and 75% of all users at a looser security setting.

Defeating fingerprints as “conclusive proof” of presence is an important step towards freedom for us all.