In thinking about this BPU I came across a new tool that will likely get a lot of folks to step in line just to avoid the hassle. From a post I put up in a couple other places, I thought it would good to be seen here as well as it may have a direct affect in the very close future, given we have threats of another pandemic and mass shot foricing coming.
This is not good. I just stumbled across this info and did not even know of its existence. I had not seen it in the geek forums for blue, red, or blackhat folks. For those not familiar in IT security you have two teams the blue hat defenders and the red hat attackers. They work together to find flaws in IT security from machines to networks. At other times if an attack is happening they work to find who, where, and how it is being done so they can shut it down and implement security measures that it will not happen again.
One aspect of IT security is the actual communications the flow of data over a network and the internet via transmission of data. Data is sent and received in what is called packets. Each packet is like a piece of mail. It has sender and receiver information, sometimes special instructions and then the data which we can think of as the body. It is this that is often analyzed to find attackers where they are coming from, how they are getting into what is supposed to be a secure system or network. A tool used for this some may know is called wireshark. It captures packets, sorts them as needed sets entire communications in groups to get a bigger picture. It is also used by black hat hacker to capture, modify, and the forward the modified packets to break into systems and networks.
What I stumble on is called Argus and it has been around for a few years now. It started as a proof of concept for realtime network data flow analysis. It is open source which means any one can download it and use it. There are licensed copies which have features the open source does not have.
Turns out Argus is alread in the hands of governments especially the US government. From their website, “it has been used operationally in US Govt, US DoD, DHS, DOE, large corporations and university networks world wide.” Note well “US DoD.” I will come back to that. What is also interesting is what agencies that are not listed that fall under the umbrella of “US Govt.” Think NSA, CIA, DIA(a military but slightly separated for other use agency), FBI, FDA, DHS, and various Health agencies.
Going back to this what something I saw about a contract formalized for further use of a licensed copy for the DoD, seen below.
USSCOCOM Awards Contract To Deploy AI Tool To Detect Disinformation Threats - Accrete states that Argus is capable of countering misinformation, detecting insider threats, supply chain influence, anti-money laundering, competitive intelligence, and background checking. NEW YORK - After U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) awarded Accrete with a five-year multi-million dollar Other Transaction Production (OT-P) software licensing contract for a duel-use open-source anomaly/threat detection software called Argus in 2021, the company has now been awarded a new contract to deploy the AI detection software to detect “disinformation threats” on social media, and other online platforms. According to Accrete, Argus is a “real-time” and “continuously learning” AI threat detection software with the ability to “learn from sparse data” and configurable to be used for social media intelligence, reverse engineering, and logistics disruption for both governmental uses, as well as commercial. What The AI Threat Detection Software Does, And Its Potential To Be Used As A Tool To Target Americans.
If you look closely the mention of one SOCOM or Special Operations Command, the elite forces of the US military. Know that DIA (Denfense Intelligence Agency) as well as the likes of NSA and other agencies share information often. As such various agencies using the Argus AI network analysis software could concievable handle and share extensive information gathered from targeted social media platforms. What they are looking for is patterns of not just packet data but what that data is speaking to as shown they are looking for what they call disinformation. That simply means this AI package has not only the ability to analyze network flow but what that flow contains, subjects, IDs of those sending and receiving information the government would consider disinformation.
We saw in the Pandemic those that stood against the narrative were attacked sometimes jailed or just gone missing. Now note that this is not just the pervue of government but large corporations. Now imagine the Google algorithm on steroids or working in conjunction with the Argus AI. It is one thing to see something and not possibly know what it means but, it is a whole new level of spying when you see something and can quickly learn not only what it means but use that for pattern recognition of multiple communications streams to determine first so called disinformation but also between which parties it is happening.
Finally note the end the mention to can be used against US citizens. Well we know that already as it is well documented by the likes of Snowden and Asange. Well what they put out in the various whistleblower reports pales in comparison to what this new capability will be able to do to spy.
The whole point of computers is in part speed, speed of communication over great distances, the speed of data sharing, uploads, downloads, even live streaming are examples of this as well as what we do here on this platform and the forum.
The forum is privately owned and housed on a server somewhere in one of the Google or Amzon cloud servers in Oregon I think if it has not been moved. It is accessed from Europe, Africa, Australia, Canada, and most of all from the US. All that communication is routed through various nodes of the internet. When a pattern shows up, it all point to a single point the forum home server. It does not matter how secure that server and any associated network may be, the Argus AI package can capture from the more open node servers where the data and communications pass through from sender to receiver. With the level and speed of analyzation it can determine all the senders and the final destination the forum server and then set up a watch channel. All the data and communications can then be captured, saved in files and analyzed independently later. Think of the old time phone tap. Police could actually listen in on live conversations. This is the digital version with a twist of computer software able to think and understand the implications of what it captures. As a software package it can do it, capture and analyze in real time and have results in real time.
Lastly it is not that SOCOM is involved but the other agencies that are and use it already. Since the developers claim it can work on sparse data and I have no reason to disbelieve that it can like humans connect dots that on the surface don’t seem to make sense and actually make sense of it.
So where does that leave us. Well we know from hints and reports that a new pandemic may well be upon us. As such this time there may be a large resistance that will of course communicate online more so than last time. Argus AI will still be able to keep up better than individuals and various algorithms did last time. Sad as it sounds we may either be forced to keep quiet or find our gathering points shut down. But God! Not to discount that God can make a way around it as we know He can there is still places where he may allow it for His purposes and we may well be directly affected by it. Only time will tell. Just know this is a fairly large leap in digital spying capabilities and as little privacy as we may have now, that is going out the door fast. It may already be gone as we know if we learn about it now it was likely in place well before it made the news.
Your call how you will deal with it. But know this even if all you do is open up a connection with the forum server you have been identified from the packet transfer between your browser and the forum server. Just lurking is no protection to anonumity.
