Social Network Analysis and Cyber Warfare: An Open Source Project
Last Updated on Sunday, 21 December 2008 01:47 Written by admin Friday, 22 August 2008 02:23
About one month ago, the DNI issued its “Analytic Outreach” directive (ICD-205), which ordered intelligence analysts within the IC to engage with individuals “outside the IC to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information.” Well, think of this project as a reverse Analytic Outreach.
Thanks to the ideas that Bob Gourley has recently expressed in his “Social Media and the National Security Professional” , and to industry contacts made via this blog and through Twitter, I’m both pleased and excited to announce the launch of a social network analysis of Russian cyber warfare activities.
Palantir Technologies has generously offered us the use of its very impressive analytic platform to conduct our research. We’ll be looking not only at network data involved in past cyber warfare attacks (Chechnya, Estonia, and Georgia), but incorporating semantic analysis of Russian hacker blogs in an effort to uncover connections that may not be readily apparent. If this model proves efficacious, we’ll launch a second effort examining Chinese cyber warfare/espionage activities.
This is a pure grass roots effort using only open source data pulled from the Web. All the participants are volunteers. Regular updates will be posted here, and our findings will be published in the appropriate venues.
If this effort sounds as exciting to you as it does to us, we are looking for volunteers who have skills in the following areas: computer security, computer linguists, data base designers/administrators, computer programmers.
If you have the requisite skills and you’d like to participate in this unique project, I’ve set up a protected Twitter alias Gray Goose. Add yourself as a follower and we’ll be in touch about next steps. There will be a vetting process and not everyone who volunteers will be able to participate.
More information will be forthcoming next week so stay tuned!
UPDATE: We’ve been overwhelmed with over 80 volunteer requests. We’re accepting less than 10 so no further requests will be considered. Thanks to everyone who expressed interest.
What does ICD-205, Russian hacktivists, Palantir Technologies, and IntelFusion have in common?
Last Updated on Sunday, 21 December 2008 01:49 Written by admin Tuesday, 19 August 2008 07:45
An announcement will be forthcoming in a few days. In the meantime, IntelFusion will be 10-7 for a bit.
Here’s some relevant background reading until then:
Palantir Technologies: The future of analysis
Intelligence Community Directive #205 – Analytic Outreach
Social Media and National Security Planners
Inside Cyber Warfare
