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.

Announcing the Technology Intelligence Group

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 July 2008 05:30 Written by admin Thursday, 31 July 2008 05:30

Christian Renaud used to be chief architect of Networked Virtual Environments for the Cisco Technology Center. No longer though. He has launched what I consider to be a ground-breaking approach to technology analysis (think Forrester and Gartner), and more importantly, is creating a model that can be replicated in the National Security space.

Here’s Christian describing the philosophy behind the TIG:

The concept behind TIG is to apply the open-innovation and dis-intermediation concepts we are all so familiar with in daily technology and apply those to emerging technology analysis.  The traditional model of technology analysis held that a firm had a proprietary cadre of analysts (some junior, some senior) that wrote reams of research to customers that payed for access to the site.  In our opinion, there is room for improvement in this model on multiple levels.

The first level is that these junior and senior analysts typically receive their insights from the customers and vendors themselves, and aggregate and process these into their result.  In addition, there is little attention paid to emerging technologies, being proactive, until the demand and customer case-studies are sufficient for the large firms to cover them.  This is also inherently ‘lossy’, in the translation from original source through all of the corporate filters.

We believe that the best people to provide emerging technology insight are the people in the trenches themselves, the people experimenting and pioneering.  Rather than receive the insight second or third-handed, the pioneers themselves are the contributors and analysts behind TIG.  This has not only the benefit of direct connection to subject matter experts, but allows us to reach far and wide across the emerging technology spectrum for new technologies and insight.  Open innovation applied via an open pool of emerging technology experts that are not proprietary but known experts in their fields.

Other innovations include an end to corporate sponsorships (you didn’t think Gartner wrote opinions for free, did you?) and an end to “static research”, opting instead for a more flexible pubishing approach – something between a book and a blog post that Renaud refers to as a “social-hybrid model”:

In addition to deep insight and analysis, we will also be providing regular updates to the research in the form of written updates, audio updates, video updates, forums and virtual roundtables.  Rather than get one snapshot in time, you have the opportunity to engage in a group of fellow subscribers with the subject matter expert for ongoing insight as the technology develops and matures.  Its a conversation between yourself and your peers and the experts themselves.

Now while that bit of exciting innovation is rolling around in your brain,  let’s jump over to the DNI’s recent Intelligence Community Directive #205 “Analytic Outreach”: “Analytic outreach is the open, overt, and deliberate act of an IC analyst engaging with an individual outside the IC to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information.” The ICD goes on to suggest specific collaborations such as with individuals in academia, nongovernmental organizations, and business.

One of the things that I most admired about the anonymous bloggers behind Kents Imperative was their recognition of the contributions made by their Business Intelligence “brethren” to the field of intelligence overall. In my opinion, today’s IC analysts who are looking for ways to implement the DNI’s latest directive should watch closely how Christian Renaud is structuring his Technology Intelligence Group. Renaud is breeaking new ground in a field not far removed from your own.

Damn exciting stuff, I’d say.

The Friday Brief

Last Updated on Friday, 25 July 2008 09:17 Written by admin Friday, 25 July 2008 09:14

Here are a few intriguing links for your weekend reading. Enjoy!

Google: 1 Trillion Pages Served, er… Indexed.

A new debating site- OpposingViews – holds a lot of promise for those of us who appreciate informed debate.

If you’re done reading the DNI’s Vision 2015: A Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise then you might be interested in reading the GAO report on the Information Sharing Environment – “Definition of the Results to Be Achieved in Improving Terrorism-Related Information Sharing Is Needed to Guide Implementation and Assess Progress” (June 2008)