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Mapping The Net And Hunting Down Evil 160

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-heart-has-been-darkened-by-the-internet dept.
DiviN writes: "An FT article headlined the Dark Side of the Web talks about a company that started a while ago to compile a complete map of the Web. Not only do they claim to have it, but moreover they say that they can trace any file on the Internet, any attachment and any posting in a newsgroup to it's origin."
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Mapping the Net and Hunting Down Evil More

Mapping the Net and Hunting Down Evil

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  • He shows me more. Criminals - who have a peculiar habit of inputting all their deeds into PCs and handheld computers - often use software to erase such incriminating information. Modern techniques, however, such as the molecular analysis of a hard disc, can reveal much of what was "deleted".

    This about that next time you delete something from your Palm! He is capturing the data you delete from your PDA! Also, is he implying does molecular analysis of every hard disc connected to the net!?

    Finally, Whitelaw demonstrates steganography - the art of concealing text within more text. "Steganography is considered the third biggest threat to US security after biological and chemical attack," he says

    His laptop shows a letter containing seemingly harmless text. But, once decoded, a very different meaning emerges: it is an order to carry out an assassination. .

    Doesn't he know about ssh!? Yeah..that's gotta be right up there with bio and chem attack. ;-)

    After reading the article, some of the ideas have merit, and he may do them, but a lot sounds like a PHB who only knows what his marketing guys tell him.

    -Pete
  • >About 40 broad categories of undesirable activity, including pornography, fraud, anarchism, "freaking", virus creation, promoting violence, cyber terrorism and hacking, have now been registered in forensic detail.

    "Freaking" is "spreading the word" as a hippie. Oh yeah, so, SO, bAd. Or, I suppose, it could mean going insane.

    I think they meant "Phreaking" which is tampering with the phone system.

    This company must be pretty crappy if they can't even spell what they are looking for.
  • This should be under Humor!
    The Onion should do a piece on this... "Hoax receives millions of dollars from scared multinational corporation".

    Fsck this hard drive! Although it probably won't work...
    foo = bar/*myPtr;
  • They didn't spend six years at evil medical school for nothing!

    Boeing gave them one meeleeon dollars <put pinky finger to mouth>!

    Fsck this hard drive! Although it probably won't work...
    foo = bar/*myPtr;

  • The Internet is an ever changing, ever evolving entity. To map it would be like trying to map every skin cell of every human on earth.
    Every day millions UPON million dissapear and as many are created. And thats just the pages. The individual posts on each one of those pages is even MORE.

    I think this company has made a bostful claim but couldn't back it up. They're hoping no one calls them on it.

  • Their mission is to seek out and protect their clients from the "bad parts" of the Internet.

    What on the Internet is more evil than the alarming number (thousands!) of people hawking scams to technologically illiterate people? They should be protecting people from themselves!

    Fsck this hard drive! Although it probably won't work...
    foo = bar/*myPtr;

  • Its a quiet, boring Sunday, and I just can't let this go unchallenged. This is just an overimaginative press release, which has been popping up in the mainstream press for some time now, touting their 100% accurate mapping of "the dark side of the web". They have avoided the technical press, or else the editors of technical journals have bullshit filters in place and don't reprint this crap. The same phrases and anecdotes keep popping up in the same order, they probably have a PR person writing the articles for lazy journos, it happens.

    on Thursday at the Loch Lomond Golf Club, Actis launched a muscular software program Yep, its a press release written as a story for the FT, who will reprint anything a PR agency hands them as long as it appears story-like.

    You can find them at www.actis-technology.com [actis-technology.com], a company in existence since April of this year. They are a spin-off of buchananinternational.com [buchananin...tional.com] which claim to have been around for quite a while. Their product is called 'Net Intelligence, apparently the apostrophe makes it trademarkable.

    The actis software is essentially a proxy server, which funnels all email, web requests, and other selected traffic through their filters. They give you a list of sites, rated "bad" "not-so-bad" and "approved by Scottish wank^H^H^H^Hhackers", and then let you decide what to do for every alert the software spits at you. For a fee, if you want to track back a file picked up from usenet, they will search their dejanews clone database and tell you where it originally came from.

    Check out some of their outrageous claims and mistakes in their press releases.

    They spell phreaking as freaking. This disqualifies them from the start.

    Consuming about 80 gigabytes of data an hour That means they have a 200 Mbps link at a minimum, and keep it 80% full 80% of the time. Thats a pretty big internet hog for europe, and I've never heard of them. Perhaps they spread that among several providers, but their website is colo at uk2net, running linux. But 80 Gig/hour is about 10 times what unfiltered usenet is producing.

    "We found Stew in the PC section of a bookshop in Glasgow - the best place to find his sort, The last thing I want is disciplined minds." That should sell well to large corporations such as Boeing and the Home Office.

    The team now has complete access to the world's newsgroups, where many viruses are initially posted and distributed, and to every image and every attachment. So they have a usenet server sucking up hundreds of publically accessible newsfeeds. I wonder how they compress all the spam messages that normally clog other servers? Maybe we can convince them to create a dejanews type service.

    "Steganography is considered the third biggest threat to US security after biological and chemical attack" 97% of all statistics quoted by Whitelaw are pulled from his ass (I made that up, its obvious 100% are)

    Criminals - who have a peculiar habit of inputting all their deeds into PCs and handheld computers - often use software to erase such incriminating information I don't know very many criminals, but most IT professionals I know don't ever input all their deeds into PCs. But criminals have discovered the trashcan in windoze 98, better sell recovery services at an outrageous price.

    Unsuspecting companies are largely unaware that a great deal of the world's criminal communications are carried out using their own PCs So criminals the world over first break into companies computers in order to communicate. That's a pretty knowledgable crowd of criminals, better than the job market as a whole. And actis has defined what constitutes criminal communication, that must have been hard to take into account 178 nations, and thousands of individual jurisdictions in over 150 languages. And all that since April of this year. Wow!

    Where serious crime emerges ... so-called "snuff", or murder, videos, the corporate server can be programmed to take a copy of the file for use as evidence in future prosecutions and then switch off power to that particular PC. Hey, they played the paedophile and snuff video card. How does their software detect this on client PCs? And how do you switch off power to a particular PC? Do you re-wire the whole building so that every outlet has a computer controlled breaker? Do they somehow disable the power switch on the employees computer to keep them from switching it back on?

    On his laptop, Whitelaw shows me how to find manuals on bomb-making and sophisticated lock-picking techniques, complete with DIY diagrams. Yahoo, infoseek, altavista, google. Wow, this company has discovered a vast criminal conspiracy, known by the code word "search engines". By installing their proxy filter, they will block all access to these criminal sites.

    This press release is too much to bear. It is pure bullshit, 100% bullshit, and nothing but bullshit. They have Yet Another Internet Filter to sell to companies and they have to make waves to keep their investors happy. Ignore this and get on with first nathalie portman posts or philosophical discussions on "free" vs. "free" software.

    the AC
  • A censor is "one who seeks to supervise the manners or morals of others." An intelligent, techno-savvy censor (or team of censors) is a force to be reckoned with. Just a thought.
  • What gets me, is the uptight nature of these folks. Arghh... Here's a quote from BI's website: "Making the Internet Better for Business." Yup. That's exactly what we need!

    That is precisely what we need. Something has to pay to build major internet backbones, broadband access, technology R&D. Your $20 a month ISP fees aren't going to pay for that entirely.
  • Two points, too right. I would mod you up if I had the priviledege.

    Half of me wants to do exactly what Actis is doing for my own nefarious purposes; the other half is scared by the fact that the people who have no business with the information are the ones who will, in the end, be the only ones with access to it.


    0x0000

  • The Internet is an ever changing, ever evolving entity. To map it would be like trying to map every skin cell of every human on earth.
    Yadda, yadda. Whether you know it or not, you're echoing the same line most people used to try to convinince me the ECHELON could not possibly be real. No way; no how. I can't even even begin to tell you how many times I heard this ... before the evidence went public. Of course, none of those people speak to me any more.... small loss.


    0x0000

  • I suppose unissued credit card number would be one that poses as a valid number. You can't just write 16 random numbers but they have to have a correct checksum(was this the last number?). What the uses for this would be, I don't know. I'd suppose that nowadays everyone wanting a valid credit card number has the capability to actually authorize it before granting any services..
  • They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far.

    IMO, that's worse than anything else they've done. Because they're saying what's oppressive and what's not. They've got this massive technology that can effectively ruin freedom on the internet, and they're deciding by themselves what's to be enforced and what isn't. Where do you draw the line? Pedophilia? Virii? Piracy? Hate speech? Who decides? Why do they get to decide? Just because they thought of it first?

    The problem here is that all of this obviously immense power is weilded by an instutitution that isn't ultimately responsible to the people it monitors. Even if it were regulated by the government, the Internet isn't just one country and shouldn't be regulated by just one.

    --
  • Things like this are what make me wish we could all just get together and rebuild.

    its just this kind of crap thats making me wnat to start a new internet. something no coporation could get onto without a review by a council of geeks (for lack of a better term) that the goverment couldn't get into because it was a private web (not public like the net) but that would allow any user on should they agree that they are prepared for the chaos and don't expect someone to hold their hands. I'm certain a new net with some new technology ould simply rock. without all the banter about the net turning young boys hearts dark. You know when bush said that he forgot to mention that it turns more hearts into code than it does into darkness. I love vint cerf and tcp/ip but i'm willing to bet he could do something new or that anyone could. TCP/ip is how old? It would also be nice to have a series of open organizations that decide the direction of the new net. global elections of flks who would help determine things like TLDs. instead of having some government orgs decide when and if we get .web. a net with a built in payment method so you wouldn't need a credit card but could still remain anonymous. would make micro payment easy. I think there really are a few billion inovations we could add that would make the net, or a new net a better place. and i'm not talking about internet II. something really different. suddenly I'm getting really off-topic think I'll go post to ASK.
  • the letters "P" and "h" are very close together on the keyboard

    What keyboard layout are you using?
    On a QWERTY keyboard the 'P' is four keys to the right and one row up from the 'H'.
    Even assuming a Dvorak layout, the 'P' is three to the left and one row up.

    I hate to be a pedant (not really ;) ) but for "phreaking" to be typoed as "freaking"
    one must be a pathetically poor typist or else you're using a really funky layout.
    (But seeing as the original article was in English, I'd have to guess it was typed on a QWERTY keyboard)


    "If it's called tourist season, why can't we shoot them?"
  • Now let know how you plan to get rid of the hard drives from your ISP, data left to routers on your path, and all other carriers?
  • How the hell would they be able too keep track of all my postings if I can't myself...

    ;-)

  • Problem solved! (Score:3)

    by subreality ( 157447 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:14AM (#686539)
    If this technology is real, it will let us resolve who got the first post, after all.

    :-)

    --Kai
    --slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom

  • Let's see just how effective it is when we filter all of your servers from our routers.

    Idiots.

  • You'll still need logs. Hundreds of bloody logs, each of which will get pulped and used to print out your log files. You can't escape from logs. Give it up.

  • And these folks don't even have a website of their own that we can look at? Ha!

    I love this, too:

    Whitelaw demonstrates steganography - the art of concealing text within more text

    And all this time I thought steganography was much more complicated, and much more useful, than that. It's too bad I can't hide raw data in an audio file like I thought I could...

  • There is a similar project in the Internet Mapping Project [bell-labs.com], whcih some of you may remember. It has been going on for a while. Other interesting mapping and visualization projects are at The Stillman Projects [sjsu.edu] and C5's 1:1 [c5corp.com].
  • The basic certification test is already there - you pay $1000 odd per month to get a T1. no money == no T1. by definition if you have that kind of money youre supposed to be smart. unfortunately companies often employ idiots and just plain lazy sysadmins who couldnt be bothered to secure systems. its also very difficult for an understaffed IT dept to manage thousands of systems with their associated security problems. now if only there was a simple way to upgrade the OSes automatically with trusted logs stored on a remote server when an exploit came out, we wouldnt have these problems.

  • Then who's the Man In The Wilderness (Score:5)

    by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:18AM (#686545) Homepage Journal
    If they can track any file to its origin, then maybe they can tell us who the Man In The Wilderness really is... you know, the guy who broke into Rodona Garst's spam ring and created this interesting web site with her files [freewebsites.com], including the nice photo of Rodona [freewebsites.com], and the picture to so we all know where she lives [freewebsites.com].

  • ... is busy, hung, or dead!

    Tsk. Incompleat sigs. Tsk. :)

  • now this is exactly the kind of commerial stuff big companies like .. ignorance once again. whenever you see bullshit like 'this company is one of the two only ones able to crack any password' or 'yeah we can see any file on the net..' please just STOP READING ! i wonder if the FT actually got money for this article.
  • There's an ad for a ThinkGeek "map of the internet" on the top of this page. Coincidence? I think not.
  • After all, who are we going to go after?
    the evil communists?

    the evil capitalists?
    the evil bankers?
    the evil entrepenuers?
    the evil republicans?
    the evil democrats?
    the evil programmers?
    the evil politicians?
    the evil racial groups?
    the evil microserfs?
    the evil hackers?
    the evil open source people?
    the evil ............
  • I think he's trying to tell me somthing.....

    could it be MI6?

    ________

  • "We are, not by choice, but by force, the Watchment on the world."
    -- JFK's intended speech in Dallas, November 1963.

    Who watches the Watchmen?

    Who gets to take their map and decide what is good, and what is evil?

    I know where I draw those lines, but I also know that my perception of those evils and goods are not the same as all other peoples.

    I'm donating to the EFF again. Pretty soon it's going to be every week.

    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • It's nice to have a Franklin stove in the living room to toss drives and media into. :-)
    --
  • If tomorrow we woke up and books were gone, replaced by the Internet, you can be sure that it would be regulated pretty damn fast.

    As more people use it, more people will want a say in what is on it.

    You seem to be confusing the medium with the content here. All the same basic rules already apply to web content as to hardcopy, starting with: "You can't say it's yours if someone else wrote it." I (and most other's on the web) don't dispute such old and well established laws as pertain to the written word.

    In fact, I agree with most of your post. The rights of individuals do need to be protected, and regulation is often the only way in such a large system. But you show me where it says I have a say in what someone else puts in his or her books. In fact, the idea expressed in the above quote directly opposes one of the oldest and most cherished principals. Regulating internet content is akin to limiting what content is publishable in a newspaper, and no one that I know would stand for that.

  • and I am the lost Anastasia. Or was that Marie, the Queen of Rumania?

  • No. it isn't just a coincidence. But it nothing to be paranoid about either.

    Alot of sites use a keyword to bring up an add related to the topic.

    Goto yahoo and do a search on cars. You'll probably get a car add... a search on OS's you'll probably end up with an add for Win2000 etc.

  • They were right about Echelon. The Echelon as painted by conspiracy theorists and magazines (every phone call you make being scanned for keywords etc) could not be real, the suspected model of what echelon actually is is much more practical and nowhere near as far fetched.

    Likewise, the number of bogus claims made by this company is immense, but lets just examine one:
    There a 20000 new porn sites put up each day.

    How do they know this - obviously they can't map the internet every day so it's extrapolated. But lets assume they can remap the entire internet on a regular basis (you'd have to to discover the new porn sites). How do they know they're porn sites? None of the censorware programs have solved this problem - do they have someone looking (20k pages a day?), do they search for naughty words or phrases (this has a collosal failure rate), do they have an AI that can spot naughty bits (remember the last attempt at this has a success rate of 50% - I can write one of those in 5 mins - sure this doesn't mean it can't be done, but I would be very skeptical of this scale of problem being solved as a side project to an internet mapping project). You have the same problem for racial hate speech etc etc. And that's just one of the dumbass claims they made.

    Or maybe it's the exagerated claims of a company that wants free advertising/higher share prices/demand for their database by people who don't know how rediculous the concept is - you know, the managers with their inspirational calendar sitting on the desk telling them everything is possible.

    I know which one I think is more likely.
  • We've all heard these sort of claims before. There was a company called Verance, oh wait, they're still around, and even though they've moved to encryption et al services, there was a time when their executive was poised to do the exact same as the claim made in the post's article.

    1. My Vote's On This Doofus [mikegallay.com]
  • Yes, we can map every piece of information on the internet. We can also tell you what your favorite sites are. Now dont bother writing us telling how you feel, we already know. See, we're the federal government...and we're listening.

    echelon: its whats for dinner

    "sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
  • The net changes that anyone who spent the time "mapping" it mapped it while it was changing, and after compiling the map, has realized that much of it is already outdated.

    It's like the crew that paints the Golden Gate Bridge. They start at one end, and when they finally reach the other end it's time to start over.

    Pete

  • I wonder if we can use this to create a better Napster/Scour...

    But it could be used for evil... RIAA could find out exactly where big MP3 sites start up. Lame!

    Peace out.
  • I bet they didn't fully index my random link [ducker.org] page.
  • Arent your regular prices just 125% of normal then? WFT is 25% EVERYDAY mean???? Dumbass.

    25% of 125 is not 100. (Dumbass.)

    Pete


  • No, I didn't notice any cookies. Junkbuster [junkbuster.com] filters them out for me.

  • They're either lying or... (Score:3)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @10:49AM (#686564) Homepage
    I really don't think that a single company could get the technology to trace everything that happens on the net, especially now that everybody seems to have broadband, and thousands of postings happen on usenet every minute. If they were tracking all this, they probably would have bragged earlier.

    Still, I'm going to start using PGP again.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • From the article:

    The porn-viewing public - which forms just 2.5 per cent of the database - cannot keep up: the number of sites is growing exponentially but the number of visitors to them only linearly, says Whitelaw.

    Does this mean that the entire internet will soon be pr0n? That porn sites will outnumber the users hugely? Sounds like my kind of hell.

  • truth is irrelevant, you will be edited to sound shocking/funny.

    i can tell by your tone that you're the same person who has posted this to every other applicable thread -- i can just see you loading every story at -1, then Ctrl-F-ing and typing in "Gore" to find the newest offenders.

    it's politics silly, what actually happens to actual people is not important.
    after all, those who live by the media soundbyte-invective die by the media soundbyte-invective.
    move on with your life.

    ---
    the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties

  • Haiku (Score:1)

    by 575 ( 195442 )
    Frightening prospect:
    Big brother is a Scotsman
    At least Stew seems cool

  • I, the great and Powerful OZ, own the web... (Score:3)

    by Crutcher ( 24607 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:19AM (#686568) Homepage
    Really, no, I do.
    'comon, man, act scared. I just told you I owned it. "I SEE ALL", see, didn't you here? You should give me money now ...

    No, wait,
    Hey KID!! stay away from that curtain, hey, HEY!!

    Crap.

    Please give me money anyway?

    -- Crutcher --
    #include <disclaimer.h>

  • Great Experiment (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Thanks to this article, we now know what happens when a gullible reporter with a tight deadline meets an enthusiastic promoter with a treasure map to sell:

    Your either get an incredible article like this one or a Presidential candidate. Thanks.

  • A big joke that silly customers get taken in by. A company desperately seeking more and more information could be taken in by this.

    One question that does come to mind is, given the constant state of flux that the internet is in, how long can information gathered be considered correct, and much of the internet could be mapped to what degree of accuracy.
  • The article says, that the system incorporates 40 categories of undesirable activity. Now, this is the most scary part of it all - how does the system, and finally the people who work for this company, determine what is good and bad?

    If they do the classification only for purposes of throwing up rough statistics, fine. But if sites / information connected to a actual person leads to some sort of retribution from either companies/empolyers/ISPs or the law enforcement this becomes an issue of constitutional rights.

    If these acts are even initially based on determinations of a private company, this should be banned. Making content illegal is the business of democratically elected bodies with constitutional safeguards.

  • "freaking" the term, in the time when i was in highschool, meant when people are dirty dancing. i can understand why this would be rated with cyber terrorism. it promotes bodily contact and bad dancing, which could lead to unholiness.
    <P>
    i agree with you, they may mean "Phreaking". they may have typed it wrong. the letters "P" and "h" are very close together on the keyboard.
    <P>

  • Regulating internet content is akin to limiting what content is publishable in a newspaper, and no one that I know would stand for that.

    I'm not too sure about this. First, web sites are not all "news" sites. In some cases, they are entertainment sites. Entertainment is restricted to a certain degree (rating systems in movies, eg.). Second, I don't agree that newspapers have an unlimited range. If the newspaper decided to run a full page ad of ultra hard core pornography, I would assume that a local constabulary would step in. We (North America) do not live in a censorship-free society.

    By the way, the very nature of society allows me, as an individual, a say in what other people do. It protects my individual rights. As an example, it is illegal to publish or distribute hate crime literature, or Holocaust denying literature. According to the "unregulated content" rule, this should be allowed, but our society (for me, Canada) has determined that we don't want this in our country, as it is an assault on our values and standards. As an OSS advocate (can't remember which one) put it, "Your right to swing your fist around ends where my face begins".

    I agree with your idealogy that books should be completely uncesored. However, practically speaking, this just isn't the case. Virtually all media is censored in one form or another. If it bothers you to think that the government would censor these sources, look at it instead that they are self-censoring, and would not publish material that would cause them to lose business (media companies are notorious for profit margins). As a consumer, if my local newspaper started running full hard core pornography, I'd probably stop buying it (well, except for the odd one).

  • How much will these things slow the already slow internet, i already hate the slow connectionspeed to certain parts of the internet. Wow more WOMBAT.
  • There's a road nearby here that is constantly under construction. It's about a two-mile stretch, but it's so busy, being a main throughway between two suburbs and the main city, and being the main road to the industrial parks, that it's heavily traveled by many trucks. It's always under construction so much, that the sign which was erected several years ago for "Road Construction Ahead" has a permanent pole, and is ruined from all the road salt and weathering. Still today, it's got a portion under construction. They'll never "complete" it.

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]
  • To make this kind of project a safe one from the viewpoint of the Internet community, it either needs to be available to everybody or nobody. If everybody, we can check up to see who's trying to shut who down and demand an accounting, and if none is provided, the victims can look into various forms of relief, legal and otherwise.

    OK, let's grant that the current people in charge are really good guys that won't let totalitarian regimes use their service. How long before this company is acquired by a corporation who has no social conscience and will sell the info to the highest bidder? Or a government with no hesitation about trading people's lives for better export treatment or other kinds of political deals?

    I'm surprised that the hacker community hasn't already unloaded on these guys.

  • So the internet dies and these guys will be able to restore the WWW from tape for us. woohoo. I hope they are doing test restores as well. I wouldn't mind them restoring the old deja posts that were deleted and perhaps find that Britney Spears Sat Night Live appearance that i can never find when i remember to search for it.

  • Wouldn't THESE guys now possess the largest collection of child pornography? Why are these guys NOT in Jail? Why are they not on trial?

    Because they are the Good Guys(tm). Only the Bad Guys(tm) get in trouble for possessing mere information.

    And that is where society crosses the line between justice and ritualized violence. Private possession of a picture hurts no one, yet society needs someone to hate. Society needs someone to disenfranchise. Salem had its witch trials, and now we have thought trials on similar pretenses. Any excuse to act against "weirdos," "freaks," or others who while not hurting people are otherwise a target of persecution. No one likes Humphry. Silly Bill of Rights, getting rid of him was much easier back in the 1600s. Lets see what he has on his computer... pictures of a nudist colony and an essay on terrorism. Right, throw this terrorist pedophile in jail.

    Hurting children is bad and indefensible. Data laying idle on a harddrive hurts no one, at least in any rational sense.

  • ...(every phone call you make being scanned for keywords etc) could not be real...
    ...uhhhh... Right. No, no, that's okay. I know you don't want to disturb the other ostriches... no need to tell them... Don't get your feathers in a riffle; I know, I know, the nice warm sand is soothing on your forehead... please, don't let me disturb your mediations ... and no, that's not a mispelling of meditations ...

    Denial is not a river in Egypt anymore, either.
    0x0000

  • Lets see.. I searched my logs for gdev.net (logged every host to it since inception) and.. Well lets just say altavista, google, and even lesser sites have hit my site, Ive seen nothing resembling a crawler and well lets just say they are conspicously absent from my weblogs.. period. Unless they hit it with a web client (seems unlikely....) (flitered out lynx, IE, netscape) and didnt see anything resembling a web crawler of theres.. I somehow seriously doubt their claims.. they are already missing one part of the net... no matter how small the *whole web* is always a false claim ;-P

    Jeremy
  • p.s. dont lambast me for how unscientific or how much this does not prove.. i was just throwing it out ther efor fun

    Jeremy
  • But not all inquiries are welcome. The government of Singapore asked if it could control web content; the Chinese authorities made a similar request. Whitelaw refused. Helping to track criminals was one thing; helping regimes find human rights activists quite another.

    i would like to see the book where he draws the line between what is criminal and what isn't. I think that most of us would agree that child pornography is bad. This is pretty straight forward, but where does he draw the line on idealistic issues?

    john

  • Re:Oh boy... (Score:3)

    by Stoutlimb ( 143245 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:39AM (#686586)
    Speaking of content... It seems like they spent a lot of effort just "cataloguing" porn. Man, what a job! Heck, if I got paid do do that, I'd never leave the office! I'd grow a beard, walk around in bare feet, and sleep under a desk.

    Wait a minute....
  • sounds like they're archiving the web and news .... they do have signed copyright releases from all the authors right?

  • Sounds a bit overexaggerated to me. (Score:5)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @08:13PM (#686591) Homepage
    Several points made in the article give me the impression that the capabilities of the database are not as powerful as claimed.

    First are the statistics on pornography sites. Yes, most sites just harvest material from public sources and redistribute it. However, how exactly were they able to determine how many images are stored on membership pages? Porn sites are notoriously pay per view services. Useful statistics on the volume of data a porn site will hold will simply not be available unless memberships were purchased on every single site. I don't care if they said they dont' care how much it costs, I know for a fact they're not purchasing memberships on 20,000 porn sites each day. :)

    How do they claim they can archive EVERY newsgroup on USENET? No newsserver serves EVERY newsgroup, as its a distributed network. Most of them offer 98% of the groups, but they'd be hard pressed to have EVERY single one of them.

    Then there's the discussion about "hackers", followed immediately about information about bomb building, lock picking, and credit card numbers.
    I'm also somewhat unsure what good a list of "unissued credit card numbers" would accomplish. If its unissued, then its useless, right? IT WON'T WORK. Here's an unissued credit card number: 4204 4502 5092 2942

    There. I GUARANTEE you that NOBODY has this number. Its "unissued". Now I'm a hacker! Oh goody! :) I'm also unsure how someone would "generate" the address of cardholders. That would be information contained in a database which would have to be "obtained". Its not information that is obtained within the number itself. As for "robbing" ATM machines. I'll give you 3 good ways to do it. Shouldersurf someone's PIN number, mug them, then drain their account, use a sledgehammer and blowtorch to extract the cash from the machine, or wait until someone draws some cash from it, and just steal it from them. I wouldn't consider any of these ways to be smart, but I certainly don't know of any other way to do it. Nor do I expect there to be any reliable information out there that would express such possibilities.

    How is steganography considered to be the 3rd biggest threat? According to this article, its more dangerous than nuclear weapons. All it is is a form of encryption. I suppose if I can't read a message of yours its less dangerous than if I CAN read a message, but it turns out to be the wrong message. forget the fact that I shouldn't be reading your messages anyways. If someone wanted to send a message detailing an assassination attempt, its unlikely anyone would obtain it until after the deed had been attempted.

    Now.. lets examine some lines of FUD:

    Unsuspecting companies are largely unaware that a great deal of the world's criminal communications are carried out using their own PCs, notes Whitelaw.

    Security experts are seriously worried about the threat of attacks on airport flight management computers, power systems, and hospital equipment, let alone stock markets such as Nasdaq.

    Anyone notice a pattern here? Sounds like this is the same techniques that antivirus vendors spew out in an attempt to get people to buy their products. Your computers are just CRAWLING with viruses and you'll most likely die if you don't use our product. True, the above lines were a tad more subtle, but the issue is the same.

    oh well.. something to think about

    -Restil

  • Re:WTF (Score:3)

    by Woundweavr ( 37873 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @12:03PM (#686599)
    And what would happen if you tried to map every house in the world? Even with satalites and all other tools of modern technology by the time you finished, many of the houses would be different or gone and new ones would be there.

    And this company doesnt just claim to map houses but their purpose and what is inside and where the nails came from. And the Internet mutates much faster than architecture. So yes, the claim is ridiculous.

  • You've got files on your lan, the software fingerprints it and filemonitors log where it goes.

    They've got a big database which they fill with fingerprints from usenet porn, warez, and other questionable newsgroups. One of these fingerprints hows up on your workstation, a filemonitor detects it, and you're in trouble with the boss..

    The password cracking thing is wholly unrelated to this stuff, as well as the harddrive forensics and all that other stuff, which has been around for decades.

    They probably don't have to access all new porn sites, just wait for the porn to show up on usenet. The real question is how good the fingerprints are. You've got your birthday-paradox on the one hand, and mutating files and multi-generational copies on the other hand.. This post probably changes the fingerprint on this whole page, but it shouldn't. And if it doesn't, the fingerprint is probably the same as the fingerprint for cnn.com.

    Impressed? Nah. Handy? Maybe.. Dunno.. If your employees are watching porn all day, you ought to notice, I mean, what are all your non-porn watching employees doing if you can't notice the difference in productivity?
    --

  • Anyone who knows where you can buy unbleached long life printer paper please let me know...

    I happen to care about these things, so:

    Try Preservation Equipment [preservati...ipment.com] (there is a US version but I can't remember it's name -- University-something...):

    Mellotex

    Mellotex is a smooth brilliant white paper that is manufactured on twin-wire machines for added strength and stability. The twin-wire technology also creates two identical printing surfaces to achieve perfect printing results with no paper feeding problems. The smooth uncoated sheet is pH neutral, unbuffered and 100% elemental chlorine-free. Not only is Mellotex the premier product for use on colour copiers and digital printing equipment, but it also makes an ideal unbuffered interleaving sheet. The paper conforms to ISO 9706 requirements for permanence and as such is suitable for archival use or applications requiring "acid-free" paper.

    It's no good without the proper ink. Have a browser around on their site and get a copy of the catalogue (presumably from the US).

    I'm just a happy customer...

  • The reason why I posted this article was that I wanted to point out, that: -1- while people in the U.S. are yelling about privacy and the government may or may not listen the Net is international and foreign snoops can do as they please... -2- while the power of corporations in Europe is arguable less than their US' counterparts, it's usually enough that someone helps law enforcement once to get a 'card blanche' in the public eye -3- if the FT bothers to actually write about it, then there is likely to be more to it than meets the eye AND, MOST IMORTANTLY: -4- if a private company in Europe is attempting what they say they have already accomplished, what about companies [government organizations] in Australasia? Australia for one has no privacy rights in their constitution and no matter how much activists and officials hype, the government can pretty much do as they please [and are said to have done so for, you guessed it, the U.S.]
  • When I first read this comment, I thought "that's impossible, they must have meant lack of organization". But the article sure doesn't seem that way ...

    The Internet, as we know it, can be seen as a new nation being formed. At first, in its earliest stages, it is chaotic, incoherent, and uncontrollable. As it gets larger, and more people join, the need for regulation will arise. Don't be too proud of this invention you've created - it will one day be subjected to the same regulatory world that we all live in.

    There can be no question that the Internet will soon be regulated. All forms of media as we know it, in virtually all countries in the world, are regulated in one form or another. If tomorrow we woke up and books were gone, replaced by the Internet, you can be sure that it would be regulated pretty damn fast.

    In any sufficiently large group of people, there is the need for regulation to promote order and protect the rights of the people in the group. In a very large group, there is a need for representation, as not all individuals can be directly involved in the regulation or decision making. Although this might not lead to one single entity (depending on how you define entity - it is definitely foreseeable that it will be one organization), it definitely will occur.

    The phenomenon of the Internet is not larger than the people of the world. As more people use it, more people will want a say in what is on it. I don't see how that can be questioned.

    All that remains is how it will be implemented.
  • Not only do they claim to have it, but moreover they say that they can trace any file on the Internet, any attachment and any posting in a newsgroup to it's origin.

    So forward this story on to 100 of your friends and Bill Gates will give you $500 and a trip to Disney World!


    Viv
    -----------
    I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.
  • I'm shaking in fear...all those people I dissed in the newsgroups will be able to trace me back to...the pool of dynamic ip addresses my isp doles out to their 6000 customers.

    Eeek!
  • First point:

    This creates an interesting dichotomy for me, half being "Oh my God, this is unethical and dangerous for society -- what if <insert conservative politician's name here, i.e. Bush or Gore> got his hands on this?!" And the other half being, "Wow, this is neat -- the crem de la crem of hackers, crackers, and other people I grew up worshipping doing something really impressive... how do I sign up?"

    Second point:

    To all the Slashdotters who say these people don't know what they're talking about, talk to Patrick Naughton, Kevin Mitnick, or the fabled Jaeger who was brought down by an astronomer with a few extra printers capturing all of the data going through the office... they'll tell you that people can and do track what's happening on the 'net.

    These are a clever group of people, but they aren't doing this as outside observers -- the thing about recovering deleted data assumes that the machine has been seized. Being able to track the data means that they are inside your IT department, inside your ISP, inside your phone company. The FBI is good, but Carnivore is useless without ISP cooperation... and they get it. So too do lots of other people.

    Don't think for a minute that you are smarter than the folks at Actis... maybe you are, but are you really smarter? How about the people who email you, or the people who run your ISP? Even if you don't make mistakes, there will be people who do, and then whoever is looking for you might find you.

    You can never be too paranoid, only too arrogent.

    --brian

  • hmm and even if they can't (doubt it) probably now would be the time to make sure that in a decade they still can't...

    Or give up on 'The Internet' altogether, maybe it been bought and sold too many times already and it's tme for something new...

  • Exactly what is this? A method to "frighten" or "scare" people? To "freak" them out? Or is the author just a lnguistic grunt who didn't pick up on the "ph" replacement?

  • Very unlikely. (Score:3)

    by Rob Kaper ( 5960 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @10:53AM (#686629) Homepage
    Unless they had near unlimited bandwidth and resources, this is impossible.

    Sure, they might have mapped a whole lot. But you cannot scan all the new and existing domains and IP addresses (you'll need both, some IP's don't have a domain and other have multiple named based hosts) and check whether there are new services on any of those. Continuously.

    Lots of good *and* bad spots are protected in one way or the other and I doubt they circumvented each and every of those protections.

    Again, I will believe they mapped a large portion, but a claim to have it *all* is quite arrogant and shows the lack of a solid understanding of the Internet, really.

  • And tomorrow... (Score:5)

    by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @10:53AM (#686630) Homepage
    And tomorrow, it will all be obsolete. I can put a server up today at an IP and domain, then the next day ship it off to another state or country to give to someone else to host.

    Or I can just decide that my FTP server needs to house jazz tunes tomorrow instead of the rap tunes today.

    Who knows? The net changes that anyone who spent the time "mapping" it mapped it while it was changing, and after compiling the map, has realized that much of it is already outdated. Look at the search engines and how often a 404 creeps up, or even server not found.

    No way they can know definitely attachments and files. It changes too fast too often.

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]

  • Questionable Claims (Score:5)

    by iElucidate ( 67873 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @10:55AM (#686631) Homepage
    They claim that they archive over 80GB an hour, and then talk about the content of porn sites, etc. Of course, how do they have access to all of these porn sites is another thing altogether - that must cost quite a lot for all of those memberships! The system appears to be some kind of massive search engine/archive similar to Alexa Internet except much more broad and with more sophisticated tracking and reporting capabilities. Although they decline to specify how, apparently they are able to compare images against each other, track texts, and do some massive queries to track back things like the Melissa virus to their first known wherabouts. They claim to have one of the largest databases in Europe, and to have found the perpetrator of the I Love You virus two days before the Feds. This really seems unlikely, and it would be nice to have some outside information, such as pictures, or results. How you can catalog and search this amount of data must really be a feat, considering their DB is larget than TerraServer and they aren't IBM or Microsoft, with billions to burn. Luckily, they can only "track" web pages and Usenet postings, so far, and they apparently classifiy it all by domain name and various other (unexplained) patterns.
  • The article claims that the company is one of only two who can crack passwords from clients or for criminal cases, or even from ex-employees who left companies and changed all the passwords. It may just be possible that they cracked passwords to get into all these porn sites. Or they could have just asked to be let in to inventory. Who knows?

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]

  • Oh boy... (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    "Do not adjust your web browser; we control the horizontal, we control the vertical..."

    I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, I have google. And with google, I can find Deja News, Altavista, yahoo, etc., etc. And with those, I think I've got it fairly well covered.

    Incidentally, how could you claim to map the whole web without violating the Robot Exclusion Principle? I guess you could have a staff of people collecting content, but that would take *way* too long.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • why is Slashdot posting this obvious gibberish? Of course they can't map the entire fucking internet. So why is it posted here? Just so we can refute it??
  • Japan: "senryuu".
    The common vernacular,
    In English: "haiku"

    Name them what you want.
    I understand my domain,
    Labels make not art

  • Impressive if it's true (Score:5)

    by Jon Peterson ( 1443 ) <jon.snowdrift@org> on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:02AM (#686637) Homepage
    It's a battle out there. The battle between net net users' and programmers' desire to be anonymous and private, and their desire (especially the programmers) to log every damn thing that happens.

    There seems to be a huge contradiction in the hacker mentality, on the one hand to collect endless log files, traces, data stores, id's, usernames, passwords, tags and the rest of it, and on the other hand to want to remain entirely private, safe behind their screen.

    Personally I'd love to remove all the log files. No more http log files analysis. No more SMTP message-id's and paths in the headers. No more off the cuff usenet postings archived for the next n decades and cross referenced by the university userid of the the guy who posted it 6 years ago.

    I don't see what's so good about archiving the Internet. It's like having a ten hour meeting where nothing gets decided but hey - we'll be able to see exactly what was said 10 years from now!

    If you want it to last, print it out. On non-bleached paper. [Anyone who knows where you can buy unbleached long life printer paper please let me know...].

    So, I'm all for Buchanan and it's sleuthing. I'm not convinced they can do all they said they can do, but hey, you leave enough log files lying around and sooner or later someone'll make a living reading through them.

    You can't have your cake and eat it!
  • I think they're a little too late. ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] created a map of the Internet last year. It can be found here [thinkgeek.com].
  • Not only do they claim to have it, but moreover they say that they can trace any file on the Internet, any attachment and any posting in a newsgroup to it's origin."

    To quote one of the great Slashdotter, Grey Fox: "someone had to put all that chaos there". How the heck can these people track any file and any post on the entire internet when it takes me (and I don't think I am alone on this) 3 or 4 days to remember where I put important documents on my computer?

    Actually, maybe the opearative word is any , any doesn't mean all. Sure if someone wants to zero in one particular file or ip address or usenet poster, they can. But focusing on all of them? Impossible.

    After all, having a map of the ocean doesn't mean you can swim across the Hudsons Bay.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • We're expected to believe that this man has produced a database that in some way encompasses the entire internet, and will continue to do so in real-time. He was able to do it because he is brilliant and employs the talents of out-of-the-box-thinking eccentrics. He can 'recover' any password, and in case he can't, he can crack the code faster than law enforcement.

    He has not only archived the whole internet, but he has classified it. His software knows which sites are naughty and which are nice--everywhere on the fucking World Wide Web. His services can prevent your company's computer resources from being used to promote violence, foster anarchy, or (especially apropos) commit fraud.

    Unfortunately for you, his client list is currently closed, due to oversubscription, so he won't be able to sign you up this month. Damn the luck. Maybe he'll be able to squeeze you in when he checks Boeing [boeing.com]'s web site and finds out they only have 188,000 employees, so a lot of those '300,000 PC's' don't get turned on very often.

  • ...and this database is a big as thay say it is, wouldn't these guys now bet the world's biggest collectors of smut and filth? Wouldn't THESE guys now possess the largest collection of child pornography? Why are these guys NOT in Jail? Why are they not on trial?

    ...Further more... wouldn't we all know about their crawlers?


    "A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --

  • Froth and Bubble (Score:3)

    by elronxenu ( 117773 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @02:30PM (#686653) Homepage
    If I were to take all the claims in the article literally, then these guys would have to be magicians - since we know that some of the things they claim to be able to do are not compatible with the protocols in use today (i.e. impossible).

    Add in random "gee whiz" quotes such as that it is possible to extract the data off an "erased" hard disk (which is entirely irrelevant to a discussion of Internet content) and steganography ("gee whiz, people can hide messages within inocuous text!) and we have the recipe for froth and bubble, self-promoting but of no actual value.

  • They couldnt trace stuff to the source (Score:3)

    by cypher3241 ( 241728 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:04AM (#686659)
    They might be able to find the first time that for example a jpg was posted to any web site or any newsgroup or anything else public. But simple private communication with encryption will not be seen nor will anyone using stuff like freedom.net or better - the cypherpunk / mixmaster remailers. If they monitored every entry/exit point into those networks like some believe the NSA does, then they might be able to track things to the source only because those networks have some weaknesses at this point to such a powerful observer.

  • TRACE THIS!!! (Score:3)

    by Johnny Starrock ( 227040 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:05AM (#686660)
    HA HA!! You can't trace my 1337 A.C. bomb making schematics fr1st p0ster1ng!!!

    Oh crap, forgot to check the little box..

    *knock knock knock*


    -----------

  • FUD, looks like mostly Usenet (Score:4)

    by gbnewby ( 74175 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:06AM (#686661) Homepage
    From the article: "Steganography is considered the third biggest threat to US security after biological and chemical attack," he says. Huh? Ridiculous!

    It sounds like they have a news feed, and are able to mine Usenet articles to try to determine the earliest signs of things like viruses. This is nice, but not particularly advanced information retrieval.

    The other part is that they characterize sites/hosts' Web content. Identifying a porn site is not really that hard since most WANT you to know they're porn so you're (a) interested, and (b) ready to enter your credit card number.

    From what I could see, the only interesting part is that they claim to have uncovered a kiddie porn ring by analyzing some sort of net traffic. This doesn't sound all that different than the firm that monitored Napster traffic to find ~300K Metallica fans^H^H^H^Hcriminals. As others have pointed out, monitoring the whole net is certifiably impossible to do except for targeted sites.

    Bottom line: the article is inflammatory and doesn't separate out "real" feats of the company from fear, uncertainty and doubt. About par for the Financial Times, I guess.

    P.S.: Anyone find a URL for Actis? (it's not actis.co.uk).

  • The last line is the scariest
    "Whatever happens to Actis, the completion of the map is prob-ably the first big step in the quest to control internet anarchy."

    We need control on the internet?

    They also cliam more than 20,000 porn sites are added a day, and these sites are all bad, but yet they have "A Map of the Interenet". Is this possible? What about the 20,000 sites added today? They found them already????

  • They were able to find out who it was. The second they did, they immediately erased all log files concerning him and deleted any directory files even mentioning him in passing. Then they programmmed their search engine to ignore any activity whatsoever from this user.

    Finally, they sent him an email saying "keep up the good work."
  • After tracing the entire internet to its origins, they learned what savvy insiders, politicians, and geeks knew all along: It all started with Al Gore.

  • Patently absurd (Score:5)

    by Scot Seese ( 137975 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:09AM (#686677)

    Claims like this smack only of bold leaps in self-promotion and hype. Considering the number of NEW devices connected to the internet on a daily basis, and the increasing number of sites using dynamically generated content, claims such as "we've mapped every byte on the internet" are insane.

    At the heart of these new "Internet Private Investigator" type companies is a desire to develop methodology or technology that is marketable to law enforcement or private companies who have an interest in tracking users down for a number of legal reasons. Whether it's a hate group posting bomb schematics, or a geek programmer reposting DeCSS source code for for the five hundredth time, "THEY" would like to find you.

    These companies fail to realize that the persons they are trying to track down, in many cases are better than those doing the tracking. When you have high school kids able to deface NASA web pages, sniff credit card numbers off a Fortune 500 company's server, hijack telnet and ftp sessions, IP spoof, and root clueless ISP's servers to use as jumping-off points, it makes it very easy to stay anonymous.

    But if the company in question told investors they had developed technology that enabled them to catch idiots, it wouldn't sizzle, would it. :)

    If the government required licencing for anyone able to purchase T1 or greater bandwidth, ala FCC licencing for radio stations - AND, pass a basic certification test verifying they understand essential, basic security measures for the OS they choose to employ, it would make the internet a much more secure (and accountable) place, and give higher professional creditability (and marketability) to the persons holding the licence.

  • Scary Intentions (Score:5)

    by petard ( 117521 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:09AM (#686678) Homepage
    As I was sitting there reading this, it struck me that the technology involved wasn't what frightens me. They're almost certainly nothing new or advanced. What scared me was the stated intent at the end of the article:
    Whatever happens to Actis, the completion of the map is prob-ably the first big step in the quest to control internet anarchy.

    The quest to control internet anarchy is indeed frightening. When an entity wants to quash a viewpoint (or a group of people), all that is necessary is to declare them "dangerous". In most cases, that's not a stretch. The ideas that the powers that be want to control most often are just that; they're very dangerous to the powers that be. They threaten the status quo. Just now, it looks like they' re not doing anything terribly frightening. They've refused to use the technology to bend to the whims of certain oppressive governments, thus far. The question remains, though. Do you want any single entity to have the power to say what's "undesirable" on the internet?


    --
    Donating to the EFF now...
  • That's a silly thing to say. We can map the Internet just as well as we can map a country. My OS map of Sussex is about 10 years old, and doesn't show some modern houses and roads. Also, being 1:25,000 scale, it doesn't show some things at all (like individual trees). Does that mean that's it's useless?? Of course not.

    Likewise a map of the Internet. Likewise a phone book, or a dictionary, or anything else.

    So, maybe the Internet changes faster than physical features or phone numbers, or languages, or anything else you might want to chart and record. That doesn't mean much, it's a degree of error at best, maybe not even that if the mapping technology can keep up.

    Geez. I wish people would stop thinking that the Internet was some kind of amazing unstoppable thing that breaks all rules, paradigms and everything else. It's just a bunch of computers on a network. Sure, a big one and a disorganised one, but hey...


  • Jealous of the incredible parties described in all the '.com gone' stories, they have invented some system which has the sole purpose of seeming amazing to techno-morons, in the hopes of getting $40m so they can play in the "Who wants to blow a million or 20?" season finale.

  • molecular Analysis of hard disk? (Score:3)

    by tcc ( 140386 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @11:11AM (#686681) Homepage Journal
    I knew there was probably something like that around... but never seen it written anywhere yet.

    Funny thing is, why when drive dies, (headcrash, not the PCB that burns out) it's such a pain in the ass to retreive data and we get "It's impossible to recover the data from it" but if you'd be a p0rn freak with disgusting tastes, and throw your drive against the wall and step over it just before the cops raid you, they could revive every single pixels of the shit you've leeched? Makes you wonder what purpose the technology serves, not that I am against taking these people down, but average joe that worked on a project without doing any backups (stupid I know, but the majority is "stupid" anyways :) ) cannot benefit from this.

    Now you'll have to go from 1 wipe to 10.... thank you for
    making people more paranoid :) heh.

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