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IBM Seeks Patent On Digital Witch Hunts
theodp writes "Should Mark Zuckerberg want to identify a snitching Facebook employee, Elon Musk wish to set a trap for loose-lipped Tesla employees, or Steve Jobs want to 'play Asteroid,' they'll be happy to know that a new IBM 'invention' makes it easier than ever to be paranoid. In a newly-disclosed patent application for Embedding a Unique Serial Number into the Content of an Email for Tracking Information Dispersion (phew!), Big Blue describes how it's automated the creation of Canary Traps with patent-pending software that makes ever-so-slight changes to e-mail wording to allow you to spy on the unsuspecting recipients of your e-mail."
I'm pretty sure witches are analog.
Anyone get the feeling that lately technology is increasingly about chasing our technological tails rather than actually doing much of anything?
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Security through obscurity doesn't work. I don't know how many stupid asinine ideas like this I'll have to see before I quit this career, but I suspect the number will be higher than I care to contemplate. This is ridiculously easy to subvert -- just run it through the thesaurus algorithm a few more times. Viola, new unique copies, that don't match what they have on record.
Next on the docket -- "Why you can read your coworkers e-mail but not the NSA's. Explorations in the bleedingly obvious."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
n a newly-disclosed patent application for Embedding a Unique Serial Number into the Content of an Email for Tracking Information Dispersion (phew!)
Get a Blackberry or a wireless broadband card for your netbook. And you can defeat the Great Blue email content tracker, which should keep you and your pathetic band safe from the Death Star, at least temporarily.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
My girlfriend works in the bid and proposal department at Oshkosh Corps. They regularly deal with top secret government contracts for armored vehicles. Each persons copy of whatever paperwork has different sets of typos, so if there are any leaks, they know exactly who it came from.
And yes, they have caught corporate spies with this before.
I got this feeling, since I first read the Zombie Survival Guide, that I should have learned how to produce homemade shotguns instead of learning how to type. When the Big Brother start keeping track of my daily trips to the bathroom, any skill below that won't cut it.
I was going to say that I am going to patent paraphrasing as a technique for circumventing this technology, but then I remembered that would a violation of the DMCA...
You should assume, while in the office, that there is a camera on you and that any content you produce on an employer provided computer will be available for inspection. That's just a simple reality these days. I keep personal information I don't want to share on my own personal computer at home.
Step 1) Hire someone to read the message into recorder.
http://www.examiner.com/x-6665-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m7d24-Miss-Teen-South-Carolinas-title-of-dumbest-person-alive-threatened-by-California-woman
Step 2) Convert voice messages to text using "SpinVox".
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/23/228208
Digital watches are so 1970s.
I thought that this sort of thing was a fairly standard thing to do if you really cared about the document. (this sort of thing was describe in The Hunt for Red October, the concept isn't new, automating it _may_ be)
I hope this sort of thing becomes common.
it will let people track down who distributes things _without_ any need for DRM and that sort of nonsense. if you really can show that a document (mp3, video, etc) came from user X you should have a fairly straightforward case against them, and if you know that this sort of thing can be done you are not going to send out copies of things to everyone.
The whole point of the technology is to encode the serial number by making slight changes to the wording of the message. Reading those words into another medium will still preserve the damning number.
I guess the subtleties of word choice are becoming an old-fashioned concern.
1. How can this be patent worthy? Individual changes to documents to make them traceable have been performed for years - even in anonymous questionnaires...
2. Patented. Good. Perhaps that will prevent others from using this method. If we are really lucky, IBM won't use it either.
Interpret it in your own words. Security broken.
"If Mark Zuckerberg should want to identify a snitching Facebook employee, Elon Musk wish to set a trap for loose-lipped Tesla employees, or Steve Jobs want to 'play Galaga,' they will be happy to know that a new IBM invention makes it easier than ever to be paranoid. In a newly-disclosed patent application for "Embedding a Unique Serial Number into the Content of an Email for Tracking Information Dispersion" (sheesh!), IBM describes how it has automated the creation of Canary Traps with patent-pending software that makes small changes to e-mail wording to allow you to spy on the unsuspecting recipients of your e-mail."
Every slashdot reader knows news posted on slashdot are distorted prior to posting.
Do people still use that? Either way, why not try to improve your hiring processes instead of treating all your employees like criminals. If you do treat me like a criminal and give me the punishment, I do feel obliged to get to do the crime as well...
Don't do non-work from work, if you work at IBM.
Crap! I wrote this from work!
This won't go anywhere.
Or if they do and try to implement this in their system, it will last until the first email is translated into a language OTHER than US English.
"Over the last 20 years, we have remained dedicated to a single mission..."
"Over the last 20 years, we have remained confined to a single mental institution..."
"Over the last 20 years, we have remained obligated to one church..."
"Over the last 20 years, we have remained engaged in espionage..."
[End Of Line]
Spy agencies have been doing this kind of thing for decades. Slightly altering the wording in documents so that the individual recipient is traceable. They used to have a major problem with classified material being leaked to the press by congressional staffers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How long will it be until Apple patents goading a supplier into assassinating employees responsible for losing sensitive product prototypes?
Since there's now a patent, these other companies would have to pay for a license in order to use this method to spy on their employees.
But do leakers do that? Always?
People get caught when their guard is down. People fuck up. People think, "nobody's out to get me."
Sometimes they're wrong. Every single day, people die by that principle. They won't get mugged. They can drive home drunk and probably not crash. They can forgo the condom this time. It's true they're not guaranteed to lose. But sometimes they still do.
You're right that it's not a general solution that you can count on, to find your opponent. But at the same time, you know plenty of damn fools will get caught by it.
It's not security through obscurity; it's advantage through security.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I claim prior art. I have been doing this for decades. Stupid patent office. Greedy IBM.
What are those for?
read the subject as 'Digital Watch' hunts?
telnet somedomain.com 25
.
Type:
HELO yourdomainname.com
MAIL FROM: <you@hostname.com>
RCPT TO: <to@hostname.com>
DATA
lol
lololol
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Something like this was mentioned in Patriot Games by Tom Clancy. It was referred to as "the smoking typewriter".
How many changes can it make before it either changes the meaning of the e-mail, or makes you look like a moron for sending such an malformed message?
Do we now have to go back to straight text e-mails just to ensure that nobody is hiding tracking bugs in it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This has been used for years - for example, back in Maggie Thatcher's day they caught a mole this way. What, exactly, is new about this ? That it's in software ?
1: Find trusted friend working on same document.
2: WinDiff Document A against Document B.
3: Create Document C containing none of the mismatches in Document A+B.
4: PROFIT!
Overall this reminds me of the SDMI system several years ago that claimed that it could hide unique identifying data in an audio recording that couldn't be detected or removed and the developers of it issued a challenge to break the system. When it was quickly broken by Edward W. Felten the music industry responded not with a reward, but with lawsuit attempting to prohibit him from speaking about his methods. Talk about sore losers!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ok, is this to complete with Amazon's double rot-13 encryption patent?
Let me get this straight, they invented a system that identifies people by slightly altering wording of messages.... automatically.... sooooooo, what exactly is stopping people from using the same exact system to automatically modify the message to make it un-traceable again????? Thunderbird plug-in in 3 ... 2...1...
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
The system uses stupid thesaurus switches. Not all synonyms mean exactly the same thing. Some of theses emails are going to sound so dumb that the employees will know something is up.
and I said nothing... because I used Usenet :P :P
joe doe?
It is easy to cut-n-paste, snip, spell check... not the same email at all.
And I mean that in a very real, and legally binding sense.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
There is a simple way to defeat this.
Reply all.
Thanks for the email. (Making sure you quote the email)
The more this comes into play the more forwarding to all will be occurring.
Tom Clancy beat this drum -- almost tiresomely -- in several of his books back in the 90's. Our Fearless Protagonist, Jack Ryan, even came up with the algorithm, the name of which currently escapes me. Granted, the algorithm is never actually explained, but its output is identical to what this patent proposes, so methinks this probably isn't worthy of a patent.
Just my two cents, of course.
-Slarty
. . . Apologies to IBM, joke follows, no offense intended . . .
" . . . a newt . . . ?"
". . . I got better."
"IBM is like a stream of bat's piss."
"It shines out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark."
"IBM is like a dose of clap."
"Before it arrives is pleasure, but after is a pain in the dong."
"It was one of Wilde's. He's the snitch."
Joke stolen from: http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/oscar_wilde.htm
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You could write a similar algorithm to run over the email before you forwarded it on to obfuscate the changes and simply normalise the wording...
You could have it built into your email client...
It is about TRUST. As a reader I got to trust that a leaked document has not been falsified in anyway. Throwing it through a filter will definitly remove that trust. If you changed the meaning of words... well how do I know exactly what you have changed? var x "I helped my uncle Jack of a horse."; document.write(x.toLowerCase());
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'd like to patent, "beating the living piss out of anyone found to be spying on me for any purpose".
I mean damn, if I'm fired for some dissemination of some random email who cares? I got nothing to lose.
Head for that CEOs etched glass door and commence pounding the immoral bastard to blood pudding.
Kinda takes the glamour outa their false sense of total power and control with multiple fractures lascerations and deep bruising.
Hell, I can do 30 days in jail. Can he do 6 months in the hospital? How bout his ITsec or Admin?
Y'all be careful out there with your security measures, there's people like me out there who aren't amused and don't care about consequences.
This includes all perceived authority figures.
-armed and heavily sedated typing from my laptop...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Since there are many example of this technique, both in fiction and the real world! I don't think they can get a patent on the "Canary Trap" itself, but the US Patent Office being what it is, they may be able to get one on the Automated Implementation of the idea, since unlike Arthur C. Clarke's Geostationary satellites, there is the hardware to implement the idea!
All you have to do is paraphrase the entire document and they can't trace it...