CIA Invests In Anti-Cybercrime Startup

wiredmikey writes "Launched by the CIA in 1999, In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States. In-Q-Tel has invested an undisclosed sum in Silver Tail Systems, an emerging online fraud prevention and analytics company, an investment they say enables them to offer powerful technology companies in the US intelligence community and further protect the nation's assets."

Comments

Commercial?

[oakbox]

This reads more like a commercial than an article for Slashdot.

What's up with that?

Or am I simply not seeing the big picture here?

- oakbox

Re:that crown and handcuffs photo

[cappp]

A wrong image perhaps...but now I've got something to replace reciting baseball scores with when I next have to uh cross the finish line second.

Silver Tail Systems

[cappp]

If you're wondering what Silver Tail does: TFA provides the following

“Silver Tail Systems solution monitors website traffic and identifies anomalies in real-time. Their unique system creates models of what is normal traffic for a website’s population and uses that to identify threats,” said William Strecker, Executive Vice President of Architecture & Engineering and CTO at IQT. “Our strategic investment in Silver Tail Systems enables us to offer this powerful technology to our customers in the U.S. intelligence Community and further protect our Nation’s assets.”

Silver Tails own website adds

New ways of combating fraud: The global threat landscape is rapidly changing and evolving. Sophisticated criminals always find ways around traditional fraud protection solutions. Silver Tail Systems has technology which monitors all web traffic and detects what is normal website behavior and what behavior is looking anomalous according to user statistics constantly updated by the hour. This real-time monitoring helps combating fraud as it emerges. Receiving alerts about suspicious web traffic lets the website administrator quickly identify the type of threat occurring and investigate the attempted attack. Once an attack is identified easy rules will divert the bad actors in real-time, protecting the website from being compromised.

Any of the techy people feel like explaining this to the rest of us? Am I exposing my ignorance by assuming it's basically a giant spreadsheet comparing whats happening now with what happened then?

Re:Silver Tail Systems

[vegiVamp]

> monitors website traffic and identifies anomalies in real-time.

mod_security.

> creates models of what is normal traffic for a website’s population and uses that to identify threats

Looking for peaks in the bandwith and connection rate graph.

Re:Silver Tail Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

So many things wrong with this.
Bad idea - hmm - maybe they talk in the park, or use paper/ dead drops or sd cards with magnets.

First, they did it with mail and phones and then mobile phonecalls - ignoring the bit that they are not supposed to be bugging Americans domestically. They even demo the software for bookmakers, say before a horse race, big game old old hat. Maybe they do the same think on the futures and stockmarket rooms - who knows? Even the police have this 'technology'

They have had 'Vampire Taps' on the main internet artery for yonks. But educated people reckon it is too big to bug, even for them - so one has to start targeting bits.
heres how:
1) Remove Bittorrent and Game sites
2) Remove Porn and online shopping
3) Sort mail by language - move Arabic and Persian to the top of the list
3.5) Repeat for Skype
4) And Chinese - after removing fast food orders
5) treat IP connections and protocols just like phone numbers
6) Run reports/ Create cubes trends std deviation etc
7) Put in budget submission - you have found 100 million suspicious people
8) This is exactly what Walmart and the marketing companies already do
9) This is what the IRS has failed to do

One thinks silver tail will become gold road , and all they will dig up is the worlds 2nd biggest porn collection , and a lot of their own having affairs.

Suspicious?

[aaaaaaargh!]

In future, better not do anything suspicious like clicking on the wrong links or visit a website in an unusual order! Because that might get you killed by an unmanned aerial vehicle... However, no need to worry about the government. As long as you do exactly the same as everybody else, you're completely safe.

Not just fraud

[nomad-9]

Apart from that specific article, the more important point IMO is that IQT's mission is not just "fraud", but whatever is supposed to serve "national security". The latter being increasingly used as an excuse to monitor as many people as possible.

In 2009 for example, IQT invested in a company called "Visible Technologies" which specialized in social media monitoring & tracking, such as the monitoring of blog posts or tweets. Another company IQT invested in, "Recorded Future" , extracted "time and event information from the Web". Another one would be "Attensity, with its own web 2.0-monitoring service.etc...

Nothing really new here: extensive Web monitoring & electronic surveillance by Big Brother in the name of cybersecurity. Dubious overall efficiency but enormous potential for privacy violations.