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Interview Alain Chesnais Chief Scientist Trendspottr.com
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. )
- the volume of data that is available is growing at a rate we have never seen before. Cisco has measured an 8 fold increase in the volume of IP traffic over the last 5 years and predicts that we will reach the zettabyte of data over IP in 2016
- more of the data is becoming publicly available. This isn’t only on social networks such as Facebook and twitter, but joins a more general trend involving open research initiatives and open government programs
- the desired time to get meaningful results is going down dramatically. In the past 5 years we have seen the half life of data on Facebook, defined as the amount of time that half of the public reactions to any given post (likes, shares., comments) take place, go from about 12 hours to under 3 hours currently
- our access to the net is always on via mobile device. You are always connected.
- the CPU and GPU capabilities of mobile devices is huge (an iPhone has 10 times the compute power of a Cray-1 and more graphics capabilities than early SGI workstations)
- thought leadership by tracking content that your readership is interested in via TrendSpottr you can be seen as a thought leader on the subject by being one of the first to share trending content on a given subject. I personally do this on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/alain.chesnais) and have seen my klout score go up dramatically as a result
- brand marketing to be able to know when something is trending about your brand and take advantage of it as it happens.
- competitive analysis to see what is being said about two competing elements. For instance, searching TrendSpottr for “Obama OR Romney” gives you a very good understanding about how social networks are reacting to each politician. You can also do searches like “$aapl OR $msft OR $goog” to get a sense of what is the current buzz for certain hi tech stocks.
- understanding your impact in real time to be able to see which of the content that you are posting is trending the most on social media so that you can highlight it on your main page. So if all of your content is hosted on common domain name (ourbrand.com), searching for ourbrand.com will show you the most active of your site’s content. That can easily be set up by putting a TrendSpottr widget on your front page
Ajay- What are some of the privacy guidelines that you keep in mind- given the fact that you collect individual information but also have government agencies as potential users.
Prior to his election as ACM president, Chesnais was vice president from July 2008 – June 2010 as well as secretary/treasurer from July 2006 – June 2008. He also served as president of ACM SIGGRAPH from July 2002 – June 2005 and as SIG Governing Board Chair from July 2000 – June 2002.
As a French citizen now residing in Canada, he has more than 20 years of management experience in the software industry. He joined the local SIGGRAPH Chapter in Paris some 20 years ago as a volunteer and has continued his involvement with ACM in a variety of leadership capacities since then.
TrendSpottr is a real-time viral search and predictive analytics service that identifies the most timely and trending information for any topic or keyword. Our core technology analyzes real-time data streams and spots emerging trends at their earliest acceleration point — hours or days before they have become “popular” and reached mainstream awareness.
TrendSpottr serves as a predictive early warning system for news and media organizations, brands, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies and helps them to identify emerging news, events and issues that have high viral potential and market impact. TrendSpottr has partnered with HootSuite, DataSift and other leading social and big data companies.
How to learn Hacking Part 2
Now that you have read the basics here at http://www.decisionstats.com/how-to-learn-to-be-a-hacker-easily/ (please do read this before reading the below)
Here is a list of tutorials that you should study (in order of ease)
1) LEARN BASICS – enough to get you a job maybe if that’s all you wanted.
http://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/Main_Page
2) READ SOME MORE-
Lena’s Reverse Engineering Tutorial-”Use Google.com for finding the Tutorial“
Lena’s Reverse Engineering tutorial. It includes 36 parts of individual cracking techniques and will teach you the basics of protection bypassing
01. Olly + assembler + patching a basic reverseme
02. Keyfiling the reverseme + assembler
03. Basic nag removal + header problems
04. Basic + aesthetic patching
05. Comparing on changes in cond jumps, animate over/in, breakpoints
06. “The plain stupid patching method”, searching for textstrings
07. Intermediate level patching, Kanal in PEiD
08. Debugging with W32Dasm, RVA, VA and offset, using LordPE as a hexeditor
09. Explaining the Visual Basic concept, introduction to SmartCheck and configuration
10. Continued reversing techniques in VB, use of decompilers and a basic anti-anti-trick
11. Intermediate patching using Olly’s “pane window”
12. Guiding a program by multiple patching.
13. The use of API’s in software, avoiding doublechecking tricks
14. More difficult schemes and an introduction to inline patching
15. How to study behaviour in the code, continued inlining using a pointer
16. Reversing using resources
17. Insights and practice in basic (self)keygenning
18. Diversion code, encryption/decryption, selfmodifying code and polymorphism
19. Debugger detected and anti-anti-techniques
20. Packers and protectors : an introduction
21. Imports rebuilding
22. API Redirection
23. Stolen bytes
24. Patching at runtime using loaders from lena151 original
25. Continued patching at runtime & unpacking armadillo standard protection
26. Machine specific loaders, unpacking & debugging armadillo
27. tElock + advanced patching
28. Bypassing & killing server checks
29. Killing & inlining a more difficult server check
30. SFX, Run Trace & more advanced string searching
31. Delphi in Olly & DeDe
32. Author tricks, HIEW & approaches in inline patching
33. The FPU, integrity checks & loader versus patcher
34. Reversing techniques in packed software & a S&R loader for ASProtect
35. Inlining inside polymorphic code
36. Keygenning
If you want more free training – hang around this website
http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cheat_Sheets
OWASP Cheat Sheet Series
- OWASP Top Ten Cheat Sheet
- Authentication Cheat Sheet
- Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Prevention Cheat Sheet
- Transport Layer Protection Cheat Sheet
- Cryptographic Storage Cheat Sheet
- Input Validation Cheat Sheet
- XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet
- DOM based XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet
- Forgot Password Cheat Sheet
- Query Parameterization Cheat Sheet
- SQL Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet
- Session Management Cheat Sheet
- HTML5 Security Cheat Sheet
- Web Service Security Cheat Sheet
- Application Security Architecture Cheat Sheet
- Logging Cheat Sheet
- JAAS Cheat Sheet
Draft OWASP Cheat Sheets
- Access Control Cheat Sheet
- REST Security Cheat Sheet
- Abridged XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet
- PHP Security Cheat Sheet
- Password Storage Cheat Sheet
- Secure Coding Cheat Sheet
- Threat Modeling Cheat Sheet
- Clickjacking Cheat Sheet
- Virtual Patching Cheat Sheet
- Secure SDLC Cheat Sheet
3) SPEND SOME MONEY on TRAINING
http://www.corelan-training.com/index.php/training/corelan-live/
Course overview
Module 1 – The x86 environment
- System Architecture
- Windows Memory Management
- Registers
- Introduction to Assembly
- The stack
Module 2 – The exploit developer environment
- Setting up the exploit developer lab
- Using debuggers and debugger plugins to gather primitives
Module 3 – Saved Return Pointer Overwrite
- Functions
- Saved return pointer overwrites
- Stack cookies
Module 4 – Abusing Structured Exception Handlers
- Abusing exception handler overwrites
- Bypassing Safeseh
Module 5 – Pointer smashing
- Function pointers
- Data/object pointers
- vtable/virtual functions
Module 6 – Off-by-one and integer overflows
- Off-by-one
- Integer overflows
Module 7 – Limited buffers
- Limited buffers, shellcode splitting
Module 8 – Reliability++ & reusability++
- Finding and avoiding bad characters
- Creative ways to deal with character set limitations
Module 9 – Fun with Unicode
- Exploiting Unicode based overflows
- Writing venetian alignment code
- Creating and Using venetian shellcode
Module 10 – Heap Spraying Fundamentals
- Heap Management and behaviour
- Heap Spraying for Internet Explorer 6 and 7
Module 11 – Egg Hunters
- Using and tweaking Egg hunters
- Custom egghunters
- Using Omelet egghunters
- Egghunters in a WoW64 environment
Module 12 – Shellcoding
- Building custom shellcode from scratch
- Understanding existing shellcode
- Writing portable shellcode
- Bypassing Antivirus
Module 13 – Metasploit Exploit Modules
- Writing exploits for the Metasploit Framework
- Porting exploits to the Metasploit Framework
Module 14 – ASLR
- Bypassing ASLR
Module 15 – W^X
- Bypassing NX/DEP
- Return Oriented Programming / Code Reuse (ROP) )
Module 16 – Advanced Heap Spraying
- Heap Feng Shui & heaplib
- Precise heap spraying in modern browsers (IE8 & IE9, Firefox 13)
Module 17 – Use After Free
- Exploiting Use-After-Free conditions
Module 18 – Windows 8
- Windows 8 Memory Protections and Bypass
ALSO GET CERTIFIED http://www.offensive-security.com/information-security-training/penetration-testing-with-backtrack/ ($950 cost)
the syllabus is here at
http://www.offensive-security.com/documentation/penetration-testing-with-backtrack.pdf
4) HANG AROUND OTHER HACKERS
At http://attrition.org/attrition/
or The Noir Hat Conferences-
http://blackhat.com/html/bh-us-12/training/bh-us-12-training_complete.html
or read this website
http://software-security.sans.org/developer-how-to/
5) GET A DEGREE
Yes it is possible
See http://web.jhu.edu/jhuisi/
The Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI) is the University’s focal point for research and education in information security, assurance and privacy.
Scholarship Information
The Information Security Institute is now accepting applications for the Department of Defense’s Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP). This scholarship includes full tuition, a living stipend, books and health insurance. In return each student recipient must work for a DoD agency at a competitive salary for six months for every semester funded. The scholarship is open to American citizens only.
http://web.jhu.edu/jhuisi/mssi/index.html
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SECURITY INFORMATICS PROGRAM
The flagship educational experience offered by Johns Hopkins University in the area of information security and assurance is represented by the Master of Science in Security Informatics degree. Over thirty courses are available in support of this unique and innovative graduate program.
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Disclaimer- I havent done any of these things- This is just a curated list from Quora so I am open to feedback.
You use this at your own risk of conscience ,local legal jurisdictions and your own legal liability.
New Plotters in Rapid Miner 5.2
I almost missed this because of my vacation and traveling
Rapid Miner has a tonne of new stuff (Statuary Ethics Declaration- Rapid Miner has been an advertising partner for Decisionstats – see the right margin)
see
http://rapid-i.com/component/option,com_myblog/Itemid,172/lang,en/
Great New Graphical Plotters
and some flashy work
and a great series of educational lectures
A Simple Explanation of Decision Tree Modeling based on Entropies
Description of some of the basics of decision trees. Simple and hardly any math, I like the plots explaining the basic idea of the entropy as splitting criterion (although we actually calculate gain ratio differently than explained…)
Logistic Regression for Business Analytics using RapidMiner
Same as above, but this time for modeling with logistic regression.
Easy to read and covering all basic ideas together with some examples. If you are not familiar with the topic yet, part 1 (see below) might help.
Part 1 (Basics): http://www.simafore.com/blog/bid/57801/Logistic-regression-for-business-analytics-using-RapidMiner-Part-1
Deploy Model: http://www.simafore.com/blog/bid/82024/How-to-deploy-a-logistic-regression-model-using-RapidMiner
Advanced Information: http://www.simafore.com/blog/bid/99443/Understand-3-critical-steps-in-developing-logistic-regression-models
and lastly a new research project for collaborative data mining
e-LICO Architecture and Components
The goal of the e-LICO project is to build a virtual laboratory for interdisciplinary collaborative research in data mining and data-intensive sciences. The proposed e-lab will comprise three layers: the e-science and data mining layers will form a generic research environment that can be adapted to different scientific domains by customizing the application layer.
- Drag a data set into one of the slots. It will be automatically detected as training data, test data or apply data, depending on whether it has a label or not.
- Select a goal. The most frequent one is probably “Predictive Modelling”. All goals have comments, so you see what they can be used for.
- Select “Fetch plans” and wait a bit to get a list of processes that solve your problem. Once the planning completes, select one of the processes (you can see a preview at the right) and run it. Alternatively, select multiple (selecting none means selecting all) and evaluate them on your data in a batch.
The assistant strives to generate processes that are compatible with your data. To do so, it performs a lot of clever operations, e.g., it automatically replaces missing values if missing values exist and this is required by the learning algorithm or performs a normalization when using a distance-based learner.
You can install the extension directly by using the Rapid-I Marketplace instead of the old update server. Just go to the preferences and enter http://rapidupdate.de:8180/UpdateServer as the update URL
Of course Rapid Miner has been of the most professional open source analytics company and they have been doing it for a long time now. I am particularly impressed by the product map (see below) and the graphical user interface.
http://rapid-i.com/content/view/186/191/lang,en/
Product Map
Just click on the products in the overview below in order to get more information about Rapid-I products.
Credit Downgrade of USA and Triple A Whining
As a person trained , deployed and often asked to comment on macroeconomic shenanigans- I have the following observations to make on the downgrade of US Debt by S&P
1) Credit rating is both a mathematical exercise of debt versus net worth as well as intention to repay. Given the recent deadlock in United States legislature on debt ceiling, it is natural and correct to assume that holding US debt is slightly more risky in 2011 as compared to 2001. That means if the US debt was AAA in 2001 it sure is slightly more risky in 2011.
2) Politicians are criticized the world over in democracies including India, UK and US. This is natural , healthy and enforced by checks and balances by constitution of each country. At the time of writing this, there are protests in India on corruption, in UK on economic disparities, in US on debt vs tax vs spending, Israel on inflation. It is the maturity of the media as well as average educational level of citizenry that amplifies and inflames or dampens sentiment regarding policy and business.
3) Conspicuous consumption has failed both at an environmental and economic level. Cheap debt to buy things you do not need may have made good macro economic sense as long as the things were made by people locally but that is no longer the case. Outsourcing is not all evil, but it sure is not a perfect solution to economics and competitiveness. Outsourcing is good or outsourcing is bad- well it depends.
4) In 1944 , the US took debt to fight Nazism, build atomic power and generally wage a lot of war and lots of dual use inventions. In 2004-2010 the US took debt to fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and bail out banks and automobile companies. Some erosion in the values represented by a free democracy has taken place, much to the delight of authoritarian regimes (who have managed to survive Google and Facebook).
5) A Double A rating is still quite a good rating. Noone is moving out of the US Treasuries- I mean seriously what are your alternative financial resources to park your government or central bank assets, euro, gold, oil, rare earth futures, metals or yen??
6) Income disparity as a trigger for social unrest in UK, France and other parts is an ominous looming threat that may lead to more action than the poor maths of S &P. It has been some time since riots occured in the United States and I believe in time series and cycles especially given the rising Gini coefficients .
Gini indices for the United States at various times, according to the US Census Bureau:[8][9][10]
- 1929: 45.0 (estimated)
- 1947: 37.6 (estimated)
- 1967: 39.7 (first year reported)
- 1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)
- 1970: 39.4
- 1980: 40.3
- 1990: 42.8
- (Recalculations made in 1992 added a significant upward shift for later values)
- 2000: 46.2
- 2005: 46.9
- 2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)
- 2007: 46.3
- 2008: 46.69
- 2009: 46.8
7) Again I am slightly suspicious of an American Corporation downgrading the American Governmental debt when it failed to reconcile numbers by 2 trillion and famously managed to avoid downgrading Lehman Brothers. What are the political affiliations of the S &P board. What are their backgrounds. Check the facts, Watson.
The Chinese government should be concerned if it is holding >1000 tonnes of Gold and >1 trillion plus of US treasuries lest we have a third opium war (as either Gold or US Treasuries will burst)
. Opium in 1850 like the US Treasuries in 2010 have no inherent value except for those addicted to them.
8 ) Ron Paul and Paul Krugman are the two extremes of economic ideology in the US.
Reminds me of the old saying- Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Both the Pauls seem equally unhappy and biased.
I have to read both WSJ and NYT to make sense of what actually is happening in the US as opinionated journalism has managed to elbow out fact based journalism. Do we need analytics in journalism education/ reporting?
9) Panic buying and selling would lead to short term arbitrage positions. People like W Buffet made more money in the crash of 2008 than people did in the boom years of 2006-7
If stocks are cheap- buy. on the dips. Acquire companies before they go for IPOs. Go buy your own stock if you are sitting on a pile of cash. Buy some technology patents in cloud , mobile, tablet and statistical computing if you have a lot of cash and need to buy some long term assets.
10) Follow all advice above at own risk and no liability to this author 
Machine Learning Contest
New Contest at http://www.ecmlpkdd2011.org/dcOverview.php
Discovery Challenge Overview
Organization | Overview | Task and Datasets | Timeline
General description: tasks and dataset
VideoLectures.net is a free and open access multimedia repository of video lectures, mainly of research and educational character. The lectures are given by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science. The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge sharing by providing high quality didactic contents not only to the scientific community but also to the general public. All lectures, accompanying documents, information and links are systematically selected and classified through the editorial process taking into account also users’ comments.
The ECML-PKDD 2011 Discovery Challenge is organized in order to improve the website’s current recommender system. The challenge consists of two main tasks and a “side-by” contest. The provided data is for both of the tasks, and it is up to the contestants how it will be used for learning (building up) a recommender.
Due to the nature of the problem, each of the tasks has its own merit: task 1 simulates new-user and new- item recommendation (cold-start mode), task 2 simulates clickstream based recommendation (normal mode). (more…)
Predictive Analytics World
Here is an announcement from Predictive Analytics World, the worlds largest vendor neutral conference dedicated to Predictive Analytics alone. Decisionstats has been a blog partner of PAWCON since inception. This is cool stuff!
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What is a White Paper?
Image via Wikipedia
As per Jimmy Wales and his merry band at Wiki (pedia not leaky-ah)- The emphasis is mine
What is the best white paper you have read in the past 15 years.
Categories are-
- Business benefits: Makes a business case for a certain technology or methodology.
- Technical: Describes how a certain technology works.
- Hybrid: Combines business benefits with technical details in a single document.
- Policy: Makes a case for a certain political solution to a societal or economic challenge.
A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool. Policy makers frequently request white papers from universities or academic personnel to inform policy developments with expert opinions or relevant research.
Government white papers
In the Commonwealth of Nations, “white paper” is an informal name for a parliamentary paper enunciating government policy; in the United Kingdom these are mostly issued as “Command papers“. White papers are issued by the government and lay out policy, or proposed action, on a topic of current concern. Although a white paper may on occasion be a consultation as to the details of new legislation, it does signify a clear intention on the part of a government to pass new law. White Papers are a “…. tool of participatory democracy … not [an] unalterable policy commitment.[1] ”White Papers have tried to perform the dual role of presenting firm government policies while at the same time inviting opinions upon them.” [2]
In Canada, a white paper “is considered to be a policy document, approved by Cabinet, tabled in the House of Commons and made available to the general public.”[3] A Canadian author notes that the “provision of policy information through the use of white and green papers can help to create an awareness of policy issues among parliamentarians and the public and to encourage an exchange of information and analysis. They can also serve as educational techniques”.[4]
“White Papers are used as a means of presenting government policy preferences prior to the introduction of legislation”; as such, the “publication of a White Paper serves to test the climate of public opinion regarding a controversial policy issue and enables the government to gauge its probable impact”.[5]
By contrast, green papers, which are issued much more frequently, are more open ended. These green papers, also known as consultation documents, may merely propose a strategy to be implemented in the details of other legislation or they may set out proposals on which the government wishes to obtain public views and opinion.
White papers published by the European Commission are documents containing proposals for European Union action in a specific area. They sometimes follow a green paper released to launch a public consultation process.
For examples see the following:
- Russia No 1. A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, April 1919, often referred to as “The White Paper” a collection of telegraphic messages by British officers in Russia, concerning the Bolshevik revolution.
- Churchill White Paper, 1922, planning a national home in Palestine for Jews. The white paper which unfortunately couldnt see the consequences- ergo high gas prices due to oil shocks,dead people in all manners of idiotic terror plots, global headache. Mr Churchill also had to deny requests for emergency food leading to 3 million Bengali deaths in 1940-45 Winston Churchill the Prime Minister of that time responded with a telegram to Wavell asking, if food was so scarce, “why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.
You know whom to blame for all of this. Its Winston Churchill, not Barack Obama
- White Paper of 1939, calling for the creation of a unified Palestinian state and a limited Jewish immigration and ability to purchase land. Which contradicted the white paper above -
- White Paper on Full Employment, 1945, Commonwealth of Australia to recognize state’s obligation to give jobs to people.
- 1957 Defence White Paper, a reassessment of UK defence needs.
- White Paper on Defence, 1964, led to the unification/creation of the modern Canadian Forces.
- 1966 Defence White Paper, cancelled the CVA-01 class aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy
- In Place of Strife, 1969 (later abandoned), to reduce trade union power.
- 1969 White Paper, 1969 (later abandoned), to abolish the Indian Act in Canada and recognize First Nations as the same as other minorities in Canada, rather than distinct groups.
- The White Paper, 1966, United States National Research Council document that led to the development of emergency medical services in the United States
Commercial white papers
Since the early 1990s, the term white paper has also come to refer to documents used by businesses and so-called think tanks as marketing or sales tools. White papers of this sort argue that the benefits of a particular technology, product or policy are superior for solving a specific problem.
These types of white papers are almost always marketing communications documents designed to promote a specific company’s or group’s solutions or products. As a marketing tool, these papers will highlight information favorable to the company authorizing or sponsoring the paper. Such white papers are often used to generate sales leads, establish thought leadership, make a business case, or to educate customers or voters.
There are four main types of commercial white papers:
- Business benefits: Makes a business case for a certain technology or methodology.
- Technical: Describes how a certain technology works.
- Hybrid: Combines business benefits with technical details in a single document.
- Policy: Makes a case for a certain political solution to a societal or economic challenge.
Resources
- Stelzner, Michael (2007). Writing White Papers: How to capture readers and keep them engaged. Poway, California: WhitePaperSource Publishing. pp. 214. ISBN 9780977716937.
- Bly, Robert W. (2006). The White Paper Marketing Handbook. Florence, Kentucky: South-Western Educational Publishing. pp. 256. ISBN 9780324300826.
- Kantor, Jonathan (2009). Crafting White Paper 2.0: Designing Information for Today’s Time and Attention Challenged Business Reader. Denver,Colorado: Lulu Publishing. pp. 167.ISBN 9780557163243.
