FUD Fighters 3 - Tokyo DNS

I'll be the first to admit, I really liked Tokyo Drift. - Yeh bet you didn't see that coming.

It was a more fun time, everything was less serious. People didn't run away from their problems, they faced them head on (just skip over the part where Sean *technically* runs from his problems by being shipped by his mother from America where he faced jail time for the street race/crash over to his Dad stationed in Japan).

There were a lot of new concepts being 'the new person' in a far away land. New friends, surroundings, traditions, foods, laws, everything but if you think about it... this resonates with being 'the new person' in just about everything.

Case and Point - Cybersecurity

I still consider myself a n00b in the field of cybersecurity.

"But Dan" I hear you exclaim "you have been doing this for years!"

Yes, yes I have.

In fact I've actually been doing this *gestures wildly* since I was a child but I didn't know that it had a name I just thought it was fixing stuff and taking security seriously also I made this .bat file to crash my friends computers (hey who remembers AOL chat rooms and kicking everyone out because you used a foreign character and if they didn't have the language pack installed the computer would crash and reboot,,, ahh bliss).

I even set my mates wallpaper to a BSOD, removed the icons and reversed the mouse, then when he rebooted the laptop it was a BSOD animation... sorry Bestwick <3

On a slightly more weird tangent I didn't know that other people didn't take things apart to see how they work (though I knew instinctively not to touch powered things or things that would hold a charge).

I didn't know that other people can't so easily put on the blinders and focus on a task.

I had a fascination with Batman and his gadgets.

James Bond and his gadgets.

Playing with Action Man figures because they had cool gadgets (remember the sniper rifle one? class.)

All this time I thought I was just a weird kid with an slightly off upbringing (by this I mean to say in a roundabout way, my Dad passed when I was 8 years old and I have been raised by my mum and then the internet when that became a thing in the later 90's)

As it turns out, years later as always, it could be that I have Autism (I mean technically speaking everyone 'is on the spectrum' but show a varying degree of this and that's where diagnosis steps in) or possibly even ADHD or any number of the things that are more commonly looked into in this day and age, in the 80's and 90's medicine wouldn't have jumped too far into it. TBH looking back now I can see that my 'weird' focus in things could be any number of these conditions in the more modern age.

Why I am I telling you this?

Mainly, because of bullying. - We might get some FUD in here so don't worry... oh who am I kidding, I always find FUD.

There's a bloke on here. I know of him, you know of him but it's not Mr. DNS...

This guy, he enjoys playing the victim, tries to frame every screenshot around it, proving his point that other people are bullying him.

But that's not how this works. (also I'll point this out a few times calling people out on misinformation is not bullying).

When you point the finger, there's three fingers pointing back to you.

When you frame 'that' screenshot or take 'that' line, you don't take the context with you or you loose it by deliberately chopping bits out and because of that you can write your own story and wrap your audience around your finger.

I'll take a little break here to remind the audience of the fantastic TV Show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Which opened with the following;

"You'll notice more obscenity than we usually use. That's not just because it's on Showtime, and we want to get some attention. It's also a legal matter. If one calls people liars and quacks, one can be sued and lose a lot of one's money. But "motherfuckers" and "assholes" is pretty safe. If we said it was all scams, we could also be in trouble. But BULLSHIT, oddly, is safe, so forgive all the bullshit language. We're trying to talk about the truth without spending the rest of our lives in court because of litigious motherfuckers." —?Penn Jillette

So this bloke, let's call him 'Schmallister' tried to Grandstand/ and be the hero to cover for his close personal friend, Mr DNS (who believes that everything ever is a DNS problem *spoiler - it isn't and once more cybersecurity professionals didn't say it wasn't important but they keep ignoring that*).

He started sharing screenshots to his '?B?o?d?y? ?S?h?o?p? ?f?r?o?m? ?H?o?m?e?' '?M?u?l?t?i?-?L?e?v?e?l? ?M?a?r?k?e?t?i?n?g?' '?P?y?r?a?m?i?d? ?S?c?h?e?m?e?' '?C?u?l?t?i?s?t?s?' 'Following' and using them to fan the flames of his ego and make him sound better and better, kind of like shouting into a glass jar, that's stuck on your head and you don't realise that the more you shout the more you suffocate yourself.

This 'following' is all the same type of 'person' with multiple jobs in their history, nothing below being a manager at multiple different companies, some famous companies and some not so much. From the research that I've done (and believe me, others have too) they may not have actually worked at any of these places at all... ??

Like it's completely made up, much the same as the fake bot accounts people use for CV harvesting and Social Engineering... peculiar isn't it? Being a fellow/member of the board/CISO/CTO/CEO/Head Honcho/VCISO/Owner... but not actually having proof besides the word of mouth and you happen to control the mouth (or leverage on that mouth, like above, buy into the club but if you dare cross them they dump your real details and secrets). They all have nothing to do all day but share each others articles to farm likes and spread misinformation as well as spit venom at the people who point it out when it happens (as one has said 'Gotta love the haters…')

Oh wait that's not how to do it... let's grab two screenshots of my own:

Also notice... they never put 'company name' in their LinkedIn Headline... almost like they don't want you to know who they work for?

Anyhoos I'm sure someone way, way better at this than me can really scratch into that itch and reveal what is going on there, lo I digress...

Dan you brought up bullying?

I did.

I didn't know that this was happening because I am not the kind who stabs people in the back when they aren't looking/can't see but seems this person sure as shit is.

I got blocked a while ago by this guy, not that I'm complaining as my feed has been absolute bliss and happiness since, honestly though, I thought that was the end of it, but as we all know, in the darkness the sith grew stronger.

I have a burner/throwaway LinkedIn account that I use to investigate things (mainly job specs and markets) and today of all days I thought to myself 'I wonder how that # is doing' so I had a look and noticed posts were missing. Accordingly, I loaded up 'ol faithful to view the same feed and to my surprise all the posts were there an also a malicious attack had occurred.

This guy, had put up a post about a month or so ago with screenshots of several of my posts many of which unrelated to anything in his lane (his schtick appears to be joining lines to things that are completely unrelated and calling it fact) and believes that they are posts attacking his campaign and even went on to state that he will be contacting the employers of people who have reacted to the post.

Why? Hey wait a minute that's harassment isn't it?

Now I'm not entirely sure why he thinks this would be a good idea, he's even written that the Police are aware.. I mean they have my number so that's not a bother and I am always happy to explain my case, did he think that this was a Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt tactic that would work?

So his screenshots, let's counterpoint shall we? - Oh, since I'm actually a nice guy I redact other peoples names.

A bit of an interesting open stating 'This person is not me', I've never claimed to be anyone but me but, ok(?) maybe it was an off day or something?

'They are currently trolling and targeting my work at?I N S I G H T' - Actually I wasn't and I haven't been trolling, on the contrary I have no interest in I N S I G H T or him, I do have an interest in combatting FUD Peddlers, Ambulance Chasers, misinformation and general grandstanding assholes (remember Penn and Teller from above).

Misdiagnosis by the NHS is a thing and anything to help it I am all for but he is under the impression that mentioning even the word insight or writing it in a certain way is an attack on him and his work... It isn't. (This stems from my previous article and this following screenshot he took from it below)

The next screenshots are unrelated to anything so I am putting them in here:

The above was my response regarding the second article I put up (FUD Fighters : 2fast 2DNS) which opens with a modified but tongue in cheek parody of a scene of a Fast and Furious sequel script from the TV show American Dad. (say that 5 times fast).

The point of opening that up is because I do stand by my words, you can't just keep pelting people with FUD marketing techniques without someone standing up and saying 'No'. The actual content however is because said person had started following me on LinkedIn and as LinkedIn notifies you when new people follow you,,, go figure. I wanted to post and make it clear that I have nothing to hide.

Now lets get back to all those reports from the earlier screenshot and this one:

I'm almost entirely sure that what has happened here is he has gone on a rampage negging (a.k.a thumbs downing and reporting) every post I have made on LinkedIn as a way to flood them with reports that I have been doing something wrong and attempting to get my account banned or something (Cyber Mobbing anyone??)

Now the way this works is that yes, LinkedIn are made aware of something and if there are many somethings then it is entirely possible that it would be handed over to a human to review.. do you want to know what the result of that was on my side?

Nothing.

The reason that nothing happened is because I am not bullying someone. I am pointing out Snake Oil and FUD Peddling Misinformation which is not a negative action and is not a crime.

100 points to ??G?r?y?f?f?i?n?d?o?r? The LinkedIn Trust & Safety team on this one, they are amazingly good at dealing with these things.

Now this is weird, the tagging ones:

Why tag his thing? It'll just show up now when you search it now (but only his post not my article which again has nothing to do with him or his setup).

Is it because of the spaces between the lettering?

Does he have copyright on spacing between letters?

Does the context wrapped around both sides of it not explain, quite clearly, that it is 'Like Project I N S I G H T from Captain America : The Winter Soldier'?

I don't get it but worse still he's impacting other people now:

For a little explanation here the Black redaction is LinkedIn Account Name and Profile Picture. Red is where he has tagged the person in the post. Green is for the company they work for tagged in the post.

What kind of person tries to tag people and employers in their post claiming 'cyber mobbing' other then to be a bullying jerk and causing strangers and their employers distress on the internet.

It's Bullying and Harassment isn't it?

These people have interacted with a post on LinkedIn, some 'Laugh', some 'Like', some 'Love' the post... it's a reaction to something not them taking part in 'cyber mobbing' or harassment of any kind and one more example of him trying to connect things together and call it fact, twist and control the narrative.

Moving on.

I am glad that I am blocked by this asshole (again Penn & Teller from above), it means that I don't have to see or put up with his constant bombardment of bullying and harassment, but, other people aren't as lucky.

The other side of that is my skin is so thick and hardened to bullying over the years (decades) that I literally could not care less what some poor soul says on the internet, not my monkey not my circus, I actually came up with my own analogy for this 'He is so unimportant, he is not even a fly in the soup of someone else at the restaurant that is my mind'.

If you dig a little through his postings you can see that he has previously 'attacked' valued members of the infosec community (so much so that some who have seen it have blocked him so they also don't have to see it anymore), he's made vague threats of contacting employers, police etc THIS is Bullying and it needs to stop.

His cohorts, they do the same though not to as much of a degree, normally if they see themselves fighting a battle they can't win they will just stop engaging or responding on that thread and move onto another comment or start a new one, sounds a lot like my new friend Dr. Richard Diston (he really doesn't like it when you don't respect his doctorate, so definitely do that.) whom touts himself as the 'real' security doctor:

And you wonder why there are issues trying to get people interested in the field and pushing them to succeed...

There is no changing people that are like this, they are too 'set in their ways' and unwilling or unable to accept criticism or help (as above).

For the maybe one or two that have read through this (as I have no doubts everything I post is monitored and when you drop a hefty article like this, people notice and spread it) I hope you now see the actions and bullying that they are doing through the other side of the looking glass and do the right thing or remove the cancerous tumour of their connection/friendship.

We can fight bullying, we can take steps to help others, so why not?

As such I leave you with this post from Lost Art of The Gentleman on Instagram:

Peace <3

*This article has been quasi-peer reviewed, meaning I have shared it to professionals in the field and made improvements or changes to ensure this is not a hit piece or designed to offend anyone, merely to counter someone else's points in a constructive manner and elaborate.

Also for full disclosure, no the Chris Kringle LinkedIn account is not mine, I see them also countering misinformation/FUD tactics and wish them well.