A Week in #Intelligence - W5 - 2023 - #ExMergere - #OSINT #Analysis #AI #Strategic #Cyber #Criminal #Services
Pierre Memheld
AI/Data for Human Analysts, Anti-Corruption @Falcon-Horizon-EU, Global Companies Support, Competitive Intelligence & Due Diligence
???????????Headline
–???????????The biotech company Colossal is actively working to reincarnate both the ancient woolly mammoth and the thylacine. Now, for its next trick, the Dallas-based firm is bringing back the dodo, the flightless bird that went extinct roughly 350 years ago from the island of Mauritius.
???????????Studies
–???????????Legendary former CIA officer Jim Lawler, celebrated for taking down the infamous A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network, is fond of telling audiences he had to be a sociopath to succeed in his line of work.
–???????????Artists provide critical counterpoints to the assumptions held by private contractors, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies about dataveillance, i.e. the use of datasets to monitor, predict, and control behavior. Whereas analysts tend to see data as “raw” facts and the analytical process as narrowly empirical, dataveillance artists regard data as constructed artifacts and remain open to a multiplicity of epistemological approaches. This article discusses the work of ten post-Snowden dataveillance artists who enable critical reflection on the capacity of automated dataveillance to represent complex and indeterminate social phenomena while refuting a singular, authoritative story about dataveillance.
???????????Artificial
–???????????Abstract: Reasoning in a complex and ambiguous environment is a key goal for Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents. While some sophisticated RL agents can successfully solve difficult tasks, they require a large amount of training data and often struggle to generalize to new unseen environments and new tasks. On the other hand, Large Scale Language Models (LSLMs) have exhibited strong reasoning ability and the ability to to adapt to new tasks through in-context learning. However, LSLMs do not inherently have the ability to interrogate or intervene on the environment. In this work, we investigate how to combine these complementary abilities in a single system consisting of three parts: a Planner, an Actor, and a Reporter. The Planner is a pre-trained language model that can issue commands to a simple embodied agent (the Actor), while the Reporter communicates with the Planner to inform its next command. We present a set of tasks that require reasoning, test this system's ability to generalize zero-shot and investigate failure cases, and demonstrate how components of this system can be trained with reinforcement-learning to improve performance.
–???????????Pass in any text (summary of a movie, passage from Wikipedia, etc.) to generate a visualization of entities and their relationships. A quick example.
?????????????Google CEO Pichai Says ChatGPT Rival Coming Soon as a ‘Companion’ to Search - Bloomberg
–???????????Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said Google will make artificial intelligence-based large language models like LaMDA available “in the coming weeks and months.”
?????????????Microsoft Plans To Update Bing With a Faster Version of ChatGPT in the Coming Weeks - Slashdot
–???????????The integration would see Bing using GPT-4 to answer search queries. People familiar with the matter told Semafor that the main difference between ChatGPT and GPT-4 is speed. Although ChatGPT sometimes takes a up to a few minutes to form a response, GPT-4 is said to be a lot quicker in responding to queries. The latest software's responses are also said to be more detailed and more humanlike. The planned incorporation of ChatGPT into Microsoft products is expected to trigger new competition in internet search, which has largely been dominated by Google. By using GPT-4, Bing would be able to provide users with humanlike answers, as opposed to just simply displaying a list of links.
–???????????In this paper we present findings from a bibliometric evaluation of scientific publications on human-AI systems, indexed in the Dimensions database over the past five years (2018 to 2022). The study maps the research landscape in this burgeoning area, as it relates to the topic of collaboration. To this end, we assessed publication and citation counts over time, authorship-level indicators, and keyword occurrence frequency. We also examined funding information as an indicator of research priorities, alongside usage-based statistics and alternative metrics such as social media mentions, recommendations, and reads. Our preliminary findings highlight a significant focus on aspects like trust, explainability, transparency, and autonomy in highly complex scenarios through the use of generative models and hybrid interaction techniques. The results also reveal a growth in the number of publications and funding grants, although a certain lack of maturity is observable in terms of citation patterns and coherence of thematic clusters.
?????????????Figuring out what, exactly, China is up to is one of the intelligence community’s top priorities. Countering Beijing also happens to be a rare instance where there’s bipartisan support in Congress.
?????????????A growing number of Japanese businesses are strengthening their intelligence gathering as the country finds itself increasingly exposed to the mounting tensions between the US and China.
???????????Strategic
–???????????WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is considering entirely cutting off Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. from U.S. suppliers over national-security concerns by tightening export controls targeting the firm, according to people familiar with the matter.
?????????????Dozens of institutions collaborate with bodies linked to Uighur genocide, weapons development and hacking
–???????????CIA director William Burns recently traveled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior intelligence officials, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News.
?????????????That was the question on everyone's mind this week after U.S. defense officials accused China of flying a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States, prompting Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China. China has denied the balloon was used for spying, saying it was used for scientific research and was accidentally knocked off course by westerly winds.
?????????????According to new reporting from the Financial Times, Google has invested $300 million in one of the most buzzy OpenAI rivals, Anthropic, whose recently-debuted generative AI model Claude is considered competitive with ChatGPT.
???????????Collection
–???????????A massive spy balloon believed to be from China was seen above Montana and is being tracked as it flies across the continental United States, with President Joe Biden for now deciding against "military options" because of the risk to civilians, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
?????????????The US has sanctioned a Chinese firm accused of helping a Russian mercenary group’s military operation in Ukraine.
–???????????Tous les quartiers généraux et bases de l'OTAN obtiendront des informations et des renseignements à partir du logiciel qui sera développé par l'Industrie de la Défense turque
?????????????In December 1980, the Government and Communist Party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) believed that it was under assault. Vietnam clearly was facing a host of serious problems: the country’s economy was in shambles as the result of a combination of the Communist Party’s disastrous Marxist-Leninist economic policies, by the American economic embargo, and by the nation’s requirement to sustain a massive army of over a million men to counter military threats on multiple fronts.
?????????????[ La reconnaissance d’entités nommées: une démarche prometteuse pour la détection automatisée de liens dans les dossiers d’enquête policière](https://www.revue-cfs.net/article/view/3349)
–???????????L’information produite par nos activités numériques est en constante augmentation. Ce flux d’informations en continu se traduit aussi par un accroissement important du nombre de données à traiter dans le cadre d’activités de renseignement et d’enquêtes policières. Afin de faciliter ce traitement de données, de nouvelles techniques ayant recours à l’intelligence artificielle s’offrent aux personnels policiers afin d’automatiser une partie de leur travail. Dans ce contexte, le présent article propose une démarche en six étapes permettant le déploiement d’une démarche structurée et d’un modèle algorithmique de reconnaissance d’entités nommées, spécifiquement adaptée pour l’analyse de documents d’enquête policière. En mettant l’accent plus spécifiquement sur le traitement de dossier d’infractions pour fraude, la démarche méthodologique à entreprendre pour avoir recours efficacement à ces nouvelles technologies d’analyse y est donc décrite en détail. De plus, l’évolution du r?le de l’analyste en renseignement criminel, l’acteur étant au c?ur de l’intégration de ce type d’innovations, y est également discutée, tout en soulignant la pertinence de la reconnaissance d’entités nommées en contexte d’enquête policière.
–???????????Abstract: Open source intelligence is a powerful tool for cybersecurity analysts to gather information both for analysis of discovered vulnerabilities and for detecting novel cybersecurity threats and exploits. However the scale of information that is relevant for information security on the internet is always increasing, and is intractable for analysts to parse comprehensively. Therefore methods of condensing the available open source intelligence, and automatically developing connections between disparate sources of information, is incredibly valuable. In this research, we present a system which constructs a Neo4j graph database formed by shared connections between open source intelligence text including blogs, cybersecurity bulletins, news sites, antivirus scans, social media posts (e.g., Reddit and Twitter), and threat reports. These connections are comprised of possible indicators of compromise (e.g., IP addresses, domains, hashes, email addresses, phone numbers), information on known exploits and techniques (e.g., CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK Technique ID's), and potential sources of information on cybersecurity exploits such as twitter usernames. The construction of the database of potential IoCs is detailed, including the addition of machine learning and metadata which can be used for filtering of the data for a specific domain (for example a specific natural language) when needed. Examples of utilizing the graph database for querying connections between known malicious IoCs and open source intelligence documents, including threat reports, are shown. We show that this type of relationship querying can allow for more effective use of open source intelligence for threat hunting, malware family clustering, and vulnerability analysis.
???????????Criminal
?????????????Coca?ne?: ??Les gens pensent que je suis le roi du port??… Un réseau de trafiquants havrais devant la justice
–???????????Soup?onnés d’être les protagonistes d’un réseau local de trafic de drogue, six hommes comparaissent à partir de mercredi devant les assises du Nord. Trois d’entre eux, des amis originaires de quartiers populaires près du port, pourraient être les donneurs d’ordre de ce réseau, démantelé en?2017. Les trois autres accusés sont soup?onnés pour l’un d’être un commanditaire, pour l’autre un dealer ??concurrent?? temporairement allié, et pour le troisième un intermédiaire incontournable sur le port.
–???????????En 2011, trois eurodéputés européens et anciens ministres – un Roumain, un Slovène et un Autrichien – ont été piégés par The Sunday Times. Ils avaient accepté de faire passer des amendements en échange d'argent. Les journalistes britanniques s'étaient fait passer pour des lobbyistes. Dix ans avant le Qatargate et le Marocgate, le discrédit était déjà?jeté sur l'institution, mais le caractère déloyal de la méthode journalistique – contraire au point?4 de la charte du journalisme – en avait atténué les effets.
–???????????Alliances avec les autres mafias et les trafiquants, contournement de la douane, économie grise… Une note fouillée du renseignement criminel et douanier qu’Europe 1 a consultée, lève le voile sur le commerce de la diaspora chinoise au service de la criminalité organisée.
?????????????For a member of the European parliament, Eva Kaili lived life more like a movie star. The Greek politician spent her free time on yachts in the Aegean, in glitzy nightclubs in Athens, hanging out at events with supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and on summer vacations at tycoon Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island Caribbean hideaway.
–???????????The case of an alleged Russian mole inside Germany’s intelligence service has raised alarms in Berlin, where Russia has long spied aggressively and may have assassinated a foe.
?????????????Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia’s Annexation of Crimea - OCCRP
–???????????For years, a secret organization run from inside Russia’s parliament successfully interfered with European policies on occupied Ukraine. Leaked emails give a new overview of the operation and show how European Union politicians who helped push Moscow’s agenda were offered cash and perks.
?????????????Currently, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) show a high potential to work in surveillance tasks, as well as in payload delivery through rivers, lakes or seas. However, AUVs have some limitations that prevent them from fully relying on their autonomous functions. In particular, unlike unmanned aerial vehicles, AUVs do not have precise positioning mechanisms like GPS to work underwater. Although inertial navigation systems have been developed for the positioning of these vehicles, smaller and cheaper alternatives for modern micro-AUVs are still required. Furthermore, the possibility of passively detecting the location of an AUV (i.e., detecting it without emitting any additional signal) opens up new alternatives for military and defense-oriented applications with these vehicles. Thus, this work proposes a passive positioning system for underwater vehicles using the acoustic signals already emitted by the AUVs themselves. To do this, the initial challenges associated to the positioning of AUVs through trilateration techniques are analyzed, and the final proposals are evaluated in a real scenario. The results show that the method known as TDoA is easier to implement and presents a more precise positioning.
???????????Services
?????????????The Defense Department wants to declassify more intelligence to enhance cybersecurity in the private sector. It said defense contractors need increased access to intelligence information to defend themselves against outside threats. Undersecretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie told a group at the Defense and Intelligence Space Conference that DoD plans to declassify some information, particularly from satellite images. He said the Pentagon may be overclassifying information needed by vendors and that DoD wants to have more transparency, and wants strategic partners to follow suit.
–???????????Officials who have worked with Democratic and Republican presidents describe an elaborate system for classified documents but a more casual one for everyday records.
?????????????The National Intelligence Director: Over-Classification Undermines Democracy - Government Executive
–???????????The ongoing investigations into handling of sensitive documents by former presidents and vice presidents have brought potential problems with the classification system back into the spotlight.
–???????????Depuis novembre?2022, la Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) conna?t une réorganisation interne sans précédent pour mettre en place un modèle intégré, associant analyse, technique et action.
?????????????à l’initiative de Jean-Christophe Fromantin, la DGSI et 25 patrons planchent sur les ? signaux faibles ?
–???????????Le programme ? Anticipation ? associé cette année à la DGSI, réunit 25 dirigeants de grands groupes et d’institutions publiques, dont Dior, Carrefour, Vinci ou l’état-major des Armées. Objectif : devancer les bouleversements à venir et ? éclairer les prises de décision stratégique ?.
–???????????Amid seemingly endless revelations of classified government files turning up at the homes of certain sitting and former U.S. presidents (as well as veeps), a high-ranking Air Force officer has quietly admitted to retaining hundreds of highly sensitive documents at his Florida home.
?????????????The drone attack on a defense facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan was carried out by Israel to protect its own security interests, and not to …
–???????????"The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China," it says, "are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States. Confronting this threat is the FBI's top counterintelligence priority."
?????????????Here's who intelligence insiders tip for the next GCHQ director - The Record from Recorded Future News
–???????????U.K. intelligence community (UKIC) insiders believe that the departure of GCHQ’s current director, Sir Jeremy Fleming, offers a good opportunity for the agency to bring in its first female executive. A handful of in-the-knows told The Record of more than half a dozen people from various backgrounds who are being tipped for the position.