BRKG Master Twitter thread. Elon Musk now owns Twitter, post 144. Heads roll for real
- Thread starter jward
- Start date
Warm Wisconsin
Easy as 3.141592653589..
On the flip side if Elon was wrong then he could pay a huge fine. The court is set to hear the case in October I believe
Knoxville's Joker
Has No Life - Lives on TB
jward
passin' thru
Reuters
@Reuters
1m
Elon Musk's lawyers have sent a subpoena to Jack Dorsey, the first indication that the Twitter co-founder and former CEO will be officially involved in the legal fight over Musk's stalled $44 billion deal https://reut.rs/3QZFWMb
View: https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1562048256028200960?s=20&t=uqJyyiqsSiC4ItPUx7i-XQ
wobble
Veteran Member
Twitter has flaws that threaten national security, whistleblower says
CEO Parag Agrawal responded in a memo to staff on Tuesday after reports revealed that Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, Twitter's former head of security, made the allegations to Congress.
Twitter's board has been covering up its 'extreme, egregious deficiencies' that make it a huge risk to national security and democracy, and executives have no idea how many bots are on the platform, a whistleblower has claimed.
'Ethical hacker' Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, the social media firm's former head of security, made the bombshell disclosure to Congress and federal agencies last month.
He claimed the tech giant is completely mismanaged with thousands of staff given access to central controls and the most sensitive information without adequate oversight, CN N and the Washington Post reported.
Zatko, who reported directly to CEO Jack Dorsey and his replacement Parag Agrawal, said senior executives have been covering up the platform's biggest vulnerabilities, and even claimed one or multiple employees could be working as a spy for foreign intelligence services.
-and-
EXCLUSIVE: MASSIVE Democrat 'Bot Farms' Revealed Influencing Elections, War, And Racial Tension — 51,343,790,000 Social Media Impressions Since 2019 — They're Gearing Up for November & 2024 #BlueCrew #DemCast - DailyVeracity
This is the Democrat Hive-Mind DemCast is a non-profit organization utilizing social media to push left-wing narratives online…
www.dailyveracity.com
Their website ‘Our Plan‘ page describes their operation in four simple bullet points:
- Curate content from messaging experts, creators, and news sources.
- Package that content into succinct strategic messages.
- Recruit, train & equip an army of social media users across social platforms to relay messaging through their accounts.
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_______________________
BOT's on the ground!
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somewherepress
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Page 1 of 2
Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies
Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post.
www.cnn.com
Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies
Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post.
www.cnn.com
Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies
By Donie O'Sullivan, Clare Duffy and Brian Fung, CNN BusinessVideo by John General, Zach Wasser and Logan Whiteside, CNN Business
Portraits by Sarah Silbiger for CNN
Updated 5:59 AM ET, Tue August 23, 2022
Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post.
The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a chaotic and reckless environment at a mismanaged company that allows too many of its staff access to the platform's central controls and most sensitive information without adequate oversight. It also alleges that some of the company's senior-most executives have been trying to cover up Twitter's serious vulnerabilities, and that one or more current employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service.
The whistleblower, who has agreed to be publicly identified, is Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, who was previously the company's head of security, reporting directly to the CEO. Zatko further alleges that Twitter's leadership has misled its own board and government regulators about its security vulnerabilities, including some that could allegedly open the door to foreign spying or manipulation, hacking and disinformation campaigns. The whistleblower also alleges Twitter does not reliably delete users' data after they cancel their accounts, in some cases because the company has lost track of the information, and that it has misled regulators about whether it deletes the data as it is required to do. The whistleblower also says Twitter executives don't have the resources to fully understand the true number of bots on the platform, and were not motivated to. Bots have recently become central to Elon Musk's attempts to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the company (although Twitter denies Musk's claims).
Document: Twitter whistleblower reveals alleged security lapses, violations, fraud
Zatko was fired by Twitter (TWTR) in January for what the company claims was poor performance. According to Zatko, his public whistleblowing comes after he attempted to flag the security lapses to Twitter's board and to help Twitter fix years of technical shortcomings and alleged non-compliance with an earlier privacy agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. Zatko is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, the same group that represented Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
John Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid and Zatko's lawyer, told CNN that Zatko has not been in contact with Musk, and said Zatko began the whistleblower process before there was any indication of Musk's involvement with Twitter.
After this article was initially published, Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, told CNN, "We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding."
CNN sought comment from Twitter on more than 50 specific questions regarding the disclosure.
In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN that security and privacy are both longtime priorities for the company. Twitter also said the company provides clear tools for users to control privacy, ad targeting and data sharing, and added that it has created internal workflows to ensure users know that when they cancel their accounts, Twitter will deactivate the accounts and start a deletion process. Twitter declined to say whether it typically completes the process.
"Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance," the Twitter spokesperson said. "What we've seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context. Mr. Zatko's allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be."
Peiter "Mudge" Zatko was the head of security at Twitter.
A well-known "ethical hacker," Zatko also previously held senior roles at Google, Stripe and the US Department of Defense.
Some of Zatko's most damning claims spring from his apparently tense relationship with Parag Agrawal, the company's former chief technology officer who was made CEO after Jack Dorsey stepped down last November. According to the disclosure, Agrawal and his lieutenants repeatedly discouraged Zatko from providing a full accounting of Twitter's security problems to the company's board of directors. The company's executive team allegedly instructed Zatko to provide an oral report of his initial findings on the company's security condition to the board rather than a detailed written account, ordered Zatko to knowingly present cherry-picked and misrepresented data to create the false perception of progress on urgent cybersecurity issues, and went behind Zatko's back to have a third-party consulting firm's report scrubbed to hide the true extent of the company's problems.
The disclosure is generally much kinder to Dorsey, who hired Zatko and whom Zatko believes wanted to see the problems within the company fixed. But it does depict him as extremely disengaged in his final months leading Twitter -- so much so that some senior staff even considered the possibility he was sick.
CNN has reached out to Dorsey for comment. A person familiar with Zatko's tenure at Twitter told CNN the company investigated several claims he brought forward around the time he was fired, and ultimately found them unpersuasive; the person added that Zatko at times lacked understanding of Twitter's FTC obligations.
Zatko believes his firing was in retaliation for his sounding the alarm about the company's security problems.
The scathing disclosure, which totals around 200 pages, including supporting exhibits -- was sent last month to a number of US government agencies and congressional committees, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. The existence and details of the disclosure have not previously been reported. CNN obtained a copy of the disclosure from a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill. The SEC, DOJ and FTC declined to comment; the Senate Intelligence Committee, which received a copy of the report, is taking the disclosure seriously and is setting a meeting to discuss the allegations, according to Rachel Cohen, a committee spokesperson.\
Sen. Dick Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and also received the report, vowed to investigate "and take further steps as needed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the same panel's top Republican and an avid Twitter user, also expressed deep
concerns about the allegations in a statement to CNN.
"Take a tech platform that collects massive amounts of user data, combine it with what appears to be an incredibly weak security infrastructure and infuse it with foreign state actors with an agenda, and you've got a recipe for disaster," Grassley said. "The claims I've received from a Twitter whistleblower raise serious national security concerns as well as privacy issues, and they must be investigated further."
The Whistleblower
Zatko first came to national attention in 1998 when he took part in the first congressional hearings on cybersecurity."All my life, I've been about finding places where I can go and make a difference. I've done that through the security field. That's my main lever," he told CNN in an interview earlier this month.
Twitter whistleblower was on CNN 22 years ago. Here's what he had to say 03:22
The events leading to his decision to become a whistleblower began before he worked at Twitter, with a devastating hack in 2020 in which the Twitter accounts of some of the world's most famous people, including then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian and Musk, were compromised. Twitter told CNN that in response to the incident, the company began compartmentalizing access to customer support tool
After the attack, Dorsey recruited Zatko, a well-known "ethical hacker" turned cybersecurity insider and executive who previously held senior roles at Google, Stripe and the US Department of Defense, and who told CNN that he'd been offered a senior, day-one cyber position in the Biden administration.
Zatko, center, was among a group of hackers who testified before Congress on cybersecurity in 1998.
What Zatko says he found was a company with extraordinarily poor security practices, including giving thousands of the company's employees — amounting to roughly half the company's workforce — access to some of the platform's critical controls. His disclosure describes his overall findings as "egregious deficiencies, negligence, willful ignorance, and threats to national security and democracy."
After the January 6 insurrection, Zatko was concerned about the possibility someone within Twitter who sympathized with the insurrectionists could try to manipulate the company's platform, according to his disclosure. He sought to clamp down on internal access that allows Twitter engineers to make changes to the platform, known as the "production environment."
But, the disclosure says, Zatko soon learned "it was impossible to protect the production environment. All engineers had access. There was no logging of who went into the environment or what they did.... Nobody knew where data lived or whether it was critical, and all engineers had some form of critical access to the production environment." Twitter also lacked the ability to hold workers accountable for information security lapses because it has little control or visibility into employees' individual work computers, Zatko claims, citing internal cybersecurity reports estimating that 4 in 10 devices do not meet basic security standards.
Twitter's flimsy server infrastructure is a separate yet equally serious vulnerability, the disclosure claims. About half of the company's 500,000 servers run on outdated software that does not support basic security features such as encryption for stored data or regular security updates by vendors, according to the letter to regulators and a February email Zatko wrote to Patrick Pichette, a Twitter board member, that is included in the disclosure.
The company also lacks sufficient redundancies and procedures to restart or recover from data center crashes, Zatko's disclosure says, meaning that even minor outages of several data centers at the same time could knock the entire Twitter service offline, perhaps for good.
Twitter did not respond to questions about the risk of data center outages, but told CNN that people on Twitter's engineering and product teams are authorized to access the production environment if they have a specific business justification for doing so. Twitter's employees use devices overseen by other IT and security teams with the power to prevent a device from connecting to sensitive internal systems if it is running outdated software, Twitter added.
The company also said it uses automated checks to ensure laptops running outdated software cannot access the production environment, and that employees may only make changes to Twitter's live product after the code meets certain record-keeping and review requirements.
I believe I'm still performing that mission," he said.
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Page 2 of 2
www.cnn.com
In an e-mail exchange between whistleblower Peiter Zatko and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Zatko expresses confusion around expectations for corrective documents.
Twitter has internal security tools that are tested by the company regularly, and every two years by external auditors, according to the person familiar with Zatko's tenure at the company. The person added that some of Zatko's statistics surrounding device security lacked credibility and were derived by a small team that did not properly account for Twitter's existing security procedures.
But Twitter's security concerns had come to light prior to 2020. In 2010, the FTC filed a complaint against Twitter for its mishandling of users' private information and the issue of too many employees having access to Twitter's central controls. The complaint resulted in an FTC consent order finalized the following year in which Twitter vowed to clean up its act, including by creating and maintaining "a comprehensive information security program."
Zatko alleges that despite the company's claims to the contrary, it had "never been in compliance" with what the FTC demanded more than 10 years ago. As a result of its alleged failures to address vulnerabilities raised by the FTC as well as other deficiencies, he says, Twitter suffers an "anomalously high rate of security incidents," approximately one per week serious enough to require disclosure to government agencies. "Based on my professional experience, peer companies do not have this magnitude or volume of incidents," Zatko wrote in a February letter to Twitter's board after he was fired by Twitter in January.
The stakes of Zatko's disclosure are enormous. It could lead to billions of dollars in new fines for Twitter if it's found to have violated its legal obligations, according to Jon Leibowitz, who was chair of the FTC at the time of Twitter's original 2011 consent order.
The agency now has another opportunity to show the tech industry it is serious about holding platforms accountable, Leibowitz added, after officials opted not to name top Facebook execs including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in the FTC's $5 billion privacy settlement with that company in 2019.
"One of the big disappointments in the Facebook order violation case was that the FTC let executives off the hook; they should've been named," Leibowitz told CNN in an interview. "And if there's a violation here — and that's a big if — then I think the FTC should very seriously consider not just fining the corporation but also putting the executives responsible under order."
Twitter told CNN its FTC compliance record speaks for itself, citing third-party audits filed to the agency under the 2011 consent order in which it said Zatko did not participate. Twitter also said it is in compliance with relevant privacy rules and that it has been transparent with regulators about its efforts to fix any shortcomings in its systems.
Zatko's allegations are based in part on a failure to grasp how Twitter's existing programs and processes work to fulfill Twitter's FTC obligations, the person familiar with his tenure told CNN, saying that misunderstanding has prompted him to make inaccurate claims about the company's level of compliance.
Twitter is exceptionally vulnerable to foreign government exploitation in ways that undermine US national security, and the company may even have foreign spies currently on its payroll, the disclosure alleges.
The whistleblower report says the US government provided specific evidence to Twitter shortly before Zatko's firing that at least one of its employees, perhaps more, were working for another government's intelligence service. The report does not say whether Twitter was already aware or if it subsequently acted on the tip.
Parag Agrawal, Twitter's former chief technology officer, was made CEO after Jack Dorsey stepped down last November.
Last year, prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Agrawal — then Twitter's chief technology officer — proposed to Zatko that Twitter comply with Russian demands that could result in broad-based censorship or surveillance of the platform, Zatko alleges.
The disclosure does not provide details of Agrawal's suggestion. Last summer, however, Russia passed a law pressuring tech platforms to open local offices in the country or face potential advertising bans, a move western security experts said was intended to give Russia greater leverage over US tech companies.
While Agrawal's suggestion was ultimately discarded, it was still an alarming sign of how far Twitter was willing to go in pursuit of growth, according to Zatko.
Zatko's report is becoming public just two weeks after a former Twitter manager was convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi case underscores the gravity of the allegations Zatko now levels at Twitter. His report could further inflame bipartisan concerns in Washington about foreign adversaries and the cybersecurity threats they pose to Americans, ranging from the theft of US citizens' data to manipulating US voters or stealing technology and trade secrets.
Twitter did not respond to specific questions about its alleged foreign intelligence vulnerabilities.
Zatko's disclosure comes at a particularly fortuitous moment for Musk, who is engaged in a legal battle with Twitter over his attempt to back out of buying the company. Musk has accused Twitter of lying about the number of spam bots on its platform, an issue that he claims should let him terminate the deal.
While the binding acquisition agreement that Musk signed with Twitter in April did not include any bot-related exemptions, the billionaire claims that the number of bots on the platform affect the user experience and that having more bots than previously known could therefore impact the company's long-term value. After Musk moved to terminate the purchase, Twitter responded with a lawsuit alleging that he is using bots as a pretext to get out of a deal over which he now has buyers' remorse following the recent market downturn, and asking a court to force him to close the deal. The case is set to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court in October.
Twitter employees walk by the company's headquarters in San Francisco.
User numbers are vital information for any social media business, as advertising revenue depends on how many people could potentially see an ad. But figures about how many users a service has, or how many people actually view a given ad on a site, are notoriously unreliable throughout the tech and media industries due to manipulation and error.
Alone among social media companies, Twitter reports its user numbers to investors and advertisers using a measurement it calls monetizable daily active users, or mDAUs. Its rivals simply count and report all active users; until 2019, Twitter had worked that way as well. But that meant Twitter's figures were subject to significant swings in certain situations, including takedowns of major bot networks. So Twitter switched to mDAUs, which it says counts all users that could be shown an advertisement on Twitter -- leaving all accounts that for some reason can't, for instance because they're known to be bots, in a separate bucket, according to Zatko's disclosure.
The company has repeatedly reported that less than 5% of its mDAUs are fake or spam accounts, and a person familiar with the matter both affirmed that assessment to CNN this week and pointed to other investor disclosures saying the figure relies on significant judgement that may not accurately reflect reality. But Zatko's disclosure argues that by reporting bots only as a percentage of mDAU, rather than as a percentage of the total number of accounts on the platform, Twitter obscures the true scale of fake and spam accounts on the service, a move Zatko alleges is deliberately misleading.
Zatko says he began asking about the prevalence of bot accounts on Twitter in early 2021, and was told by Twitter's head of site integrity that the company didn't know how many total bots are on its platform. He alleges that he came away from conversations with the integrity team with the understanding that the company "had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bots," in part because if the true number became public, it could harm the company's value and image.
Experts on inauthentic behavior online say it can be difficult to quantify "bots" because there isn't a widely agreed upon definition of the term, and because bad actors constantly change their tactics. There are also many harmless bots on Twitter (and across the internet), such as automated news accounts, and Twitter offers an opt-in feature to allow such accounts to transparently label themselves as automated. Twitter told CNN that the claim it doesn't know how many bots are on its platform lacks context, reiterating that not all bots are bad and adding that to focus on the total number of bots on Twitter would include those the company may have already identified and taken action against. The company also does not believe it can catch every spam account on the platform, Twitter said, which is why it reports its less-than-5% figure, which reflects a manual estimate, in its financial filings.
But Zatko told CNN he thinks there would still be value in attempting to measure the total number of spam, false or otherwise potentially harmful automated accounts on the platform. "The executive team, the board, the shareholders and the users all deserve an honest answer as to what it is that they are consuming as far as data and information and content [on the platform ... At least from my point of view, I want to invest in a company where I know what's actually going on because I want to invest strategically in the long-term value of an organization," he said.
Twitter says that it allows bots on its platform, but its rules prohibit those that engage in spam or platform manipulation. But, as with all social media platforms' rules, the challenge often lies in enforcing its policies.
Elon Musk is engaged in a legal battle with Twitter over his attempt to back out of buying the company.
The company says it regularly challenges, suspends and removes accounts engaged in spam and platform manipulation, including typically removing more than one million spam accounts each day. Twitter said the total number of bots on the platform is not a useful number. The company declined to answer questions about the total number of accounts on the platform or the average number of new accounts added on the platform daily as context around its daily bot deletion figure.
But in casting doubt on Twitter's ability to estimate the true number of fake and spam accounts, Zatko's allegations could provide ammunition to Musk's central claim that the figure is much higher than Twitter has publicly reported.
By going public, Zatko says, he believes he is doing the job he was hired to do for a platform he says is critical to democracy. "Jack Dorsey reached out and asked me to come and perform a critical task at Twitter. I signed on to do it and b
Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies
Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN and The Washington Post.
www.cnn.com
Twitter has internal security tools that are tested by the company regularly, and every two years by external auditors, according to the person familiar with Zatko's tenure at the company. The person added that some of Zatko's statistics surrounding device security lacked credibility and were derived by a small team that did not properly account for Twitter's existing security procedures.
But Twitter's security concerns had come to light prior to 2020. In 2010, the FTC filed a complaint against Twitter for its mishandling of users' private information and the issue of too many employees having access to Twitter's central controls. The complaint resulted in an FTC consent order finalized the following year in which Twitter vowed to clean up its act, including by creating and maintaining "a comprehensive information security program."
Zatko alleges that despite the company's claims to the contrary, it had "never been in compliance" with what the FTC demanded more than 10 years ago. As a result of its alleged failures to address vulnerabilities raised by the FTC as well as other deficiencies, he says, Twitter suffers an "anomalously high rate of security incidents," approximately one per week serious enough to require disclosure to government agencies. "Based on my professional experience, peer companies do not have this magnitude or volume of incidents," Zatko wrote in a February letter to Twitter's board after he was fired by Twitter in January.
The stakes of Zatko's disclosure are enormous. It could lead to billions of dollars in new fines for Twitter if it's found to have violated its legal obligations, according to Jon Leibowitz, who was chair of the FTC at the time of Twitter's original 2011 consent order.
The agency now has another opportunity to show the tech industry it is serious about holding platforms accountable, Leibowitz added, after officials opted not to name top Facebook execs including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in the FTC's $5 billion privacy settlement with that company in 2019.
"One of the big disappointments in the Facebook order violation case was that the FTC let executives off the hook; they should've been named," Leibowitz told CNN in an interview. "And if there's a violation here — and that's a big if — then I think the FTC should very seriously consider not just fining the corporation but also putting the executives responsible under order."
Twitter told CNN its FTC compliance record speaks for itself, citing third-party audits filed to the agency under the 2011 consent order in which it said Zatko did not participate. Twitter also said it is in compliance with relevant privacy rules and that it has been transparent with regulators about its efforts to fix any shortcomings in its systems.
Zatko's allegations are based in part on a failure to grasp how Twitter's existing programs and processes work to fulfill Twitter's FTC obligations, the person familiar with his tenure told CNN, saying that misunderstanding has prompted him to make inaccurate claims about the company's level of compliance.
Foreign threats
Twitter is exceptionally vulnerable to foreign government exploitation in ways that undermine US national security, and the company may even have foreign spies currently on its payroll, the disclosure alleges.
The whistleblower report says the US government provided specific evidence to Twitter shortly before Zatko's firing that at least one of its employees, perhaps more, were working for another government's intelligence service. The report does not say whether Twitter was already aware or if it subsequently acted on the tip.
Parag Agrawal, Twitter's former chief technology officer, was made CEO after Jack Dorsey stepped down last November.
Last year, prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Agrawal — then Twitter's chief technology officer — proposed to Zatko that Twitter comply with Russian demands that could result in broad-based censorship or surveillance of the platform, Zatko alleges.
The disclosure does not provide details of Agrawal's suggestion. Last summer, however, Russia passed a law pressuring tech platforms to open local offices in the country or face potential advertising bans, a move western security experts said was intended to give Russia greater leverage over US tech companies.
While Agrawal's suggestion was ultimately discarded, it was still an alarming sign of how far Twitter was willing to go in pursuit of growth, according to Zatko.
"The fact that Twitter's current CEO even suggested Twitter become complicit with the Putin regime is cause for concern about Twitter's effects on U.S. national security," Zatko's disclosure says.
Zatko's report is becoming public just two weeks after a former Twitter manager was convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi case underscores the gravity of the allegations Zatko now levels at Twitter. His report could further inflame bipartisan concerns in Washington about foreign adversaries and the cybersecurity threats they pose to Americans, ranging from the theft of US citizens' data to manipulating US voters or stealing technology and trade secrets.
Twitter did not respond to specific questions about its alleged foreign intelligence vulnerabilities.
The Musk element
Zatko's disclosure comes at a particularly fortuitous moment for Musk, who is engaged in a legal battle with Twitter over his attempt to back out of buying the company. Musk has accused Twitter of lying about the number of spam bots on its platform, an issue that he claims should let him terminate the deal.
While the binding acquisition agreement that Musk signed with Twitter in April did not include any bot-related exemptions, the billionaire claims that the number of bots on the platform affect the user experience and that having more bots than previously known could therefore impact the company's long-term value. After Musk moved to terminate the purchase, Twitter responded with a lawsuit alleging that he is using bots as a pretext to get out of a deal over which he now has buyers' remorse following the recent market downturn, and asking a court to force him to close the deal. The case is set to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court in October.
Twitter employees walk by the company's headquarters in San Francisco.
User numbers are vital information for any social media business, as advertising revenue depends on how many people could potentially see an ad. But figures about how many users a service has, or how many people actually view a given ad on a site, are notoriously unreliable throughout the tech and media industries due to manipulation and error.
Alone among social media companies, Twitter reports its user numbers to investors and advertisers using a measurement it calls monetizable daily active users, or mDAUs. Its rivals simply count and report all active users; until 2019, Twitter had worked that way as well. But that meant Twitter's figures were subject to significant swings in certain situations, including takedowns of major bot networks. So Twitter switched to mDAUs, which it says counts all users that could be shown an advertisement on Twitter -- leaving all accounts that for some reason can't, for instance because they're known to be bots, in a separate bucket, according to Zatko's disclosure.
The company has repeatedly reported that less than 5% of its mDAUs are fake or spam accounts, and a person familiar with the matter both affirmed that assessment to CNN this week and pointed to other investor disclosures saying the figure relies on significant judgement that may not accurately reflect reality. But Zatko's disclosure argues that by reporting bots only as a percentage of mDAU, rather than as a percentage of the total number of accounts on the platform, Twitter obscures the true scale of fake and spam accounts on the service, a move Zatko alleges is deliberately misleading.
Zatko says he began asking about the prevalence of bot accounts on Twitter in early 2021, and was told by Twitter's head of site integrity that the company didn't know how many total bots are on its platform. He alleges that he came away from conversations with the integrity team with the understanding that the company "had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bots," in part because if the true number became public, it could harm the company's value and image.
Experts on inauthentic behavior online say it can be difficult to quantify "bots" because there isn't a widely agreed upon definition of the term, and because bad actors constantly change their tactics. There are also many harmless bots on Twitter (and across the internet), such as automated news accounts, and Twitter offers an opt-in feature to allow such accounts to transparently label themselves as automated. Twitter told CNN that the claim it doesn't know how many bots are on its platform lacks context, reiterating that not all bots are bad and adding that to focus on the total number of bots on Twitter would include those the company may have already identified and taken action against. The company also does not believe it can catch every spam account on the platform, Twitter said, which is why it reports its less-than-5% figure, which reflects a manual estimate, in its financial filings.
But Zatko told CNN he thinks there would still be value in attempting to measure the total number of spam, false or otherwise potentially harmful automated accounts on the platform. "The executive team, the board, the shareholders and the users all deserve an honest answer as to what it is that they are consuming as far as data and information and content [on the platform ... At least from my point of view, I want to invest in a company where I know what's actually going on because I want to invest strategically in the long-term value of an organization," he said.
Twitter says that it allows bots on its platform, but its rules prohibit those that engage in spam or platform manipulation. But, as with all social media platforms' rules, the challenge often lies in enforcing its policies.
Elon Musk is engaged in a legal battle with Twitter over his attempt to back out of buying the company.
The company says it regularly challenges, suspends and removes accounts engaged in spam and platform manipulation, including typically removing more than one million spam accounts each day. Twitter said the total number of bots on the platform is not a useful number. The company declined to answer questions about the total number of accounts on the platform or the average number of new accounts added on the platform daily as context around its daily bot deletion figure.
But in casting doubt on Twitter's ability to estimate the true number of fake and spam accounts, Zatko's allegations could provide ammunition to Musk's central claim that the figure is much higher than Twitter has publicly reported.
By going public, Zatko says, he believes he is doing the job he was hired to do for a platform he says is critical to democracy. "Jack Dorsey reached out and asked me to come and perform a critical task at Twitter. I signed on to do it and b
jward
passin' thru
Musk sends fresh letter to scrap Twitter deal after whistleblower claims
August 30, 202212:10 PM CDTLast Updated 18 hours ago
Aug 30 (Reuters) - Elon Musk has sent an additional letter of deal termination to Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) to include a recent whistleblower complaint from former security head of the social media firm as another reason to scrap the $44 billion deal.Last week, Peiter Zatko, a famed hacker known as "Mudge", said in his complaint that Twitter prioritized user growth over reducing spam and falsely claimed it had a solid security plan. read more
If the allegation are true, then Twitter has breached some of the provisions of the merger agreement, Musk and his legal team said in a letter dated Aug. 29.
Twitter, however, said in its regulatory filing the fresh termination notice was invalid and wrongful under the deal terms.Elon Musk's twitter account is seen on a smartphone in front of the Twitter logo in this photo illustration taken, April 15, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Musk has also subpoenaed Zatko, seeking information mostly about the way the microblogging site measures spam account.
Musk decided to terminate the deal in July, saying the company misled him and regulators about the true number of spam or bot accounts on the microblogging platform.
His legal team said allegations on certain facts, which were known to Twitter prior to July 8 but were not disclosed to them, provide additional and distinct bases to end the deal, according to a regulatory filing by Musk on Tuesday.
The latest turn of events comes as the two sides head to a five-day trial at the Delaware Court of Chancery set to begin on Oct. 17. Twitter is asking Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick to order Musk to buy it for the agreed $54.20 per share.
Twitter shares were down 2.5% at $39.02 before the bell.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/H5KMVVGPVZNMHCXMXCPAHHGRTU.jpg)
Musk sends fresh letter to scrap Twitter deal after whistleblower claims
Elon Musk has sent an additional letter of deal termination to Twitter Inc to include a recent whistleblower complaint from former security head of the social media firm as another reason to scrap the $44 billion deal.
jward
passin' thru
Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
BREAKING Twitter shareholders are poised to approve Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal — Early votes suggest the acquisition will be approved by a wide margin - WSJ
vector7
Dot Collector
What? Why now and what changed?
Just checked his twits/polls from yesterday, and how they were attacked by #NAFO bots controlled by the CIA and Ukrainian high officials, I assume he want to be able to get rid of them, just read the thread:
The @CIA and the Ukraine Govt run a joint botnet called #NAFO. They engage in social media manipulation to make it seem like the masses support Ukraine. They also attack @twitter users who criticize the US proxy war. Most NAFO users are bots or aliases mixed with useful idiots.
Now that #NAFO has their crosshairs on @elonmusk it’s putting the spotlight on them. This is good because it will lead to investigations into state sponsored malicious activity on @twitter. It may also help Elon in his case by demonstrating that Twitter does nothing against this.
The intel community usually has strict rules not to use social media. But for the first time the entire global workforce of US & partner spy agencies has permission to engage the enemy on Twitter via #NAFO using aliases and fake accounts combined with bots. Social media warfare.
View: https://twitter.com/hectorandradel/status/1577333284907864064?s=20&t=zMD4q7fg9R4glCLcau4I4Q
Just checked his twits/polls from yesterday, and how they were attacked by #NAFO bots controlled by the CIA and Ukrainian high officials, I assume he want to be able to get rid of them, just read the thread:
The @CIA and the Ukraine Govt run a joint botnet called #NAFO. They engage in social media manipulation to make it seem like the masses support Ukraine. They also attack @twitter users who criticize the US proxy war. Most NAFO users are bots or aliases mixed with useful idiots.
Now that #NAFO has their crosshairs on @elonmusk it’s putting the spotlight on them. This is good because it will lead to investigations into state sponsored malicious activity on @twitter. It may also help Elon in his case by demonstrating that Twitter does nothing against this.
The intel community usually has strict rules not to use social media. But for the first time the entire global workforce of US & partner spy agencies has permission to engage the enemy on Twitter via #NAFO using aliases and fake accounts combined with bots. Social media warfare.
View: https://twitter.com/hectorandradel/status/1577333284907864064?s=20&t=zMD4q7fg9R4glCLcau4I4Q
Last edited:
vector7
Dot Collector
I just realized I’m getting fired
RT 27secs
View: https://twitter.com/drefanzor/status/1577335747652091913?s=20&t=2jNl0qRbv6QTD-K6_fdGrg
RT 27secs
View: https://twitter.com/drefanzor/status/1577335747652091913?s=20&t=2jNl0qRbv6QTD-K6_fdGrg
mzkitty
I give up.
I can hardly wait for him to allow Trump back on the platform. Those liberal heads will explode and Musk can fire them all.
I believe Trump said he wouldn't go back to Twitter, no matter what.
Summerthyme
Summerthyme
vector7
Dot Collector
Multiple Twitter users report unexpected and sudden decrease in followers count following Musk buyout deal news.
View: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1577416087763050496?s=20&t=ETAB5i0HM1kQq7BjVNATEQ
View: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1577416087763050496?s=20&t=ETAB5i0HM1kQq7BjVNATEQ
mzkitty
I give up.
intothatgoodnight
. . .
Interesting development.
Am wondering if Team Trump, et al, decided that they needed a non-censored Twitter global service up and running ASAP?
Also begs a question about any pending and unannounced tech lash-up with Starlink and Twitter, which would not require terrestrial IP connectivity in order to remain widely available - or, if terrestrial internet/IP backbones (main underground/undersea fiber connectivity "highways" carrying large volumes of internet activity between two major points) were somehow disabled (say, between CONUS and Europe, Asia), Starlink could provide host specific services (Twitter, in this example, but could be a select group of others) globally, bypassing any "missing" terrestrial/undersea backbone segments. (Starlink acting as a de facto backbone link for pre-selected/limited internet services)
intothegoodnight
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
Christopher F. Rufo 
@realchrisrufo
4h
NBC News reporter accidentally admits that Twitter has been suppressing, manipulating, and distorting the public debate in order to benefit the political Left.
View: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1577361445188431872?s=20&t=ut0-Tn-W4msEF90O99HHKQ
@realchrisrufo
4h
NBC News reporter accidentally admits that Twitter has been suppressing, manipulating, and distorting the public debate in order to benefit the political Left.
View: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1577361445188431872?s=20&t=ut0-Tn-W4msEF90O99HHKQ
Macgyver
Has No Life - Lives on TB
This is a very valid point, especially if the difference is only a couple million bucks it's worth it to a lot of politicians.
energy_wave
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Twitter banned my account last month and I rarely posted. I only signed up to follow a few people. I clicked the like button frequently for Consertive politicians though and replied to Elon. Must be they didn't like that.
Dobbin
Faithful Steed
Um. Musk has served notice that he intends to hold Twitter's hooves to the fire on DISCLOSURE. (I.e. part of the agreement package) All those fake bots just begging to be revealed.
Biden Regime is not happy...
Twitter will be the next player in the batters box.
"The ball is a popup fly to shortstop."
Dobbin
intothatgoodnight
. . .
There is a good chance that Twitter is utilizing the AWS (Amazon Web Services) "menu," with AWS cloud tech embedded into their backend infrastructure - or, at least some sort of "direct-connect" data-mining connection via a "private" AWS hook-up for the three-letter bunch and/or DHS.
For background - below is a 2014 article describing the tech/business relationship between the three-letter bunch, and Amazon AWS cloud tech.
My guess - Twitter is likely part of, or became part of, this discussion.
-------------------------------------------
www.theatlantic.com
The Details About the CIA's Deal With Amazon
A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a "radical departure" for the risk-averse intelligence community.
By Frank Konkel
July 17, 2014
The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency. What’s more, they’ll only pay for what they use.
The vision was first outlined in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago. Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.
For the risk-averse intelligence community, the decision to go with a commercial cloud vendor is a radical departure from business as usual.
In 2011, while private companies were consolidating data centers in favor of the cloud and some civilian agencies began flirting with cloud variants like email as a service, a sometimes contentious debate among the intelligence community’s leadership took place.
As one former intelligence official with knowledge of the Amazon deal told Government Executive, “It took a lot of wrangling, but it was easy to see the vision if you laid it all out.” The critical question was would the IC, led by the CIA, attempt to do cloud computing from within, or would it buy innovation? Money was a factor, according to the intelligence official, but not the leading one.
The government was spending more money on information technology within the IC than ever before. IT spending reached $8 billion in 2013, according to budget documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The CIA and other agencies feasibly could have spent billions of dollars standing up their own cloud infrastructure without raising many eyebrows in Congress, but the decision to purchase a single commercial solution came down primarily to two factors.
“What we were really looking at was time to mission and innovation,” the former intelligence official said. “The goal was, ‘Can we act like a large enterprise in the corporate world and buy the thing that we don’t have, can we catch up to the commercial cycle? Anybody can build a data center, but could we purchase something more?
“We decided we needed to buy innovation,” the former intelligence official said.
(page 1 of 5)
For background - below is a 2014 article describing the tech/business relationship between the three-letter bunch, and Amazon AWS cloud tech.
My guess - Twitter is likely part of, or became part of, this discussion.
-------------------------------------------
The Details About the CIA's Deal With Amazon
A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a "radical departure" for the risk-averse intelligence community.
www.theatlantic.com
The Details About the CIA's Deal With Amazon
A $600 million computing cloud built by an outside company is a "radical departure" for the risk-averse intelligence community.
By Frank Konkel
July 17, 2014
The intelligence community is about to get the equivalent of an adrenaline shot to the chest. This summer, a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the Central Intelligence Agency over the past year will begin servicing all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community. If the technology plays out as officials envision, it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For the first time, agencies within the intelligence community will be able to order a variety of on-demand computing and analytic services from the CIA and National Security Agency. What’s more, they’ll only pay for what they use.
The vision was first outlined in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago. Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.
For the risk-averse intelligence community, the decision to go with a commercial cloud vendor is a radical departure from business as usual.
In 2011, while private companies were consolidating data centers in favor of the cloud and some civilian agencies began flirting with cloud variants like email as a service, a sometimes contentious debate among the intelligence community’s leadership took place.
As one former intelligence official with knowledge of the Amazon deal told Government Executive, “It took a lot of wrangling, but it was easy to see the vision if you laid it all out.” The critical question was would the IC, led by the CIA, attempt to do cloud computing from within, or would it buy innovation? Money was a factor, according to the intelligence official, but not the leading one.
The government was spending more money on information technology within the IC than ever before. IT spending reached $8 billion in 2013, according to budget documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The CIA and other agencies feasibly could have spent billions of dollars standing up their own cloud infrastructure without raising many eyebrows in Congress, but the decision to purchase a single commercial solution came down primarily to two factors.
“What we were really looking at was time to mission and innovation,” the former intelligence official said. “The goal was, ‘Can we act like a large enterprise in the corporate world and buy the thing that we don’t have, can we catch up to the commercial cycle? Anybody can build a data center, but could we purchase something more?
“We decided we needed to buy innovation,” the former intelligence official said.
(page 1 of 5)
Last edited:
intothatgoodnight
. . .
(page 2 of 5)
A Groundbreaking Deal
The CIA’s first request for proposals from industry in mid-2012 was met with bid protests to the Government Accountability Office from Microsoft and AT&T, two early contenders for the contract. Those protests focused on the narrow specifications called for by the RFP. GAO did not issue a decision in either protest because the CIA reworked its request to address the companies’ complaint.
In early 2013, after weighing bids from Amazon Web Services, IBM and an unnamed third vendor, the CIA awarded a contract to AWS worth up to $600 million over a period of up to 10 years. The deal, handled in secret, was first reported by FCW in March 2013, sending ripples through the tech industry.
A month after the deal became public, IBM filed a bid protest with GAO that the watchdog eventually upheld in June, forcing the CIA to reopen bids to both companies for the contract. A legal struggle between Amazon and Big Blue ensued, and AWS filed a lawsuit against the federal government in July 2013, claiming the GAO sustainment was a “flawed” decision.
In October, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler sided with Amazon and overturned GAO’s decision to force the CIA to rebid the contract. Big Blue went home, AWS claimed victory under the deal’s original financial specs, and nearly 18 months after the procurement was first released, the CIA and Amazon went to work.
It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract’s importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it “one of the most important technology procurements in recent history,” with ramifications far outside the realm of technology.
“It’s going to take a few months to bring this online in a robust way, but it’s coming,” Wolfe said. “And I think it’s going to make a big difference for national security.”
Securing New Capabilities
The Amazon-built cloud will operate behind the IC’s firewall, or more simply: It’s a public cloud built on private premises.
Intelligence agencies will be able to host applications or order a variety of on-demand services like storage, computing and analytics. True to the National Institute of Standards and Technology definition of cloud computing, the IC cloud scales up or down to meet the need.
In that regard, customers will pay only for services they actually use, which is expected to generate massive savings for the IC.
“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to sharpen our focus and to be very efficient,” Wolfe told an audience at AWS’ annual nonprofit and government symposium in Washington. “We hope to get speed and scale out of the cloud, and a tremendous amount of efficiency in terms of folks traditionally using IT now using it in a cost-recovery way.”
Many agencies within the IC already have identified applications to move to the cloud. In a recent report, National Reconnaissance Office Chief Information Officer Donna Hansen said her agency had picked five applications, including its enterprise resource planning software, to migrate to the IC cloud. As with public clouds, the IC cloud will maximize automation and require standardized information, which will be shared through application programming interfaces, known as APIs. Amazon engineers will oversee the hardware because AWS owns the hardware and is responsible for maintaining it just as they do in the company’s public data centers.
Whenever Amazon introduces a new innovation or improvement in cloud services, the IC cloud will evolve. Company officials say AWS made more than 200 such incremental improvements last year, ensuring a sort of built-in innovation to the IC cloud that will help the intelligence community keep pace with commercial advances. Wolfe said AWS’ capacity to bring commercial innovation from places like Silicon Valley to the IC is one of the contract’s greatest benefits. Whenever AWS introduces new products, the CIA will be able to implement them.
A Groundbreaking Deal
The CIA’s first request for proposals from industry in mid-2012 was met with bid protests to the Government Accountability Office from Microsoft and AT&T, two early contenders for the contract. Those protests focused on the narrow specifications called for by the RFP. GAO did not issue a decision in either protest because the CIA reworked its request to address the companies’ complaint.
In early 2013, after weighing bids from Amazon Web Services, IBM and an unnamed third vendor, the CIA awarded a contract to AWS worth up to $600 million over a period of up to 10 years. The deal, handled in secret, was first reported by FCW in March 2013, sending ripples through the tech industry.
A month after the deal became public, IBM filed a bid protest with GAO that the watchdog eventually upheld in June, forcing the CIA to reopen bids to both companies for the contract. A legal struggle between Amazon and Big Blue ensued, and AWS filed a lawsuit against the federal government in July 2013, claiming the GAO sustainment was a “flawed” decision.
In October, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler sided with Amazon and overturned GAO’s decision to force the CIA to rebid the contract. Big Blue went home, AWS claimed victory under the deal’s original financial specs, and nearly 18 months after the procurement was first released, the CIA and Amazon went to work.
It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract’s importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it “one of the most important technology procurements in recent history,” with ramifications far outside the realm of technology.
“It’s going to take a few months to bring this online in a robust way, but it’s coming,” Wolfe said. “And I think it’s going to make a big difference for national security.”
Securing New Capabilities
The Amazon-built cloud will operate behind the IC’s firewall, or more simply: It’s a public cloud built on private premises.
Intelligence agencies will be able to host applications or order a variety of on-demand services like storage, computing and analytics. True to the National Institute of Standards and Technology definition of cloud computing, the IC cloud scales up or down to meet the need.
In that regard, customers will pay only for services they actually use, which is expected to generate massive savings for the IC.
“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to sharpen our focus and to be very efficient,” Wolfe told an audience at AWS’ annual nonprofit and government symposium in Washington. “We hope to get speed and scale out of the cloud, and a tremendous amount of efficiency in terms of folks traditionally using IT now using it in a cost-recovery way.”
Many agencies within the IC already have identified applications to move to the cloud. In a recent report, National Reconnaissance Office Chief Information Officer Donna Hansen said her agency had picked five applications, including its enterprise resource planning software, to migrate to the IC cloud. As with public clouds, the IC cloud will maximize automation and require standardized information, which will be shared through application programming interfaces, known as APIs. Amazon engineers will oversee the hardware because AWS owns the hardware and is responsible for maintaining it just as they do in the company’s public data centers.
Whenever Amazon introduces a new innovation or improvement in cloud services, the IC cloud will evolve. Company officials say AWS made more than 200 such incremental improvements last year, ensuring a sort of built-in innovation to the IC cloud that will help the intelligence community keep pace with commercial advances. Wolfe said AWS’ capacity to bring commercial innovation from places like Silicon Valley to the IC is one of the contract’s greatest benefits. Whenever AWS introduces new products, the CIA will be able to implement them.
intothatgoodnight
. . .
(page 3 of 5)
“The biggest thing we were trying to do—the visionary folks a couple years ago—was answer the question, ‘How do we keep up?’” Wolfe said. “The mission we have is important. The pace and complexity is really not [diminishing], in fact, it may be increasing. We feel it is very important to deliver the best IT and best products and services we can to our customers in the IC.”
What of the data, though? Intelligence agencies are drowning in it, collecting and analyzing an amalgamation of information from sensors, satellites, surveillance efforts, open data repositories and human intelligence, among other sources. Is that data really secure in the cloud?
The CIA is convinced it is.
The IC cloud “will be accredited and compliant with IC standards,” says a senior CIA official familiar with the IC cloud. It will, for example, be able to handle Sensitive Compartmented Information, a type of classified information. “Security in the IC cloud will be as safe as or safer than security on our current data centers,” the senior CIA official says. Because the IC cloud will serve multiple tenants—the 17 agencies that comprise the IC—administrators will be able to restrict access to information based on the identity of the individual seeking it. The idea is to foster collaboration without compromising security. Visually, the IC cloud can be thought of as a workspace hanging off the IC’s shared network—a place where data can be loaded for a variety of tasks like computing or sharing. The IC cloud gives agencies additional means to share information in an environment where automated security isn’t a barrier to the sharing itself. This could prove vital in situations reminiscent of 9/11, in which national security is an immediate concern.
Cloud vendors, including Amazon, have argued that cloud infrastructures can be more secure than traditional data centers because there are fewer points of entry, but the leaks by Snowden illustrate the potential threat from inside an organization. Snowden was able to access and download classified information intelligence officials said he shouldn’t have been able to access.
To access information within the IC cloud, analysts must have the proper permissions. In addition, the standardized environment and automation means all activity within the cloud is logged and can be analyzed in near real-time.
Some government officials view cloud computing as inherently less secure than computing on locally controlled servers, but the CIA’s acceptance of commercially developed cloud technology “has been a wake-up call” to those who balk at it, according to John Pirc, a former CIA cybersecurity researcher who is now chief technology officer at NSS Labs, a security research firm.
“You hear so many people on the fence about cloud, and then to see the CIA gobble it up and do something so highly disruptive, it’s kind of cool,” says Pirc. “To me, this removes the clouded judgment that cloud isn’t secure. Their moving forward with this should send a message to the rest of the industry that cloud is something you shouldn’t be afraid of.”
Pirc is no stranger to disruptive technologies. At the CIA’s research labs in the early 2000s, he recalls virtualization—a technology that allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on the same servers, allowing for far more efficient computing—before it became an integral component of many IT enterprises. Intelligence agencies use commercial off-the-shelf technology all the time, but to Pirc, the importance of the cloud capabilities the CIA gets through leveraging Amazon Web Services’ horsepower is best exemplified in computing intelligence data. Scalable computing is critical for fostering shared services and enhanced collaboration between disparate intelligence agencies.
“The biggest thing we were trying to do—the visionary folks a couple years ago—was answer the question, ‘How do we keep up?’” Wolfe said. “The mission we have is important. The pace and complexity is really not [diminishing], in fact, it may be increasing. We feel it is very important to deliver the best IT and best products and services we can to our customers in the IC.”
What of the data, though? Intelligence agencies are drowning in it, collecting and analyzing an amalgamation of information from sensors, satellites, surveillance efforts, open data repositories and human intelligence, among other sources. Is that data really secure in the cloud?
The CIA is convinced it is.
The IC cloud “will be accredited and compliant with IC standards,” says a senior CIA official familiar with the IC cloud. It will, for example, be able to handle Sensitive Compartmented Information, a type of classified information. “Security in the IC cloud will be as safe as or safer than security on our current data centers,” the senior CIA official says. Because the IC cloud will serve multiple tenants—the 17 agencies that comprise the IC—administrators will be able to restrict access to information based on the identity of the individual seeking it. The idea is to foster collaboration without compromising security. Visually, the IC cloud can be thought of as a workspace hanging off the IC’s shared network—a place where data can be loaded for a variety of tasks like computing or sharing. The IC cloud gives agencies additional means to share information in an environment where automated security isn’t a barrier to the sharing itself. This could prove vital in situations reminiscent of 9/11, in which national security is an immediate concern.
Cloud vendors, including Amazon, have argued that cloud infrastructures can be more secure than traditional data centers because there are fewer points of entry, but the leaks by Snowden illustrate the potential threat from inside an organization. Snowden was able to access and download classified information intelligence officials said he shouldn’t have been able to access.
To access information within the IC cloud, analysts must have the proper permissions. In addition, the standardized environment and automation means all activity within the cloud is logged and can be analyzed in near real-time.
Some government officials view cloud computing as inherently less secure than computing on locally controlled servers, but the CIA’s acceptance of commercially developed cloud technology “has been a wake-up call” to those who balk at it, according to John Pirc, a former CIA cybersecurity researcher who is now chief technology officer at NSS Labs, a security research firm.
“You hear so many people on the fence about cloud, and then to see the CIA gobble it up and do something so highly disruptive, it’s kind of cool,” says Pirc. “To me, this removes the clouded judgment that cloud isn’t secure. Their moving forward with this should send a message to the rest of the industry that cloud is something you shouldn’t be afraid of.”
Pirc is no stranger to disruptive technologies. At the CIA’s research labs in the early 2000s, he recalls virtualization—a technology that allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on the same servers, allowing for far more efficient computing—before it became an integral component of many IT enterprises. Intelligence agencies use commercial off-the-shelf technology all the time, but to Pirc, the importance of the cloud capabilities the CIA gets through leveraging Amazon Web Services’ horsepower is best exemplified in computing intelligence data. Scalable computing is critical for fostering shared services and enhanced collaboration between disparate intelligence agencies.
intothatgoodnight
. . .
(page 4 of 5)
“What it allows them to do is spin up servers and add more [computing power] fast, and when you’re computing intelligence data, the more compute power you have, the faster you can react,” Pirc says. “In the private sector, compute is all about money and profit, but from my viewpoint when I worked for the agency, you’re working with extremely time-sensitive information. Being able to have that compute power, something that might have taken a couple of hours might instead take a few seconds. Profits aren’t lost when you make mistakes in the intelligence community—people die when you make mistakes.”
A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.
Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials, according to GAO documentation, and was one of the chief reasons the agency selected Amazon.
Limited Details
The CIA declined to comment when Government Executive asked about the extent of the IC cloud’s capabilities or that of the National Security Agency’s cloud. Amazon also declined to describe the IC cloud’s technical capabilities.
It is a good bet, though, that the AWS-built cloud for the IC will have capabilities at least equal to existing capabilities Amazon has already implemented across government.
For example, the company provides the cloud bandwidth for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s collection of more than 1 billion trade records and more than a terabyte of new data per day through its Market Information Data Analytics System. This example may be prescient given that now-public surveillance efforts indicate the IC collects billions and perhaps trillions of pieces of metadata, phone and Internet records, and other various bits of information on an annual basis. The potential exists for the CIA to become one of AWS’ largest customers.
Within the intelligence community, examples abound where the cloud’s capabilities could significantly boost the mission.
As the geospatial hub of the community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ingests, analyzes, metatags and reports all geo-intelligence and multisource content in its flagship program called Map of the World. Geospatial data’s importance to the IC has increased in recent years, as evidenced by NGA’s nearly $5 billion budget and its staff nearly doubling in size since 2004. For intensive applications like ingesting or analyzing geospatial data, scalable computing could have a significant impact on mission performance. The cloud also could improve the way the agency shares its large data sets.
What the IC has done with cloud is not easily replicable, according to American Council for Technology President Rick Holgate, but it is worth paying attention to.
“The IC has a model other agencies should look to and aspire to in terms of transforming the way they think about delivering services across a large enterprise,” Holgate says. “They are looking to common platforms and service delivery models across an entire enterprise, and not just gaining cost efficiencies, but to provide foundational capabilities to really allow it to operate.”
Whether or not the IC cloud serves as an example for the rest of government, the CIA’s quest to buy innovation will loom large for years to come.
Time to Share
The Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise lays out a vision for the IC’s 17 agencies to securely discover, access and share information. The goal: greater mission success.
“What it allows them to do is spin up servers and add more [computing power] fast, and when you’re computing intelligence data, the more compute power you have, the faster you can react,” Pirc says. “In the private sector, compute is all about money and profit, but from my viewpoint when I worked for the agency, you’re working with extremely time-sensitive information. Being able to have that compute power, something that might have taken a couple of hours might instead take a few seconds. Profits aren’t lost when you make mistakes in the intelligence community—people die when you make mistakes.”
A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.
Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials, according to GAO documentation, and was one of the chief reasons the agency selected Amazon.
Limited Details
The CIA declined to comment when Government Executive asked about the extent of the IC cloud’s capabilities or that of the National Security Agency’s cloud. Amazon also declined to describe the IC cloud’s technical capabilities.
It is a good bet, though, that the AWS-built cloud for the IC will have capabilities at least equal to existing capabilities Amazon has already implemented across government.
For example, the company provides the cloud bandwidth for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s collection of more than 1 billion trade records and more than a terabyte of new data per day through its Market Information Data Analytics System. This example may be prescient given that now-public surveillance efforts indicate the IC collects billions and perhaps trillions of pieces of metadata, phone and Internet records, and other various bits of information on an annual basis. The potential exists for the CIA to become one of AWS’ largest customers.
Within the intelligence community, examples abound where the cloud’s capabilities could significantly boost the mission.
As the geospatial hub of the community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency ingests, analyzes, metatags and reports all geo-intelligence and multisource content in its flagship program called Map of the World. Geospatial data’s importance to the IC has increased in recent years, as evidenced by NGA’s nearly $5 billion budget and its staff nearly doubling in size since 2004. For intensive applications like ingesting or analyzing geospatial data, scalable computing could have a significant impact on mission performance. The cloud also could improve the way the agency shares its large data sets.
What the IC has done with cloud is not easily replicable, according to American Council for Technology President Rick Holgate, but it is worth paying attention to.
“The IC has a model other agencies should look to and aspire to in terms of transforming the way they think about delivering services across a large enterprise,” Holgate says. “They are looking to common platforms and service delivery models across an entire enterprise, and not just gaining cost efficiencies, but to provide foundational capabilities to really allow it to operate.”
Whether or not the IC cloud serves as an example for the rest of government, the CIA’s quest to buy innovation will loom large for years to come.
Time to Share
The Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise lays out a vision for the IC’s 17 agencies to securely discover, access and share information. The goal: greater mission success.
intothatgoodnight
. . .
(page 5 of 5)
In essence, ICITE (pronounced EYEsite) changes the business model for intelligence agencies by requiring that they share services.
Cloud computing—behind the IC’s firewall—is one element of that vision. Think of it as the intelligence community sharing information behind a walled castle apart from the rest of the world operating on the Internet.
The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are leading IC cloud development; the NSA’s privately hosted cloud was launched in 2013. Importantly, it was made available to users on new and legacy systems so that personnel on any of its systems could use it. The cloud built by Amazon Web Services at the behest of the CIA will be a shared resource for services on an as-needed basis. Intelligence agencies can order a variety of services like storage, computing, analytics, database services or application hosting. Both clouds will work in complementary fashion, according to senior CIA officials.
Other ICITE components include a common desktop, an IC-wide applications mall, and network requirement and engineering services.
The Defense Intelligence Agency and National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency have piloted shared desktop capabilities across their agencies for several thousand users. Those capabilities eventually will spread throughout the IC.
In essence, ICITE changes the business model for intelligence agencies, mandating shared services. Instead of each agency building out its own systems, select agencies—either one or two of those with larger budgets—are responsible for governing its major components.
The Elephant in the Room
In cloud computing, there’s Amazon Web Services and then there’s everybody else.
IT research firm Gartner had to rescale its famed infrastructure-as-a- service “Magic Quadrant” study in 2013 to accommodate Amazon Web Services’ enormous competitive lead.
The quadrant ranks cloud providers based on their ability to execute operations and the comprehensiveness of their vision. For several years there hasn’t been even a close challenger to AWS. Gartner’s 2014 quadrant shows that AWS captures 83 percent of the cloud computing infrastructure market.
In the combined cloud markets for infrastructure and platform services, hybrid and private clouds—worth a collective $131 billion at the end of 2013—Amazon’s revenue grew 67 percent in the first quarter of 2014, according to Gartner.
While the public sector hasn’t been as quick to capitalize on cloud computing as the private sector, government spending on cloud technologies is beginning to jump.
Researchers at IDC estimate federal private cloud spending will reach $1.7 billion in 2014, and $7.7 billion by 2017. In other industries, software services are considered the leading cloud technology, but in the government that honor goes to infrastructure services, which IDC expects to reach $5.4 billion in 2017.
In addition to its $600 million deal with the CIA, Amazon Web Services also does business with NASA, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most recently, the Obama Administration tapped AWS to host portions of HealthCare.gov.
In essence, ICITE (pronounced EYEsite) changes the business model for intelligence agencies by requiring that they share services.
Cloud computing—behind the IC’s firewall—is one element of that vision. Think of it as the intelligence community sharing information behind a walled castle apart from the rest of the world operating on the Internet.
The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency are leading IC cloud development; the NSA’s privately hosted cloud was launched in 2013. Importantly, it was made available to users on new and legacy systems so that personnel on any of its systems could use it. The cloud built by Amazon Web Services at the behest of the CIA will be a shared resource for services on an as-needed basis. Intelligence agencies can order a variety of services like storage, computing, analytics, database services or application hosting. Both clouds will work in complementary fashion, according to senior CIA officials.
Other ICITE components include a common desktop, an IC-wide applications mall, and network requirement and engineering services.
The Defense Intelligence Agency and National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency have piloted shared desktop capabilities across their agencies for several thousand users. Those capabilities eventually will spread throughout the IC.
In essence, ICITE changes the business model for intelligence agencies, mandating shared services. Instead of each agency building out its own systems, select agencies—either one or two of those with larger budgets—are responsible for governing its major components.
The Elephant in the Room
In cloud computing, there’s Amazon Web Services and then there’s everybody else.
IT research firm Gartner had to rescale its famed infrastructure-as-a- service “Magic Quadrant” study in 2013 to accommodate Amazon Web Services’ enormous competitive lead.
The quadrant ranks cloud providers based on their ability to execute operations and the comprehensiveness of their vision. For several years there hasn’t been even a close challenger to AWS. Gartner’s 2014 quadrant shows that AWS captures 83 percent of the cloud computing infrastructure market.
In the combined cloud markets for infrastructure and platform services, hybrid and private clouds—worth a collective $131 billion at the end of 2013—Amazon’s revenue grew 67 percent in the first quarter of 2014, according to Gartner.
While the public sector hasn’t been as quick to capitalize on cloud computing as the private sector, government spending on cloud technologies is beginning to jump.
Researchers at IDC estimate federal private cloud spending will reach $1.7 billion in 2014, and $7.7 billion by 2017. In other industries, software services are considered the leading cloud technology, but in the government that honor goes to infrastructure services, which IDC expects to reach $5.4 billion in 2017.
In addition to its $600 million deal with the CIA, Amazon Web Services also does business with NASA, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most recently, the Obama Administration tapped AWS to host portions of HealthCare.gov.
vector7
Dot Collector
BOMBSHELL REPORT: | Steve Bannon says VERY CLOSE SOURCES claim Twitter was willing to KNOCK OF A FEW BILLION to keep Trump and BANNED CONSERVATIVES OFF TWITTER and to keep management staff – MUSK REFUSED.
View: https://twitter.com/trending911/status/1577814962239639552?s=20&t=hHO6nshXGZmXLZ-Yl7XUvg
BREAKING: Sources tell Bannon Twitter gave @elonmusk 2 conditions
1.Trump & Conservatives remain off Twitter
2.Twitter staff remains the same
Musk said..... NO DEAL.
RT 1min
View: https://twitter.com/CSinclairtv/status/1577756498196930563?s=20&t=Ln6gNO8IHWc8eFd0RSM7NA
This obviously needs to be re-shared. The left before Elon wanted to buy Twitter.
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/conmomma/status/1577498352853610497?s=20&t=hHO6nshXGZmXLZ-Yl7XUvg
View: https://twitter.com/trending911/status/1577814962239639552?s=20&t=hHO6nshXGZmXLZ-Yl7XUvg
BREAKING: Sources tell Bannon Twitter gave @elonmusk 2 conditions
1.Trump & Conservatives remain off Twitter
2.Twitter staff remains the same
Musk said..... NO DEAL.
RT 1min
View: https://twitter.com/CSinclairtv/status/1577756498196930563?s=20&t=Ln6gNO8IHWc8eFd0RSM7NA
This obviously needs to be re-shared. The left before Elon wanted to buy Twitter.
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/conmomma/status/1577498352853610497?s=20&t=hHO6nshXGZmXLZ-Yl7XUvg
jward
passin' thru
CaitlinSinclairTV
@CSinclairtv
3h
BREAKING: Sources tell Bannon Twitter gave @elonmusk
2 conditions
1.Trump & Conservatives remain off Twitter
2.Twitter staff remains the same
Musk said..... NO DEAL.
View: https://twitter.com/CSinclairtv/status/1577756498196930563?s=20&t=hwpmASwKxKY1Vo6CJJLy5Q
Global Freedom Movement
@GlobalFreedomM
9h
Don’t be surprised when Elon requires KYC verification to log in to your twitter account to “fight the bots.”
Removing anonymity is something he’s already hinted at.
Get yourself a Gab as backup & link up there.
People on our side don’t have a satanist gf, or wear NWO jackets.
Show this thread
@CSinclairtv
3h
BREAKING: Sources tell Bannon Twitter gave @elonmusk
2 conditions
1.Trump & Conservatives remain off Twitter
2.Twitter staff remains the same
Musk said..... NO DEAL.
View: https://twitter.com/CSinclairtv/status/1577756498196930563?s=20&t=hwpmASwKxKY1Vo6CJJLy5Q
Global Freedom Movement
@GlobalFreedomM
9h
Don’t be surprised when Elon requires KYC verification to log in to your twitter account to “fight the bots.”
Removing anonymity is something he’s already hinted at.
Get yourself a Gab as backup & link up there.
People on our side don’t have a satanist gf, or wear NWO jackets.
Show this thread
Last edited:
Macgyver
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Elon Musk Announces Twitter Acquisition Is Just the Start of His Mysterious 'X' Plan
Now that the deal appears to be back on, Elon Musk drops hints that buying Twitter could be part of a much larger plan.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Elon Musk Reveals Twitter Acquisition Is Just the Start of His Mysterious ‘X’ Plan
After first grabbing headlines on Tuesday by saying he would buy the social media giant Twitter after all, Elon Musk
offered two tweets about his grander vision that the Twitter purchase could lead to.
Musk on Tuesday filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealing that he would go through with the deal to buy Twitter if a lawsuit against him in the Delaware Chancery Court is dropped.
Twitter had sued Musk after he said that he no longer wanted to go through with his $44 billion purchase of the company.
On Twitter Tuesday, Musk made his only public comment about the purchase.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted Tuesday.
In response to the ripples of comment this created, he later tweeted, “Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong.”
In writing about the tweets for the BBC, Zoe Kleinman, a technology editor, took a stab at decoding what “X” might be.
“He could well be eyeing something along the lines of the hugely successful Chinese app WeChat. That’s a kind of ‘super app’ which incorporates a lot of different services including messaging, social media, payments and food orders – there is as yet no such thing in the west,” Kleinman wrote.
Musk had praised WeChat in June during a town hall with Twitter employees, according to CNBC.
“And I think that there’s a real opportunity to create that,” Musk said then.
“You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so useful and so helpful to your daily life. And I think if we could achieve that, or even close to that with Twitter, it would be an immense success.”
Meanwhile, Twitter said in a statement on Tuesday that it plans to move cautiously forward with the deal, according to The Washington Post.
The Post reported that a source, who was not named, said the company wants the judge overseeing the lawsuit it brought against Musk to oversee the process of finalizing the sale.
According to the Post, the source also said Twitter executives are still wary of Musk and fear this could be some type of maneuver and not a genuine plan to buy Twitter.
But some analysts said Musk’s offer is a signal that he understands the deal is going to go forward.
Daniel Ives, an analyst for the investment firm Wedbush Securities, wrote a note to clients saying Musk’s acceptance of the deal was a “clear sign that Musk recognized heading into Delaware Court that the chances of winning vs. Twitter board was highly unlikely and this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another,” according to MarketWatch.
“Being forced to do the deal after a long and ugly court battle in Delaware was not an ideal scenario and instead accepting this path and moving forward with the deal will save a massive legal headache,” Ives wrote.
vector7
Dot Collector
China threatens Elon Musk: 'He will be taught a lesson' (for tweeting peaceful options for Ukraine) (3min)
Oct 6, 2022'The War on the West' author Douglas Murray joined 'Fox & Friends' to discuss the Chinese response to Musk's remarks and the broader threat the CCP poses to the United States.