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Facebook's New Product: You - Audio Article
Why We Did This – Facebook’s New Product: You.
In a number of confidential strategy sessions with
the Acreto Advisory team, led by Bob Flores, former CTO of the CIA,
we set out to identify a number of potential mid to long-term threats
that we should monitor. In studying the challenges that come with
securing and adopting IoT technologies, and based on the complexities
of how they operate and the dependency model that is established
sociologically, we realized that Facebook, Google, and other similar
tech giants are starved for data points.
“It used to be that analysis of large amounts of data was limited to the biological capacity of the person. Computers didn’t used to have the processing power nor the algorithm and data sciences that they do today. Now, that’s not the case. The fact of the matter is that all these social media companies are data-starved. The more data points they have, the more they can absorb. There is no overload capacity for these social giants.”
Babak Pasdar, CEO and CTO of Acreto
Given recent events, and since we had one of the
foremost experts in data collection in the world with us, when
conversation turned to Facebook, we honed in on their data collection
platform, where they are now and where they are heading in the
future. We uncovered enough in that meeting to warrant a deeper dive
into the Facebook machine. We studied the company, their practices,
their history, their technology and even the psychology of its
management team. We uncovered a lot of information and the more we
uncovered, it made us want dig more. Through extensive research
exploring investments, patents, acquisitions, market positioning and
even management’s comments, we uncovered data that we thought was
concerning.
Pasdar explains, “We first became professionally interested in Facebook when we realized they have pinned their strategic future on IoTs. Where once Facebook’s information sources were limited to a handful of devices like computers and phones, with IoT integration they can collect much more granular data from hundreds if not thousands of sources.”
Part of what makes addressing this challenge
difficult is that the social media companies have features and
functions that people want, and that they have built social
environments that have become 21st century meeting grounds. These
platforms are where the global community meets. All of the data
points that IoT devices represent are a factor that can be difficult
to overcome because there are these functionalities that may be
highly desired or necessary for the social media perspective as it
relates to people and our attitude towards ‘connecting’ with
others. It’s really an all or nothing thing to have these features.
What we’re doing, first and foremost, is
identifying the problem. We are also offering organizations and
consumers a balanced choice so that they can share the information
they want to share, they can utilize the services of the platform in
the granular way they desire to share or engage, and they are
empowered and able to not give away the data that they want to
protect or keep private.
Facebook has proven it can be a kingmaker. Despite
the company’s public relations lines, it’s clear that every party
and every politician, for any seat, will engage in Facebook hacking.
We define Facebook hacking as utilizing publicly available resources,
along with coercion and manipulation of people, technologies and
process to gain advantages. Advantages that can be for a cause, God,
pocket book, or country. Facebook hacking is not just limited to
politicians, but also extends to adversaries including those who wish
physical and economic harm upon others. The stage has been set for
compromising and manipulating entire communities.
When thinking about securing IoT devices, we think
like hackers do. How do we break it or steal it? How do we manipulate
it or prevent it from functioning? How do we destroy it? These are
the questions we can ask.
Hacking is not direct or simple. Many times,
hacking involves a complex orchestration of multiple components that
typically has many permutations. When thinking through this, we
realized first, how integral IoT devices are to social media, and
second, the impact they have on privacy and on how we live our lives.
If Facebook and Google can know as much about you
as they do today with just a handful of devices such as your
computer, your phone, or your watch, picture how much they would know
about you and how they could manipulate you – and how they could
manipulate societies, economies, or even democracies – when they
have thousands of highly granular data points for each
individual they track.
Facebook’s reach is astounding. The organization
collects a constant stream of data from one-third of the world’s
population, and have their roots nestled in half of the world’s web
sites.
In Acreto’s Facebook Dossier, the team makes the
case for Facebook as spyware and a personal information trafficker.
Along with the dossier, Acreto is announcing new technology
specifically designed to protect and prevent direct and indirect data
leaks to Facebook and other data collection platforms such as Google,
among others.
Facebook’s New Product: You.
Overall, the dossier
explains how Facebook is intrusive for users and non-users alike.
Most notably of recent events, the Cambridge Analytica scandal
revealed a vast, deeply intrusive analytics manipulation with
Facebook at its core. The extraordinary amount of private data
collected from Facebook was used to target conservatives during the
2016 US presidential election. The information gathered from multiple
testimonies to US and European legislators and regulators shed light
on Facebook’s IoT strategy and sets the stage for intrusion of
privacy of historic proportions. Nothing is more illuminating about
Facebook’s strategy of data collection than their recent
acquisition of Onavo, dubbed a “mobile data analytics company”,
but in actuality, a ‘man-in-the-middle’ masquerade to collect,
store and analyze all user communications for Facebook’s use,
benefit, and profit.
Facebook came, Facebook saw… and Facebook
continues to conquer: this time, your IoT devices.
“Cambridge Analytica is the canary in the coal mine to a new Cold War emerging online. Soon the so-called ‘Internet of Things’ will become the norm in American households. Algorithms will soon be driving our cars and organising our lives. This is not just about technology today, we have to seriously consider the implications for tomorrow. To put it bluntly, we risk walking into the future blind and unprepared.”
Christopher Wiley, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower
Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL
Elections, used a suite of political psyops tools in more than 200
elections around the planet. The vast majority of the targets were
third world and underdeveloped countries, many without the resources
or knowledge to defend themselves. These efforts were in preparation
for their biggest effort to date: The US 2016 Presidential Elections.
As we have rounded the corner for the 2018 mid-term elections,
Facebook and their capabilities loom large, especially when there is
no buy-in from the topmost echelon of political leadership.
Your data is no longer your own. Facebook wants it all and they want it now to weaponize their most valuable product — The User.
To read more about Russian nation state hacking of the US Elections and how cyberattacks come together, check out a two-part collaboration between Acreto CEO, Babak Pasdar, and former CTO of the CIA, Bob Flores, here.
Learn more or read online by visiting our web site: Acreto.io — On Twitter: @acretoio and if you haven’t done so, sign up for the Acreto IoT Security podcast. You can get it from Apple – Google or your favorite podcast app.
About Acreto IoT Security
Acreto IoT Security delivers advanced security for IoT Ecosystems, from the cloud. IoTs are slated to grow to 50 Billion by 2021. Acreto’s Ecosystem security protects all Clouds, users, applications, and purpose-built IoTs that are unable to defend themselves in-the-wild. The Acreto platform offers simplicity and agility, and is guaranteed to protect IoTs for their entire 8-20 year lifespan. The company is founded and led by an experienced management team, with multiple successful cloud security innovations. Learn more by visiting Acreto IoT Security on the web at acreto.io or on Twitter @acretoio.
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By Acreto Security
4
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Why We Did This – Facebook’s New Product: You.
In a number of confidential strategy sessions with
the Acreto Advisory team, led by Bob Flores, former CTO of the CIA,
we set out to identify a number of potential mid to long-term threats
that we should monitor. In studying the challenges that come with
securing and adopting IoT technologies, and based on the complexities
of how they operate and the dependency model that is established
sociologically, we realized that Facebook, Google, and other similar
tech giants are starved for data points.
“It used to be that analysis of large amounts of data was limited to the biological capacity of the person. Computers didn’t used to have the processing power nor the algorithm and data sciences that they do today. Now, that’s not the case. The fact of the matter is that all these social media companies are data-starved. The more data points they have, the more they can absorb. There is no overload capacity for these social giants.”
Babak Pasdar, CEO and CTO of Acreto
Given recent events, and since we had one of the
foremost experts in data collection in the world with us, when
conversation turned to Facebook, we honed in on their data collection
platform, where they are now and where they are heading in the
future. We uncovered enough in that meeting to warrant a deeper dive
into the Facebook machine. We studied the company, their practices,
their history, their technology and even the psychology of its
management team. We uncovered a lot of information and the more we
uncovered, it made us want dig more. Through extensive research
exploring investments, patents, acquisitions, market positioning and
even management’s comments, we uncovered data that we thought was
concerning.
Pasdar explains, “We first became professionally interested in Facebook when we realized they have pinned their strategic future on IoTs. Where once Facebook’s information sources were limited to a handful of devices like computers and phones, with IoT integration they can collect much more granular data from hundreds if not thousands of sources.”
Part of what makes addressing this challenge
difficult is that the social media companies have features and
functions that people want, and that they have built social
environments that have become 21st century meeting grounds. These
platforms are where the global community meets. All of the data
points that IoT devices represent are a factor that can be difficult
to overcome because there are these functionalities that may be
highly desired or necessary for the social media perspective as it
relates to people and our attitude towards ‘connecting’ with
others. It’s really an all or nothing thing to have these features.
What we’re doing, first and foremost, is
identifying the problem. We are also offering organizations and
consumers a balanced choice so that they can share the information
they want to share, they can utilize the services of the platform in
the granular way they desire to share or engage, and they are
empowered and able to not give away the data that they want to
protect or keep private.
Facebook has proven it can be a kingmaker. Despite
the company’s public relations lines, it’s clear that every party
and every politician, for any seat, will engage in Facebook hacking.
We define Facebook hacking as utilizing publicly available resources,
along with coercion and manipulation of people, technologies and
process to gain advantages. Advantages that can be for a cause, God,
pocket book, or country. Facebook hacking is not just limited to
politicians, but also extends to adversaries including those who wish
physical and economic harm upon others. The stage has been set for
compromising and manipulating entire communities.
When thinking about securing IoT devices, we think
like hackers do. How do we break it or steal it? How do we manipulate
it or prevent it from functioning? How do we destroy it? These are
the questions we can ask.
Hacking is not direct or simple. Many times,
hacking involves a complex orchestration of multiple components that
typically has many permutations. When thinking through this, we
realized first, how integral IoT devices are to social media, and
second, the impact they have on privacy and on how we live our lives.
If Facebook and Google can know as much about you
as they do today with just a handful of devices such as your
computer, your phone, or your watch, picture how much they would know
about you and how they could manipulate you – and how they could
manipulate societies, economies, or even democracies – when they
have thousands of highly granular data points for each
individual they track.
Facebook’s reach is astounding. The organization
collects a constant stream of data from one-third of the world’s
population, and have their roots nestled in half of the world’s web
sites.
In Acreto’s Facebook Dossier, the team makes the
case for Facebook as spyware and a personal information trafficker.
Along with the dossier, Acreto is announcing new technology
specifically designed to protect and prevent direct and indirect data
leaks to Facebook and other data collection platforms such as Google,
among others.
Facebook’s New Product: You.
Overall, the dossier
explains how Facebook is intrusive for users and non-users alike.
Most notably of recent events, the Cambridge Analytica scandal
revealed a vast, deeply intrusive analytics manipulation with
Facebook at its core. The extraordinary amount of private data
collected from Facebook was used to target conservatives during the
2016 US presidential election. The information gathered from multiple
testimonies to US and European legislators and regulators shed light
on Facebook’s IoT strategy and sets the stage for intrusion of
privacy of historic proportions. Nothing is more illuminating about
Facebook’s strategy of data collection than their recent
acquisition of Onavo, dubbed a “mobile data analytics company”,
but in actuality, a ‘man-in-the-middle’ masquerade to collect,
store and analyze all user communications for Facebook’s use,
benefit, and profit.
Facebook came, Facebook saw… and Facebook
continues to conquer: this time, your IoT devices.
“Cambridge Analytica is the canary in the coal mine to a new Cold War emerging online. Soon the so-called ‘Internet of Things’ will become the norm in American households. Algorithms will soon be driving our cars and organising our lives. This is not just about technology today, we have to seriously consider the implications for tomorrow. To put it bluntly, we risk walking into the future blind and unprepared.”
Christopher Wiley, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower
Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL
Elections, used a suite of political psyops tools in more than 200
elections around the planet. The vast majority of the targets were
third world and underdeveloped countries, many without the resources
or knowledge to defend themselves. These efforts were in preparation
for their biggest effort to date: The US 2016 Presidential Elections.
As we have rounded the corner for the 2018 mid-term elections,
Facebook and their capabilities loom large, especially when there is
no buy-in from the topmost echelon of political leadership.
Your data is no longer your own. Facebook wants it all and they want it now to weaponize their most valuable product — The User.
To read more about Russian nation state hacking of the US Elections and how cyberattacks come together, check out a two-part collaboration between Acreto CEO, Babak Pasdar, and former CTO of the CIA, Bob Flores, here.
Learn more or read online by visiting our web site: Acreto.io — On Twitter: @acretoio and if you haven’t done so, sign up for the Acreto IoT Security podcast. You can get it from Apple – Google or your favorite podcast app.
About Acreto IoT Security
Acreto IoT Security delivers advanced security for IoT Ecosystems, from the cloud. IoTs are slated to grow to 50 Billion by 2021. Acreto’s Ecosystem security protects all Clouds, users, applications, and purpose-built IoTs that are unable to defend themselves in-the-wild. The Acreto platform offers simplicity and agility, and is guaranteed to protect IoTs for their entire 8-20 year lifespan. The company is founded and led by an experienced management team, with multiple successful cloud security innovations. Learn more by visiting Acreto IoT Security on the web at acreto.io or on Twitter @acretoio.