Wikileaks – NeoNazi Forum Dumps
Wikileaks has data from several Neo Nazi forums. The information includes user lists, private message histories, forum posts, etc. I’ve been pouring over the data since yesterday. They seem to be using SMF and phpBB primarily between the sites – some with modified fields. I’m currently looking at the communication patterns for the private messages. When I analyzed the user lists, I found a good number of overlap users between the sites – users who were members of multiple websites. What I’m doing now is cross referencing the private messages to and from the individuals with multiple memberships. I’m hoping this reveals who the significant actors are, what individuals form subgroups, and how different subgroups are linked between the sites through the multiple membership users.
This is all very preliminary, but should make for some fascinating observations later. After I am done with the communication patterns, I’m going to take a look at word frequencies in the forum posts. I might make one of those weighted word clouds, those always make for intriguing eye candy.
Redaction vs CTRL-C CTRL-V
User error is ever the bane of security. It has plagued the digital world since the first user taped their password to their monitor, an event likely to have occurred shortly after the first passwords were given out. While the existence of user error continues its endless march, the form it takes mutates as technology advances. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security mistakenly released a manual on its screening procedures (user error 1) and failure to properly redact certain sections (user error 2). The internet, in its vast never sleeping glory, found this document and scattered it to the four winds to preserve it against censorship. (As a side note, I often speak of the internet metaphorically as if it were a living entity. I feel it better captures the internet’s essence that we are each but parts of a larger metaphorical mental organism.)
The document can be found at cryptome.org and on wikileaks.org.
The mistake was a fairly simple one, and a common governmental gaff. In redacting the document, the reviewer simply placed black boxes over the offending text without “burning in” the redaction. “Burning in” is a process of re-rendering the post-script data so instead of rendering a block of text with a black bar on top of it (e.g. layered) it renders just the black bar. The layered rendering they released can then have the redaction box deleted or the data simply cut and pasted out of the document.
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