TABULA ROSA SYSTEMS: 2016-07-10

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems Blog Of 7/16/2016 - Machine Vision

Machine Vision

Machine vision is the ability of a computer to "see." A machine-vision system employs one or more video cameras, analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), and digital signal processing (DSP). The resulting data goes to a computer or robot controller. Machine vision is similar in complexity to voice recognition.
Two important specifications in any vision system are the sensitivity and the resolution. Sensitivity is the ability of a machine to see in dim light, or to detect weak impulses at invisible wavelengths. Resolution is the extent to which a machine can differentiate between objects. In general, the better the resolution, the more confined the field of vision. Sensitivity and resolution are interdependent. All other factors held constant, increasing the sensitivity reduces the resolution, and improving the resolution reduces the sensitivity.
Human eyes are sensitive to electromagnetic wavelength s ranging from 390 to 770 nanometers (nm). Video cameras can be sensitive to a range of wavelengths much wider than this. Some machine-vision systems function at infrared ( IR ), ultraviolet (UV), or X-ray wavelengths.
Binocular (stereo) machine vision requires a computer with an advanced processor. In addition, high-resolution cameras, a large amount of random access memory ( RAM ), and artificial intelligence ( AI ) programming are required for depth perception.
Machine vision is used in various industrial and medical applications. Examples include:

Electronic component analysis
Signature identification
Optical character recognition
Handwriting recognition
Object recognition
Pattern recognition
Materials inspection
Currency inspection
Medical image analysis

The term machine vision is often associated with industrial applications of a computer's ability to see, while the term computer vision is often used to describe any type of technology in which a computer is tasked with digitizing an image, processing the data it contains and taking some kind of action.

======================================== Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All!

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

Great Reasons for Purchasing Netiquette IQ

· Get more email opens. Improve 100% or more.

· Receive more responses, interviews, appointments, prospects and sales.

· Be better understood.

· Eliminate indecisin.

· Avoid being spammed 100% or more.

· Have recipient finish reading your email content.

· Save time by reducing questions.

· Increase your level of clarity.

· Improve you time management with your email.

· Have quick access to a wealth of relevant email information.

Enjoy most of what you need for email in a single book.

=================================

**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP
management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:
www.tabularosa.net
==================================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” has just been published and will be followed by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

In addition to this blog, I maintain a radio show on BlogtalkRadio and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo. I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

I am the president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a “best of breed” reseller of products for communications, email, network management software, security products and professional services. Also, I am the president of Netiquette IQ. We are currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ, which promotes the fundamentals outlined in my book.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed a dynamic and successful career and have attained an extensive background in IT and electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace.Anyone who would like to review the book and have it posted on my blog or website, please contact me paul@netiquetteiq.com.
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Friday, July 15, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems Blog For 7/15/2016 - A MUST Read Regarding DARPA And The Next Great Advance In Network Security

AUTHOR: CADE METZ.CADE METZ BUSINESS

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 07.05.16.07.05.16 wired.com

TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.7:00 AM

DARPA GOES FULL TRON WITH ITS GRAND BATTLE OF THE HACK BOTS

ON A GIANT flat-screen TV in an old Emeryville, California warehouse, a floating orb fires red, blue, pink, and yellow beams into a honeycomb of hexagonal blocks. The blocks are black, white, and gray, but as the beams hit them, they change—flashing, fading, absorbing color. And when they do, scores tally just above.

On the same screen, from adjacent windows, three commentators provide additional color, as if this was a videogame championship. “You can see who’s being owned, and who’s doing the owning,” says one, a theoretical physicist named Hakeem Oluseyi.

But this isn’t a videogame. The other two commentators are veteran white-hat hackers, experts at reverse-engineering software in search of security holes. The slick-bald guy (with the ponytail in back) is Visi, and the thin one with the hipster beard is HJ, short for Hawaii John. No other names given. They’re hackers.

All this is dress rehearsal for a $55 million hacking contest put on by Darpa, the visionary research wing of the US Defense Department. The contest is called the Cyber Grand Challenge, and it’s set for early August. Seven teams will compete inside seven supercomputers erected in a ballroom at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, each unleashing artificially intelligent software that will defend one machine—and virtually attack the rest.

No one has ever really deployed a bot like that—software that can, completely on its own, find and repair security holes in real time. If these bots reach maturity, it would be a fundamental shift in computer security. But none of that is visual. So, to prove it can work, Darpa is going all Tron, visually recreating what goes on inside those seven machines. It’s not enough to have bots play Capture the Flag. You need to see it. “What’s happening inside the central processing unit? What’s happening inside the memory?” says Mike Walker, the veteran white-hat hacker turned Darpa program manager who oversees the Grand Challenge. “That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Inside the Grid

On the TV, Oluseyi, Visi, and HJ are describing that Tron-like visualization, a software universe Darpa built in tandem with voidAlpha, a videogame company. VoidAlpha works out of this reclaimed warehouse, and Walker is here too. He and his Darpa team arrived in Emeryville last week so they could hone the visualization and try it out.

This isn’t the first time the security community has tried to build useful visualizations of what goes on inside a computer network. In fact, there’s a whole sub-community devoted to network visuals. But for Visi and HJ, Darpa has captured the art of reverse engineering in an unprecedented way. “This has never been available, even to reverse engineers using the most cutting edge tools,” Visi says.

For decades, human hackers, including Visi and HJ, have played Capture the Flag, the oldest, biggest, and most famous hacking contest. But the Cyber Grand Challenge is for bots, and Darpa wants to bring these bots into the wider world. Having this kind of visualization helps people understand how that might work—and it can help them build better bots. “A Grand Challenge is about starting technology revolutions,” Walker says. “That’s partially through the development of new technology, but it’s also about bringing a community to bear on the problem.”

Plus, it looks cool. For people who watched Jeff Bridges ride a light cycle around a computer-generated vision of a circuit board (twice!), or watched Angelina Jolie, in Hackers, mess around inside a supercomputer called Gibson (we see what you did there, and no doubt @GreatDismal did, too), the idea of getting to see what’s actually happening in the soul of a machine is more than tantalizing.

The Physical and the Virtual

The competition’s wardrobe-sized supercomputers are already at the Paris, sitting quietly in storage. They arrived at the end of June. And in the coming weeks, a team led by Darpa contractor Sean O’Brien will forklift them into an 83,000 square-foot ballroom and onto a clear plexiglass stage.

That transparency is literal and metaphoric. The visible air gap between the machine and everything else in the room ensures that data will only travel to the outside world on CDs carried by a robotic arm. “No networking cable will cross the air gap,” O’Brien says.

That way, everyone—even the most skeptical and paranoid hacker among the crowd at Def Con—will know the competition is on the up-and-up. Even the contestants, the seven teams that spent the last two years designing the bots, will sit outside the air gap.

As these contestants watch, the bots will go to work inside the machines, analyzing and defending software they’ve never seen before. They’ll look for security vulnerabilities in their own machine. They’ll scramble to patch those vulns and keep their systems running. And at the same time, they’ll strive to show Darpa’s referees they can exploit holes in the other machines. That’s how Capture the Flag works—except for the bots.

Click to Open Overlay GalleryDarpa tests the supercomputers—enormous racks of servers—that serve as the playing field fothe Cyber Grand Challenge. DARPA

Closing the Window

Traditionally, finding and patching security holes is a human talent. But machines are playing an ever expanding role. Google, for instance, is building sweeping systems that can identify vulns via fuzz testing, a technique that involves throwing random inputs at a piece of software. Google’s system can simultaneously fuzz dozens of Android phones, and it’s using deep neural networks—networks of hardware and software that can learn by analyzing vast amounts of data—to gradually learn what sort of fuzzing is likely to work and what’s not.

At least, that’s the idea. These kinds of systems are a long way from handling the whole process on their own. They don’t identify and patch holes in software while people are using it. And they’re certainly not in the toolkit of the average online company. “This a long ways off,” says Orion Hindawi, CEO of Tanium, a security company just down the road from today’s dress rehearsal. “It’s an extremely expensive way to solve the problem.”

But with the Cyber Grand Challenge, DARPA is aiming for all that. It seeks bots that can identify and patch vulns in the moment—without any human intervention. “We’re trying to close the window to a minute,” Walker says. “Or seconds.” In the same way self-driving cars have improved enormously since they picked their way through a Grand Challenge obstacle course in the Mojave desert, Walker hopes the bots will get better, eventually outperforming humans. The battle in Las Vegas might be the first time people are just an audience for AIs fighting for hacker supremacy, but it won’t be the last.

Nerd Detector

To a certain subset of the population, the idea of real-life Tron is enough of a sell. “You could use this as a nerd detector,” Oluseyi says during practice commentary. But Tron was a fantasy. Come on, a security program that looks like the commander of Babylon 5? What are the odds?

With the Cyber Grand Challenge, the visual metaphor is more literal. One view is akin to an arena. That’s still very Tron-like, but instead of light cycles and flying discs, you get those honeycombs of hexagons. The hexagons represent real software services running inside the supercomputers. And the colored beams hitting the hexagons show data flowing into those services, including data from the bots. The audience can see when a bot finds a hole, when it patches the hole, when a bot accidentally breaks the service, when the service is inaccessible because a patch is taking too long, and so on.

What’s more, Darpa’s visualization can drill down and really look at those streams of data—about 84,000 attempts at reverse engineering over an eight-hour contest. This is called the “trace view.” It can actually demonstrate what each bot is doing—what code is executing when. “It literally shows the execution flow of data being given to a program,” Visi says, “and what the program is doing with that data.” Matt Wynn, one of the voidAlpha designers that built the visualization, believes the company could turn this into a bone fide debugger, something engineers could use hone and debug code in the real world.

From afar, the trace view looks almost like a wire fence rolled up into cylinder. But up close, you can see the route of the moving data. A code loop—when a service executes the same routine over and over again—looks like a loop, a developing spiral. For Visi, this is what sets Darpa’s project apart. It can show you what’s happening inside the machine over time. It’s not a snapshot. It’s a narrative.

Human and Machine

If you’re not a hacker, this is still hard to grasp—at least initially. But that’s why Darpa hired commentators. It’s all about taking what’s inside the head of someone like Visi—a seasoned reverse engineer—and showing it to everyone. “There’s a distinct need to get that fusion of knowledge and understanding out to a larger audience,” he says. When reverse engineering, he mentally visualizes the hack, and Darpa wants to visualize it for real. It wants to give everyone else that same image.

The image on screen is beautiful. It’s intriguing. And, ultimately, it’s enlightening. But it still looks small. And it shouldn’t. It should show the enormity of the task—the massive amounts of code and traffic those bots will deal with. That’s why Darpa brought in Oluseyi, the physicist. On the Internet, he’s known for a TED talk on infinity. “Program analysis,” Walker says, “is a duel with the infinite.” And Oluseyi is here to make sure we all see it.

======================================== Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All!

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

Great Reasons for Purchasing Netiquette IQ

· Get more email opens. Improve 100% or more.

· Receive more responses, interviews, appointments, prospects and sales.

· Be better understood.

· Eliminate indecisin.

· Avoid being spammed 100% or more.

· Have recipient finish reading your email content.

· Save time by reducing questions.

· Increase your level of clarity.

· Improve you time management with your email.

· Have quick access to a wealth of relevant email information.

Enjoy most of what you need for email in a single book.

=================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems - Blog Of 7/14/2016 - What Is The Dark Web?

http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/

by Tyler Carbone

Chief Operating Officer, Terbium Labs

What is the dark web? Finding consensus on the answer to that question is surprisingly challenging. Typically, studies discussing cyber threat and the dark web focus on sites hosted on hidden services within the Tor network. These sites—accessed by URLs ending in “onion”—are only accessible through Tor, an Internet overlay proxy network that users most frequently access with a special browser called the Tor Browser. Tor hidden services are outside the reach of a standard Internet browser and are set up so that both the hosts and the visitors of those sites are anonymous.

While many measures and discussions of the dark web focus on these hidden services, the dark web is bigger than just hidden services. A large number of sites customers classify as the dark web don’t live on Tor at all; they are hosted on the regular Internet and can be accessed from any browser. Often, these sites are simply hosted in countries where running, for example, a marketplace for stolen credit cards is not grounds to be shut down. For instance, many major fraud markets that claim to provide credit cards or bank accounts live, technically, on the clear web, and popular exploit sites exist steadily on even the most common top-level domains, even dot-coms.

At Terbium, we think about the dark web as anywhere on the Internet that our customers wouldn’t want to see their data appear, either for sale or for vandalism purposes. These locations range from forums on Tor hidden services to clear web carding marketplaces hosted in Eastern Europe to paste sites such as Pastebin that may be used largely for legitimate purposes.

What makes the dark web dark?

Recently, a global poll conducted byIpsos showed that 70 percent of people believe the dark web should be shut down. The idea of shutting down the dark web is likely to struggle to gain traction. Because, at the end of the day, the dark web is simply a series of independent websites hosted on both the clear web and as hidden services within the Tor network. Even if it were possible, or advisable, to shut down Tor entirely, doing so would do little to curb sites that may not even be hiding, except by virtue of being in countries with laws that do not touch them. Thinking of the dark web as a single entity isn’t entirely accurate, and shutting it down is not as simple as flipping a switch.

The issue is further complicated by the ambiguous nature of Tor itself. In addition to hosting a variety of illicit content, the Tor network is also a tool for free speech in regions that may seek to censor citizens. As a result, in addition to a lot of the so-called dark web existing outside the Tor network, much of the activity occurring within the Tor network is largely considered positive.

Criminal activity does occur on the dark web, but it’s hardly as shady or mysterious as it’s often made out to be. The dark web, criminally speaking, is primarily a place of business, and it mirrors traditional ecommerce far more than you might expect. Major markets allow you to browse through subsections of their websites to see what kinds of offers are available. You can filter your search results by vendor rating or sort your results by price. Vendors rely on reputation, advertisements and sales—Black Friday is a big sale day among fraud dealers, while drug dealers favor Halloween or New Year’s Day—just like traditional retailers.

Shining reviews from satisfied customers are a popular way for vendors to promote their shops, and fraudulent transactions—yes, even for fraud purchases—are quickly flagged as scams to warn other customers. Forums discuss the best places to find deals, who you can trust and how satisfied buyers are with their latest orders—not unlike typical forums on the clear web.

MINIMIZE THE THREAT OF THE DARK WEB

The reality is that the dark web—some of it on Tor, some of it on clear web sites—is made up of sites and activities that pretty closely mirror offline crime statistics. The majority of it is drugs, and of what remains, much of it is financial- or fraud-related crime. At times, the dark web is a disappointingly mundane corner of the Internet. Therefore, at Terbium our approach is to provide our customers with an affordable, automated and fully private tool to monitor for the appearance of data or discussions that they wouldn’t want to be public. Precisely because of how routine the transactions on the dark web can be, not ignoring them as well as not overreacting to them is equally important.

What can we do about the dark web?

Nevertheless, the question remains: Should we shut down the dark web? Here are some other questions that will be up for discussion among a panel of experts exploring the dark web, 28 June 2016, at 1 p.m. Eastern:

· Why are deep and dark web actors so much more challenging to identify?

· Can we permanently shut down the dark web? Would we want to? Why or why not?

· What type of illegal activities are conducted on the deep and dark web?

· What challenges does the dark web present for law enforcement agencies?

· What should be the government’s role in policing the dark web?

· What should or can private sector entities do in the deep and dark web?

Attend the live panel discussion for answers to these questions and more.

Host

Bob Stasio is a senior product manager of cyber analysis with IBM i2 Safer Planet. Stasio has nearly 14 years of expertise fighting top-tier malicious actors in the intelligence community, the US military, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the commercial sector. He also served on the initial staff of the US Cyber Command. During the troop surge of 2007, his intelligence unit supported the detainment of more than 450 high-value targets.

Guests

Tyler Carbone is a technology entrepreneur with a business and law background. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia, Tyler has cofounded and successfully sold two technology companies. He has consulted and advised a variety of clients, ranging from a Fortune 500 financial services company to local start-ups. Tyler currently is COO at Terbium Labs in Baltimore, Maryland.

Scott Dueweke formed Zebryx Consulting in 2015 to provide public and private sector clients an understanding of identities and alternative payment systems—both risks and rewards. Dueweke is an expert on identity and anonymous payments on the Internet, and he regularly advises senior leadership within financial institutions and the US government. He previously provided similar services for Agilex and from 2006–2014 with Booz Allen Hamilton.

Michael Goedeker is an author and researcher at the front end of cyber warfare, espionage and crime and researching academia, press and security professionals globally.

========================================= Good Netiquette And A Green Internet To All!

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

Great Reasons for Purchasing Netiquette IQ

· Get more email opens. Improve 100% or more.

· Receive more responses, interviews, appointments, prospects and sales.

· Be better understood.

· Eliminate indecisin.

· Avoid being spammed 100% or more.

· Have recipient finish reading your email content.

· Save time by reducing questions.

· Increase your level of clarity.

· Improve you time management with your email.

· Have quick access to a wealth of relevant email information.

Enjoy most of what you need for email in a single book.

=================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.

Pages

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems Blog Of 7/16/2016 - Machine Vision

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

=================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems Blog For 7/15/2016 - A MUST Read Regarding DARPA And The Next Great Advance In Network Security

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

=================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Tabula Rosa Systems - Blog Of 7/14/2016 - What Is The Dark Web?

What makes the dark web dark?

What can we do about the dark web?

Host

Guests

Special Bulletin - My just released book,

"You're Hired. Super Charge our Email Skills in 60 Minutes! (And Get That Job...)

is now on sales at Amazon.com

=================================

Another Special Announcement - Tune in to my radio interview, on Rider University's station, www.1077thebronc.com I discuss my recent book, above on "Your Career Is Calling", hosted by Wanda Ellett.