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Fighting Communications Analysis - Information Warfare Technologies

The starting point of the first technological wars can be considered the day when the first bribing of the Luddites was made and they began to tear down the looms not for the sake of an idea, but for a reward. Gradually, competitors gained experience and developed the practice of direct sabotage . However, with this appeared the beginnings of protective measures. It has become not so easy, and not so effective, to take a job, throw a bomb and run away - there was less sense from this, and more problems. At the same time industrial espionage was gaining momentum - the theft of technology and know-how.

By the way, there are no good methods to combat industrial espionage to this day. However, this can be countered. First, the spy must have good technical training. After all, otherwise he will not be able to understand that from the cabinet with the drawings it is necessary to redraw first. Secondly, not every advanced engineer agrees to such an unethical matter. And thirdly, most often, the messenger can be recognized by the lack of, so to speak, corporate spirit.

However, leaving aside morality and ethics, it is necessary to recognize that the one who guessed to combine sabotage and espionage was a man of an extraordinary mind and ingenuity. As a result of this merger, a new method of dealing with competitors was obtained - covert sabotage . It is not hard to guess what it is - introducing a subject into a competing enterprise that gradually, scientifically and systematically leads an enemy organization to destruction and bankruptcy. Destroying a team, conducting tactically correct, but strategically destructive decisions, bureaucratizing the system of work - you can list them for a long time, but the fact remains.
This person can (and will) be loved and respected by not very far-sighted leaders. After all, it improves work, makes a profit - here and now. I will make a reservation that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to perform malicious actions with a shrewd bosses. But, the larger the organization, the greater the chances that there is a key department for it, where the brother / friend / matchmaker / cum chief manages. That's where the evil pest puts its efforts.

With the development of information technology, competitors are getting more and more opportunities to spy and harm each other remotely - through the media and the Internet. The first anti-hairrs pasted advertisements on poor wages on the pillars, spread rumors in the bars about the director's mistresses, whispered to the workers stories about the eight-hour working day somewhere out there, and, in general, taking advantage of people's ignorance created a negative opinion about the competing enterprise.
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Further more. It is difficult to find now a person who would not read custom-made articles in newspapers or would not look at the war of local factories on local television. But the antipyar suffered a significant drawback - its distributors knew little about the real state of affairs in the enemy camp. But, of course, they tried with all their might and are trying to dig out more facts, rumors and, of course, dirt. And the Internet gave them that opportunity.

Turning to the present time, we must pay attention to two things. First, the information has become more accessible . And, more often, its availability increases regardless of the person’s desire to keep it secret. And secondly, the most important component of information, communication , has reached a critical mass. I will explain. If some time ago it was extremely difficult to find a missing employee and everything that remained to be searched was a phone (turned off) and a home address (often incorrect), now, having spent a small amount of time analyzing his connections, the opportunity to reach the right person has increased many times over. That is, the number of existing links has become sufficient to find an unknown link.

The same thing happens at a higher level than the search for ordinary workers. What does a person do before accepting an invitation to work? That's right, trying to find out as much as possible about the company, where he will work hard, about his future superiors, about the team - the competence of people and, if possible, about the relations within him. All the same work can be done and unscrupulous competitors. And it is much better to do than a regular, albeit an advanced person.

Analysis of both internal, organizational relations, and external - counterparty, can bring considerable benefits to competitors. And if the company works in the field of information technology, and if the employees at the workplace have the Internet, and if the boss is registered on LinkedIn or Facebook ... The pests open a real information field of miracles. And it becomes much more difficult to prevent the analysis and use of the extracted information for bad purposes. This is no longer sent to the Cossack person in the back to beat. And it’s almost impossible to abandon the use of open information - well, where in our world without e-mail or a cell phone?

Based on the foregoing, it becomes clear - if the leakage of information cannot be prevented, then its (information) should be as confusing as possible. And even better - to start a stream of misinformation . This, by the way, is not a new idea at all. Even the ancient Greeks in Thermopylae tried to crank such a trick. However, they were let down by the human factor - there was a citizen who exchanged conscience for banknotes. However, this is a single example and, in general, misinformation has proven itself well throughout its existence.

But misinformation is a rather vague concept. You can't imagine her at the morning planning meeting. Here more detailed knowledge of the components of this phenomenon is needed. Without going into details on the technical details and specific cases of the use of the disinformation method, it is worth highlighting its part that relates to this article - information relations. Now it's time to mention a couple of basic terms. First, the actor. The actor is the main actor in the process of exchanging information . Director, sysadmin, secretary - all of them can be actors in a given coordinate system. Secondly, communication. Communication is an information channel connecting two actors. It is two, no more and no less. The connection, of course, can be a messenger, mail, telephone and any other channels suitable for transmitting information.

Knowing the basic concepts, you can make a small list of their use in the case of misinforming a competitor:



In general, all these concepts, even without special knowledge, are intuitive. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning them in a little more detail.

So, noise. Using all the sub-clauses of this paragraph, a surplus of links and information transmitted through them is created, which leads to a serious difficulty in analyzing the links of the required actor. And in fact:

Entering a false connection between the wife and the mistress of the chief (for example, in classmates) will, at a minimum, cause the analyst to be perplexed.

Throwing a few dozen connections to the empty sheets - unfilled LJ, abandoned profiles on the forums, friendship with the crowd of renamed bots, necessitates an increase in the time spent on the analysis of these loose links.

Creating a heap of similar but different connections with the same actor will cause a competitor to control a much more fragmented data stream.

Having spent a little more time programmers (or money for them), and organizing a couple of virtuals, you can generally fill up the spies with a hypothetically important bunch of information.

Changing the information channel between the two actors at short intervals, will cause the analyst to spend all his time searching for these new connections.

All these ways of dealing with the informational “analysis”, as well as the second paragraph - breaking the ties, will be described in detail in the second part of the article - if the community finds it interesting.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/22545/


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