In The News

"Social Engineering the News"
This apolitical talk explores the similarities between traditional social engineering and today's "fake news". During this talk, Michael Schrenk will show how social engineers use OPSEC (Operations Security) to plan a successful social attack. Additionally, you'll also learn the about the economics of "fake news", who's making the money, and how much, and how information is weaponized. This talk will also reveal that the news has been socialized for a long time, and that socially engineered news lead to the start of the Spanish American War. We'll also explore techniques to guard against social engineering in general, and specifically in the media.

"Social Engineering the News"
It might be called "fake news" but at it's heart, it's the latest wave of social engineering. This apolitical talk explores the similarities between traditional social engineering and today's "fake news". During this talk, Michael Schrenk will show how social engineers use OPSEC (Operations Security) to plan a successful social attack. Additionally, you'll also learn the about the economics of "fake news", who's making the money, and how much, and how information is weaponized. This talk will also reveal that the news has been socialized for a long time, and that socially engineered news lead to the start of the Spanish American War. We'll also explore techniques to guard against social engineering in general, and specifically in the media.

"Security: Metadata & Operations Security"
I had the good fortune to address Phil Simon's class on how metadata influences security and data privacy. It also lead to this blog post on metadata related security issues the SAS website.

"Applied Intelligence: Using Information That's Not There"
Organizations continue to unknowingly leak trade secrets on the Internet. To those in the know, these leaks are a valuable source of competitive intelligence. This talk describes how the speaker collects competitive intelligence for his own online retail business. Specifically, you learn how he combines, trends, and analyzes information within specific contexts to manufacture useful data that is real, but technically doesn't exist on it's own. For example, you will learn about the trade secrets that are hidden within sequential numbers, how he uses collected intelligence to procure inventory, and how and why he gauges the ongoing health of his industry and that of his competitors. And on a related note, you'll also learn how the federal government nearly exposed an entire generation to identity fraud.

"You're Leaking Trade Secrets"
Networks don't need to be hacked for information to be compromised. This is particularly true for organizations that are trying to keep trade secrets. While we hear a lot about personal privacy, little is said in regard to organizational privacy. Organizations, in fact, leak information at a much greater rate than individuals, and usually do so with little fanfare. There are greater consequences for organizations when information is leaked because the secrets often fall into the hands of competitors. This talk uses a variety of real world examples to show how trade secrets are leaked online, and how organizational privacy is compromised by seemingly innocent use of The Internet.

It was great meeting new and old readers at my two book signings at the BlackHat 2014 security conference at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

And, thanks for staying and listening to my short talk on why a bot developer works to stop bots.

"Online Privacy for Organizations"
I was thrilled to present this keynote address in Dublin Ireland. My talk focused on how organizations leak much more information that what they're aware of, just by doing innocent (looking) things.

"How my Botnet Purchased Millions of Dollars in Cars and Defeated the Russian Hackers"
This is the true story of a botnet that created a competitive advantage for a car dealership. This dealership found a website that offered returned lease vehicles—great cars for their inventory—but bad web design and heavy competition from other automotive dealerships made the website useless. In response, a botnet was developed to make automotive purchases with machine precision. With the bot, they could acquire any cars they wanted, without interference from competing dealerships. During its one-year life, this botnet autonomously acquired many millions of dollars in cars. Along the way, it successfully adjusted to competition from a similar bot developed by Russian hackers while maintaining a sufficiently low profile to "stay below the radar" of everyone involved.

"Promote Your Career by Writing Non-Fiction"
Michael Schrenk describes how writing non-fiction can advance your a career.
The primary focus on the talk was that the more transparency the writer has with the audience, the better the work. In other words, you'll be more successful when your personal reason for writing is in alignment with the topic.

"Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers"
This one-hour web cast was in anticipation of my upcoming book of the same title. There were over 600 attendees in the live audience.

"The Hidden Internet"
A lecture to the BBC Digital Media Group on less known ways of conducting Data-Based Journalism.

"The Web Investigator"
A two-day lecture on unconventional ways to conduct online research.

"Screen Scraper Tricks, Difficult Cases"
Screen scrapers and data mining bots often encounter problems when extracting data from modern websites. Obstacles like AJAX discourage many bot writers from completing screen scraping projects. The good news is that you can overcome most challenges if you learn a few tricks. This session describes the (sometimes mind numbing) roadblocks that can come between you and your ability to apply a screen scraper to a website. You'll discover simple techniques for extracting data from websites that freely employ DHTML, AJAX, complex cookie management as well as other techniques. Additionally, you will also learn how "agencies" create large scale CAPTCHA solutions. All the tools discussed in this talk are available for free, offer complete customization and run on multiple platforms.

"The Web Investigator"
I developed and presented this two-day lecture on unconventional ways to conduct online research.

"Creating Competitive Advantages with Webbots"
I was the featured speaker at this Los Angeles Chapter meeting of the OWASP

"Summer School 2009"
I presented a series of lectures on unconventional ways to conduct online research For The Centre for Investigative Journalism at City College, London.

"Online Project Tracking"
Presented the plans and current status of a custom project tracking software use to track resources applied to projects and to calculate bonuses.

"Into the Cloud"
Lectured on the benefits of moving corporate reporting and documentation from Excel spreadsheets and FTP servers to web accessible cloud-based services. I shared the stage with author Joseph Pine ("The Experience Economy")

"Online Techniques for Distributed Organizations"
I presented on several techniques for organizations to connect with a distributed workforce.

"The Executable Image Exploit"
This lecture described how to disguise computer programs as online images that may be used to gather specific metrics. I also talked about how these methods were used to help a Private Investigator track an online stalker.
The "Executable Image Exploit" lets you insert a dynamic program into any community website that allows references to off-domain images; like MySpace or eBay. By uploading the following line of HTML to a community website, <img src="http://www.mydomain. com/executable.jpg"> you can launch a dynamic program that masquerades as a static image and capable of reading and writing cookies, analyzing referrer (and other browser) variables and access databases. It is even possible to create an image the causes a browser to execute JavaScript.

"Developing Webbots with PHP"
This presentation highlighted the benefits of writing webbots in PHP/CURL. In addition to explaining how to capitalize on flaws in the current client/server model used by the web, attention was paid to methods for downloading and parsing media.
 
I was very proud that I went on directly after Rasmus Lerdorf, who got the PHP project off the ground in 1995.

"Online Corporate Intelligence"
In this presentation, I enlarged on the previous year's pretension to show how automation can improve Corporate Competitive Intelligence.

"An Introduction to Writing Webbots and Spiders"
You can have a lot of fun with the Internet by ditching your browser in favor of writing special purpose programs that look for or do very specific things on the Internet. This session will equip you with techniques to extract and interact with data from web sites without a browser, parse and filter data, follow links, deal with encryption and passwords, and manage terabytes of information. You'll also learn why writing these programs is a useful activity, and walk away with ideas and abilities to write useful spiders or web agents of your own design.