hello world [what’s up]

Nǐ hǎo Cartomancers! On Thursday, April 25th, I’ll be at improve 2024 (featuring Fraud Fight Club). to discuss SCAMS: Defining, Measuring, and Combatting. This will be a nice break for me, because in addition to my consulting work, I’m knee deep in conference proposals. I forget every year, but like clockwork, right after tax season comes CFP season (for the late summer conferences, aka Hackerpalooza). I’ve probably been doing this over ten years, but this year my eyes popped a little bit - I’m on four tracks for Black Hat USA and ONE of my tracks has 180 proposals to review this year (the AI/ML track, one of my faves). I think all-in I’ll have over 300 proposals to review and I’m at about…60. Which isn’t terrible, but there’s sure a long way to go.

Still - the world is spinning around us, so let’s get into it:

• News nuggets 

  • Influencers Get the Fake Makeovers: The bots are coming for your love and attention, and subscriptions. Real Fans Only.

  • Deepfakery Poised to Poison Elections: (It’s happening): Countries around the world are seeing and hearing fake info get absorbed into their election cycle

  • Watching the money mules at work: The unsealing of federal court documents reveals details of “courier” operations in support of international crime

  • Calling All Moderators: Content moderators unite to discuss strategies for strengthening their ecosystem & online community governance

• Noodling in the Lab

  • Wherein I reconsider my life choices and investigate becoming a librarian: Moving the noodle to the end this issue, because you don’t want to hear about this. (Unless you do, in which case, come on down the bottom of the page.)

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training data [what’s news]

🗨️ Influencers Get the Fake Makeovers: Next stop for the deepfake train (reminder, we’ve seen it used to fake real politicians as a way to spread misinformation, we’ve seen it used to create fake porn of real people, we’ve seen it used to create extremely effective social engineering and phishing campaigns, we’ve seen it used to sell scammy stuff and low-key promote political misinformation (as in Women’s faces stolen for AI ads selling ED pills and praising Putin) and now we’re seeing it move straight into influencer economics. The article ‘AI Instagram Influencers’ Are Stealing Women’s Bodies shares how people are setting up AI-generated influencers by downloading existing reals of models & sex workers, deepfaking them, and then using the deepfake content to promote subscriptions (think OnlyFans and their competitors). So instead of AI-generated spam, it’s….spam created by real people that then just gets an AI “face lift”. Question: If audiences know the models are bots, do the audiences care?

🗨️ Deepfakery Poised to Poison Elections (It’s happening): Concerns about political disinformation have been steadily rising over the past few years, anywhere there’s an election process. And while we’ve been holding our breath on how deepfakes might play a role in turbocharging existing sentiment and campaign tactics, no point in holding our breath anymore, deepfakes are here - everywhere. WaPo has a great article recently that digs into the supply chain that’s evolving to empower candidates and trolls alike, with the best of the worst. Expect a confusing mishmosh of news, fake news, and deepfake news where the truth gets even shadier and more difficult to parse out of the info feeds. Here’s the article: AI deepfakes threaten to upend global elections. No one can stop them. A couple of takeaways to consider:

• A DHS memo  warned election officials how gen AI can be used to enhance foreign-influence campaigns including impersonation of election officials, spreading incorrect info on how to vote, or sowing confusion about the integrity of the election process.

• Earlier this year, generative AI was used to influence Taiwan’s elections. (On election day, AI generated showed a prominent politician endorsing one of the candidates - but no such endorsement had been made). 

• WaPo interviews a professional content creator, who reveals politicians have started contacting him for services (in his home country of India where elections are happening), specifically in some cases to create faked content. So, the supply chain is getting revved-up.

🗨️ Watching the money mules at work: Interesting tidbit showing up in the Charlotte, NC local news - Chinese money laundering operation deposited cartel money into Charlotte banks, feds say. Five Chinese nationals, suspected of being part of a money-laundering scheme supporting drug trafficking, are being charged with money laundering after a series of deposits across a number of banks. (One suspect is said to have made a series of deposits totaling more than $22 million in less than two years). In March, a grand jury indicted the five suspects. The federal court documents were recently unsealed.

🗨️ Calling All Moderators: The inimitable Christine Moellenberndt popped into my LinkedIn feed with an update and pointer to the All Things In Moderation virtual event (May 15 - 17), which brings together a mix of industry and academic folk to talk about content moderation. If you moderate, build moderation capabilities, or care about cultivating dynamic, interactive, and constructive digital spaces, check this out.

a noodle from the lab [what we’re working on]

Every few years I have a period of time where I feel like I’m on the verge of some kind of epiphany, having to do with data and the human condition. Often this happens while I’m in transit, while my mind has time to wander - like the existential crisis I had on the Acela to DC a few years back where my brain fixated on the idea that “information is a VIRUS” and I was thinking about self-healing information networks, evolution, and learning. (Yes, I’d already read Snow Crash at that point, and no, I swear this was something different - and important – at least it felt very important at the time). 

Usually this “almost an epiphany” is followed by some kind of existential crisis that requires researching grad school programs. Oh, for so many years I’ve been searching for the perfect PhD program, the one that will let me finally unlock the epiphany. Friends, I’ve done economics, I’ve done finance, I’ve done organizational behavior, I’ve done cybersecurity, I’ve done telecommunications engineering, I’ve looked into psychology, art, art history, linguistics, religious studies, philosophy, complexity studies, environmental science, botany, geographic information systems, systems engineering, information theory, symbolic systems and semiotics - whatever school you’ve thought of, I’ve dug deep into their course catalog. But I always keep coming back to library science and the iSchools. 

For those of you who are wondering - is this my announcement I’m going back to grad school (again, again, again, again?) the answer is I dunno but anything is possible. What I’ve learned is at the masters’ degree level, most schools are offering an MLIS (ALA-accredited programs are the key) and offer concentrations like the classic public librarianship, or school librarianship, or academic/research librarianship, but of course information science has changed over the years, so now database and digital collections concentrations sit side by side with methods of archiving, cataloging, designing metadata, UX, and cybersecurity considerations.

Speaking of cybersecurity, SUNY Albany actually sets their MLIS and related programs in their College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity. (A testament to the idea that librarians and libraries offer many vital services to a community, not just book-related services anymore, I thought this microcredential sounded interesting: Librarians as Second Responders)

More normal is for an iSchool to emphasize information systems, with library-, cybersecurity- and data science-related as sub-concentrations of IS include the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. UW’s iSchool roughly follows this model as well, but I was surprised and disappointed to learn that Berkeley’s iSchool has gone and dropped their MLIS offering completely. (I <3 Berkeley, Go Bears!)

I want to say more about how protecting data, and protecting libraries, information integrity, and intellectual freedom are all interconnected, but that’s probably a separate wander so I’ll just leave you with this nugget below from @archive.org to consider:

find more cartomancy [what’s out there]

coming soon

▶️ On April 25th, join me at improve 2024 (featuring Fraud Fight Club). I’ll be discussing SCAMS: Defining, Measuring, and Combatting at 11am with fellow fraud experts David Kerman (Chase), Mike Timoney (FRB Boston), and Ian Mitchell (The Knoble / Mission Omega). See you there!

▶️ On Friday, May 24th, I’m delighted to join the 2024 BSides Knoxville speaker lineup as their keynote. (Happy 10th Anniversary, Knoxville Bsides-ians!) The theme for this year is near and dear to my heart - detection - and it should be a fun day of detective-ing and clue-deciphering wrapped by a Hacker Jeopardy after party. It’s elementary, dear Cartomancers - come on by!

on demand

I was delighted to spend some time discussing cybersecurity career paths, leadership development, and industry trends while reconnecting with my friend and colleague Sandra Liu (if you haven't seen what she's working on over on YouTube I encourage you to check out her projects). this interview, we cover cybersecurity career and industry topics including:

• 🤝 What do hiring managers look for when hiring candidates for a job?

• 💻 What cybersecurity skills are most relevant?

• 💭 What are the biggest challenges facing organizations today?

A bit of a throwback to but it was so much fun chatting with Andy Ellis, and so much in here is true even a couple of years later.

ttyl [what’s next]

Thanks for reading to the end of this set of lab notes. I’m thrilled to have some fellow travelers mapping out where we’ve been, philosophizing about where we want to be, and building the paths to get us where we’re going.

If you’ve read to the end and you find this content helpful, I’d love feedback. My news feed is full of leads, but my personal algorithm loves learning about what interests the community, so that I can focus in on what will be most useful. Just hit reply and your comments will come whizzing into my inbox. (It’s also a good way to find me if you are interested in working with me or with Cartomancy Labs).

See you next time on the Futurecast!

Allison

@selenakyle