Re: Dr. Neal: Researcher's Analysis of al Qaeda

["Dr. Neal Krawetz" <hf () hackerfactor com>]

On Thu Aug  2 10:57:51 2007, Gary Warner wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Thanks for the link!
>
> Neal,
>
> GREAT WORK! 
>
> Is the tool easily deployable?  Is this something I can load on a PC and 
> look at a boxload of images? or is this a major number crunching event?
>
> I've shown some of these AQ videos in InfraGard meetings where we talked 
> about how they are shared and distributed, but I never imagined that 
> there would be this level of manipulation in them!
>
> _-_
> gar

Hi Gar,

Thanks for the compliment.
I just got back in town.  (I don't trust Defcon networks, so I went without
Internet for a week.  And SSH over TOR is like a 300 baud modem.)

I intentionally design all of my tools for command-line and scripting.
Most of the analysis methods take longer to load/save the image than to
actually do the computation.  However, wavelets (covered in my talk) and
color density (not covered) are VERY slow.  (An 800x600 image might take a
minute for wavelets and up to 10 minutes for density; fortunately, these
are not the main algorithms that I use.)

I am currently talking to a company about possibly productizing the code.
(Right now, it is a very ugly command-line program that does all of the
analysis.  It is good for me, not good for other people.  Version 2 should
be much more usable.)

Finally, the analysis programs (jpegana and imgana) do not draw any
conclusions.  They just generate pictures.  A human still needs to look
at the pictures.  This came from a law enforcement requirement: an expert
needs to explain the "how".  The image analysis algorithms just make it
really easy for a human.  (However, I do want to build a simple summary
system that may not be accurate but will allow the quick "bucketing" of
images.)

Gar: if you have other questions, send me an email off-list.

                                        -Neal
--
Neal Krawetz, Ph.D.
Hacker Factor Solutions
http://www.hackerfactor.com/
Author of "Introduction to Network Security" (Charles River Media, 2006)
and "Hacking Ubuntu" (Wiley, 2007)

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