Raps BOT : Predicts Insider Cyber Terrorism Threat HIGH

I seeded an internet botnet of 10K+ targeted clients which scour the web, scraping and collating conversation data then predicts the national security situation of the UK in 3-6-12 months time.

I started designing this botnet when I worked as a consultant at IBM research in Hursley on persuasive technology projects.

Basically this botnet uses the processing capabilities of 3rd party web servers and clients in order to remain alive. It is totally autonomous meaning I can send it out with commands one month and it returns the next month with the information which my server then crunches to get a prediction.

One vector my botnet has exposed is cyber terrorism risk in the UK. I had expected to almost certainly see that Russia and China were the primary sources of bad actor behaviour. But I was surprised when the prediction of Raps Bot reported that 78% of the cyber threat to national security was going to come from UK citizens and insider personnel, not from foreign shores.

I ran this botnet for 10 months and it basically scraped links using keywords from the relevant forums and social media sites and then followed them and collated the data.

I have a reporting system which produces a map of the main cyber terrorism threats and all the longest tentacles were from insider terrorism orientated threats.

Assessing crime motivation plays a big part in the analysis process and I have to say the system picked up on this extremely well, plotting the main motivation points and then relating them to the data, the location and the context.

Build a Bot - But you don't have to become one!

It is when we live with robots
Work like robots
Pretend to be robots
That depression takes hold

The best remedy i have found
Is in watching God

When i first looked
I couldn't find him

Then on closer inspection
He was right there in front of me

In the eyes of a child
In the hair of the woman i love
In the voice of great leaders
In a carers touch

To melt those old killer robots
All you need is love!

What You Need to Know About Botnets!

Published by Silicon.com Aug07
A bot, short for robot, is an automated software program that can execute certain commands. A botnet, short for robot network, is an aggregation of computers compromised by bots that are connected to a central "controller." These botnet controllers are often controlled from chat rooms. Botnet controllers can be linked together to form even larger botnets and to replace another controller that is taken off line. Botnets controlling tens of thousands of compromised hosts are not uncommon. Botnets are becoming a significant problem across the Internet.
A white paper from US-CERT is available here http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/malware-threats-mitigation.pdf