List of keywords released by DHS is FAKE - Proof Inside

As a follow up to this thread, I believe there is extremely strong evidence to suspect the list of keywords released by the DHS in response to an FOIA request is fraudulent and not the real list. (For the newcommers, this is a supposed list of words the DHS sniffs for on social networks and elsewhere to detect "threats".)

Look at the bottom section entitled "Cyber Security":



Anyone even remotely knowledgeable about networking, cyber security or computer science would immediately recognize this list as having been written by someone who obviously knew nothing about cyber security at all, but simply googled around collecting enough terms that sound like they could be the right terms to try to pass this off as a real list of keywords.

Some glaring errors include the use of "mysql injection" which refers to a specific brand of sql datbase, rather than the more general "sql injection", incorrectly calling a DDOS attack a "dedicated denial of service attack" (it actually stands for distributed denial of service attack), the use of completely obsolete terms like "phreaking" which was a common theme in the 80's movie War Games but no longer has any relevance to today's technology, and the word "conficker" which refers to an obsolete computer worm that came around a few years ago and has now been eradicated. They even have the name of a magazine, 2600, on the word list.

There is no way, if the DHS actually employs real cyber security professionals, that they would sniff these terms as a way to detect threats. They would be looking for names of specific tools like Nikto or Wiresharck, etc and/or would be searching for exploit terminology that is relevant to threats to large industrial or corporate database platforms (MySQL NOT being one of them as that is mainly used for small personal web sites). They fail to list a number of obvious types of exploits such as Xpath injection, LDAP injection, remote buffer overflow, all of which should be flagged for before such dubious terms as "phreaking" and "mysql injection".

What clearly happened here is the DHS knew they had to release something to respond to the FOIA request so they scribbled some terms onto a list they thought they could pass off as the real thing, and the person writing the list was not computer literate in the slightest. They googled some phrases like "hacking" or read a wikipedia article and collected a list of terms, not knowing what they mean, and added them to the list. Show this to any security expert and they will say the exact same thing I promise you.

I agree with your assessment of obsolete vocabulary. Phreaking was a technique used gain a carrier signal over a dial-up modem, and dial-up just isn't used anymore due to slow speeds.

Then, include the words that would get literally millions of hits, such as malware. How generic is that? Malware is too rampant to make it a feasible search term, and if they really did, I can see some servers being overloaded.

Something is just weird about that list.

apparently it is real.

full document

i wish i could add the link to my OP.

reply to post by kn0wh0w


of course it's the real document they gave out for the request...but is it really the real thing?

doubtful...

of course it's the real document they gave out for the request...

Ok...

but is it really the real thing?

You just said it was?

If it's the real thing how can it be fake?

You got me confused

If that is really real then I actually DO fear for the security of the United States. I could write a better algorithm in 10 minutes to scan for combinations of words that would indicate legitimate threats.

reply to post by kn0wh0w


i think the point he's trying to make is that this whole list looks rather thrown together just so they could present something that was required of them...

hence it's not the real list...

I can't get any more simpler than that...

reply to post by kn0wh0w


In other words a list was released to appease the FOIA request but the OP's assertion is that the terms on it may not be the actual words they are tracking - just what they want us to think they are tracking.

Originally posted by here4awhile
reply to post by kn0wh0w

 

i think the point he's trying to make is that this whole list looks rather thrown together just so they could present something that was required of them...

hence it's not the real list...

I can't get any more simpler than that...

well of you look at the full document it's not exactly 'thrown together'.

or do you mean that the only the list of search words is thrown together?

because the full document contains about 40 pages....

Originally posted by kosmicjack
reply to post by kn0wh0w

 

In other words a list was released to appease the FOIA request but the OP's assertion is that the terms on it may not be the actual words they are tracking - just what they want us to think they are tracking.

edit on 5/29/2012 by kosmicjack because: (no reason given)

Ok i get it now.

Because the document is certainly real, just the list of search words is faked?

I might agree with that assumption.

So star and flag.

I don't think the list is fake, but I do think it was a list they have used many years ago to conduct this very same searches. A sort of first draft if you will.

reply to post by Radiobuzz


That seems reasonable. And now there is an updated list that, of course, they wouldn't release to the public as it would sort of nullify their efforts.

The discussion of whether the word list is authentic is very timely. We can recycle dozens of old threads, substituting the words "keywords list" for "birth certificate," and continue the discussion without pause.

To me it's another example of the risks we run when we view things through a conspiracy lens, not that it's wrong to, but it's certainly risky. I think most people keep saying "But that really means..." until they come to the conclusion they believed in the first place. (Or the conclusion that's more fun.)

reply to post by kosmicjack


Exactly, I think that in their minds, publishing a list of keywords and algorithms used nowadays to monitor the traffic would be a huge rift to their security, and in fact you could argue that it is indeed the case, as doing so would render them useless.

Originally posted by kosmicjack
reply to post by Radiobuzz

 

That seems reasonable. And now there is an updated list that, of course, they wouldn't release to the public as it would sort of nullify their efforts.

What I don't get is, that the only people who would need to fear the "real list", if this one is in fact deprecated by another, would already know the terms they need to steer clear of in the first place. So why even bother creating a false one?

Seems to me they want the general public to be more concerned by what the DHS is monitoring, than the professionals who already know what they SHOULDNT be saying in the first place.