It seems that not a week goes by without another spate of articles about the mounting threat of account hijacking and cybercrime. Last week, The Onion revealed how the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) gained access to their social media accounts, and just this past weekend, The New York Times reported that a new wave of...
Who would guess that tucked away on the second floor of what appears to be an ordinary office building near downtown Redwood City is a dedicated team of web lovin’, crime fightin’ defenders of the internet? Each morning they make their way by freeway, train or bike to fulfill their mission of battling the rising...
In 2010, Impermium launched with a vision to handle abuse across the internet in a smart and scalable way. The architecture was designed from the ground up to ingest and analyze large amounts of data from many different social networks on an ongoing basis. Cofounders Naveen and Vish designed the data warehouse to utilize Pig,...
This week’s Associated Press Twitter hacking event highlighted the fact that bad guys are successfully targeting diverse websites. The AP is far from alone–Burger King, Jeep, HMV, National Public Radio, and other large companies have had their sites or social media feeds hijacked in recent months. Beyond damaging an individual or brand’s reputation, these hacks...
Recent months, and recent security industry gatherings, have brought numerous stories raising the specter of “mobile malware,” pernicious botnets running on our smartphones and mobile devices, inflicting damage and burning through our precious data plans in the process. While the technology is certainly possible, and proofs-of-concept have been constructed, at this stage the threat of...
Why does a security company like Impermium care so much about internationalization? We care about User Generated Content (UGC). A lot. At Impermium, we employ patented machine learning algorithms to stop the bad guys from spreading spam, taking over accounts and exploiting the vulnerable. When discussing adversarial machine learning, the temptation is to focus on...
In the process of protecting user accounts and content, Impermium sees many different types of fraudulent account activity. Tracing these instances both upstream and downstream to examine the actors and infrastructure being used to perform attacks almost always reveals a root based in economic incentive. Understanding the ontology of web fraud in order to create...
“Whoa, I just logged into my admin panel and found 10,000 new comments!” Typically, high numbers of page views and user interaction is a good thing. However, when you experience an explosion of comments in a short period of time, typically they turn out to be spam. Has this ever happened to you? Did you...
Just over a month ago, I joined the Impermium team as the Business Operations Manager. Coming from Washington DC, it is a big change, and many people have asked about my new role and what it’s like to work at a fast-paced tech startup in Silicon Valley. It’s engaging and fun, and every day I...
In a recent talk at the 2013 Strata Conference, I presented a few insights into adversarial machine learning and how it challenges traditional machine learning. I received a lot of positive feedback from attendees, and was subsequently flooded with requests for my slides and additional materials. Here, I will present an abridged version of my...
In a recent talk, Bruce Schneier spoke of the emergence of “feudal security,” a system in which we’re forced to cede our data security to our device manufacturers and service providers. Just as peasants and merchants relied on the local lord for defense against marauding vandals, so too must we trust in our cell phone...
![Recognizing Spam. . .Not As Easy As It Used To Be [Quiz]](http://www.impermium.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/iStock_000003989354XSmall-290x290.jpg "Recognizing Spam. . .Not As Easy As It Used To Be [Quiz]")
