On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 06:39:26PM -0400, r.deibert@utoronto.ca wrote 1.3K bytes in 39 lines about: : The Information Warfare Monitor just posted a short security note on "Targeted Tracking", the link for which is here: : http://www.infowar-monitor.net/2011/07/targeted-tracking/ : : Our security analyst discovered some clever ways in which emails are being sent to targets presumably to collect vulnerability intelligence that can be used later on. Please pass along to Tibetan organizations that you may believe are recipients of this email. As the former CTO of an online marketing firm, this is called "getting to know your customer". The only thing suspicious in the email is the dyndns.org domain. Any real marketer would use 2o7.net or some other global tracking system, like google-analytics.com, to see who is hitting their page, and what characteristics each user presents. These systems automatically map the individual and their entire history to this single email. In fact, the more targetted you want your email campaign, the more it costs, on the order of US$0.001 per email sent (yes, that's less than one cent). I believe you when you say these techniques are also being used to target people. However, at the same time, they've been used for the past decade to gather intelligence about customers to better target ads and features about a product. I get emails from many organizations, non-profit and for-profit alike, that are loaded with tracking links, javascript, and other techniques to elucidate my browsing history, browser profile, etc. Some examples sitting in my inbox right now are from CPJ, ACLU, and CIMA. It seems simpler to me for an adversary to simply buy the needed data from an ad network rather than go through all of the trouble of spearfishing. -- Andrew pgp key: 0x74ED336B _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE