Project Vigilant: One Nearly Homeless Guy Talking Big?

from the vigilant-indeed dept

So there was a lot of attention paid last week to a newly unveiled "Project Vigilant," which supposedly had a bunch of security experts secretly monitoring internet traffic privately for the US government. However, the more people looked at the details, the more sketchy the whole thing became, and some of us started wondering if the whole thing was a hoax to prove how gullible the media is on security issues (a popular pasttime at Defcon, where this all went down).

Now, Declan McCullough, who has apparently known the guy supposedly "running" the operation, Chet Uber, for years, has an article suggesting that, while it might not be a hoax, it sure sounds like one guy making very little sound like it's a lot. And, not just one guy, but a nearly homeless guy, who couldn't afford a razor until his disability check came in the mail, the day that McCullough spoke to him.

Basically, it sounds like Uber talks big, but there's little, if anything, to back any of it up -- and, at times, doesn't much sense at all:

Uber has a habit of making pronouncements that manage to be both grand and incomprehensible. Two months ago, he sent me an e-mail about Project Vigilant that said, in part: "We do not look at attribution ever as a 100 percent solution. We do see offering a high level of confidence determined by showing correlation that are consistent with perceived events in this time-space model--causality is a bitch--and then based on how that correlation was done and our view of the reliability of the sources and methods used we have a confidence interval."

In conversations over the last week, Uber dropped phrases like "we have dozens and dozens of things that are ready to go to patent pending," "we're running hundreds and hundreds of different experiments," "we've developed steganography and compression algorithms and the use of noise," and "we have the capability to monitor up to 250 million IP addresses per day."

As for the claims of various well-known folks involved with the project? Well, that seems to again be blown out of proportion. One of the "big names" involved is Mark Rasch, who apparently gave Uber free legal advice at some point. When asked about the project, Rasch told McCullough: "I don't know if he's done this or it's something he's looking to do."

Of course, now we can get the conspiracy theories going about how this story is also a hoax to lessen the concerns about this group's supposed monitoring of the internet (yes, please?). But, seriously, this sounds like one guy talking really big without much to back it up. Not quite a hoax, but not quite anything serious either.

Filed Under: chet uber, project vigilant

Is Project Vigilant A Hoax?

from the looking-questionable dept

We just wrote about the new publicity campaign from a group called Project Vigilant, linking to three separate articles discussing how it was a private organization monitoring internet traffic and providing it to the US government. The whole thing seemed dubious on a legal basis, and now plenty of people are questioning whether or not the whole thing is real or some sort of hoax or publicity stunt. Julian Sanchez points out that the "parent company" behind the Project, one "BBHC Global" looks painfully amateurish (and right now appears down). Then, a bunch of security experts are skeptical of the whole concept, noting that if it's been around for 14 years, how come no one's heard of it, and it hasn't participated in any serious security efforts. Others point out that it's almost certainly a publicity stunt of some kind, pointing out that the website was registered just last year. The suggestion there is it's an attempt to jumpstart a new security company. I'm guessing it's more of a hoax to try to show how gullible some people are.

Filed Under: hoax, monitoring, project vigilant, security
Companies: project vigilant