The fight against the analysis of communications - information warfare technologies

    The starting point of the first technological wars can be considered the day when the first bribe of the Luddites was made and they began to destroy the looms, not for the sake of an idea, but for a fee. Gradually, competitors gained experience and the practice of direct sabotage developed . However, along with this, the beginnings of protective measures appeared. It became not so simple, and not so effective, to get a job, drop a bomb and run away - there was less and less sense from it, and more problems. At the same time, industrial espionage was gaining momentum - the theft of technology and know-how.

    By the way, to this day there are no good methods to combat industrial espionage. However, this can be resisted. First, a spy must have a good technical background. After all, otherwise he will not be able to understand that from the cabinet with the drawings it is necessary to redraw first. Secondly, not every advanced engineer will agree to such an unethical matter. And thirdly, more often than not, a malefactor can be recognized by the lack of, so to speak, corporate spirit.

    However, leaving aside morality and ethics, it is worth recognizing that the one who guessed to combine sabotage and espionage was a man of outstanding intelligence and ingenuity. As a result of this merger, a new method of dealing with competitors was obtained - hidden sabotage. What it is, it’s easy to guess - the introduction of a subject into a competing enterprise, which gradually, scientifically and systematically leads the enemy organization to destruction and bankruptcy. Destroying a team, carrying out tactically correct, but strategically destructive decisions, bureaucratizing the system of work - you can list for a long time, but the fact remains.
    This person can (and will) be loved and respected by not very visionary leaders. After all, he improves work, makes a profit - here and now. I will make a reservation that it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to perform malicious actions with the perspicacious bosses. But, the larger the organization, the more likely it is that there is a key department for it, where the boss / friend / matchmaker / godfather of the boss rules. This is where the evil pest puts its efforts.

    With the development of information technology, competitors are getting more and more opportunities to spy and harm each other remotely - through the media and the Internet. The first anti-PR employees glued bad salary announcements to the pillars, spread rumors in the bars about the director’s mistresses, whispered work tales about the eight-hour working day somewhere “out there”, and, in general, using the ignorance of the people, created a negative opinion about the competing enterprise.

    Further more. It is difficult to find now that person who would not read custom-made articles in newspapers or watch the war of local factory workers on local television. But the antipiar suffered from a significant drawback - its distributors knew little about the real situation in the enemy camp. But, of course, they did their best and are trying to dig up more facts, rumors and, of course, dirt. And the internet gave them that opportunity.

    Turning to the present, we need to pay attention to two things. Firstly, information has become more accessible . And, most often, its accessibility increases regardless of a person’s desire to keep it secret. And secondly, the most important component of information — communication — has reached critical mass.I will explain. If some time ago it was extremely difficult to find an employee who was suddenly missing, all that remained was a seeker - a telephone (switched off) and a home address (often incorrect), now having spent a small amount of time analyzing his connections, the ability to reach the right person has increased many times over. That is, the number of existing connections has become sufficient to find an unknown link.

    The same thing happens at a level higher than the search for ordinary workers. What does a person do before accepting a job invitation? That's right, he is trying to find out as much as possible about the enterprise where he has to work hard, about his future bosses, about the team - the competence of people and, if possible, about the relationships within him. All the same work can be done by unscrupulous competitors. And to do much better than an ordinary, albeit an advanced person.

    The analysis of both internal, organizational relations, and external - counterparty, can bring considerable benefit to competitors. And if the company works in the field of information technology, and if employees have the Internet at their workplaces, and if the boss is registered on LinkedIn or Facebook ... A real information field of miracles opens up for pests. And to prevent the analysis and use for bad purposes of the information obtained becomes much more difficult. This is no longer a mishandled Cossack face in the back room to beat. And to refuse to use open information is practically impossible - well, where in our world without email or a cell phone?

    Based on the foregoing, it becomes clear that if information leakage cannot be prevented, then it (information) should be confused as much as possible. Better yet, let it flowmisinformation . This, incidentally, is not a new idea at all. Even the ancient Greeks in Thermopylae tried to crank such a feint. However, they were let down by the human factor - a citizen was found who exchanged conscience for banknotes. However, this single example and, in general, disinformation has proven itself throughout its existence.

    But misinformation is a rather vague concept. After all, you can’t imagine it on the morning meeting. Here, a more detailed knowledge of the components of this phenomenon is already necessary. Without going into deep technical details and specific cases of the use of the disinformation method, it is worth highlighting that part that relates to this article - information communications. Now it's time to mention a couple of basic terms. Firstly, the actor.An actor is the main actor in the process of exchanging information . Director, sysadmin, secretary - all of them can be actors in the coordinate system we set. Secondly, the connection. Communication is an information channel connecting two actors. Just two, no more and no less. Communication, of course, can be a messenger, mail, phone and any other channels suitable for transmitting information.

    Knowing the basic concepts, you can make a small list of their use in misinforming a competitor:

    • I. Noisy information space.
      1. The introduction of false bonds.
      2. The introduction of loose bonds.
      3. Introduction of multiple branching links.
      4. Creation of high-noise virtual objects.
      5. The use of variable relationships.
    • II. Breaking ties.
      1. The imposition of a partially false social graph.
      2. Use of alternative links.
      3. The use of negative relationships.


    In general, all these concepts, even without special knowledge, are intuitive. Nevertheless, it is worth saying a little more about them.

    So, the noise. Using all the subparagraphs of this paragraph, an excess of links and the information transmitted through them is created, which leads to a serious difficulty in analyzing the links of the desired actor. And in fact: The

    introduction of a false connection between the wife of the boss’s mistress (for example, in classmates) will cause, at a minimum, the analyst’s perplexity.

    Forwarding dozens of links to dummies - unfilled LJ, abandoned profiles on forums, friendship with a crowd of renamed bots, leads to the need to increase the time spent on parsing these loose links.

    Creating a pile of the same, but different connections with the same actor will make the competitor need to control a much more fragmented data stream.

    Having spent a little more time for programmers (or money for them), and having organized a couple of virtuals, you can fill up spies with a hypothetically important bunch of information.

    Changing the information channel between two actors at short intervals will force the analyst to spend all his time searching for these new connections.

    All of these ways of dealing with informational “analysis”, as well as the second paragraph - breaking ties, will be described in detail in the second part of the article - if it seems interesting to the community.

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