Person
1 episodes · 22 quoted claims
Christopher Ahlberg says a hacker broke into the US Electoral Assistance Commission using a SQL injection and extracted information.
“some guy there had broken into this thing called, uh, Electoral Assistance Commission, EAC, and and, uh, he had hacked it in good ways using a SQL inject, extracted a whole bunch of information”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future found a hacker's advertisement for access to the Electoral Assistance Commission and bought the access before anyone else did.
“we found it before somebody else and and actually bought the access, crazily enough”
Ahlberg says ransomware operators write the software and franchise its use to other criminal actors in return for a share of the proceeds.
“There's guys who write and operate ransomware software. They then franchise out out the use of this ransomware software to other actors”
Ahlberg says some Russian-language criminal forums, such as Maza and Exploit, were created in the early 2000s and some still exist.
“some of these forums were put up the in the early 2000s, Maza and exploit.”
Ahlberg says Spotfire was sold to a Palo Alto company, transcribed as Tipco, which is TIBCO.
“So then we we had sold that to a company in Palo Alto called Tipco.”
Ahlberg says Spotfire was sold for $195 million.
“We sold that for $195 million, you know, nothing to sneeze at”
Ahlberg says the idea for Recorded Future came to him while running on a treadmill, after Spotfire's sale was signed but before it closed.
“I was like I was on the treadmill running and and, uh, uh, literally, uh, while we we had signed the deal to sell Spotfire, but we hadn't closed yet.”
Ahlberg says the company was first going to be called Recorded Time, a Macbeth reference, but the domain name was taken, so it became Recorded Future.
“Then, of course, the domain name recorded time was taken, and it became recorded future”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future took early venture funding from In-Q-Tel and Google Ventures around 2008-2009.
“ended up taking money from Incutel and Google Ventures back in 2008, 9 or something like that”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future ran an intelligence business and a quant trading signals business in parallel for several years before a Series C investor urged it to kill the trading track.
“for multiple years ran an intelligence track and a quant trading track to to create quant trading signals”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future's first entity and event extractors were written as large stacks of if-then-else rules.
“We wrote our first entity extractors and event extractors with, like, lots of if then elses just stacks of if then else statements”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future replaced per-language entity extractors with one model that spans roughly 15 to 30 languages.
“Now that that is one coherent model that sort of spans, I don't know, 15, 30 languages”
Ahlberg says about 47 countries use Recorded Future in some national capability.
“we have probably 47 different countries around the world that use us in in some sort of, uh, national capability”
Ahlberg says that after Russia's invasion Recorded Future provided its technology to Ukraine, which was already a customer.
“when the invasion happened, we did not approve of that. So we said, let let's help out, and, um, we provided our technology”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future chose not to have customers in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
“chose to not have customers in China and Russia and and and, e- Iran and North Korea”
Ahlberg says Recorded Future has about 2,000 customers and that each goes through a know-your-customer check.
“our stuff is fairly expensive, so we only have 2,000 customers”
Ahlberg says cyber attacks were concentrated in English-speaking countries partly because phishing emails were easiest to write in English, and AI removes that limit.
“there was a reason most cyber attacks happened in English-speaking countries for a long time, because writing the phishing emails was easiest to do in English”
Ahlberg cites Rob Joyce, a former head of cyber defense at the US National Security Agency, who said defenders must know their network better than the attacker.
“there's a guy Rob Joyce, who's in who's a terrific man who used to run cyber defense for the US government at NSA.”
Ahlberg says Telegram's founder first built VK, the Russian social network, before starting Telegram.
“he built VK first, sort of the the Russian Facebook.”
Ahlberg says Telegram has a centralized server and does not use end-to-end encryption in the same way Signal does.
“does have sort of a centralized place to be. It has encryption that is not at the same way of end-to-end encryption as of Signal and others do.”
Ahlberg says the General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation issued a statement declaring Recorded Future an 'undesirable' enemy of the state.
“the General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation put out a statement around why Recorded Future is an enemy of the state.”
Ahlberg says Mastercard's payments data could reveal whether stolen credit cards were used, which would help trace the criminal supply chain behind them.
“we get our hands on a stolen credit card, it would be awfully interesting to know whether that card has been used or not”