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from the another-job-lost-to-automation dept.
Spotted on HackerNews is a link to a paper on Automated Crowdturfing Attacks and Defenses in Online Review Systems:
Malicious crowdsourcing forums are gaining traction as sources of spreading misinformation online, but are limited by the costs of hiring and managing human workers. In this paper, we identify a new class of attacks that leverage deep learning language models (Recurrent Neural Networks or RNNs) to automate the generation of fake online reviews for products and services. Not only are these attacks cheap and therefore more scalable, but they can control rate of content output to eliminate the signature burstiness that makes crowdsourced campaigns easy to detect.
The paper, available from the arXiv link, contains the details of the attack which the paper notes "are largely indistinguishable from real reviews to human readers", and suggests defensive mechanisms based on "statistically detectable variations in the character-level distribution of machine-generated reviews".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @01:03AM (8 children)
The Internet is a failed experiment. It was great while it lasted but now, it's being used for just plain evil shit. It's time for a reboot!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday September 06 2017, @01:26AM (5 children)
Says the guy posting as AC.
There is no meaningful reboot possible, and no expectation of improvement, nor any actual useful dialog as long as anonymity is part of the equation.
The internet baked in anonymity. Bolted on security (mostly ineffectively). but never gave a second thought to Personal Privacy and Public-Voice.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday September 06 2017, @02:23AM (1 child)
Really? You have to use Tor if you want a chance at having your sliver of anonymity, and that may even be compromised.
Your ISP is a sellout and the NSA is watching everything with XKeyscore. Maybe using Wi-Fi from a neighbor, coffee shop, or library can help. Maybe not.
Using mobile 3G/4G is simply connecting yourself to a surveillance network.
Things could be worse. There has been talk of baking authentication instead of anonymity and encryption into the Internet. After all, we have to win the Cyber War!
You can't have one without the other. You might be able to fly under the radar for a while, harassing peons at 1 Megadeath threat per second, but if the government is out to get you, it's a wrap.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 06 2017, @04:31AM
Meant to say "You have to use Tor, I2P, or something along those lines". Tor is just one approach.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @08:29AM
True. This is why people posting under their real names on Facebook are such shining examples of human virtue.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:13AM
Frojack wrote : -
I take it that "Frojack" is your real name then, but it would help your battle against anonymity if you gave your name more fully, and address, email, and phone number too.
OTOH I don't care. Chances are I would not know you personally so your name would mean nothing anyway. I judge comments on their own merit, AC or not.
Anyway, I dont see how banning anonymity would solve this review problem. I could still post fake reviews under my real name, or fake reviews under fake names (I'm sure people could beat the system), or (as I do now) real reviews under fake names.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @01:07PM
Says a guy (or gal) posting as AC. There's more than one, you know? (I know for sure, because I didn't write that other post.)
But anyway, what has posting as AC to do with the content of that post?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 06 2017, @06:56AM
If one considers the internet like the postal system, it does an excellent job of routing packets... just as it was designed to to. It does an excellent job of accepting a packet here and delivering it there.
In continuation of the analogy to the post office, we are having massive problems due to the sheer amount of junk mail along with people inserting anthrax powder in some of the mails.
The senders of a lot of the junk mails gladly support law that forbids us from ignoring their craps, while holding them harmless should someone put anthrax in the mailier. ( referring to rogue malware, wannacry, etc. ). Our government is even financing even new versions of malware for the TLA's as existing hooks get exposed, leaving the ordinary user wide open for exploitation by those who become privy to where the backdoors are.
The internet is working just fine, however our Government is passing laws intended to keep the populace dumb enough so they can't evade the business model of the lobbyist-hiring corps, which depends on the customer's own computer accepting executable content without understanding what those instructions are telling the computer to do.
An ignorant population is an exploitable population.... by both business AND by hucksters.
As important as our computer infrastructure has become to modern society, the idea of having it all shut down one day by the digital equivalent of the "great Potato Blight of Ireland", except a digital blight will spread far faster. I have no way of knowing if the means to instigate one exists right now, although I suspect it does. If its not held by our own TLA's, it may well exist in microcode in every major imported processor chip. With all this "intellectual rights" stuff going on, who knows if there is some microcode in the chip to permanently brick it should it see a certain sequence of instructions, much like those FTDI USB-RS232 chips got bricked? Like having a "sleeper cell" in our computational infrastructure, laying dormant, maybe for decades, until one day the instructions go out to wake up and die. Another word for this is "Microsoft Update" by someone who appears to be Microsoft. And make sure the customers can't protect themselves by simply turning it off when its discovered the wildfire is ablaze.
Personally, given my understanding of how important our computers are to us, and the ignorance of them our Congress is forcing onto us via "rights" protection mechanisms, I feel our own Congress is being played like a fiddle. They are quite knowledgeable in "leadership" techniques to control sheeple, whether through greed or fear, however I see them sorely lacking in knowing how computers actually work.
Fun fact - fun fact - fun fact: Did you know a hacked computer can even be programmed to ignore a direct command from even the President of the United States? Even if he is backed by the full force of the United States Military? Even under direct threat of a Court Martial? I do not believe a lot of Congressmen are aware of this, and still believe ignorance is the key to national security. Much like the people in Houston that thought fifteen backup generators were sufficient, but failed to take into account that water and electrical switchgear don't mix.
Problem is the "honorable Mr. So and So" won't find out what we have been warning about until the water rises and we get into a major war.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 06 2017, @01:32PM
It didn't fail. It was hijacked by the grass fuckers looking for more money followed by the government who are paid by said grass fuckers.