Drones, OSINT, NLP and Sherlock Holmes

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15 January 2017 was yet another treat for me. I watched the most excellent Benedict Cumberbatch playing the part of the brilliant yet crazed Sherlock Holmes. Granted, this is an imaginative and fictitious portrayal of the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle. But I am wondering, if you also watched it, did you note the crossover from fiction to the cyber realities of our time? My first observation was the anarchistic leverage of the drone to deliver an adverse payload into the midst of a group of targets. And it is here where I jump back to my Tripwire Blog of 22/12/14 where I introduced the concept of utilising Toys for Terror. It was interesting in this episode of Sherlock that the imagination of the creators conjoined this storyline with real-life, topical implications of flying toys. The next relationship with the digital world I noticed was the subliminal reference to ‘OSINT’ [Open Source Intelligence]. In this episode, Sherlocks brother, Mycroft, admitted that his service had been utilising the powers of their secret sister, Eurus, to seek out and identify terror threats with the use of OSINT in an effort to predict them before they occurred. Again, yet another cross-over between reality and the digital realm. I refer to it as Minority Report OSINT analysis, something which seeks to predict the future based on Internet chatter and other forms of intelligence snippets that when aggregated paint a very accurate and full picture of unknown unknown threats. You may have also noticed how Eurus employed her mind and leveraged the arts of social engineering and NLP [Nero Linguistic Programing] to identity the key touch points of her targets and then to manipulate and mess with their minds in a very discreet and subliminal manner. It's a common trait of many modern day successful cyber criminals to see social engineers as the first step on the ladder of compromising and exploiting a target. And finally, we have the name of Sherlocks brother ‘Mycroft’ – another very real cross over into the real-time world of UK Government and its related Intelligence programmes. Googling the word ‘Mycroft’ brings up a bucket load of information about Sherlock Holmes. However, looking further down the page, you will notice a reference to a company that supposedly offers services based on ‘Expert Immigration Intelligence.’ As of this writing, it takes you to a 404 [Page not found]. However, some of the older cached records they tell us that, in this instance, the word "Mycroft" relates to the Management of Immigration Detention Centres by an outsourcing organization that works closely with the Home Office's UK Visas and Immigration services to help the Government manage migration successfully, information which I must admit I was surprised to find sitting on the Internet for all to view. But again, yet another cross over from the world of fiction to real time operations and systems. As a conclusion, the digital world is now entering the mainstream of on-screen dramatization with a very clear realisation that that which was once denounced as the product of over imaginative minds is now a very real threat to global economies, governments, and the public. Well done to those who write TV episodes to bring this subject to the living rooms of the viewing public. Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor, and do not necessarily reflect those of Tripwire, Inc.