Paterva Evolution – Data Mining for the Google Generation

So in a world where data is king, peopleare obviously going to look for ways to mine the data in more effectiveways. I saw a talk in May last year by Ian Cook titled, “FindingInformation in the Darkweb,” with a subtitle of “Open SourceIntelligence Gathering on a Shoestring.” This was interesting andpretty cool on the whole, but required a number of tools and some timeto mine the data and glue all the bits together.

While data is cool, without context it can be a huge burden to mineand discover the relationships. Well, my friends, close your GoogleEarth as I’ve got something to show you that is so cool it’ll makewhizzing round the streets of San Francisco in Google Earth feel likepeeling potatoes.

Welcome to Evolution,the brain child of Roelof Temmingh of ex-SensePost fame. It’s a toolthat “associates data found in multiple search engines andsocial-networking Web sites… to find information behind IP addresses,Domain Name System entries, domain registration and more.”[1] He presented on it at CanSecWest and FIRST, from which the slides are available.

You could use it for “investigating,” or you could it as I did tofind stuff that would be immediately apparent in Google. I’ve used iton several projects to find information related to subjects I’ve beenresearching and to find other works by those authors and similar worksby others.

Anyway, it’s useful tool for anyone doing background checks through to forensic investigators.