Ep 49 - Building the Biggest Cyber Threat Intelligence Database and Protecting Against Malicious URLs in Messaging Apps and Email

On this LAB Radio, episode Aaron Mangal and Chris Groshong talk
security, the Internet and origin story of how MetaCert helps
protect users from malicious links with CEO and founder, Paul
Walsh.


Paul Walsh, CEO and founder of MetaCert and co-founder
of W3C Mobile Web Initiative


Paul is an early web pioneer in security and safety for users
having helped create projects like the W3C Mobile Web Initiative
who's mission includes "ensuring that the Web be available on as
many kind of devices as possible".


He also helped create standards and classifications for Uniform
Resource Locations (URLs) as a part of his work at the W3C
organization.


"I'm CEO of MetaCert. In 2017 we completely eradicated phishing
on Slack for the crypto world. In 2018 we pretty much brought a
stop to phishing for the crypto world on Telegram. 2019 is going
to be our most important year - our mission is to eradicate
phishing for everyone who uses our new email security solution
for native mobile email.


Previously...


I was part of the team that helped to launch technologies such as
AIM, Internet Radio, Online Games and X2 56K Modem Protocol while
working at AOL during the 90's.


I co-instigated the creation of the W3C Standard for URL
Classification/Content Labeling and I'm one of the seven original
Founders of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. I also own a full
patent for Malware and Phishing detection and prevention inside a
mobile app WebView with more pending.


I own an Indian restaurant in Ireland - Michelin Star for 10+
years.


[I am a] Irish. Father. Wine Drinker. Advanced Open Water Diver,
Snowboarder, Skydiver Wannabe and Seasoned Traveller."


-Paul Walsh


This new broad access of the web we are seeing today has
brought new challenges such as malicious individuals who
seek to steal peoples data and even worse Cryptocurrency and the
value within.


The MetaCert team began by providing authenticity and monitoring
of social media channels like Telegram and Slack which has a wave
of malicious bot attacks on users, encouraging them to click on
compromised links and put their sensitive data into fake websites
which ultimately leads to theft.


MetaCert aims to protect businesses from malicious
threats and unsafe URLs inside Messaging Apps


MetaCert has a patented enterprise-grade security API which can
lookup over 2,000 shortening services and check it against a
massive database of 10 billion classified URLs across 65
categories in a fraction of a second.


MetaCert boasts the biggest threat intelligence system on the
planet. The second to them is OpenDNS (run by Cisco) which has
classified 2 million domains across 60 categories.


One of the reasons for building its own threat intelligence
system was to prevent false positives (which is a problem with
current solutions on the market automatically blocking too many
innocent sites).


MetaCert recently released a beta of their email security
solution which helps verify the safety of links:


After listening to this episode you will learn:


How Paul was an early semantic web pioneer in the 90s and
created the W3C Mobile Web Initiative

Why Paul felt websites and search engines should show more
metadata and have an identity certificate

What a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) is and why they
are important

How Webview works and was a vulnerability in our mobile use
of the Web

Why they got a patent in place for security around Webview to
protect themselves from tech giants like Google

Why the first iteration of MetaCert was for child safety and
built a database for pornographic content

How MetaCert saw the opportunity to organize and classify
URIs and created the biggest Cyber Threat Intelligence Database
to date

How the MetaCert API works

How MetaCert leverages a reward system for compensating
people (Validators) for helping identify and log links

Why the MetaCert "Green Shield" icon has become a pillar in
their branding and marketing to the public

Paul's vision for decentralizing governance around content,
link filtering and working group/committee creation

A fake news identifying browser add-on called TrustedNews
which is 100% powered by MetaCert

About how Paul is considering moving away from Ethereum
(first time mentioned in public)



For show notes and more visit: LAB Radio Episode
49