Threat actor
Cognitec Systems
Last fetched
Cognitec Systems is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques.
Description
Cognitec Systems is a face recognition technology company. One of its products, FaceVACS, delivers extensive surveillance functionality that goes beyond basic face matching. The system can guess ethnicity based on a person's skin color, flag suspects on watch lists, estimate the age of a person, detect gender, and "track" faces in real time. According to the company, it also helps identify suspects if they have tried to evade detection by putting on glasses, growing a beard, or changing their hairstyle. It is used at border checkpoints in several countries, including Germany. The New South Wales Police Force in Australia stopped using the company's PhotoTrac Suspect Identification System after concerns about the program's ineffectiveness and a tendency for "producing false identification matches when it comes to racial minorities in particular." The company was acquired by SALTO Group in March, 2022.
Techniques by tactic
No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for Cognitec Systems in WhisperGraph.
Attributed infrastructure
None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to Cognitec Systems today — this states the absence of a published link, not that Cognitec Systems has no infrastructure.
References
- https://www.cognitec.com/news-reader/cognitecs-veridos-egates-bangladesh.html
- https://www.cognitec.com/news-reader/cognitec-technologies-to-capture-facial-images-at-german-borders.html
- https://www.biometricupdate.com/201601/cognitec-exec-discusses-facevacs-facial-recognition-technology
- https://slate.com/technology/2013/04/statue-of-liberty-to-get-new-surveillance-tech-but-dont-mention-face-recognition.html
- https://www.cognitec.com/news-reader/Cognitec-joins-SALTO-Group.html
- https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/nsw-police-stop-using-ineffective-and-racially-biased-facial-recognition-identification-system/
© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.
Related pages
Pivot from Cognitec Systems into its techniques, tactics and any attributed infrastructure.
Queries
Resolves the slug to this actor, merging every duplicate node sharing the same name.
MATCH (a:ACTOR)
WHERE a.name =~ $pattern OR any(x IN a.aliases WHERE x =~ $pattern)
RETURN a.id AS id, a.name AS name, a.aliases AS aliases, a.description AS description,
a.references AS references, a.campaigns AS campaigns
LIMIT 25Techniques this actor uses, grouped by the tactic each one serves.
MATCH (a:ACTOR {name: $name})-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN)
OPTIONAL MATCH (t)-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN t.id AS techniqueId, t.name AS techniqueName, tac.id AS tacticId, tac.name AS tacticName
LIMIT 1000Infrastructure publicly attributed to this actor.
MATCH (n)-[:ATTRIBUTED_TO]->(a:ACTOR {name: $name})
RETURN labels(n)[0] AS kind, n.name AS name
LIMIT 25Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.