Threat actor
Near
Last fetched
Near is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques.
Description
Data intelligence company Near was originally founded in Singapore in 2012 and later relocated to Pasadena, California. In 2021, data broker Near claimed to have location data on 1.6 billion people, which raised additional concerns when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2022. The data's potential sale to another company, including sensitive information from locations like abortion clinics, alarmed many human rights and privacy advocates. Near's privacy policy states that all collected data can be conveyed to prospective new owners, should the business be sold. Near sold data to the U.S government and claimed otherwise on its website, with no privacy safeguards in place until 2022. The sale of location data without informed consent continued until at least October 2023.
Techniques by tactic
No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for Near in WhisperGraph.
Attributed infrastructure
None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to Near today — this states the absence of a published link, not that Near has no infrastructure.
References
- https://themarkup.org/privacy/2024/02/23/what-happens-to-your-sensitive-data-when-a-data-broker-goes-bankrupt
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/sen-wyden-exposes-data-brokers-selling-location-data-anti-abortion-groups-target
- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/how-your-sensitive-data-can-be-sold-after-a-data-broker-goes-bankrupt/
- https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/data_broker_location_abortion/
- https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/data-intelligence-startup-near-with-1-6b-anonymized-user-ids-lists-on-nasdaq-via-spac-at-a-1b-market-cap-raises-100m/
- https://outsideinsight.com/insights/ai-merge-online-offline-behaviour/
© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.
Related pages
Pivot from Near 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.