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Ransomware Prohibition
Theres nothing that can’t be made worse The Treasury has moved to prohibit payment of ransomware ransoms. They’ve said there will be some exceptions, and it is obvious that this won’t be an effective complete global ban on payment. The result, a partial ban on payment, is the worst possible ransomware environment for victims. The… Read more
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The WeChat Ban and National Cyber Strategy
NOTE: The ban on WeChat was blocked for violating freedom of speech. For the millions of Chinese in the diaspora Trump’s WeChat ban has created a problem only the software grey market can solve. WeChat is almost an existential requirement. It’s the only messaging app the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allows, making it the only… Read more
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Cybercraft: the short version
Cybercraft is the skillful management of cyber ways and means to achieve your ends. We are living through a return to great power competition. Cyber has created a new means for contest between states and other entities, including organisations, companies, small groups and individuals. Cyber has infiltrated every facet of modern life. It has become… Read more
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Disclosure Keynote: Cybercraft
I presented the opening keynote at Okta’s Disclosure conference on Sept 2nd 2020. I used the opportunity to put forward a new term of art (cybercraft) and to outline some of my thinking on cyber conflict. There is a good write up on ZDNet here. The video is on YouTube. Another write up on DarkReading… Read more
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Propaganda, harder than it looks
A poor effort at “black propaganda” The success or failure of black propaganda depends on the receiver’s willingness to accept the credibility of the source and the content of the message. Care has to be taken to place the sources and messages within a social, cultural, and political framework of the target audience. If the… Read more
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Useful idiots indeed
#blog/disinformation It was the media’s poor handling of the leaked documents that had the most impact. In late June ‘16 @lorenzofb @pwnallthethings and I had proved Guccifer 2.0 was not “a Romanian hacker” but rather more than one Russian engaged in an information operation to aid the Trump campaign. Collected contemporary evidence here. There was… Read more
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Modern Mass Media and Info War
This is fascinating… the 3rd largest media company, after Disney and Warner, is The Soul Publishing, and they’re pure online only. They produce dedicated content designed for Facebook and YouTube algorithms. Why is that interesting? Well, for one, their content is lies (seriously, the debunking videos are hilarious: “wow, that cleaning solution made those sneakers… Read more
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Zoom + Keybase
There is an opportunity here to signal that Zoom is not a Chinese asset. Zoom can effectively remove itself from the board by completely mitigating passive surveillance. When no state’s intelligence agency benefits from a home field advantage with Zoom, then its value as a strategic cyber asset is massively reduced. If Zoom eliminates the… Read more
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A Map of 0day Deaths
Collection Bias This map does not show what FireEye claim it shows. Israel, 1 0day? 8200 be slacking not hacking Australia, 0 0days? ASD Aussie Slacker Directorate. This is a map of 0day deaths where the death is attributed. Nothing more. A map of attributed 0day deaths. It doesn’t even reflect operational methodology because Chinese… Read more
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Forgotten Tricks of Trench Warfare
Razzle Dazzle everywhere The German sandbags were a variety of colors, black, pink, yellow, beige, green, etc. They were not arranged in orderly patterns, but scattered haphazardly throughout the parapet. The belief was that the cacophony of contrasting colors made it harder for the human visual processing system to make sense of what it saw.… Read more