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Iran in the membrane
Iranian retaliation for killing soleimani It is hard to see the assassination of Soleimani as anything but an act of war. Killing the second most important politician, and top military leader, of a foreign state outside of a war zone is essentially a de facto declaration of war. The saving grace here is that the… Read more
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Books I read and recommend. 2019
In no particular order, here are some of the books I read over the last year. Fiction (sci-fi fantasy noir) Dope by Sara Gran jade war cry pilot the first stone the city in the middle of the night every heart a doorway a memory called empire Goshawk squadron The friends of Eddie coyle Mole… Read more
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DPRK 2020
Intro https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/iranian-official-denies-plans-interfere-us-election-65929393 Trump asks for foreign interference Republicans are fine with Trump’s Ukraine collusion. Preventing foreign states from interfering with the 2020 US presidential election is a lost battle. There is no reason for any of them to stay out, and many are even incentivised to control the outcome regardless of the repercussions. DPRK 2020… Read more
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Baltic Counter Disinformation
Here is a slightly rearranged version of this defense one article. I’ve emphasized the main lines of Russian disinformation and how Lithuania deals with them. As always the interesting thing is the techniques that are used to make false information appear legitimate. Here the Russians use a one-two-three approach: 1. Source: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/12/russian-trolls-are-hammering-away-natos-presence-lithuania/161654/ Attacks Jewish New… Read more
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Wilderness of Mirrors .co.uk
Barebones recap of the story so far: Jeremy Corbyn waved a copy of the publicly released redacted NHS documents during a debate with Boris Johnson. At a later date Corbyn held a press conference to wave around the unredacted version. The unredacted version has been available on Reddit for 5 weeks, and was pushed on… Read more
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This is Literally Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that attempts to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. [1] The recent publication of This Is Not Propaganda [2] has created a lot of buzz amongst aficionados of disinformation and digital propaganda. I haven’t read the book yet, and I’m sure this isn’t Pomerantsev’s… Read more
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Security thinking ruined secure messengers
…I’m more of a “blog half full of COMSEC” kinda guy… Secure instant messengers are a miracle of the modern age. They enable literally anyone to communication with security and privacy guarantees that were the exclusive capability of nation states just a few decades ago. In real-time, regardless of geographic location. Telephones connect places, mobile… Read more
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Thats just, like, your opinion, man
Differing Perspectives on Cyber Threats Ransomware is a hot topic pretty much all the time in information security circles. It is (I believe) one of the stronger drivers for better security decisions at companies (“here is public proof on an existential threat for failure”). Ransomware is also pretty uninspiring as an attack, there is no… Read more
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FSB deploys cyber units inside Europe (for years)
The cyber is coming from inside the EU Czech counterintelligence (BIS) rolled up forward deployed FSB controlled hackers. The hackers were ethnic Russians and ethnic Russians with Czech citizenship. They ran two companies selling IT supplies as covers for their offensive cyber espionage activities. BIS had them under surveillance for several years, during which they… Read more
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Cyber Deterrence
Part of the “total cyber warfare” series I see deterrence against cyber is basically: cyber, diplomatic, kinetic cyber: only works if both sides have similar exposures and vulnerabilities to a cyber attack. It is hard to do a proportionate Cyber response to Laos, for example. diplomatic: all of the usual international levers of coercion, like… Read more