May 18, 2022

We open this newsletter with a banger. A free book of case studies of Russian espionage operations. Free! Book!

Matthijs R. Koot @mrkoot

Russian Intelligence: A Case-based Study of Russian Services and Missions Past and Present (14MB .pdf, Spring 2022, 370 pages) ni-u.edu/wp/wp-content/… Author: Kevin P. Riehle (@riehle_kevin) Editor/Publisher: National Intelligence (NI) Press /c @krypt3ia #intelligence #russia

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Ruairi Fahy @RuairiFahy

Seeing a lot of goths about again, which is bad news. Goths are the harbinger of recession whether its the 2008 recession, the 1980s recession or 5th century Rome and the collapse of the empire. They may not be the cause but they are the warning we should heed

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Cyber is everything, even M&A contracts.

Alejandra Caraballo 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇷 @Esqueer_

I pity the lawyer that has to explain how a poop emoji constitutes a disparaging remark and a violation of the acquisition deal in this context. Oh wait, that's me.

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Bit of the old black propaganda.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/14/secret-british-black-propaganda-campaign-targeted-cold-war-enemies-information-research-department

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Strong “dog who caught a bus” energy.

The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent

⚡️Ukraine's Military: High-ranking Russian military officials killed by Melitopol guerrillas. Russian occupying forces are “trying to hide this situation,” the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration reported on its Telegram channel on May 17.

For context.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/23/a-ukrainian-city-under-a-violent-new-regime

On that note, more things are going very poorly for Russia in that area.

Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en

⚡️ partisans have blown up the 🇷🇺 occupier's armoured train in #Melitopol. An explosive charge detonated under the train car carrying the personnel. The railway track are damaged, a number of casualties and fatalities is now being specified. #UkraineUnderAttaсk #UkraineRussianWar

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Deep dive OSINT on SIGINT.

Antonio (Tony) I56578 SWL 🇮🇪 @i56578_swl

a bit of #SIGINT #OSINT about Taiwanese Navy HF email messages exchange i56578-swl.blogspot.com/2022/05/1016-p… @DecodeSignals @DF3LZ @ik1yde @shoc_rolf

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A good thread with several very cogent points.

Pwn All The Things @pwnallthethings

In 2012, Gmail had only just adopted HTTPS. The few orgs that cared about security still focused on perimeters, not observability: threat intel orgs were mostly lightweights, at best an afterthought bolted onto AV vendors. The defense market was *terrible* and offense had it easy

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What’s up at Facebook?

Cory Doctorow @doctorow

Facebook may find it easy to hire shills, but it's can't hire engineers. The company is increasingly turning into a tech ghost-ship, experiencing massive shortfalls in its recruiting goals. Apparently, coders have higher standards than "think tanks." protocol.com/workplace/face… 32/

protocol.comFacebook’s hiring crisis: Engineers are turning down offersFacebook had an awful time trying to recruit engineers in early 2021, seeing low and painful acceptance rates on job offers and battling to find talent to fill an extremely high supply of jobs.

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Genius

Badger Em 🏳️‍🌈 @sports_badger

There is a bloke selling eggs next to the Thatcher statue #Grantham

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🟣 or 🚫 💜🇺🇦 @dotornot2

Cybersecurity can takes many shapes.

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A bit on the nose

Lachlan Evenson @LachlanEvenson

PSA: If you’re wondering why there’s a lot of traffic in downtown Valencia this morning there is a dump truck on fire #KubeCon. Plan accordingly.

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Allegedly the Iranians have infiltrated people into Telus Corporation , allowing them to mass delete photos on Instagram.

https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-61488050

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Switzerland is elevating cyber to a.. federal… something. I’ll be honest, I have no idea how Switzerland works. Clearly this is big though.

Florian Egloff @egflo

Today the Federal Council decided to turn the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) into a federal office & instructed @efd_dff to prepare proposals by end of 2022, how the office should be structured and which department it should be part of. @GovCERT_CH

admin.chNational Cybersecurity Centre to become federal officeDecisions, notifications and statements by the Federal Council. Decisions taken by the Federal Council at its weekly meeting are published here.

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Bugs Rule Everything Around Me

Edge Security @EdgeSecurity

If SIMD registers are used in interrupt handlers, apparently #VirtualBox will leak host register secret values into arbitrary guest VM processes. On 5.18 this takes the form of secret intermediate cryptographic hash values leaking into the guest. lore.kernel.org/lkml/YoTVIGiXU…