What's the difference between an anti virus and a botnet? The botnet is free.

What’s the difference between an anti virus and a botnet? The botnet is free.

This is a purely speculative post. I have no information or evidence that anyone is doing anything like this. I’d be surprised if they were, but I’d also be surprised if some intel agency didn’t try it.

A discussion on twitter reminded me of something I’d thought about before: what is the best possible cover for a digital espionage tool? - Anti virus.

You want a program that:

runs continuously
gets constant updates from a command and control server
scans every file on the system
sends frequent data to the command and control server
updates itself dynamically as required based on C&C commands
is completely integrated into the operating system to run at the highest privilege level
kills or prevents running security analysis tools (eg debuggers) to protect itself

An antivirus product is absolutely perfect for this. If I was an intelligence agency I would be looking to subvert an AV system and use that for my espionage tool.

Flame is lame! I’d rather be an antivirus. ;)

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HXBrL-mdowY

cyber info war espionage disinformation kgb Youtube

Sharing Truths About the Self: Theorizing News Reposting on Social Media | Tran | International Journal of Communication

Sharing Truths About the Self: Theorizing News Reposting on Social Media

ijoc.org

This is great

People don’t share on social media to share information but to signal.

a myriad of solutions against misinformation—from media literacy training to fact- checking—strive to help individual users make more reliable reposting choices. These interventions assume that citizens aim to spread true stories, yet lack the skills or information to reliably distinguish fact from fiction. However, a growing body of research suggests that this might not accurately reflect what drives reposting behavior.

Pennycook and colleagues (2021), for example, found evidence for an inattention-based account of misinformation spreading, suggesting that people generally wish to avoid disseminating false content and are typically able to tell truth from falsehood—but, in the context of social media, their attention is focused on factors besides accuracy. When deciding which news to repost, users are not primarily concerned with the story’s accuracy but with something else altogether.

We routinely engage in many communicative acts—from joking, gossiping, and storytelling to outright lying—where telling the truth is not the main objective. This article aims to contribute to the theorization of social media reposting as a form of goal-oriented communication. If users’ main objective behind reposting news is not to transmit accurate information to their network, what other purpose does this activity primarily serve?

To answer this question, this article explores seven key affordances enabled by Facebook and Twitter’s news sharing functions, namely visibility, scalability, persistence, association, meta-voicing, interactivity, and immediacy. Taken together, I argue that, beyond facilitating the forwarding of information, these affordances also render reposting an effective means for self-presentation.

cyber infowar

A Key Reason for Russia’s Colossal Electronic Warfare Failure in Ukraine

Six weeks into the war, it’s clear that Russian Electronic Warfare/Electronic Attack (EW/EA) systems have been largely ineffective.

The Defense Post

Great article on electronic warfare

cyber ukraine war electronic warfare

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/nyregion/cruxy-oconnor-ira-spy-wednesday.html

Cruxy O’Connor and the Central Park Ambush

One hundred years ago this week, the British spy was caught in what appears to be the Irish Republican Army’s only authorized attack on Amer

nytimes.com

counterintelligence counterterrorism

When the Mongols Set Out to Conquer the World, There Was Only One Limiting Factor: Grass | Historynet

The steppe nomads invented the operational level of war, with the essential nutrient for their herds dictating where—and when—they fought.

Historynet

Dr Wayne Lee is great reading

warfare history

https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast/532/notes

espionage counterintelligence intelligence Ira pira

The drone operators who halted Russian convoy headed for Kyiv

Special IT force of 30 soldiers on quad bikes is vital part of Ukraine’s defence, but forced to crowdfund for supplies

the Guardian

The unit is also looking at ways to overcome Russian jamming, part of the electronic warfare being waged in Ukraine in parallel to the bombs, shells and missiles. At present, Aerorozvidka typically waits for the Russians turn off their jamming equipment to launch their own drones, and then it sends up its machines at the same time. The unit then concentrates its firepower on the electronic warfare vehicles.

Honchar describes these technological battles, and Aerorozvidka’s way of fighting, as the future of warfare, in which swarms of small teams networked together by mutual trust and advanced communications can overwhelm a bigger and more heavily armed adversary.