Schneier on Security

ResearcherZero • September 28, 2022 10:46 PM

@Bruce

May be one reason Australia had it’s access limited?

ResearcherZero • October 1, 2022 11:00 PM

The “cornucopia of bugs placed in Russian diplomatic facilities” proved to be very useful in identifying particular individuals responsible for ordering certain covert operations. Other programs were also very helpful for confirming such details, as well as in determining when participants were divulging useful details during discussions, and verifying the authenticity of any information that was supplied.

If there was a need to determine who was responsible for a particular case, who gave the order, it could be determined, or if a Russian source supplied the information it could be verified.

For example if you wanted to look into a specific case such as:

“The test confirmed that I had Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) stage zero, but that chemotherapy was not advisable, since I had no symptoms and the cure would be worse than the disease.

…not only had two recent American Ambassadors to Moscow died of cancer (Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson and Charles Chip” Bohlen), then-Ambassador Walter Stoessel was suffering from a severe blood disorder (Stoessel eventually died of leukemia in 1986).”
https://shoeone.blogspot.com/2013/09/moscow-microwaves.html

…or if information was supplied about who gave the order, those individuals could be investigated.

Of course catching individuals engaged in such activities was helpful. We knew who they were, where they were located, where their equipment was stored, and could observe them engaged in the activities.

More importantly, we could demonstrate the veracity of any claims made by the victims to more senior officials, hence dismissing any of their doubts.

“many individuals who have been treated immediately after an event have improved.”

“directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases.”
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/2022_02_01_AHI_Executive_Summary_FINAL_Redacted.pdf

“This weapon is designed to target the living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system,”
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047342593/long-before-havana-syndrome-u-s-reported-microwaves-beamed-at-an-embassy

“poor handling, by the OMS leadership, of the microwave attack on agency officers,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/business/economy/havana-syndrome-microwave-attack.html

The technology is definitely there – the effect has been demonstrated with 1960’s era transmitters. With sufficient power and a narrow beam antenna, the attackers wouldn’t even need to be in the same room or building as their targets. Power levels high enough to be audible or even cause pain might also cause dizziness, nausea, and even traumatic brain injury.

Frey used several transmitters at different power levels. The transmitters were pulsed, like magnetrons, so while average power was low, peak power was high.
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/25/cuban-embassy-attacks-and-the-microwave-auditory-effect/

1960’s era transmitters pulsed …peak power was high

The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and currently in microwave ovens and linear particle accelerators. It generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field while moving past a series of cavity resonators, which are small, open cavities in a metal block.

Electrons pass by the cavities and cause microwaves to oscillate within, similar to the functioning of a whistle producing a tone when excited by an air stream blown past its opening. The resonant frequency of the arrangement is determined by the cavities’ physical dimensions. The out-of-phase electrons moving past the slits give up energy to establish and maintain within the resonant cavities standing electromagnetic waves. …the magnetron serves solely as an oscillator, generating a microwave signal from direct current electricity supplied to the vacuum tube.

Of course you would also need an inverter and a couple of large capacitors. Use of any such device would be (is) highly dangerous and unpleasant to anyone in the target beam. Greatly more so than the discomfort and danger inflicted by taser.

ResearcherZero • October 27, 2022 2:14 AM

@Nick Levinson

And very few the learnt of.

Returning the favour was pretty popular around that time, and bugs seemed to be going around like the seasonal flue.

ResearcherZero • March 19, 2023 3:51 AM

be careful who is let in through “revolving doors”

“In the late 1980’s the KGB instructed all it’s officers to go into business and engage for that puposes who ever maybe useful icluding criminals, who at that time were the only people knowledgeable of how the market (at least the black one) was operating.”
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20160613091026mp_/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/03/INQ006481.pdf

ResearcherZero • May 6, 2023 8:38 AM

@Bruce

“The revelation raises questions about whether the US and its European allies should have been more prepared for the 2014 attack, when Russia annexed Crimea and attacked the Donbas.”
‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/05/we-knew-putin-would-attack-ukraine-back-in-2011-says-bill-clinton

We knew Putin would attack Ukraine back in the 1990’s, to be exact.

ResearcherZero • May 12, 2023 10:51 AM

Managing humans and their emotional responses can be the most difficult task. People imagine it’s just a simple matter of informing someone, but individuals respond in a variety of ways, sometimes erratically.

“It risks disclosures, because every time additional people know about activities, there is a greater risk of leaks.

Can you get this approval in the field any more? No, you have to come home. You have to come to headquarters. Does headquarters want to… be put in a position where they have to make these tough judgment calls? Not really.

…when we look back at what happened, we will find that there are nuggets of information scattered around various U.S. agencies, perhaps information in the hands of foreign intelligence services, that had we been able to pull it together, would have given us warning. That is a very serious issue that needs to be examined.”
‘https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terrorism/fail/constraints.html

And occasionally you get no response, repeatedly.

ResearcherZero • June 10, 2023 7:47 AM

‘The Value of Science is in the Foresight’

https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2021/01/14/sympathy-for-the-devil-russian-mercenary-operations-around-the-world-as-a-case-study-for-future-geopolitics/

This denial policy must be considered a clear success. If Russia were to attack a member of NATO—say, one of the Baltic states—Moscow would undoubtedly mount a similar, but likely more intense, denial campaign to at least slow down the invocation of NATO’s Article 5 commitment to mutual self-defense, and to isolate and demoralize the government and population of the target country.

The proponents of NGW recognize that occupation is insufficient for achieving a fait accompli; an alternative government must be installed, however manufactured its legitimacy may be. Political targets were of primary importance. The Crimean parliament building was occupied on February 27, 2014, effectively ending local decision making.
‘https://thf-reports.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/SR184.pdf

For 30 years, rolling the frontier back westward has been one of Russia’s top strategic priorities.

Putin’s strategy was one of unclarity, of blurry, gray movements in a fog of ambiguity, none of them rising to the level of war.

“The emphasis in methods of struggle,” Gerasimov observed, is on “widespread use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other non-military matters … Overt use of force,” he advises, “often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis management, occurs only at a certain stage, primarily to achieve definitive success in the conflict.” That “certain stage” arrived on February 24.
‘https://time.com/6155129/russian-strategy-guiding-invasion-ukraine/

“known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf”
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0126

Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov – head of the Kremlin-funded Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia

Ionov used the organization to target political groups in the U.S. and other countries, including Ukraine, Spain, the U.K. and Ireland. The organization reached out to group leaders and paid for them to attend conferences in Russia.
‘https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-citizens-and-russian-intelligence-officers-charged-conspiring-use-us-citizens-illegal

just how far oligarchs have sunk their teeth into the West
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/will-oligarchs-reputation-laundering-face-a-reckoning.html

establishing a potential toehold over policy decisions in Washington
https://acdatacollective.org/work/americas-cultural-institutions-are-quietly-fueled-by-russian-corruption/

https://themoscowproject.org/players/

–

Gaining and maintaining popular support, military mobilization, refinement of nonlinear approaches to war and preparation for future unconventional conflicts.

“using proxies, or surrogates, to not only exploit vulnerabilities in low intensity conflict, but to also prepare for future operations, which may involve high intensity conflict”

Russia has studied nonlinear war since the Cold War (called Active Measures) and Afghanistan through the 1980s, and continued these studies with interventions in Moldova and Lithuania in the early 1990s. Furthermore, from 1994 to 2009, Russia double majored in nonlinear war during the First and Second Chechen Wars.

…engaging Georgia with espionage in 2006, conducting cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007, and completing “counterterrorism” campaigns in Chechnya in 2009.

The Russo-Georgian War in 2008, however, is an exemplary case first, of the evolution of nonlinear or hybrid capabilities; secondly, of the application of indirect instruments in order to destabilize a country; and thirdly, of the volatile effects of such tactics that persist until today. Moreover, during and after this conflict, Russian tactics also combined cyber warfare with both informational and conventional means.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151217191006if_/http://smallwarsjournal.com:80/printpdf/30157

Russia’s Annexation of Crimea: An Analysis Under the Principles of Jus ad Bellum
‘https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20531702.2022.2056803

ResearcherZero • June 20, 2023 12:51 AM

@Bruce

I’ve watched the development of the situation we find ourselves in today over the last thirty years. There were a number of defections from the former Soviet Union back then. A lot of intel. Yet we have landed in what seemed the likely position. Some did take the assessments seriously, but others did not, even though the assessments were rated high confidence.