JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 20/01/2025 And an entire year’s expected political espionage game will not materialize for them. While you love to see it, at the same time know that those APT teams will have to do new and possibly creative things this year to make up for the shortfall, even if only for their own internal metrics. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 20/01/2025Imagine for a minute how the adversary intrusion operators feel, who having put all of the work into another year’s campaign against Davos events, find that basically no one is attending this year because center of gravity is absolutely in DC at the moment. 220
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 19/01/2025Going into a national security special event with a staggeringly bright communications footprint involving absolutely no fail missions, it sure would have been nice to have confidence that SALT TYPHOON has been evicted from US telecom networks before now. 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 19/01/2025First impression is one of a very committed assault element. 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 19/01/2025Apparent counterrevolutionary / revenge hits against Iranian judiciary figures involved in extrajudicial prisoner killings & moharebeh cases, reads like something out of John Wick, with edged weapon engagement used to acquire battlefield pickup small arms. 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 19/01/2025The precedent that service footage may circulate in this manner will be critical for future poison pen claims, especially those involving Pacific regional tensions and conflict interactions (such as fabricated claims about war crimes). 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 19/01/2025Beyond a few idiots posting to Red Note in their military & other gov roles, there is substantial incentive for United Front to surge video exfiltrated from cyber espionage, in new placement under hijacked or synthetic identities. 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025Claude instructed kitchen table nuclear ☢️ experimentation livestream is definitely a 2020s reboot of the Manhattan Project (1986) movie. Or perhaps that sad story about the Boy Scout who tried to build a neutron source by scraping together americium. 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025One really ought to be concerned about the errors in Apple Intelligence presentation of news. Because when even Cupertino cannot get it right, the roll your own LLMs being pushed across agencies & services for national security missions almost certainly aren’t going to be better. 052
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025Precisely the point of the conversation. And if this is so difficult to estimate in the simplest and most common of defensive actions, than how much harder to measure countering interactions 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025State practice in offensive cyber countervalue targeting of objects of military - economic potential have defined international norms far more decisively than any number of aspirational prohibitions. This is the agreed fight, whether we like it or not. 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025inattention (where any further implant is good enough for immediate purpose, so why waste time thinking and just grab first tool to hand). 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025intrusion workloads as consequence of earlier ops being burned. But case is confounded by the likelihood that this may be just individual operator preference, error (especially for those with limited skill on keyboard following conditional checklists), or 100
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 18/01/2025It is tempting to think that adversary actors exploiting BeyondTrust may getting nervous about possible attention following headline disclosures, & are rotating in other similar tooling for survivability. This would be an excellent example of discrete, measurable reaction suggesting additional 210
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025One wonders what is so critical that GUGI recover, or destroy in place, when diving on the sunken hulk of a smugglers' vessel lost due to poor maintenance, incompetence in wartime retreat. As a first impression, one might assume exquisite cryptographic material, but this is table stakes 220
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025A ransomware crew claiming hits on multiple medical targets, including hospital and psychiatric practices, and also hitting a historic convent operating since 1578, very much tells you what kind of scum you are facing off against. 040
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025of control in every enterprise. This is authoritarian state power exercised directly. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025Framing Chinese government interactions with RedNote as meetings with “government relations” to discuss “concerns”, as if these were ordinary Western lobbyists, is a fundamental analytic error. The Communist Party issued orders to a subordinate Party cell, mandated as a mechanism 130
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025in formally accredited programs, on the same topics. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025of university intelligence studies degrees for the requirement. Whatever one thinks about the value, or lack thereof, of certs it is odd to see equivalence made between what is at best 40 engagement hours vice somewhere between 1300 to 3600 program hours demanded 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025One knows job markets are tough for those coming into the game, but distortions are becoming ever weirder. Saw a billet circulating for what is essentially an entry level analytic role that demanded specific intelligence professional certification, explicitly rejecting substitution 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025 and then driving those choices to the breaking point in testing. Because nothing else will so clearly demonstrate what is absolutely critical to success, and where one’s abstract view of hard choices needs to change in the face of unforgiving pressure. There are lessons here. 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025an endless series of choices that balance tradeoffs of necessary and desired characteristics. One can spend years to decades analyzing these to find optimized solution sets, and these will still be imperfect. But down in Texas they are taking best estimates, 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 17/01/2025The number of commentators that still don’t understand what they are watching when they see SpaceX launches is surprising. But this is so different from how most bureaucratic impulses function it deserves explanation. Every operational act requires 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025One wonders what 74455 will do to commemorate the passing of Monsieur Lynch. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025It is regrettable that something so important as cyber would be reduced to a last minute afterthought of an executive order that is essentially for all political purposes, & operational outcomes, dead on arrival. There was no need for this, especially in this manner. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025A startup announcing its progress, and further funding rounds, towards thylacine de-extinction is precisely the future @GreatDismal anticipated. Would getting one be seen as too klept adjacent of an aesthetic and therefore gauche? 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025...through deliberate deception, or restructuring of transactional capabilities generation options. 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025New research into KV botnet pattern of life as ORB network raises question if inevitable delays imposed by attempting to treat counter-cyber operations actions as a law enforcement & judicial matter may have allowed the adversary to blunt counter-botnet takedown & remediation efforts... 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025Consider fly away AUV capability, with rapid deployment options, run by a mutant hybrid drawn from the DNA of Blackwater, Woods Hole, and Ma Bell 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025A no notice deployment of private military contractor seabed warfare assets to defend the Trans Pacific Express cable and other nearby undersea links from “accident” would be an interesting assertion of rights by international joint venture partners. 100
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025The CEO of Xiaohongshu has to know that there is high likelihood that all of this ends with his execution by the Party. Because they can never admit to their own mistakes, and will need a scapegoat. 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025...in the best of ways: this is the essence of our freedoms. And absent lethal threats that ultimately drive mainland compliance, the weak tea of most official propaganda is going to be fodder for an entire generation of remix & mockery 100
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025The 🇨🇳Communist ideological apparat is almost certainly entirely unprepared to encounter the weight of the American cultural - political memespace, and the speed at which it shifts. Breaking down firewalls via app wars should be their worst nightmare. Our people are inherently an unruly bunch... 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025Tally of recent munitions expenditures in Red Sea fight is just first accounting of real costs masked by the illusion that we could continue to indefinitely ride out enemy attack. Every empty rack in the shot locker will haunt us, & all the moreso the day we cannot assure perfect defensive fires. 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 16/01/2025It is baffling to see naval designers continue to attempt to delete gun mounts when they are now proven to be a must have layer in lower end swarm defeat. No matter how nice a maybe sometime future laser mount may be. Add back in 5”, plus several Bofors for each engagement arc. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025More than seven years of known, disclosed options to directly degrade TYPHOON / PANDA implants at scale (and almost certainly in play quite a while before). So much wasted opportunity must be noted, even as we may be pleased to see effects this week. 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025If a state owned firm is willing to set $100 billion on fire in hopes of inflicting sufficient political pain rather than lose access, what else might they risk? 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025Over / under odds that a newly banned app suffers an "unexpected" & "mysterious" 0day resulting in breach or destructive effects against user base mobile devices, just as they are forced to exit market? 110
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025Misread a line a “hostage compute” and now will be assigning operations design for future counter ransomware campaigns not merely against targeting of data encryption but selective control of chipset. 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025Natsec law panel discussion I'd be interested in hearing: "Failing political parties, 18 U.S.C. § 951, and the special relationship." This is the intersection of some hard political science, foreign policy analysis, and intelligence studies puzzles 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 15/01/2025Down the rabbit hole of DPRK energy targeting, once again. And as always, the arguments over strategic effects optionality are forefront of problem space. It is as if folks deliberately wish to ignore backbearings for anything other than arguments supporting KJ of mere espionage. 000
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025I most dislike the prospective imminent return of the recurring fabrications of “news” about national security matters that simply did not happen, but arose out of Beltway chatter pervasive enough (or planted sufficiently well enough) to advance talking points for a cycle. 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025Large scale C-UAS deployments are needed post haste 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025DJI reportedly deliberating enabling drone ops in violation of prior flight restriction geofencing should be seen as preparation for large scale irregular attacks against critical targets, on a sufficiently near term timeline that they expect US policy to be unable to react. 120
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025Naming carriers after living Presidents is a poor choice, as it may too heavily burden their namesake should we lose that ship in combat. 010
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025Nothing says timely warning analysis like dissemination of product “anticipating” copycat threats around a high profile incident some 45 days later. 020
JD Work @hostilespectrum.bsky.social · 14/01/2025Theories of jurisdiction and action are badly decided in ways that merely open up lawfare options that will do more to cripple our interests than to halt adversary action. 010