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Has the age of the "digital siege" begun?
by David Barrett 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/has-age-digital-siege-begun-david-barrett/?t… I won't claim to be any particularly adept student of modern history, but Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine seems to have triggered a digital counterattack without precedent. Not with the panoply of ridiculously-named (but truly terrifying) "cyberweapons" at each sides' disposal, but with a surprisingly mundane range of financial weapons (which should be named "finweaps" to add a testosterone-fueled edge). It makes me wonder if we're in for a new generation of "digital sieges" warfare, where there's no actual need to physically shut down an adversary's physical supply lines: you just take away their ability to pay. "De-SWIFTing" of Russian banks isn't a concept I'd ever really considered or heard discussed before a week ago, and now it seems like a dagger to the heart of the Russian economy. Russia has stockpiled one of the world's largest foreign currency reserves -- worth at least $600B -- which (to the degree I understand it) is intended to be used to preserve the value of the Russian Ruble, staving off a hyperinflation feedback loop that would have devastating effects domestically. But apparently the mechanism by which this strategy would be executed depends entirely on the SWIFT network of international wire transfers. Disable the ability of Russia to actually execute the purchases, and that $600B war-chest is effectively neutralized, locked within Russian vaults with no where to go. The idea of a banking protocol somehow bringing a superpower to its knees sounds far fetched, and surely wouldn't work by itself. But I wonder if it's just the first of many ways to "disconnect" Russia from the global economy? Some other options: * Identify every private jet currently in Russia, using the global transponder network. Blacklist those jets from landing at any "allied" airport, and if they do land anyway, just refuse to refuel them. We might render billions of dollars in oligarch aircraft hardware instantly useless. * Send an upgrade out to every iPhone and Android phone in the Russian empire, just turning it off until hostilities cease. An entire nation's ability to communicate internally grinds to a halt. * Identify every major internet peering relationship with Russia, and throttle its access to all allied services: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, all go offline. Bit by bit (literally, and figuratively) we might identify and disable every connection to the outside world, and turn it from a 1 to a 0. Can any nation truly survive digital isolation in today's competitive world? I wonder if it might be possible to lay siege to Russia entirely digitally, and win this war without firing a single shot -- without blockading a single harbor -- while establishing a sobering precedent for how to respond to "connected adversaries" in the future.

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Use of Belarus bad news for WL Dead-enders
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Ed Snowball might want to run out a ratline to somewhere - Cuba? The DPRK? The walls are closing in on the WL deadenders as well as its parent organization #KGB Wikileaks man in Belarus https://twitter.com/bungdan/status/1497685874443624451/photo/1

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NYCCoin on the Week
by Gunnar Larson 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

NYCCOIN PRICE CHART $0.0017 $-0.01 (-33.78%)

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Everyone a remailer - everyone a Mint
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Everyone a cypherpunk terrorist https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-decentralization-isn-t-the-ultimate-goal… Is it true that people will never run their own servers? I strongly disagree.

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Legit Ru targets for DDoS, SWAT, Ransom, etc
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

https://twitter.com/BrettCallow/status/1497650024922054659 BrettCallow The 'IT Army' announced by by Minister for Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhaylo Fedorov has released its target list. h/t @Cyberknow20 1/2

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Has the age of the "digital siege" begun?
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Reading on, I question whether SWIFT would seriously slow Russia down - but still advocate for it as a strong symbolic gesture that might then be followed up by a full-court-press to pivot the EU away from Russian fuels and reset renewables over fossil/ trad-nuclear. Agree with other measures - though the Devil is in the detail. A digital siege of Russia will soon bring it to its senses and also send-a-message to any other similar type of CHEKIST dictatorships. Don't fuck with us. A successful digital siege also means the United Networks can safely take over from the old UN. Then, on to Cypherpunk 2027 and overt world-wide crypto-anarchism. OUT, LOUD and PROUD!

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Has the age of the "digital siege" begun?
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Just read first paragraph but its obvious the ' next super-power' - people-power online-all-the-time has been a force to be reckoned with since the late 1990's. Main example being a rapid pivot of the huge anti-globalization movement to global antiwar from 1999 to 2003. This would come as no surprise to anyone whose read part 10 of ' Assassination Politics " ( All three of us ) A soft-drill form of APster, I would argue, has essentially ALREADY won global hegemony and this was done by May 2005 - ' Victory is here - its just not evenly distributed ' ( William Gibson ) TIMOTHY " An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion " C. MAY 1992 TIM " I guess now that the Pentagon is setting up a murder pool it can't be illegal for us to do it " MAY. 2003

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KGB capture their first Nazi in Ukraine
by professor rat 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Rudolph Hess, sorry, " Elon Musk " was flushed out of a spider-hole in the Pripyat swamp. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/elon-musk-s-hitler-tweet-highlights-r… ( Reposts are NOT endorsements )

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North Korea fires possible ballistic missile
by zeynepaydogan 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

Nuclear-armed North Korea fired an apparent ballistic missile Sunday morning, Japan’s Defense Ministry said, as the world remains fixated on Ukraine and[the Russian invasion of its neighbor.](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/02/27/world/russia-ukraine-weapons-west/) The South Korean military also confirmed the launch of an unidentified projectile. Sunday’s launch comes after it conducted seven missile tests in January — the most ever in a single month for the isolated nation. On Jan. 30, North Korea launched a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that Tokyo said has a range of 5,000 kilometers — putting all of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam within striking distance. It was the[first such test since November 2017.](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/01/30/asia-pacific/north-korea-missile-launch-seventh/)Both Japan and Guam are home to key U.S. military bases that would be used in any crisis on the Korean Peninsula. That move came weeks after North Korea hinted at ending its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests while calling on Washington to drop what it said is a “hostile policy” toward Pyongyang. The remarks and launches have stoked concern that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be opening the door to tests of increasingly powerful weapons after years of focusing on less provocative launches. Amid concerns that the Ukraine crisis could take Washington’s focus off the North Korean nuclear threat, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denied this would be the case last month, saying that the U.S. can[“walk and chew gum at the same time”](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/02/14/asia-pacific/politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific/us-japan-korea-trilateral-meeting/)even as it faces down other global challenges

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SpyVeillance: SpyGigging, Followrs, Premise, Telegram, OSINT, OSWarfare, Tor, AP [re: Ukraine War]
by grarpamp 27 Feb '22

27 Feb '22

> Opensource recon hubs popping up... The Premise type apps have been known for quite some time, same for decades worth of opensource spying, oppos, and ops. Plainly obvious that if someone's paying to take pictures, recon, social engineer info of you... they don't have your best interests in mind. Nor are such things not also tools that won't come back to bite or be used against you. In history, spy on humanity lead to authoritarian mass abuse of human freedom by first mover power. Armsrace disaster. Topdown sideup, global scams all spies agents trolls power seeking political agendas imposing ideology force against will, notably none advocating voluntaryism to live let live and associate freely under nonagression. AP News... https://twitter.com/spyblog https://twitter.com/wsj https://twitter.com/byrontau https://twitter.com/dnvolz https://twitter.com/hiddenmarkov https://twitter.com/covert_intel https://aboutintel.eu/privacy-and-automated-osint/ Followrs - Uber style gig economy street surveillance operatives for hire https://www.wsj.com/articles/app-taps-unwitting-users-abroad-to-gather-open… https://twitter.com/premisedata Gigwork app Premise suspends Ukraine operations after being accused of working with Russia in invasion. It says it was actually working for clients in western democracies — which matches @WSJ reporting that it has ties to US military intelligence. Premise Mobile-Phone App Suspends Ukraine Activities After Accusations Fly WASHINGTON—A mobile-phone app that pays users to perform basic observational tasks such as photography and has U.S. defense and intelligence clients suspended its activities in Ukraine on Friday... WSJ wrote about Premise in July. It asks people all over the world to do sentiment surveys, photography, etc. But it also turns user phones into sensors to gather signal data on cell towers and wifi networks, which can be valuable tactical intelligence. https://www.wsj.com/articles/defense-intelligence-agency-expected-to-lead-m… It's part of a broader trend of embracing 'open source' intelligence that is going on in militaries and intelligence agencies around the world, including the United States. One official estimated 80% of intelligence is now sourced to unclassified sources wsj.com/articles/defense-int… Defense Intelligence Agency Expected to Lead Military’s Use of ‘Open Source’ Data The move would place the agency in charge of setting policy for intelligence gleaned from social-media and commercial-data troves. https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1497001286444617746 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1474067549574688768 Telegram is the most popular messenger in urban Ukraine. After a decade of misleading marketing and press, most ppl there believe it’s an “encrypted app” The reality is the opposite-TG is by default a cloud database w/ a plaintext copy of every msg everyone has ever sent/recvd. It's amazing to me that after all this time, almost all media coverage of Telegram still refers to it as an "encrypted messenger." Telegram has a lot of compelling features, but in terms of privacy and data collection, there is no worse choice. Here's how it actually works: 1/ @0xggus URGENT!🟡 If you want to help the antiwar activists in Russia and human rights defenders around the world, you can run a snowflake proxy❄️ and/or a Tor bridge. Help us circumvent the Tor block in Russia! #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar Read more here 👇 blog.torproject.org/tor-cens… Responding to Tor censorship in Russia | Tor Project Since December 1st, some Internet providers in Russia have started to block access to Tor. We need your help NOW to keep Russians connected to Tor! blog.torproject.org Tracking the NASA FIRMS map, which is usually used to trace wildfires, gives us a broad view of significant fighting since the invasion. The coordinates are not precise, but in the right area. We know many of you have been impacted by the events in #Ukraine, and our thoughts are with you. ProtonVPN is open source and free forever. Our anti-censorship features can help maintain the free flow of information, an important weapon in the fight for #freedom & democracy. @ProtonVPN If you are a #journalist and need our services in order to continue informing the public about what is happening in #Ukraine, please contact us at advocacy(a)protonmail.com. @jeffhorwitz Successful FB efforts to combat this kind of stuff have long been routinely dependent on warnings from outside the company, whether from partners or advocacy groups or reporters. Whether in Myanmar or the US, the company’s needed the help. @JaneLytv Facebook cutting off data access, disbanding the CrowdTangle team, and standing in the way of research now has a direct effect on the ability to uncover Russian information operating during this offensive. Researchers don’t give up but we need to acknowledge this consequence.

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