Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Penetration — I was asked for good references on pre-operation phases of hacking. I recommended Matt Monte’s “network attacks and exploitation: a framework”, and Bill McRaven’s “Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice”. The Monte book is the best book on cyber written so far. It covers a…

Ageism is never a good look — There is an argument that goes “the Internet is not secure because it was designed in the 60s (or 70s, or whenever) and back then security wasn’t part of the plan. Now we’ve inherited that legacy of no security, and it haunts us still.” For some reason this has never…

In the medieval era scribes and poets wrote about war and conflict for a class who participated actively in those activities. As a result, a great deal of the writing is actually very accurate in its depictions because the audience knew when it was inauthentic. This strikes me as an interesting point because the cyber writing is so so so bad in comparison. There is very little that chronicles cyber events that does so in a way that is authentic.

There is a constant need to label cyber operations as “cyber ${battle from history}.” The most recent one, indeed the one that inspired me to write about this phenomenon, is the spectacularly insane “cyber Cuban missile crisis.” The exact quote is from some fraudulent “cyber security experts” apparently: The…

This is a summary of the key points from this article: How to Not Get Caught When You Launder Money on Blockchain? Seems like successfully laundering Bitcoins is fairly complicated. There are lots of pitfalls. Secrecy is usually binary, it is all or nothing. If there is secrecy for 99…

NOTE: The ban on WeChat was blocked for violating freedom of speech For the millions of Chinese in the diaspora Trump’s WeChat ban has created a problem only the software grey market can solve. WeChat is almost an existential requirement. …

grugq's domain I'm more of a "blog half full of COMSEC" kinda guy... Secure instant messengers are a miracle of the modern age. They…gru.gq

A Brief Spec and Overview — I want to build a secured phone that can be used as either a hardened comms device, or even as a daily driver. I have a decade of experience in practical applied operational security, and over 5 years of experience working on secured Android phones. This project is my last…

Deepfakes are risky for information warfare, but exciting new capabilities for security — I’ve always been sceptical of deepfakes. What are they good for? I’ve never understood the excitement over the perceived utility of deep fakes for disinformation in information warfare. Information warfare does not need deepfakes, cheapfakes are more than enough. …