SINCE IT FIRST appeared in Apple’s App Store last year, the free encrypted calling and texting app Signal has become the darling of the privacy community, recommended—and apparently used daily—by no less than Edward Snowden himself. Now its creator is bringing that same form of ultra-simple smartphone encryption to Android. On Monday the privacy-focused non-profit…
Category: Intelligence Tradecraft
Cold War Files: The Third World War that Almost Was in 1950
With the comfort and hindsight of a half-century, President Harry Truman’s decision to commit American power to save South Korea from Communist aggression in late June 1950 stands as perhaps America’s finest moment of the Cold War. By making a difficult commitment, by sacrificing 50,000 American lives in the end, Truman upheld Western values…
The Ignorance of Intelligence Agencies
This is a very short article, but worthy of your time nonetheless. It points out one of the glaring inadequacies of the current state of our Foreign Intelligence apparatus in this country. All of the sentences in italics are of my doing for emphasis on these points. -SF By Williamson Murray At the start of…
Suggested Reading: Some of my Favorite Non-Fiction Espionage
I have been getting emails lately requesting I list what books I have in my Library. It is no secret I am a huge book worm, so I felt obliged to share some titles with you based on subject. Today we will focus on one of my favorite subjects: Espionage and Intelligence, next month maybe World…
Cold War Espionage: How Soviets used IBM Selectric keyloggers to spy on US diplomats
How Highly sophisticated bugs went undetected for 8 years during the Cold War. By Dan Goodin A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world’s first keylogger—a 1970s bug that Soviet spies implanted in US diplomats’ IBM…
Here is How World War 3 Could Start Tomorrow
By PW Singer and August Cole There is an old adage that militaries set themselves up by failure by preparing to fight the last war. When it comes to 21st Century warfare, the problem however may not be with looking back, but that we aren’t looking back far enough. For the last two decades, leaders…
Iran’s Cyber-Espionage Tricks
A group of suspected Iranian hackers are using a sophisticated network of fake LinkedIn profiles to spy on unsuspecting targets worldwide — including the U.S. — according to a new report. The fake personas fell into two groups: one set that were fully developed profiles posing as recruiters for major worldwide government contractors and international…
A Sneek Peak at Russias High Tech War Machine at work in Syria
Russia has been sending fighter jets, drones, and bombers to Syria to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad, generating concern and outrage among the United States and its allies. Far less attention has been paid to Moscow’s simultaneous deployment of advanced surveillance, signals intelligence, and electronic warfare equipment that could deal a new blow to…
How to Explain the KGB’s amazing success identifying CIA agents in the field?
A great example of using “comparison data” and simple deduction to pull back the veil. Counterintelligence 101.-SF As the Cold War drew to a close with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, those at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, finally hoped to resolve many long-standing puzzles. The most important of which…
HOW THE OSS SHAPED THE CIA AND AMERICAN SPECIAL OPS
Six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services to collect and analyze intelligence and conduct special operations. Its formal existence lasted just three years. But more than 70 years on, the U.S. organizations charged with these missions today remain indelibly influenced by the OSS…