Last week in Silly Little Pretext Approach my overly sensitive threat detection went off on a curious, but otherwise random stimulus. This week something else happened, it’s 100% an issue (maybe), and I’m going to discuss … delicately … what I saw.
Attention Conservation Notice:
A creepin’ creeper gets caught, maybe for the second time. If you do counter-intel, come right in, but remove any drinks from your desk, because you’re liable to have a giggle fit like I did.
Background:
I used to have a volunteer coordination practice. That took a big hit in July of 2020, which turned out to be a good thing, as I’m a witness for Cicada 3301 v. Michigan State University, rather than a defendant. I got pulled into doing such things again due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That spiraled up into something just as stupid in the fall of 2023, which led to this ChewToys article. Some other stuff happened and this July I aggressively removed anyone connected to that world.
There’s been a ladder of disfunction in this area:
People used to approach me, that mostly ended circa 2019.
I’d approach people in my environment, assuming being first mover was safe against infil, that ended circa 2021.
Others would get approached, I’d get looped in, this became unprofitable circa 2023.
Others would pick likely players, vet them, then I’d hear about it, get pulled in, has been the case since 2024.
Lurking around me waiting to be noticed no longer works, I don’t spend much time where that could happen, I don’t make approaches, and I won’t spend much time talking to anyone I can’t identify. This week we have the first instance of what might be someone lurking around an associate with an eye on getting introduced to me.
I’d normally keep this sort of thing quiet, but this was a bit extraordinary, because I’m not actually sure it WAS a human. This may well be an instance of a cyberborg approach.
Approach:
Can’t say much about where, when, or why this started, but here’s what really set me off. The persona claimed to be doing some AI development in the area of situational awareness. What they claimed involved embedding, which I happen to have spent some time on due to Parabeagle, and what they were saying was word salad.
If you’re going to do local embedding, the CPU/GPU make a huge difference in what you’re doing. I was asking questions about it, the answers betrayed no knowledge of the effects of processor instruction sets on embedding, which did not jibe with the other claims the persona made about its background.
And then there was this … in the context of determining if their processor had AVX2, or the more advanced AVX512 instructions.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
For the non-technical, a sensible answer would involve naming a type of computer and/or a GPU to use. Apache is web server software, this reads like a LARPer getting overrun by the demands of the conversation.
Analysis:
This approach felt off right from the start and it quickly went downhill from there. Maybe this is just a LARPer working with an assist from ChatGPT, but I’m wondering if it’s purely automation with occasional human intervention. I’ve been targeted by automated stuff like that in the past.
Just before Twitter was sold I was doing some fire watch stuff and I got insulted. I responded, and the insult bot came back almost immediately with something very old and obscure. A few days later it happened again. This was not someone Googling me a bit before responding, they would not have gone for a page ten result. This was three years ago and it marked the beginning of my completely dismissing that site for any interactions.
Arguing against the notion that it’s automation, this presence seems familiar to me, like something that happened last summer. The word salad engagement is strategy that gets employed periodically. Long ago I had an episode of mania triggered by intolerance to a supplement, and some goon excitedly noted that I was bipolar. Since then I get periodic approaches that presume I’m in that delusional state that bipolar people get where they believe they can do anything.
To be fair, once I realized what had happened, I did spend a decade periodically recruiting friends to help me feign having bipolar episodes, with the express goal of rug pulling hopeful infiltrators. Do not judge me for my Puckish sense of humor.
Conclusion:
The world is like NorCal, after a dry summer, when the Diablo winds start to relentlessly blow. There have been little flash fires, but no major conflagration. Yet. If you scan the top articles listed below, you’ll see I’ve been expecting that firestorm for quite some time.
I closed the last accounts in the activist world between early June and mid-July. Any markers that hadn’t been used are invalid. A bunch of people are going to Fool Around, then they’re going to Find Out. I still talk defense tradecraft here, but I’m not interested at all in mission planning. I lost two days to flu back in 2009 and when I returned the basiji had rounded up our sources. This was one of those formative experiences; I’m obviously not a legit agency spook, I’m way too much of a boy scout when it comes to safety of agents.
Things have become VERY quiet around here since last spring. Anything the least bit off is NOT going to slip through, it’s like strobe seen through night vision googles. The source gets noticed immediately and the only reason there isn’t an immediate reaction is that the strobe illuminates the space around it.
If that approach was you, go read Dispelling Delusions Of Adequacy. And then go find someone else to bother, because you’re an object of fun around here.
