TOOKC Phase 10: Enabling Longevity

The long con, at scale.

So here we are at the end of exploring The Online Operation Kill Chain. The original document by Ben Nimmo and Eric Hutchins was authored from the point of a whole platform defense facing a well funded corporate or nation state malign influence operation. The viewpoint here is that one company grade officers and their NCOs in a network threat. One person who understands the strategy, one or two who can execute and observe, and a shifting mass of associates whose participation ebbs and flows based on general conditions.

TOOKC make sense from that commanding view from the top of the heap, but for those of us still in earshot of the front line things are very, very different. We do still encounter all of the ten phases, but never in the order they specified.

The final phase in the strategic view, that of Enabling Longevity, is something that we considered every step of the way. Let’s consider why that was the case.

Attention Conservation Notice:

The tradecraft for a massed, semi-automated attack is very different from the norms for a small unit of irregulars. No matter what the motivation in the moment, my experience with small groups is that they are always serving in an ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) node function to some degree. If you’re commissioning such work, you’re free to go. If you’re executing it, come on in.

Self Preservation:

People who get involved in online conflicts usually show up for a fairly small set of well understood reasons.

The people who turn up because what they’ve learned about the world compels them to act will fall into a range of Occupational Specialties. But they won’t realize this for some time.

There are people who turn up because they can act out online in ways that would earn them corrective beatings and custodial sentences if they did such things IRL. The Personalities & Disorders section in What Hunts You? is an introduction to the denizens of the digital locked ward.

Things have changed so much since Project Chanology clear back in 2008. The anarcho-performance art of Anonymous vs. the Church of Scientology, which I learned about in retrospect, had evolved into deadly serious geopolitical activity by the time I first participated in such things in the summer of 2009.

Being the poster child for how to make every mistake in the book without getting taken out of the game, I have very mixed feelings about things.

Preserving Positions:

All through the September boot camp, the ten phases of The Online Operation Kill Chain, and the technical information in Tool Time, the focus has been on not having something unwanted from the conflict zone following you home.

There might be more words about how to create and handle the things you use in exploring online conflict spaces, but that was always conditioned with “and do NOT do what I did the first time out”.

There are now seventy seven subscribers to this thing. I know more than one of you has done “the full monty” - an old laptop, a new burner phone, and slipping into deeper action than you were doing when I started writing three and a half months ago. I hope you’ve got worthy goals and workable strategies, but I’m taking pains to NOT know what you’re actually doing. I’ll pick a new direction for Q1 2024 and I’ll likely be sharing observations of online activity. I never want to be in a position where I comment on some aspect of an event and it sets off a series of unfortunate events.

I paused to scan the Washington Post while collecting my thoughts here, and it’s clear that things are going to escalate bigly. Modi feels safe murdering critics in the west and now we’re learning more about Indian intel running front groups here.

When you get tired of listening to me, which is inevitable, you should find some other sources of tales of woe. Learn from the mistakes of others; you want last long enough to make them all by yourself.

Conclusion:

So that’s that, The Online Operation Kill Chain material for Q4 of 2023 is done. I really had doubts at the start of December that I’d finish by year end, but I think this has been a good story - the ending practically wrote itself. What could happen here is a book that recasts TOOKC in small ISR node terms … but I’d need to be hella fast. Tradecraft evolves in bursts, but in general what was the right way six months ago will have been degraded, or upgraded, or simply overtaken by events.

So what’s in the pipeline for Q1 2024? I guess I have three weeks to consider. While writing this I’ve been periodically doing the kick off & turn to check on how another installation of Qubes 4.2.0rc5 is going on the other side of the room. A week ago I wrote Getting Serious About Qubes and this being the tenth year since I first tried it, I am kinda amazed that it’s going to stick. This install is going on that 1.6TB LSI drive I’ve had buyer’s remorse over for three years and as soon as it’s complete I’ll be doing an install on a 250GB SSD in a USB carrier. The USB keyboard and mouse for my primary machine won’t work for installing, but I can use the PS/2 equipped machine to create something I can use here.

And there’s been another little change over the weekend on my LinkedIn profile. That health upgrade in June has stuck for six months straight. I still have to pay attention to what I eat, but thanks in large part to a friend’s chance mention of Noopept, the Lyme disease related fog bank I wandered in from July of 2007 through April of 2022 has been dispelled. So … if any of you know of a Neal sized opening somewhere, I’d love to hear about it.