LOL McAfee

[Jason A. Donenfeld]

Hi,

Lunatic or not, John McAfee's blog is some Internet entertainment alright.

Can we agree that if the posts aren't fiction, writing about this is
ridiculous from an opsec point of view?
http://www.whoismcafee.com/a-clear-and-present-danger/


Jason

[the grugq]

> Lunatic or not, John McAfee's blog is some Internet entertainment alright.
>

Yeah, it is a complex mix of insightful truths, dubious half truths and
completely outrageous lies.

Personally, I think his guide to how to deal with corrupt cops was
absolutely excellent. It is accurate for South Africa, Thailand,
Argentina, Cambodia, Laos... and I'll assume other countries I've never
had to practice it in.

> Can we agree that if the posts aren't fiction, writing about this is
> ridiculous from an opsec point of view?

It is particularly bad for his operatives, assuming they exist. He is,
apparently, personally out of danger (barring an assassination squad).
The revelation that people have been spying on highly places government
officials will lead to witch hunts and reprisals, probably catching some
real informants (even w/o McAfee's operatives, there are active agents
in the country), but most likely catching and harming a lot of innocents.

Side note: that was an active tactic of the British during the fight
against the Provos. They would announce that a bank robbery got away
with more than they actually did (to sow distrust), and they would
announce that all operations were the result of informants (particularly
when they werent). The Provos had some very tough informant
interrogation techniques (torture with blowtorchs, drills, knives, etc.)
and they executed everyone that they found. When an informant was being
hunted, they ceased all operations until the informant was found. This
might take months. It was a very effective counter intelligence tactic
by the British.

> http://www.whoismcafee.com/a-clear-and-present-danger/

While very unlikely to be true, there are some interesting things in
here. It does describe a methodology for setting up a cheap intelligence
gathering operation. Like most laymen though, he doesn't address the
intelligence process / cycle. Gathering raw intel is just the first
step, it needs to be analyzed, cleaned up and then packaged into a
product for the end customer. The operation he describes lacks an
analysis phase and a final deliverable. It is all just random raw intel.

The idea that hezbollah has 11 agents a month to send to the US, for
months on end... this is pretty far fetched. The ricin angle is also
bizarre.


cheers,

--gq

[Maxim Kammerer]

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 11:39 AM, the grugq <theg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The idea that hezbollah has 11 agents a month to send to the US, for
> months on end... this is pretty far fetched.

I believe the whole piece can be classified as “narcissistic fiction”.
It actually became painful at: “I know all of this because I
reassigned resources and for the past three months have had two people
in Nicaragua that have made connections with the Hezbollah camp and I
have three people in Mexico who have made connections with mid-level
Zeta members.” His ideas on setting up a cheap intelligence operation
methodology are also of dubious value. Giving laptops as presents is
as stupid as it sounds. Using operatives sounds nice in a fantasy like
this, but in reality they are untrained and will quickly fail. He
seems to be aware of this issue by mentioning that his operatives are
smarter than average local population, but in reality he has nothing
to offer to people with the required skills, so he won't be able to
recruit them.

On the other hand, not having a full intelligence cycle might not be
such a big deal for a one-man / small-team operation — similarly to
how one doesn't have to go full retard with SE best practices in a
small software project. Of course, some structured analysis is still
required, otherwise one will easily arrive at wrong conclusions due to
incorrect / biased interpretation of available data.

--
Maxim Kammerer
Liberté Linux: http://dee.su/liberte

[the grugq]

- ppl in .gov are of an age where they don't use computers, although
they will use mobile phones / tablets fairly heavily. a free laptop
would likely be regifted to a family member (or other acquaintance),
such as a son/daughter. It is... unlikely that it would be used for
anything remotely sensitive.

- poorly trained operatives vs. untrained targets... it doesn't seem
like a serious problem given the limited scope of the operation.

I think it is possible to have done, but implausible that it occurred.

[apologies, this was a half formed series of thoughts on the topic, I
was planning on fleshing it out, but never did. I'm just gonna send it
out so the points are out there.]

Also, I agree with Maxim's analysis.