Black Hat 2013 - OPSEC Failures of Spies
HackersOnBoard2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2014–2019
talk · general · evergreen · 2014–2019 on HN
Matthew Cole's Black Hat 2013 talk on operational security failures by CIA operatives. It covers the Abu Omar case and how sloppy tradecraft with cell phones exposed officers through call records and metadata.
HN commenters cite it as a compelling demonstration that metadata identifies people, and as a great watch on sloppy CIA tradecraft.
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4 comments from Hacker News
> Call Detail Records Don’t Actually Identify People This is one of the best videos I have ever seen countering this argument. ▶ this video
who could forget the Abu Omar Case, where the CIA kidnapped an individual in Milan. but they left evidence due to sloppy OPSEC. so we know for sure they used to do much worse. I guess most spying activities don't warrant such a detailed investigation though, so we never find out. the Black Hat 2013 talk on this is a great watch: ▶ this video
What none of the privacy-related prose defense by Facebook addresses is the abundant value of the metadata that Facebook will be able to harvest. Check out what leaking even just the metadata can tell about you.[0] [0]: ▶ this video
While not a talk by Applebaum, this video is semi-related and showing OPSEC failures by CIA using cell technology: ▶ this video