Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

cia.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#21

Post by greenyouse »

greenyouse wrote: post #2

Shows some helpful ways to reason about open problems with incomplete information.

Ah, this missed the mark since the domain is all political/state related. I saw the mental liquidity story from today and it reminded me of an old book they published about how to think. That one has better theory based talk. This article has too many references to conflicts so it's kind of distracting from the interesting stuff.

psychology of intelligence analysis book link: https://www.cia.gov/static/9a5f1162fd0932c29bfed1c030edf4ae/...

previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#23

Post by photochemsyn »

If you want the real story on current CIA tradecraft (at least on the digital side):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7

For the rest of it, see books like "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner, or "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA and the Sixties". A lot of that is about CIA recruitment and influence operations, which is perhaps not the kind of 'tradecraft' the CIA likes to popularize, e.g.:

https://coffeeordie.com/charles-manson-cia

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#25

Post by mike_d »

pinkcan wrote: post #14
boppo1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s bad advice that ne’er-do-wells will try to employ, leaving them susceptible to the CIA.

Wouldn't that be too obvious, wouldn't it be better to plan bogus info elsewhere, especially for and org capable of doing so? Wouldn't it be dangerous to publish bogus info that can be picked up by nationals and allies, especially since it is branded?

People think this, but it is still highly effective.

Say you want your adversaries to use pencils instead of pens to write their secret notes. You publish information on the risks of pens and how they leak information on an obscure corner of the internet and seed it to a small forum or two. That gets picked up by a government worker in Germany and they put it into their recommendations. That document then gets stolen by the Chinese. Both of these get shared with Iran. The materials are then leaked and you have the Snowden's of the world shouting from the rooftops the importance of using pencils.

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#26

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

sneak wrote: post #17

If you told me I'd be parsing PDFs from cia.gov on my main mobile device 24 hours ago, I wouldn't have believed you.

Hey, a couple of decades ago you could be buying The CIA World Factbook as a paper almanac at a gas station.

Pretty good, now online, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#28

Post by whartung »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #26
sneak wrote: post #17

If you told me I'd be parsing PDFs from cia.gov on my main mobile device 24 hours ago, I wouldn't have believed you.

Hey, a couple of decades ago you could be buying The CIA World Factbook as a paper almanac at a gas station. Pretty good, now online, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook

Used to buy this on CDs at computer shows along with latest Linux distros and whatever other wonders InfoMagic and their ilk published.

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#29

Post by dmbche »

mike_d wrote: post #25
pinkcan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that be too obvious, wouldn't it be better to plan bogus info elsewhere, especially for and org capable of doing so? Wouldn't it be dangerous to publish bogus info that can be picked up by nationals and allies, especially since it is branded?

People think this, but it is still highly effective. Say you want your adversaries to use pencils instead of pens to write their secret notes. You publish information on the risks of pens and how they leak information on an obscure corner of the internet and seed it to a small forum or two. That gets picked up by a government worker in Germany and they put it into their recommendations. That document then gets stolen…

While I see what you mean, I can't think of any example right away that are touted by people like Snowden - I see there were many honeypots on crypto, TOR and "encrypted" phones, but other than maybe VPNs I wouldn't know what was shared this way.

Re: A Tradecraft Primer (2009)

#30

Post by dmbche »

pinkcan wrote: post #3

I understand this document is from 2009, not secret, and probably contains information known elsewhere. Still, what is the intent of the CIA in publishing this on the open web? I assume they would be able to distribute this to US nationals even in other orgs through internal networks.

My reasoning is that this, to people not as well versed on the subject, indicates that the CIA shares anything that it doesn't absolutely need to keep hidden from the public. It indicates that they are trustworthy.

Also, everything in there is somewhat "common knowledge" as in if you sat down for 4 hours thinking on the subject you'd probably get most of whats written here. So this has little impact on risk - anyone that would be a serious risk doesn't need this, so it's a neat read for the public instead.

Post reply on HN