Microsoft’s new report out on the very loud computer attacks during the Ukraine War highlight how the U.S. has been a target of aggression.

The chart above represents the geographic distribution of customers notified of all nation state threat activity, not just Russian, between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021. By June 2021, Ukraine was the second-most impacted country we observed, reflecting 19% of all notifications of nation-state threat activity that we provided to customers during that time, largely due to the ramp up of Russian activity.

When it says “by June 2021” this is in context of Russian invasion of Ukraine starting 24th February 2022 (a year later) — Internet-based attacks are linked all the way back to at least March of the prior year.

Cyber attacks may have been long-prepared ahead of time yet also came in secondary or even tertiary waves behind kinetic attempts at damage. For example Ukrtelecom fought off Russian cyber attacks at the end of March 2022. At the start of that same month a major communications tower in a civilian area of Kyiv had been fired upon with missiles.

Government and information technology services were flagged as the most targeted during Russia-aligned network intrusions or destructive attacks, although Microsoft did a weird thing by grouping Ukrainian finance, defense, transportation and more into an “Other” category… while listing Internet and defense as separate too.

Microsoft believes only a half-dozen Russian government (e.g. “sponsored”) groups launched more than two-hundred attacks against Ukraine. Thirty-seven were classified as destructive, however less than half of those were in a broad category of critical infrastructure.

More than 40% of the destructive attacks were aimed at organizations in critical infrastructure sectors that could have negative second-order effects on the government, military, economy, and people. Thirty-two percent of destructive incidents affected Ukrainian government organizations at the national, regional, and city levels.

Microsoft’s report doesn’t mention levels of capability. Elsewhere they’ve said things to the press like Russia “brought all their best actors to focus on this” without providing any real scale to measure against.

Russian attacks have been plagued with incompetence whether land, sea or air so it’s hard to tell if Microsoft is laughing at the technical ability of Russia or trying to be serious about a telco having a one-day 20% drop in service being as bad as it gets.

In other words, when people say things like Ukraine is doing better than expected, it’s probably more accurate to say Russian ability is more overblown than even a Tesla — riddled with fraud and in-fighting, a dumpster fire of the “strong man” myth (e.g. paper bear).

From an article praising the Google Pixel 6, here’s the before:

And the after:

Note the obvious contrast failure of AI (light hand vs dark hair and light straw vs dark clothing). Areas of contrast should be easiest for the algorithm to manage because the light/dark borders of a human hand classifier for example, yet they instead reveal flaws in the algorithm.

It’s important to highlight the image flaws here because the next point made in the article is that “Real Tone” is a “major rethink” about people with different complexions in order to get contrasts right (e.g. better handling of darker skin, related to an historic problem of racism in technology engineered for photography). It begs a question of why a white hand wasn’t outlined properly against dark black hair.

Also I’m just going to say that a people “eraser” leaving all the artifacts of life (cups on the table) is a very cynical filter for a “major rethink” team of engineers. They’re allegedly trying to see people more accurately while creating a feature that removes people entirely… put the two together and you get the worst chapters in history.

On the plus side perhaps the feature could generate a whole new class of “ghost” art from Pixel 6 owners to raise awareness: users who publish photos with everyone “erased” and things left behind to emphasize the horrors.

Genocide documentation comes to mind where tables set for dinner are left behind by people abruptly seized and exterminated… perhaps even Pixel could facilitate imagery for the 1838 Trail of Tears, which was initiated with house invasions at dinner time specifically so U.S. Soldiers could put as many Americans into internment camps as quickly as possible.

Also worth considering is how Google has run afoul of the Illinois privacy laws for image processing without consent, and whether more localized device processing is meant to help avoid prosecution.

Google’s face grouping tool, which sorts faces in the Google Photos app by similarity, runs afoul of Illinois’ biometric privacy law. The law requires companies to get user consent for the use of such technologies.

I’ve written here before about Civil War-era photograph manipulation, in the context of impersonation. Instead of asking the ages old question what if something you are can be faked or manipulated, Google brings forward an even older question of what if you and all your friends and family can be erased using technology.

The hypocrisy of Elon Musk knows no bounds.

Elon Musk went on a tweetstorm over the weekend, lobbing numerous critiques of Twitter… included suggestions on how to transform Twitter and its products. On Saturday, he asked his roughly 81 million Twitter followers to vote on whether the company should turn its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter. […] As for deleting tweets, it’s an action that Musk has taken in the past. Earlier this year, he deleted an offensive meme that compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to genocidal dictator Adolf Hitler.

Note the double-ended attack here.

Elon Musk displayed fawning apologist praise of Hitler as someone sane or competent (he was not), while attempting to denigrate sane and competent leaders as being less desirable.

Honestly I’m surprised Elon Musk didn’t portray Hitler with the more traditional apologist meme of “at least my trains to Auschwitz ran on time” (a nod to IBM).

And then he deleted the tweet.

It’s not the only time Elon Musk has tried to associate Nazism with democratic leaders who obviously are completely opposed to it.

Offensive memes are a staple for Musk, who calls himself an “extremist“.

Delete the w in twitter?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2022

This tweet trying to start a “Titter” campaign was deleted as well.

A similarly deleted Tweet was Elon Musk saying he wanted to start a place of learning called “TITS” just so he could capitalize women-bashing as “epic merch”.

And who can forget Elon Musk offering $5000 to someone to delete their Twitter account because he didn’t like the content?

Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old from Florida, rejected a $5,000 offer from Elon Musk to delete his Twitter account…

Women have never been treated well on Twitter, which has a long history of favoring extreme-right male views as its preferred tone.

Many of the women interviewed by Amnesty International described changing their behaviour on the platform due to Twitter’s failure to provide adequate remedy when they experienced violence and abuse. The changes women make to their behaviour on Twitter ranges from self-censoring content they post to avoid violence and abuse, fundamentally changing the way they use the platform, limiting their interactions on Twitter, and sometimes, leaving the platform completely.

The quote above says “many” women were censored, while the number is in fact 80%.

That is expected to only get worse now, beyond “TITS” and “Titter” jokes and going perhaps towards Elon Musk ordering accounts he disagrees with deleted as he attempted with a pathetically low pitch to Sweeny.

Already we see the market recognizing this obvious fact as CEOs leave the platform to avoid censorship by Elon Musk.

I do not want my free speech to be actively managed or controlled by a competitor.

Unfair competition in business is obviously bad, yet financial attacks are only tip of the iceberg for a man like Elon Musk who allegedly aims to profit from increasing social and racial animus to benefit extreme right political groups.

The CISO Series had me on their podcast again to share some unvarnished thoughts. Hope you enjoy:

A young woman is killing it in her first cybersecurity job out of college. Management is so thrilled with her that they want to give her a promotion. Problem is the promotion reveals a lot of other innerworkings that don’t speak well of the company’s culture. This week’s episode is hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), producer of CISO Series and Mike Johnson.