David Osborn
14.9K posts
@david_osborn
Politics, media, information security & how they relate. Russia, C Asia, M East for many years, now in France.
AMERICA DECIDES ‘26: Who do you trust when it comes to whether the troops are getting deployed? OSINT strippers or manifesto-publishing access journos?
People need to know, disinformation does not just happen in Eastern Europe. It threatens established open democracies like Britain too. And we're not doing enough about it. That's why @CommonsForeign is calling on the Government to take action. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
❌ Saudi Arabia terminates two major construction contracts for Trojena ski resort ft.com/content/fdce70…
"I'm not going to discuss the details of someone's phone when I've got two wars on... This is gutter politics, not interested" @bbcpaddy questions Defence Minister Al Carns over the theft of a phone belonging to Keir Starmer's former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. #Newsnight
I received a suspicious email with a weird link yesterday. My first thought was this is yet another phishing attempt, albeit well-tailored. I was wrong: researchers with whom I shared this email told me I was targeted by a very recent DarkSword attack used by the GRU. If I were to click the link in that email, my phone would be compromised — without entering any passwords or doing anything else. Fun fact: the attack would be launched only if I would access the link using an iPhone registered in Lithuania (which is indeed my case). Luckily, I didn’t click. Beware! Technical details about this exploit and how to stay protected: cloud.google.com/blog/topics/th…
We are following the emergence of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (HAYI) very closely. They are probably the first AI-led terrorist movement but whoever is behind them is no match for AI-powered content and metadata analysis. We'll be sharing our forensic analysis soon.
$1.5 BILLION. Let me say it again - a $1.5 BILLION BET. Bigger than any futures purchases made at the time. 5 minutes before Trump's post. Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer? This is corruption. Mind blowing corruption.
Kazakhstan is advancing plans for Alatau, a $20B “city of the future” near Almaty, master-planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It will ease congestion, boost trade along the Middle Corridor, and become a smart hub for business and innovation by 2050. timesca.com/alatau-inside-…
This smells as fishy as a Somalia trawler. There is a whole dedicated IT security team in the rear basement of 10 Downing Street who constantly ensure that staff phones and IT kit are secure. Inconceivable they were not rapidly made aware of the alleged phone theft by the CoS private office. Logs would exist of this. And when new device issued, 10DS security team would liaise with Met and OGD to assess whether opportunistic thief or targeted foreign agent operation with the potential to compromise some of the most senior figures in government. This McSweeney equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’ is going to need a bit more work.
