Thread by @cynicalsecurity

A book review tweetstorm: “The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States” by @ArmsControlWonk

Long-awaited, I received it on my iBooks at 0117 on 7th August and, inevitably, started it there and then. By noon it was done incl. sleep…

The “2020 Commission” is a book which can be read in many different ways: as a novel, taking the light road, as political satire, as a horror story for those with Cold War PTSD and also as a textbook on C4I and escalation/de-escalation theory.

After a few pages you are…

inevitably drawn into your own reading of the book which, in my case, teetered between Cold War PTSD and C4I escalation/de-escalation.

Reading the opening salvos brought back the terror of KAL 007 in 1983¹ with a twist. This event triggers a long…
__
¹ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Ai…

list of what can be graciously defined as “mis-understandings” and “mis-readings” by both sides. Dry, painful, dark humour fuelled by arrogance, groupthink and, unfortunately, perfectly believable behaviour.

For ITsec practitioners there is a lesson embedded in the book:

attribution causes deaths. There is no “innocent banter” in the complexity of geopolitics: a tweet *will* be mis-interpreted and have consequences, a creative cyber-attribution eventually will come back to bite in unexpected ways.

As a techie the only “mmh” is, perhaps, the

attack against Koryolink which, while plausible, has effects which are normally mitigated in networks since 2014 or so. Still valid with the benefit of doubt.

Ideally a copy of the book should land in Pyongyang: it might have more effect than any other current diplomatic effort.

Forgot the link, unfortunately forced to read the ebook as opposed to the real thing due to “reasons”.

“The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Attacks on The United States” by Dr Jeffrey Lewis (aka @ArmsControlWonk) itunes.apple.com/ch/book/2020-c…