Bytes and Borscht

Topic

politics

A collection of 8 issues

Trying to understand Russia

The collective West is often treating Russia as a country whose internal logic seems impossible to grasp - emphasis on "seems", because it's not actually impossible. Understanding the internal logic of the current Russia requires holding several uncomfortable truths at once.

No Pain, No Gain - How Impunity Perpetuates Failure

It’s time to treat cybersecurity incidents and data breaches like preventable disasters, not the inevitable cost of doing business.

The Byzantine Heritage in Russian Security Culture

I would argue that Byzantium remains a key driver of Russian (strategic) security and intelligence culture. In this post I want to explore how I came to this conclusion and talk about how Byzantine "intelligence traditions" influenced Russian statecraft across the ages.

MITRE CVE Program - the past, the present .. and the (European) future.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program is a globally adopted system for identifying and naming cybersecurity vulnerabilities with unique IDs. Established in 1999 by researchers at the MITRE Corporation (a U.S. non-profit R&D organization), CVE was created to ensure that different ..

Strings Attached: Talking about Russia's agenda for laws in cyberspace

Russia's longstanding proposals for "information security" agreements may sound cooperative, but they conceal a Trojan horse - a push to legitimize censorship, silence dissent, and bind others to rules it won’t follow.

Breathe in, breathe out - and then start writing.

A lot of fuss has been made about the fact that Russia released their revised nuclear doctrine pretty much the day that Ukraine used long-range missiles to attack targets inside Russia.

Another round: Government malware & digital surveillance

Not just the seasons, or my attempts to appear in the office in an outfit other than holey conference shirts, shorts and Birkenstock slippers that are cyclical. The desire of politicians for a "government trojan" or surveillance of digital communication seemingly follows a constant rhythm ..

Perpetrators don't matter

The following post has been composed in the night after the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, on 22nd of March 2024. I ended up only sharing it with a few people because I wasn’t entirely comfortable with posting it here at the time. So .. here it is now.