As the nation discusses PMOLeaks, we, at CommandEleven, are neither surprised nor shocked that the Prime Minister House and the Government of Pakistan was the target of this cyber operation. This has been slowly expanding since 2017 with no response, or change in protection tactics, from the Government of Pakistan, security institutions nor intelligence organizations.
While yet ANOTHER commission and ANOTHER JIT is being formed to investigate the source of the leaks, we can be assured that this leak is nothing compared to what is coming in the future.
Before anyone assumes CommandEleven has entered the conspiracy theory game, this analysis will lay each KNOWN breach of security and either institutional or individual response to assure it doesn’t occur again.
For years, Pakistan’s security apparatus, politicians and establishment has allowed these problems to occur because of their inability to understand, combat or counter any of the new forms of tradecraft being implemented today.
This was not the first breach, and sadly will not be the last.
Let’s be clear – many previous lapses created the situation that Pakistan struggles with, without response nor corrective measures.
Let’s start by discussing tradecraft and its implications on the operations of a nation.
TRADECRAFT
What we are seeing are different forms of tradecraft. Tradecraft is a term usually associated with state espionage, but has been modified over time since the inception of 4th and 5th Generation warfare.
Tradecraft is encompassed with all the methods and tactics that can be used to gather intelligence against any party, individual, politician, judge, general or institution. However, tradecraft is used by both invaders and protectors, making a second potential layer that can be compromised.
Basically, any information that is publicly available, or can be privately acquired, is information that can be compromised by foreign state and non-state actors.
In the past, before the introduction of information warfare, tradecraft was all paper, signals and human gathered intelligence.
Now, we all live in a different world...
