Peter Baurichter

The Feast of Saint Nicholas (Dutch: Het Sint-Nicolaasfeest c. 1665–1668 now also known as Sinterklaas), is a painting by Dutch master Jan Steen, which can now be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It measures 82 x 70.5 cm. The picture, painted in the chaotic Jan Steen “style,” depicts a family at home on December 5, the night celebrated in the Netherlands as the Feast of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas.

You can read about the painting in detail here. The painting is like a story. To give you some examples about the catholic version:

• The sobbing boy has been naughty so no gifts for him in his shoe
• Grandma might have something for him maybe?
• The girl’s doll represents John the Baptist and he is the Saint Patron of epilepsy and therefore it suggests the girl suffers from it as well (Wikipedia says so, i could not verify this and doubt it since he was the patron of many: builders, tailors, printers, baptism, conversion to faith, people dealing with storms and their effects (like hail), and people who need healing from spasms or seizures.)
• They are pointing up the chimney, where the holy man must have entered and left the house.
• The Child near the chimney is holding a symbol of the struggle between Catholics and Protestants, a gingerbread man in the shape of St. Nicholas. The delicacy, still enjoyed around the fifth of December, was seen as an example of Catholic worship of saints and was not approved of by Protestant authorities. In the seventeenth century, the baking of such figures of saints (especially St. Nicholas) was banned. In 1655 in the city of Ultrecht an ordinance was passed which forbade “the baking of likenesses in bread or cake”.^[1]

Sources:
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/1993/11/30/twee-sint-nicolaasfeesten-van-jan-steen-7205027-a1353576

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feast_of_Saint_Nicholas

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/SK-A-385

Just posting something about Bellingcat since I highly respect this organisation for its transparency and objectivity. Even though they cover the most political sensitive topics, they stick to their objectivity and use open source intelligence to fact-check stories, allegations and events.

The above picture is from their document that links to all open source investigation sources.

I also believe that the need for an organisation like Bellingcat is getting bigger because of the following trends:
– fake news
– deep fakes
– government lead operations/info wars to confuse people
– distrust in MSM (Main Stream Media)
– Threat intel companies not providing intel on their own country (basically they choose sides)
– Propaganda from news organisation (Fox News and Russia Today)

They are even training (free of charge and paid) other people in the art of open-source investigations

Notable cases/stories: MH 17, war in eastern Ukraine, civil war in Syria, El Junquito raid, Yemeni civil war, Skrippal poisoning, Christchurch mosque shootings.

This European press wining story from Christiaan Tiebert is very interesting The Turkish Coup through the Eyes of its Plotters, as you can follow the whatsapp messages chronologically.

One of my favourite topics that i had the pleasure to discuss various times and encounter in different organisation over the years: the differences between these 2 organizational entities, and almost species, well eh let’s call it cultures, within the same organization. Mostly the responsibilities are separated by a firewall separating the Enterprise network from the industrial network with. The DMZ is mostly the creation of a one-time set-up by the IT team and then assumed to be supported by the OT team.

Kris Krewson and Lesley Carhart describe it very clearly and vividly in this article called 5 Tips for a Happy Marriage Between IT Cybersecurity and Operational Technology Teams.
The article itself is a product of an OT and IT fling:
OT (Lesley Carhart from Dragos – OT Security)
IT (Kris Krewson from Crowdstrike – IT Security)

Dragos is from Bobby M. Lee and Crowdstrike is known for their DNC forensics and from Trumps free publicity.

Some quotes from the article that I recognize:

“We’ve delivered tabletop incident response exercises at manufacturing plants where the OT personnel did not know they had a corporate IT cybersecurity team, much less that they could or should call them for support during an incident.“

“If process owners’ primary concerns are bodily harm, environmental contamination or loss of production, they may determine that a compromised computer or controller could not realistically lead to these outcomes. “

“Build individual relationships across both teams. At many sites, we find operators and engineers who have worked at the facility for decades and know the process and people inside and out. These are people to seek out, respect and learn from. “

The picture is from Cisco’s blog entry called A Bromance for the Ages: When IT met OT

A new cybersecurity alliance focused on the security of operational technology: Operational Technology Cyber Security Alliance (OTCSA) Designed to mitigate risk and assess business impact from cyberattacks on utilities, manufacturing and oil and gas industries and physical control devices.

The group is launching as operational technology operators are increasingly targeted by nation-state actors as well as cybercriminals.

Initial members of the Operational Technology Cyber Security Alliance include ABB, Check Point Software, BlackBerry Cylance, Forescout, Fortinet, Microsoft, Mocana, NCC Group, Qualys, SCADAFence, Splunk and Wärtsilä.

My 2 cents: these are not the typical OT security vendors. Is it then a new initiative to shine some OT security light on the traditional IT security players?

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“We staged the biggest coup in the history of civilization and everyone volunteered to join”

Love this show since this one has the tech right and the story is right as well. Love it when seeing him using Protonmail, Linux Mint, Kali, wireshard, PCAP password dumps and python script to dig through them.

I am not going to say anything more about it since a spoiler might fire back at me.