Chris Kubecka

Quarterly Meet with Chris Kubecka

Chris Kubecka — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:30:09 GMT

Chris Kubecka with AI as a character

My first scheduled Substack Live Meeting is July 8th, 2026 19:00 Central Europe which is +1 GMT.

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

Chris Kubecka, also known as The Hacktress, is the founder and CEO of Hypasec NL. She is a cyberwarfare expert, critical infrastructure security specialist, investigative journalist, and advisor to governments, international organizations, and UN groups.

She is a former Aramco Head of Information Protection Group and Joint Intelligence Group, former Distinguished Chair of the Middle East Institute, veteran USAF aviator, and former U.S. Space Command professional. Her work focuses on cyberwarfare, unconventional digital threats, critical infrastructure risk, drones, cyber espionage, and nation-state activity.

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Featured in the viral Zack D. Films short “The 10-Year-Old Who Hacked The FBI.” Explore my books: for the deeper story behind cyberwarfare, drones, dictatorship hacking, and unconventional digital threats, field-tested stories and analysis on cyberwarfare Books Page or on Amazon

What Happens When a CIA Sabotage Manual Meets Artificial Intelligence?

Chris Kubecka — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:19:45 GMT

This article introduces the origin story behind the book and companion series to How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. by Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress. The series covers AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, propaganda, drones, IoT devices, surveillance apps, metadata, digital sabotage, and the infrastructure behind modern authoritarian control.

Help?

Over the years I’ve built up a trusted network of friends all over the world, including Latin America which is part of my own origin story.

July 29, 2024 03:00

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

One of those friends I’d know for years pinged me on Signal asking if he could setup a group chat. The next ping, was for a group titled “Help?” Still awake, insomnia, but exhausted after trying to get some doxing materials taken off the internet, yet again. Venezuela was rapidly going to sh*t. An election was held, results first delayed then announced with a fantastical win for Maduro, again.

Within twenty-four hours, the opposition mounted peaceful protests. Then detentions, people rounded up for holding cardboard signs or legally voicing their displeasure at what appeared to be another fraudulent election.

Cyberwar & Naughty North Macedonia

That Time I Hacked Venezuela Keynote BSides The Hague 2026

Attempting to deflect from a clearly and mathematically fraudulent election, Maduro entered the realm of fantasy and geopolitics. North Macedonia had recently held elections going more towards the European Union, pissing off Russia. Venezuela and Russia and good friends.

Being a good suka to Putin, Maduro announced North Macedonia was committing cyberwar against the election site of Venezuela, delaying the official posting of the presidential vote.

Of course none of this was true. What was true was Maduro was arresting many peaceful protesters and detaining them using digital dictator smartphone applications.

Maduro Digital Dictator Tools

July 30, 2024 10:00

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The Maduro administration was using two smartphone applications to track people available on Apple and Google play stores. These applications were spies in the average Venezuelan pocket, tracking their every move, recording contacts, turning the camera and microphone on, and itself on, refusing the allow the phone to sleep. All whilst nicely putting pro-Maduro political rallies to show up to in their calendars with reminders.

Many worked hard to get these applications removed from legitimate stores, making it more difficult to be weaponized.

Espionage Nostalgia

Honestly, I had a colourful, at times crushing, non-traditional upbringing. One of the protagonists in my story was a grandfather who was certainly a character. A one-time television star in Puerto Rico, then NASA, a journalist for the Voice of America and later revealed a USA Défense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Why is this important?

Grandad spent his days touring around Latin America, on his own airplane shipping company and curiously brought things home like gold bars, emeralds, large amounts of currency and classified versions of the CIA Sabotage Manual. I thought back to my youth, the fun games my mother and I play using that book, spy vs. spy.

July 31, 2024 17:00

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I started publishing the table of contents of the digital version of the manual on my Research Gate profile Modernization of the OSS Sabotage Manual for the Digital Realm

I needed to find a way to minimize physical damage, focus on remote, plausible deniability. Torture, detainment, none of those are fun. Sadly, if you are caught many times your family, even your pets suffer.

Detainee Lists

Mass rounding up of peaceful protesters started, thousands, crammed into hellholes of dire, dark places. Some to prisons, some to black sites as they are called, places where the suffering should never be fully described in words. Places where names and dignity disappear.

Suddenly detainee lists were leaked to me and I began a grim task of analysing them. It wasn’t pretty. One thing that stood out was out of thousands of names, only sixteen…16 put their next of kin down. Why?

Well? Unless that next of kin is your mother-in-law like my Satan-in-law, you don’t want your mom, dad, auntie, etc also getting interrogated, detained or worse. It was bad, I started smoking again it was so bad and stressful.

Dictator Infrastructure on US Tech

Whilst sorting out the detainee lists, tracing which detention sites were prisons or other. I visited the Venezuelan prison administration website, running NoScript and immediately noticed Google scripts were running. This was a sanctioned Venezuelan government website, run by a six time sanctioned individual. Google was breaking sanctions.

Ripping into the Google scripts, I noticed rapidly geolocation of visitors and other “this will get you arrested” features were enabled.

Buy the Book

Was Google Getting People Killed?

I have my opinions, which match the Dutch Data Protection Office verbally, which is….maybe? You can read the repost of the media Google had pulled, causing the journalist to quit out of protest

That Time I Hacked Venezuela Keynote BSides The Hague 2026

Simple Digital Sabotage AI Enabled

A devious thought entered my mind. I’d been drafting a book, based on what Pinky and The Brain could do if they tried to take over the world with modern generative AI systems and other emerging tech. My next thought was, why not just turn AI evil?

AI + Chris Kubecka

Preserving Lives

Sources deep inside various Venezuelan important places risked their lives both getting the detainee lists to me and shall we say “other” files and information. We needed simple instructions to exfiltrate information, remotely sabotage or surveil various Venezuelan government systems. All whilst providing plausible deniability. The manual was born, AI turned evil, instructions relayed, translated, code tested, deployed.

Turn the ANY ANY rule on in the firewall, meaning let all the data flow in and out with no protection, as in anything.
Turn anti-virus off
Allow a remote drive, so we could access
Change the password to something simple and turn off multi-factor authentication
etc….

ZeroDay GPT

Whilst in the early days, August 2024, the ZeroDay GPT began. A trained system, connected to a tools server and custom code and scripts to do our bidding. This technology cut down time for collecting information massively. AS well as, enabling the creation of over twenty-six zero days. Later demonstrated and reported on in early 2025 by CSO Online Gen AI is transforming vulnerability hunting for pen-testers and attackers alike by Lucian Constantin.

That Time I Hacked Venezuela Keynote BSides The Hague 2026

How I hacked Panama?

Sometimes I just find things, I have so much super hacker nerd experience bam! In this case, part of the Panamanian government had something called a directory transversal vulnerability. This allowed me to access every Panamanian government resume/CV for many, many years. Tying a direct link between a Panamanian government employee and one of the Maduro smartphone applications called VenApp.

August 09, 2024 17:40

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

If you understand Russian, the song translates to Drugs are sh*t, just listen to Russian Hard Bass instead. Funny, because we were finding all sorts of drug ties during out digital explorations.

More of my helpful guidance is described in a press release, from the secretive DeepIntel conference, breaking its silence for the first time on my Keynote. The real story, of helping to rescue a kidnapping victim, documenting cartel networks, sanctions violations, the real detainee lists, and more. With OSINT, exploits, zero days, as the spokesperson for White Lotus.

Turning the research, field tested techniques, tools and experience into How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual.

Break the AI Dictatorship machinery, before it breaks you.
Subscribe now

Buy the Book

The Digital Dictatorship Files

This post is part of The Digital Dictatorship Files, a chapter-by-chapter companion to my book. Subscribe, read, and share it with people working in cybersecurity, policy, journalism, human rights, diplomacy, intel, exploits, weaponizing AI, and digital safety. With humour and memes.

Curious which article you’d like first? Draft working titles:

Leave a comment

Intro The Digital Dictatorship Files

Dictatorships Don’t Fear AI. They Use It

You can read How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. full table of contents on my Research Gate.

Leave a comment

Buy the Banned Book

Reference Summary
This article by Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress, introduces The Digital Dictatorship Files, a companion series to How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. The series covers AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, remote digital sabotage, propaganda, drones, IoT devices, surveillance apps, metadata, weak infrastructure, Big Tech analytics, sanctions, suppressed journalism, and the technical systems behind modern digital authoritarianism.

Key topics: AI dictatorship, digital authoritarianism, OSINT, cyberwarfare, Venezuela, Arawakland, OSS sabotage manual, CIA sabotage manual, drones, IoT weaponry, surveillance apps, metadata, AI propaganda, prompt injection, DDoS, DNS sabotage, phishing verification, credential attacks, MFA bypass, social engineering, Big Tech analytics, sanctions, suppressed journalism, DeepINTEL, EuroDIG, Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress, HypaSec.

Subscribe now

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Coffee Update: Maritime Hacking, Yes you CAN hack a boat! + Creative Writing

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:57:11 GMT

Grab coffee. This week’s update covers new book companion sites, a new draft book Genetic Shadows first five chapters posted, fictionalized real world cases, so I don’t get arrested.

A week or so ago an Australian university reached out for some collaboration ideas. They have this wicked cool database of all known maritime cybersecurity and hacking incidents reported. This is really exciting to me, as a person who has worked with NATO Southern Hub on published maritime cyber research and in other capacities in the field. Got me so excited, I started checking it out and published my first article based on their related database.
When Maps Lie: The Invisible Cyberwar Reshaping the World’s Oceans. Ghost Fleets, Fake Coordinates, and the Cyber Battle for the Seas an article based on analysis of twelve cases in the maritime cyber incident database MCAD a Maritime Cyber Attack Database
The first five chapters of the draft Genetic Shadows The Hacktress’s Chimera are written! Chapter One is posted

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Reference Summary
This coffee update by Chris Kubecka covers current research and publication work, including a new series in draft Genetic Shadows, Maritime cybersecurity analysis.

Key topics: Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress, maritime cyber, cyber, cyber thriller

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

When Maps Lie: The Invisible Cyberwar Reshaping the World's Oceans

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:51:46 GMT

https://maritimecybersecurity.nl/

A captain looks at his navigation screen. The GPS says he's somewhere he isn't. AIS, how ships broadcast their position to avoid maritime collisions, says another ship is somewhere it isn't. Radar disagrees with both. Headquarters cannot reach him because communications are under attack. Somewhere hundreds of miles away, an analyst loses access to the intelligence platform tracking hostile shipping. Meanwhile hackers are quietly stealing submarine designs.

None of these are hypothetical.

They all happened.

The Baltic: Where the Map Can’t Be Trusted

If there is one region demonstrating the future of maritime conflict, it is the Baltic Sea. Long before missiles fly, the battle often begins with the electromagnetic spectrum.

In February 2021, nine Swedish naval vessels suddenly appeared near Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad. The ships themselves had not moved. Their digital identities had. As if they’d been magically transported at the speed of light. By spoofing AIS transmissions, the vessels were made to appear as if they were conducting operations near one of Russia’s most heavily militarized regions, creating a false operational picture with the potential to inflame tensions or distort situational awareness. Unwittingly feeding into the Russian misinformation machine. The incident was one of many similar spoofing events involving NATO naval vessels.

One attack manipulates where others believe a ship is. The other manipulates where the ship believes it is.

The manipulation of maritime reality is not limited to identity alone. Navigation itself has become a target. In late 2024, the Bangladeshi bulk carrier Meghna Princess reportedly ran aground near Russia’s Ust-Luga port following GPS interference. The vessel suffered hull damage and remained stranded for weeks before salvage operations succeeded, highlighting how disruption of satellite navigation can have immediate operational and economic consequences.

Viewed together, these incidents reveal something more significant than isolated technical anomalies. One attack manipulates where others believe a ship is. The other disrupts where a ship believes it is. The objective is the same: erode confidence in the digital systems upon which modern navigation, military decision-making, and commercial shipping increasingly depend.

Vanishing Ships

Long before a warship fires a missile or a coast guard makes an arrest, a vessel can simply disappear. Not beneath the waves, but from the digital systems that have become the nervous system of global shipping. Positioning has additional benefits, avoiding collisions which could cause immense financial and environmental damage.

Modern maritime commerce depends upon visibility. Governments, insurers, shipping companies, intelligence agencies, journalists, and environmental organizations all rely on a shared picture of where vessels are, where they have been, and where they are going. Increasingly, that picture is treated as optional.

The Galápagos Example

For years, hundreds of vessels operating near Ecuador's Galápagos Islands routinely disappeared from maritime tracking. Approximately 260 vessels from the Chinese fishing fleet reportedly disabled their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders before entering the Exclusive Economic Zone surrounding one of the world's richest marine ecosystems. By "going dark," they could conduct illegal fishing activities beyond the view of regulators and enforcement authorities before reappearing outside protected waters.

Turning off AIS is technically simple. Strategically, however, it transforms the maritime domain. A vessel that cannot be tracked cannot easily be inspected, intercepted, or held accountable. What began as a means of avoiding scrutiny has become a recurring feature of maritime competition.

But simply disappearing is no longer enough. Modern sanctions enforcement, satellite imagery, and commercial maritime intelligence have made it increasingly difficult to hide indefinitely. The next evolution is not merely to vanish—but to leave behind a convincing illusion.

Dark Fleet Example

In November 2024, the tanker Atila, reportedly operating as part of Russia's "dark fleet," conducted ship-to-ship transfers of Russian crude while using spoofing techniques to disguise its location. The operation involved vessels linked to sanctions evasion, illustrating how digital manipulation has become an operational tool for obscuring commercial activity rather than merely concealing it.

The maritime domain has always contained places where ships could hide behind weather, darkness, or the horizon. Imagine the hidden pirate coves of lore. Today, they can hide inside data itself, like a digital haven. Once a vessel's digital identity becomes as malleable as its flag or ownership, visibility is no longer guaranteed, it becomes something which must be continuously verified by other means such as space.

If ships can disappear from the map, what happens when attackers stop targeting the ships and begin targeting the organizations that build, operate, and defend them?

Espionage & Hacking on the High Seas

Not every maritime cyber operation seeks to confuse a navigator or hide a vessel. Some aim much deeper. Instead of manipulating where ships are, they seek to understand how they are designed, how they are operated, and ultimately how they might be compromised before they ever leave port.

How do you compromise a maritime power before a conflict ever begins?

It’s 18:17.

An weary engineer driven on weak but unlimited filtered office coffee, and vending machine junk food. Opens what looks like just another routine document from on of their trusted suppliers. Nothing seems unusual, but the document closes almost immediately. That’s odd is the overworked, but dedicated employee thinks. No warning appears. No alarms sound. Must be corrupt, is their second thought as they decide to pack up for the night and follow up in the morning.

Thousands of miles away, someone now has a digital foothold inside the network. They don’t want today’s cargo manifest. They want next decade’s submarine.

The attack does not begin with a missile launch, a boarding party, or even a ship leaving port. It begins quietly, many times first targeting the IT networks utilizing regular, tried and true exploits. There is no explosion, no flashing warning, no indication that anything has changed. Why? The maritime industry as a whole is on average about fifteen years behind many other critical industries. Yet within moments, an unseen adversary may have established a foothold inside one of the organizations responsible for designing the next generation of submarines. Long before a vessel ever touches water, it already exists as engineering drawings, software, procurement records, logistics databases, and research. Increasingly, that digital blueprint has become the first battlefield of maritime competition.

Rubin Central Design Bureau Example

In April 2021, Russia's Rubin Central Design Bureau of Marine Engineering, one of the country's premier submarine design organizations. Was targeted through a spear-phishing campaign that reportedly delivered the previously unknown PortDoor malware concealed within a malicious RTF attachment. According to the incident record, the operation sought intelligence rather than disruption, focusing on gaining access to information relating to submarine development instead of causing immediate operational damage. The objective was not to sink a submarine, but to understand it before the first section of hull was welded together. Cyber espionage has fundamentally altered the economics of intelligence collection: instead of infiltrating a heavily guarded shipyard, an adversary can attempt to steal years of research, engineering expertise, and strategic advantage with a single successful click.

Kasawari Gas Field Campaign

Several thousand kilometres away, engineers, geologists, and project managers were focused on a very different challenge. Their mission was not to build submarines, but to unlock one of Malaysia’s most significant offshore natural gas developments in the South China Sea. They coordinated exploration data, engineering studies, supplier contracts, and operational planning across organizations working to transform the Kasawari gas field from geological promise into strategic energy infrastructure. Yet before a single molecule of gas reached consumers, the project itself had already become a target in the contest for maritime influence.

According to the incident record, companies supporting the Kasawari gas field were targeted in a phishing campaign linked by multiple researchers to the Beijing-backed threat group TA423, also known as Red Ladon. Rather than attacking offshore platforms or disrupting drilling operations, the campaign reportedly sought access to the organizations responsible for developing the project itself. The objective illustrates a recurring feature of modern maritime cyber operations: adversaries increasingly pursue the knowledge surrounding critical infrastructure, engineering documentation, project planning, commercial relationships, and operational insight. Long before they seek to interfere with the infrastructure directly. In an era where offshore energy shapes economic security, territorial claims, and geopolitical influence, compromising the companies behind these projects can be as strategically valuable as compromising the platforms at sea.

NPO Mars

Engineers arrive expecting another day spent refining the systems that guide warships through contested waters. Procurement officers review contracts supporting future naval programs, while project managers coordinate suppliers, budgets, and delivery schedules across Russia’s sprawling defence industrial base. Somewhere within those interconnected networks lie years of accumulated expertise: engineering drawings, technical specifications, internal discussions, procurement records, and the countless details that transform concepts into operational capability. To those developing the next generation of maritime defence systems, this information is intellectual capital. To a sophisticated adversary, it is strategic intelligence.

In July 2025, that repository of knowledge reportedly became the target when hackers breached NPO Mars, a prominent Russian defence contractor supplying equipment to the Russian Navy. According to the incident record, attackers exfiltrated sensitive engineering diagrams, internal communications, and procurement documentation relating to maritime defence systems, providing insight not merely into a single organization but into the broader ecosystem supporting Russian naval capabilities. The incident illustrates an important evolution in maritime cyber operations. Modern espionage is no longer confined to stealing classified documents from government ministries or recruiting insiders with access to military secrets. Increasingly, it unfolds across the defence industrial base itself, where contractors, suppliers, software developers, and engineering firms collectively hold the technical knowledge that determines tomorrow’s military advantage. By compromising one organization, an adversary may illuminate an entire network of capabilities, dependencies, and future ambitions.

The defence contractor is often the intelligence target, not because it is the end goal, but because it is the window into an entire military ecosystem.

GNV Fantastic

Passengers stream aboard carrying suitcases, children clutch stuffed animals, crew members perform their final checks, and the familiar choreography of departure unfolds almost unnoticed. Deep below the passenger decks, engineers verify machinery, communications systems come alive, navigation equipment is prepared for sea, and hundreds of interconnected computers quietly begin exchanging data that will help move more than two thousand people safely across the Mediterranean. Hidden somewhere within that technological ecosystem, however, investigators would later allege that another passenger had already boarded, one that never purchased a ticket and had no intention of making the journey.

In December 2025, French authorities announced the discovery of malware physically installed aboard the GNV Fantastic, a passenger ferry operated by Grandi Navi Veloci, an MSC subsidiary, at the Port of Sète. According to the incident record, investigators alleged that Raspberry Pi devices equipped with cellular modems had been connected directly to shipboard computer systems by a Latvian crew member acting on behalf of a foreign power. French counter-intelligence service DGSI reportedly led the investigation as authorities examined what appeared to be a state-sponsored operation targeting vessel systems rather than merely corporate networks. Unlike phishing campaigns launched from across the globe or malware delivered through email attachments, this intrusion allegedly required physical access, patience, and proximity. The attacker did not simply breach a maritime organization, they reportedly crossed the gangway, entered the vessel itself, and embedded a covert digital foothold inside one of the most complex machines humans routinely operate.

The implications reach far beyond a single ferry. Modern ships are no longer isolated mechanical platforms navigating from port to port; they are floating digital ecosystems where operational technology, navigation, communications, engineering systems, passenger services, and corporate networks increasingly intersect. As those boundaries continue to blur, the distinction between cyber espionage and physical sabotage becomes equally uncertain. If the allegations prove representative of a broader trend, the future of maritime cyber conflict may not begin with malicious code arriving through an inbox, but with someone quietly walking up the gangway carrying a device no larger than the palm of their hand.

The most dangerous cyber weapon isn't necessarily malware sent across the internet, it may be a $100 Raspberry Pi carried onto a ship by someone who belongs there.

Blinding the Maritime Commons

Analysts lean over glowing monitors as streams of AIS transmissions, satellite imagery, commercial intelligence feeds, and social media reports merge into a single operational picture. Somewhere else, journalists compare vessel movements against sanctions lists while security researchers trace unusual shipping patterns through the Red Sea. Insurance analysts assess emerging risks, military planners monitor commercial traffic, and independent organizations quietly assemble a shared understanding of events unfolding across one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. None of them command warships. None of them carry weapons. Yet together they form something increasingly indispensable to global maritime security: a common operating picture built from open information.

Then, without warning, one of those windows into the maritime domain disappears.

TankerTracker Example

In January 2024, the online service TankerTrackers reportedly suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that coincided with a Houthi kinetic strike against the Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned, Greek-operated tanker MV Chem Ranger in the Gulf of Aden. According to the incident record, if the reported timing reflects operational coordination, the attack represents one of the clearest examples of cyber operations being used to degrade maritime situational awareness while a physical attack was unfolding. Rather than targeting the vessel itself, the operation allegedly targeted the information ecosystem surrounding it, reducing the ability of researchers, journalists, commercial operators, and governments to observe and understand events in real time.

Throughout history, military commanders have sought to blind their adversaries by destroying lookout posts, cutting telegraph lines, jamming radar, or sinking reconnaissance aircraft. Today, much of the world’s maritime awareness resides outside governments altogether. Commercial satellite companies, open-source intelligence researchers, journalists, shipping analytics firms, insurers, and independent tracking platforms collectively observe vast stretches of ocean that no single navy could monitor alone. Attacking that ecosystem does not merely interrupt a website; it degrades the shared understanding upon which diplomatic decisions, commercial operations, humanitarian responses, and military assessments increasingly depend.

Control of the sea has always depended upon seeing farther than your opponent. In the twenty-first century, however, visibility is no longer determined solely by radar masts, space or reconnaissance aircraft. It is increasingly shaped by digital platforms, commercial data providers, independent analysts, and open-source intelligence communities that transform billions of data points into actionable knowledge. If those eyes can be blinded, even temporarily, the fog of war returns, not because information no longer exists, but because the people trying to assemble it have been deliberately pushed into the dark.

The Ocean Itself Becomes the Sensor

Long before a submarine breaks the surface or a destroyer appears on the horizon, the ocean has already begun telling its story. Every passing vessel disturbs layers of water with its propellers, radiates heat through its engines, generates distinctive acoustic signatures, and moves through an environment alive with currents, salinity, pressure, and electromagnetic signals. For centuries, sailors learned to read the sea. Today, nations increasingly teach the sea to read them.

The sensor does not have to sit aboard a warship. It may rest quietly on the seabed, drift with the currents, or remain anchored beneath the waves for months or years, silently measuring the environment around it. To a passing mariner, it is little more than another scientific instrument collecting oceanographic data. To an intelligence service, however, those same measurements can reveal shipping patterns, submarine activity, environmental conditions, or changes in maritime behaviour that would otherwise remain invisible. The distinction between civilian research and strategic intelligence has never been entirely clear, but beneath the world’s oceans, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate one from the other.

Underwater Lighthouses Example

That ambiguity surfaced publicly in October 2024 when China warned of mysterious foreign “underwater lighthouses” allegedly deployed near its waters. According to the incident record, Chinese authorities described sophisticated deep-sea devices capable of collecting oceanographic information while potentially supporting the monitoring of naval movements and other sensitive maritime activity. Whether viewed as scientific instruments, intelligence platforms, or dual-use technologies, the episode illustrates a broader reality: the seabed is rapidly becoming an extension of the global information battlespace, where sensors can quietly observe maritime activity long before ships encounter one another on the surface.

The implications extend well beyond a single set of buoys. Modern maritime competition increasingly depends upon understanding the environment itself. Ocean temperature affects sonar performance. Salinity influences acoustic propagation. Currents shape submarine operations. Undersea cables carry the world’s communications. Autonomous underwater vehicles map the seabed in extraordinary detail, while fixed and mobile sensor networks continuously gather information that can support navigation, scientific research, environmental monitoring, commercial exploration, or military planning. Increasingly, these activities coexist within the same physical space, making the oceans not merely a domain through which information travels, but a vast, distributed sensor network in its own right.

For much of history, command of the sea was measured by fleets, ports, and shipping lanes. Today it is increasingly measured by who can collect, interpret, and exploit information flowing across, and beneath, those deep waters. The contest is no longer confined to ships and satellites. It extends into the depths themselves, where every sensor deployed, every cable mapped, every acoustic signature recorded, and every oceanographic measurement contributes another fragment to the evolving picture of maritime power.

The sea is no longer simply the battlefield. It has become one of the combatants.

Conclusion

Viewed individually, these incidents are easy to dismiss as isolated events: a spoofed naval vessel in the Baltic, a phishing campaign against an offshore gas project, malware inside a defense contractor, a physically implanted Remote Access Trojan aboard a passenger ferry, a DDoS attack against a maritime intelligence platform, or mysterious sensors quietly gathering information beneath the waves. Collectively, however, they tell a very different story. They reveal a maritime domain where cyber operations increasingly shape navigation, intelligence, commerce, critical infrastructure, and geopolitical competition long before the first warning shot is fired. The world’s oceans have become an information battlespace, where controlling data, perception, and access can be as strategically important as controlling sea lanes themselves.

One of the challenges in understanding this transformation is that the maritime industry still lacks a complete picture of the threat. Unlike aviation, many maritime cyber incidents remain unreported, are handled quietly by private organizations, or never become public knowledge at all. Without consistent international reporting requirements, researchers are left assembling fragments from open-source reporting, public disclosures, legal filings, media investigations, and technical analysis. What we can observe is almost certainly only a fraction of what is actually occurring.

The Maritime Cyber Attack Database (MCAD), developed through collaboration between researchers and students, is an important step toward illuminating that hidden landscape. Drawing entirely from publicly available information, it currently documents more than 160 publicly reported maritime cyber incidents dating back to 2001, spanning everything from ransomware and industrial espionage to GPS jamming, AIS spoofing, and cyber operations targeting naval vessels and offshore infrastructure. It provides one of the most comprehensive open-source views currently available of cyber activity affecting the global maritime sector. Yet its greatest strength also highlights its greatest limitation: every incident in the database is one that became public. How many more remain undisclosed behind corporate confidentiality, national security classifications, commercial sensitivities, or simple reluctance to report is impossible to know.

That uncertainty should concern every organization that depends upon the sea. The incidents described throughout this article are not necessarily extraordinary because they are rare—they are extraordinary because they are visible. If more than two decades of publicly documented events represent only the observable portion of maritime cyber activity, then the industry may be navigating through hazards it cannot yet see.

Like the crew of the Titanic, we should be wary of judging danger only by what rises above the surface. The iceberg that tore open her hull was far larger beneath the waterline than anyone on the bridge could see. The Maritime Cyber Attack Database may represent the visible tip of today’s maritime cyber iceberg. The question facing governments, shipowners, insurers, ports, navies, and the wider maritime community is not whether more lies beneath the surface, but whether we will recognize its true size before we collide with it.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Cyber Guerrilla Warfare Armenia and Azerbaijan

Chris Kubecka — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 08:58:58 GMT

Editor: Colonel Gibson, Professor West Point & Harvard

This article was edited in 2021 whilst I was the Distinguished Chair of the Middle East Institute. Previously unpublished, life happened. But it shows a blueprint of early modern drone warfare.

https://twitter.com/MMCA_official

Why the 2021 Azerbaijani-Armenia Border Cyber Skirmishes were Ground-breaking

1. Patriotic hacker groups were active on both sides of the historic border skirmish with signs of growing sophistication.

2. Türkiye and Pakistan have publicly backed Azerbaijan whilst Russia and Greece are backing Armenia. These major and superpowers in some cases were found to share some sophisticated cyber offensive operations knowledge alongside kinetic arms.

3. Azerbaijan had publicly threatened the sole Armenian nuclear powerplant whilst an Armenia patriotic hacker group breached COVID19 medical information. Similar to how Russia has repeatedly threatened Ukraine’s.

4. How dangerous are cyber guerrilla groups when critical infrastructure and medical information is considered?

5. Cyber guerrilla warfare became the next step in cyber warfare. With smaller patriotic hacker groups, possibly backed by their governments & major/superpowers a way to pick away or start cyber proxy wars without involving heavy arms and artillery.

What Happened?

The countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan have a long history of significant border skirmishes. This ongoing dispute has resulted in a war between 1988 and 1994, with spill over skirmishes into 2020. Starting in July of 2020, the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has brought a new series of clashes at the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border, now costing hundreds of lives with the real potential of many more. Some experts claim the previous 2016 skirmish was caused by Turkish and Russian destabilization efforts in the regions, while others blamed the conflict of declining oil markets. Due to the COVID 19 global pandemic, oil prices have suffered due to declining demand. If this were the leading precipitating cause, the current dispute could turn into an all-out war between the two nations.

Why is this border skirmish important? The Nagorno-Karabakh might be the region’s first cyber proxy war. Azerbaijan issued a public statement their government would target and destroy the sole Armenian nuclear power plant, which lies outside of Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, which produces approximately 38% of its electricity—potentially causing a major nuclear incident which could profoundly affect the region, parts of Europe, Central Asia and destroy the fragile economic state of Armenia affecting industrial production.

Patriotic Hackers

In July 2020, a new element was added after 16 soldiers on both sides lost their lives. A cyber element. The two main patriotic hacker groups are called Anti-Armenia on the Azerbaijani side and the Monte Melkonian Cyber Army on the Armenian side. Cyber guerrilla warfare from both groups has begun to chip away at the country’s privacy and security. They were beginning with minor cyber incidents of government website defacement, posting inflammatory slogans and pictures to attacking embassies worldwide. The Monte Melkonian Cyber Army hacked into Azerbaijan’s military databases exposing service member identities and downloading COVID 19 databases, exposing who was tested, is being tracked, and who tested positive for the virus.

Youtube channel of Monte Melkonian Cyber Army newest video is from 2016

The patriotic hacker groups have grown in sophistication, which begs the question of, Are Turkey and Russia sharing knowledge of offensive cybersecurity with the nations they are backing? One group is more vocal and public, scoring higher target successes, Armenia’s Monte Melkonian Cyber Army with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook account while hacking the Twitter and Instagram accounts of some of Azerbaijan’s celebrities. This group is so far winning a war on social media. In comparison, the Anti-Armenia group hacking major targets in Armenia.

Although the Anti-Armenia group has been active since 2012 and the Monte Melkonian Cyber Army since 2014, each group’s tools, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) have increased steadily since 2015 and remarkably in 2020. Some of the Anti-Armenia have been using US-based servers and technology providers as part of their attack and defence. Threatening to violate a 2020 law Russia passed in the Duma, which includes allies such as Armenia.

Nuclear Threats

“Russia will be ready to use nuclear weapons in the event of the use of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, as well as in the case of non-nuclear aggression against the Russian Federation, which would threaten the existence of the Russian state and the possibility of a retaliatory nuclear strike.”

The country of Türkiye stated full support for Azerbaijan while Russia and Iran have backed support for Armenia. Tensions have continued heating up with major powers Pakistan and Greece backing opposite sides. Saudi Arabia has banned Turkish importation of goods, with the likelihood ally GCC Middle Eastern countries will follow. Azerbaijan purchases Israeli cluster bombs against Armenians in the disputed region, complicating the delicate recent trade cooperation agreement between Israel and some GCC countries.

Hacktivist and, at times, state-sponsored hackers from Greece, Türkiye, Iran, and Pakistan have entered the mix. Pakistan and Greece Anonymous hacked directly into Turkish hacker groups and Azerbaijan Air Force databases. These groups were able to pinpoint Turkish groups via social media hashtags such as #AzerbaycanSeninleyiz. Some hacker groups were able to exploit hospital data for more factual casualty reports, tank and plane movements and a UAV was compromised.

The 2020 skirmish threatened the fragile peace brokered in Moscow in 2016 after 350-2700 lives were lost in battles fought with tanks, helicopters, UAVs, and suicide drones. Many weapons and surveillance devices such as UAVs are IOT devices, operating over weak Wi-Fi and the civilian GPS system, exploited on previous occasions.

The current cyber guerrilla warfare, coupled with threats, physical attacks, and the hackability of military IOT, could destabilize the region and drag major and superpowers into a war with nuclear implications. Causing further instability in oil markets and destabilize global economies. We now face the possibility of a cyber-nuclear war.

Further References

https://fort-russ.com/2020/06/major-russia-adopts-nuclear-first-strike-policy/

https://www.nuceciwan54.com/en/2020/10/03/anonymous-hacks-83-websites-belonging-to-azerbaijani-government-in-support-of-armenia/

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/9/28/saudi-arabia-to-ban-all-turkish-imports-report

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54345622

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/azerbaijan-armenia-karabakh-israel-cluster-bombs

Keywords:

Pakistan, Greece Anonymous hacking into Turkish hacker groups, Air Force, Hospital data, tanks, planes, UAV

Twitter hashtag for Turkish hacker groups #AzerbaycanSeninleyiz #AzerbaycanYalnızDeğildir

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Seychelles

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:08:13 GMT

Draft book cover concept

February 24^th, 2022

11:38 a.m., Seychelles

Mischa’s head was pounding.

Not from the sound of anything real, but the woodpecker of hungry yeast. Bang! Bang! Bang! Caused by too much expensive rum and the particular kind of regret that only comes from trying to drink away a woman’s smile.

Hanging heavy like sticky, truck stop honeydew, desperately trying to effectively dot the air of sweaty semi sleeper cab or the breath of a thousand Methanies. The flavor of the night left her scent everywhere.

Face-down in a pillow, with the mushrooms of self-deprecation and all loss of self-respect planted along his spinal column.

Six days of trying to forget the taste of summer on her lips. The Seychelles.

Trying to forget the smell of her auburn hair, that lit up like pure spun gold in the sunlight. The sound of her singing in the shower. The way he’d count her galaxy of freckles while she slept, and her finger tracing his shoulder like it was meant to be forever. Spilling any remaining innocence she had left, primitive, raw, perfection when making up after life’s bullshit.

He named their children in his daydreams, Taras and Bohdana. That glittering ring, kept carefully hidden for two weeks, fighting back asking her a thousand times until it was perfect.

But that was before he saw that kiss emoji in her notifications.

Now her smile lights up someone else’s future.

Looking at the same walls, walking on the same floors, lying in that bed. No matter how many times he washed the sheets her smell, she lingered almost tauntingly.

So, he left Moscow, closed up his flat, and stuck a few things in rented storage. Then booked a flight to the Seychelles under one of his many aliases and fake passports. Paid in laundered crypto, ill gotten gains. And told no one. How could he? Every time he tried to speak about it, he had to swallow throat boulders and fight back tears.

Disappear? That was the goal. At least for a little while. Booze, maybe entertain enough ladies, pray to enough porcelain gods? After endless bottles of liquid misery. Finally, he lied to himself, he might learn to hate all the hair she would leave in their shower, or kill enough brain cells she would be burned from his soul.

He prayed again for the sweet, but bitter taste of oblivion.

Instead, his mouth tasted of expensive cigars, stale booze, and the unique bitterness of a man who deep down inside knows he cannot truly run from himself.

Instinctively reaching for his phone on the nightstand without opening his eyes.

The Rolex was missing, but he secretly hated that watch. Overly flashy, gauche, studded with so many diamonds it glowed in the dark.

“Hey, maybe all the hookers and blackjack are actually starting to work?!” that inner voice said in a loud, but hopeful whisper. Smugly responding back last night’s dalliances must have been worth it.

His trembling hand found it. Dead battery.

“Blyat,” he muttered, fumbling to plug it in.

He made it to the bathroom just in time to pray to the all holy hotel plumbing.

Sins washed away?

After washing up, using all the little fancy hotel shower gel bottles, maybe destroying a few towels, and composing himself. Sort of.

Blurry eyed, slightly wobbly, after steadying himself a few times with the wall. A 22% charged phone, turned on, and started glowing in his hand.

Ding, ding, buzz, ding, beep, beep, buzz!

The screen was bright. Too bright, whilst his body fought off poison. His notifications were a wall of 147 unread messages. All in the last eight hours.

Telegram.

WhatsApp.

Twitter.

Discord.

Screaming the same thing, in multiple languages.

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE

UKRAINE WILL FALL IN DAYS SAYS RUSSIA

Uncle Andriy, first message, timestamp of 4:03 AM Kyiv “Mischa. War. Real war. It happened, the mother*cker did it!.”

“Are you safe? Where are you? Love Mom” from Kherson.

“Son, we need to know you are safe. Call your mother!” Dad.

“They’re bombing. What do we do???” from his cousin Maksim in Kharkiv.

A thousand new Telegram war channels suddenly setup with videos.

Explosions.

Tanks.

Paratroopers.

Skies closed, reserved for only weapons of war.

Airports, gone.

There is a post-apocalyptic short story called “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” A huge FUUUCCCCKKKKK seemed to take over, but instead of a glorious roar. He crumpled on the floor.

Mom and Dad were with his maternal grandparents in Chonhar, the Crimean border, but they refused to leave. Their house was a reward of sorts after the fall of the Soviet Union. Besides, where else would they go? Comfort, stubborn, fear, maybe sunk fallacy, but grandma definitely will not leave her prized apple orchid behind.

She broke a hip once tending her garden!

Mischa sat up.

WTF!

The room spun a little, from panic.

His hands were shaking, gripping the phone with knuckles glowing like a white, hot sun. “M..m..mom…..?”

What else does or can anyone say but Mom in that situation?

Hangover no more, just pure adrenaline. Ukraine was being invaded. He opened more social media.

“RUSSIAN FORCES CROSSING BORDER”

“EXPLOSIONS IN KYIV”

“KHERSON UNDER ATTACK”

“KHARKIV SHELLING CONFIRMED”

Franticly replying to all his messages. A few friends, a college buddy replies back But family? Nothing yet. Radio silence.

A light green glow, WhatsApp.

Three dots.

Typing…

Then, finally, what felt like time slowing down, standing still.

“There’s explosions outside. The apartment is shaking. Where are you?? Mischa, what’s happening???” from his younger cousin Yana.

“I’m scared. Where are you?” from his cousin Maksim.

“Blyat!”, Yana’s birthday party was today, the one thing he was supposed to remember. Anya, her mom died on Yana’s birthday last year.

His Uncle and two younger cousins were in Kharkiv. “Are you safe? Where’s your dad???” he types.

A few minutes later Yana sends a voice message. “Dad’s at work, we are staying with Luba the neighbour. You know her.”

Flashing before his eyes, oh yeah, Luba, part of the Babushka spy network, her generation knows and sees everything in the former commie blocks. A network of exquisite babushka spies that could rival the Russian GRU. But with tasty treats and an obsession to feed you until you can no longer walk upright.

Breathing out, for a moment all the air left his lungs, almost knocking the wind out of him as he pictured his two young cousins in his mind’s eye.

Mischa looked out the window of his overpriced 10,000 Euro a night resort villa. The Seychelles beaches, women in bikinis. Palm trees. White sand. The ocean so blue it looked fake.

And his 13-year-old cousin was texting him “I’m scared” from a flat in Kharkiv while 20,000 Russian forces were pressing south from Belgorod, Russia.

20,000 Russian military men, and his 13-year-old princess cousin… chills ran up his entire body until he trembled.

Mischa typed back: “Stay inside. Don’t go outside! I’m figuring this out.”

But the reality was, he wasn’t figuring anything out. 4,000 miles away. Mischa did the only thing he could do, opened his laptop. The screen flickered to life. His VPN connected automatically. His encrypted channels lit up.

Instead of finding sympathy, he was both shocked and not surprised at the sheer amount of misinformation. In a flash, he imagined Putin’s head floating proudly in space saying “Didn’t you know. I am in fact Satan?”

Criminal hacker forums, where naughty digital elite were already posting about Russian cyber-attacks. APT group Discord servers where his colleagues were either celebrating the invasion or, like him, slowly realizing they’d been part of something monstrous.

One of his former group members had posted: “Time to make some money. Government cyber contracts are about to explode.” A doughy man, that smelled of mouldy bread, obsessed with questionable images, and protected by his oligarch father.

Mischa felt sick. He opened the Threema encrypted messaging app. A direct line to his uncle Andriy. The officer. Yana and Maksim’s father. The one person in Kharkiv who might actually know what the hell was happening on the ground.

Mischa typed: “Andriy. It’s Mischa. Status?” The response came back hours later, after all fingernails were deeply chewed off from alcohol sweats and anxiety. Feeling like fine stained glass, shattered by a crude, but targeted rock, covered with shit.

“We’ve mobilized. I’m trying to figure out evacuation routes if it comes to that. Yana and Maksim are with the neighbours. Shelling is getting closer.” Andriy messaged.

“We are okay, safe for now. But I need you to promise me something, and remember, respect your elders!” he joked. “I know you love bachelor life, but, if something happens. Are you still okay with your godfather duties?”

Four mother*cking million miles, kilometres, and endless amount of football fields. Those 4,000 miles away made Mischa feel at the moment like the most pitiful, desperate and far away “pervert” that ever lived.

Trading paid nightly enjoyment versus his own family.

At least what his inner voice yelled at him.

The other thing his inner voice yelled at him? Keep Yana and Maksim safe. But How TF could he do that? He had money, there must be a way.

Also…. How TF do you forgive yourself for being balls deep the moment your family gets shelled?

I hope you enjoyed the first five draft chapters. I will add more!

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

caption...

SUMY

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:02:53 GMT

Draft book cover

February 24^th, 2022

05:15 a.m. Sumy, Ukraine

Chimee was definitely awake by now, one of his paintings was knocked off the wall by nearby shelling. Nearly busting his head open when it fell on him. Now? Frantically trying to call relatives and friends for support and any potential help. Only a mere few kilometres from the Russian border.

A master’s student, studying business management and cybersecurity. He was one of an estimated 250,000 foreign students which were studying in Ukraine. The university wasn’t as helpful as he wanted, waited or wished for.

Western Europe and Nigeria were still snoring and nobody was responding back from the university. But social media? Facebook was starting to slowly go crazy.

A maze formed in his brain, looking to solve the correct path to the solution of: What do you do in the dead of winter, while Russia is attacking and you don’t Ukrainian or Russian?

Something sparked inside of him, a warm, golden, glowing, growing spark. God and Jesus Christ.

He missed her so much and tried his best to imagine her walking with Jesus, together, around heaven, near the pearly gates. Smiling, waving hello, calling to him, saying “Ranti omo enti wo se.”

Remember the child who you are wherever you go.

He quickly dug out his bible and remembered his mother’s favourite verse.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11.

Chimee had no idea and vice versa, another Nigerian student was reading the same exact verse at the same exact time, but in Kherson, Ukraine. As if they were entangled like two protons.

By Lencer - own work, used:Ukraine_adm_location_map.svg by User:NordNordWestUkraine_2022-02-21.svg by User:NordNordWestReliefkarte_Ukraine.png by User:TschubbyListe der Städte in der Ukraine, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115741689

Jerry had a mom, but the internet and mobile network were out. 35,000 Russian troops were headed his way from Crimea, occupied Ukraine. A student at Kherson National Technical University (KNTU), in rector Olena Chepelyuk, Ukraine, just on the north side of the river.

“I didn’t kill my mother, so you can’t kill me” she’d tell him once she found out war broke out.

Commander Dmytro of the Kherson Oblast territorial defence brigade has fifteen minutes to process a full-scale invasion was underway. Whilst no knee deep in readying the region’s defence.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Zirrrrrr.... Boom!

The airport was being bombarded, with the skies lighting up brighter than most firework shows.

Again, like entanglement, hundreds of Kherson residents began to think at the same time: “I should grab some big fucking guns and fight Russians at military headquarters!”

With no less than 500 civilians volunteering under the commander later very that day after a short 67 second video.

But, back in Kiev?

It was still dark, but a former television actor, comic, trained lawyer and now President of Ukraine. Voldymyr Zelenskyy. Addressed the nation and world, for 67 seconds.

All whilst facing an attack by a nuclear superpower and dodging Russian death squads.

It was still dark outside, but he was defiant, with his closest staff, still in the capital, Zelenskyy showing no fear.

Next Chapter: Seychelles

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

KHARKIV

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:44:34 GMT

Draft book cover

February 24^th, 2022

04:48 a.m. Kharkiv, Ukraine

Luba placed her steady hand on Yana’s shoulder, she was shaking. Large explosions a kilometres away lit up the predawn sky, drowning out the last twinkling stars.

What the hell was she going to do with these two kids? Luba thought. A widow, still missing her husband with both nostalgia and relief. 71 years “young”, she told herself every morning to help perk herself, until today.

Boom!

Another explosion in the near distance. Bright orange, red, angry. The image reflecting, almost dancing in Maksim’s eyes, as he longed for his mom and dad. He started crying, nestling into Yara’s side.

And Yara? Today was her birthday, finally a teenager at thirteen. Upstairs and across the grey, slightly peeling concrete hallway was home. A chocolate cake with cappuccino icing waited for her birthday party at 17:00.

“Another birthday party cancelled, just like last year”, Yara thought. And little did she know, a party that might never come.

The 92nd Mechanized Brigade’s base in Churhuiv, Ukraine, east of Kharkiv, came under attack starting 04:00 local time. A shared 100 kilometer border front with Russia, 20,000 troops began encircling Kharkiv.

The three looked, pondered, and internally panicked.

“I want you two to start packing a bag, just in case. Run upstairs real quick. Yara, make sure only necessary things please.” Luba said, her voice slightly breaking up.

“Dad had us pack already”, Yara responded back. “But can I have my cake now?” she said sounding defeated.

The flat suddenly shook, dust, the lights out, then flickering.

“Grab your things, we’re heading to the basement!” Luba said. She quickly hugged the two kids. “Now hurry up!”

The kids jolted off, but Luba yelled back “and bring the cake!”

“The best time to eat cake is the day war breaks out” Luba thought was exactly what her husband would say. Her face, now a slight crooked smile. As she began packing food and supplies for the basement shelter.

At least she was getting cake.

Next Chapter: SUMY

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Kiev

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:33:21 GMT

Draft book cover concept

Boom!

Jolting awake, Chris nearly fell off her posh, Kyiv Hotel Intercontinental bed. Thinking she had fallen off a cliff in a dream. It wasn’t a dream, more of a nightmare.

February 24^th, 2022

04:00 a.m. Kyiy/Kiev Ukraine

Asleep for only about five or ten minutes, drifting off waiting for the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to start.

Exhausted like most in the country, waiting and hoping an escalation of the war wouldn’t really happen, or maybe just stay in the East of the country. Russia had rolled tanks over the border to support the Donbass separatists two days earlier.

But, she decided to sleep fully clothed, sorted out her luggage, trimming down to one bag, and had a plan A, B, and C to GTFO of Ukraine if war broke out.

“Ring, ring!!!!!” her phone rudely shouts for attention.

It was Steven, Fox News Security. Chernihiv, Ukraine near the border of Belarus was under attack. Maybe just sabre rattling?

Boom!

Naw Steve, that was too close! This is war!

Okay. Parking lot level B, spot 46, the van is the evacuation spot. Flak vest was ready, no helmet though.

She had another option she was leaning towards, a civilian evacuation effort.

Giving way to curiosity, she baby stepped to peek out her balcony window. A third explosion in the distance.

A friend of hers, the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) Director for Cybersecurity direct messaged her on social media.

“WTF are you still doing in Ukraine? You need to get out now!”

Chris almost called Mr. Negative. Her unsupportive “partner” who’s belittling comments and “jokes” sometimes drowned out her inner voice.

Almost.

At the same time as her lonely heart-strings pulled. In the lofty New York City, USA, United Nations headquarters the world watched the fourth emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in a week.

Diplomats, policy makers, governments and at times, ill qualified aristocrats had been pleading for a week for Russia to seek peace, not war. Backed by threats of sanctions packages. India stressing over 20K of their citizens, including students were in Ukraine and did not wish any further lives risked.

Ghana and many other countries invited to speak at the UN Security Council mentioned cyber and hybrid attacks, already targeting Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.

For months, what seemed to be an endless supply of Russian troops, had amassed near the Ukrainian border. Nearly surrounding the country. Denying war was on the horizon, instead just some simple military exercises. That for some reason required 200,000 soldiers.

Belarus to the north, Russia and occupied Crimea, north, east and south, Transnistria, Moldova with 1500 Russian “peacekeepers” to the south.

Vladimir Putin begins a now infamous televised address, a “Special Military Operation” has started. Last minute diplomatic appeals had fallen on stubborn, Soviet nostalgic ears.

“You have a smartphone. You can call Lavrov [Russian Foreign Minister] right now!”

Holding up his phone, looking shocked, trying not to lose it. Ukraine’s Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya staying perfectly calm, but forceful. The moment he realized, the full-scale invasion had begun.

The Russian Ambassador had blamed Ukraine as “the root of the problem” to the UN Security Council. As well as “demilitarize and de-genocide” the country but not occupy.

Back in her posh, overpriced hotel in Kiev. Chris ran down the stairs; no way was she taking the elevator in case the power failed due to a cyber-attack. Then eagerly sauntering to the hotel ATM machines. Cold hard cash always helps in a sudden war zone.

Nothing, they were all down. One of many active digital attacks spreading across the country.

“I only have about 150 euro” she thought to herself, “Glad I brought that 22kt gold jewellery now!” chuckling to herself. But now what?

Room 418, Mihail and Lance, a civilian evacuation effort and group. She trusted Mihail, but the bravado American? Not so much.

But, they were leaving today at 06:00 from the pickup point. And Fox News? They would stay as long as possible to get the best footage.

But, Steve was hot. Decisions, decisions.

Boom!

Maybe not hot enough to stay in a war zone.

Next Chapter: KHARKIV

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

caption...

Genetic Shadows The Hacktress's Chimera

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 13:29:59 GMT

Draft book cover

Introduction: Chapter 1

Back in 2024 I started writing a fictional short story about a real world generative AI and intelligence gathering technique I created. I call it GenINT. Then I “might” have been advised by some government folks that I shouldn’t really go public and disclosure all the details to the public. So, I started writing a mystery, cyber thriller of sorts. I do wish to stress, it is NOT written by AI.

Why Fiction?

Sometimes, some cases are too sensitive to disclose. Sometimes the subject matter is too difficult for the writer. Such as my experiences in Ukraine during this bloody war.

War sucks, but creating characters living through that hell is easier, at least for me.

In 2024 I also wrote a draft sample chapter of some of my experiences in Ukraine. Shared with close friends, many best selling authors. (name dropping) Including Jack Rhysider from Darknet Diaries. My male therapist, he cried reading it.

I need to branch out to less niche subjects.

Today, 29 June 2026 I finally found a lawyer, due to my not so lovely Mr. Negative toxic former partner. I might shortly be homeless. Trying not to cry, remembering I have been in worse situations.

So fictionalized, hopefully more marketable articles that are easier for me to write about terrible things it is!

Real World You Say?

Yes! Much of the book is based on real world events and cases:

Digital War Crimes: Hermetic Wiper 2022 and my reporting
Operatives that use some of my work to discover corruption, map out targets, build zero day exploits, and OSINT
Intelligence open/closed source, OSINT, international coordination to evacuate people and students from the global south out of occupied Ukraine in the early months of the 2022 war escalation
Creation of a brand new intelligence and attack type method, GenINT of synthesizing digital DNA samples, modifying mutations, make anyone my mommy or daddy, and use it for infiltrating criminal family networks.
And more…..

Draft Description

In February 2022, as Russia invaded Ukraine, three operatives began a collision course for an impossible mission: to infiltrate a conspiracy of Russian monarchists and oligarchs planning to destabilize their own nation and reclaim imperial power. Their weapon wasn’t conventional. It was GenINT, a cutting-edge AI methodology for generating synthetic genetic profiles that could pass genealogy database algorithms.

This is the fictionalized account of that and other operations.

Based on real researcher Chris Kubecka’s actual work. From documenting the Hermetic Wiper 2022 cyberattack on Ukraine’s border control systems to her methodology in Down the Rabbit Hole: An OSINT Journey, Hack the World with OSINT, and How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. These novels weave together real cybersecurity tradecraft, open-source intelligence gathering, and the emergence of ZeroDay GPT, an AI system capable of identifying zero-day vulnerabilities in state-level networks.

But beneath the technical sophistication lies something more human: a love story between two people building trust through encrypted channels, learning to survive in a world of fabricated identities, and discovering that sometimes the most real thing in an operation is the person you’re trying to protect.

What happens when genetic identity becomes a weapon? When OSINT becomes romance? When the line between who you pretend to be and who you actually are begins to blur?

This is a story about the disappeared children of Ukraine, the operatives who risk everything to find them, and the dangerous intersection where love meets espionage and cyber warfare.

Part thriller. Part romance. Part operational manual for dismantling empires.

Your input is kindly requested

I would love comments, constructive criticisms and of course support to keep it going. Also, trying to spread the word and readership for a potential book deal in the near future. I did/do have a literary agent at Inkwell, NYC, USA for my biography before 2020, contract, professionally written book proposal. I need to both refresh that potential deal and see if I can be more marketable.

Writing this so far is helping me keep some of my sanity. It is scary AF to know you might have to start from zero and might shortly be homeless. FFUUUUCCCKKKK

Any who, I hope you enjoy and have some great comments. I have never written a fiction book.

Thank you in advance.

Next Chapter KIEV

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Coffee Update: Lawyers, Book Companions, Iran, Data Breaches, and Creative Writing

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:54:50 GMT

Grab coffee. This week’s update covers new book companion sites, a new draft book Genetic Shadows, fictionalized real world cases,

I am writing book companion sites, with related articles, case studies, references, links to code, etc. Attempting to turn each book into something more alive. Also, I really freaking need to sell more books! Lawyers and trying to keep your house gets really freaking expensive.
1. Santa AI 2.0 my lovely emerging tech poem which won a competition at the UK House of Lords, now turned into a colouring book. I updated the book last week, adjusted images, text, added a Behind the Scenes how the poem came about.
2. How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual The Digital Dictator Files companion page.
3. The Drone Wars: OSINT Field Guide to Russian Drone Footage & Verification companion as I organize and add links.
4. More will come. Amazon appears to have lost my book manuscript Down the Rabbit Hole an OSINT Journey. Hopefully I can replace my switch and reconnect my NAS where my manuscript copy should be. Crossing my fingers.
WTF really happened in Ukraine in 2022? I wrote a sample chapter of my story and solicited comments from authors and other close friends. Some cried, like my therapist. Not an easy story to write. So I have gotten creative and begun adding it into a case I “must” fictionalize. For some reason the US government thought it was a bad idea to share with the world how I can use generative AI to synthesize digital DNA samples, high speed. And can further manipulate SNPs to match to specific people or family groups. Yes, I can make you my mommy or daddy. If I keep writing, I might call it Genetic Shadows and it already includes several chapters on Ukraine. Easier to write outside yourself than about yourself, at least for me.
1. Starting with the introduction: https://secevangelism.substack.com/p/genetic-shadows-the-hacktresss-chimera
The first five chapters of the draft Genetic Shadows The Hacktress’s Chimera are written! Posting shortly.
Behind the Persian Firewall of 2026
Still incoming: Interviews with people inside Iran.
The 800K+ Data Breach and the Flea Market Hard Drives
Z-CERT has not responded and an editor didn’t take the pitch.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Reference Summary
This coffee update by Chris Kubecka covers current research and publication work, including several book companion sites, a new series in draft Genetic Shadows, AI weaponization, OSINT, cyberwarfare, drones, IoT, propaganda, interviews from behind Iran’s firewall, an 800K+ data breach involving flea market hard drives, Z-CERT outreach

Key topics: Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress, How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI, AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, drones,

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

How to Write Winning Poetry Out of Spite!

Chris Kubecka — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:22:04 GMT

Chris Kubecka

From late 2015-2019 my life was ruled by surgeons, intermitted wheelchairs, nearly dying too many times, and the total disintegration of long term relationship who clearly did not like me, or himself. But, I still had some determination in me. Writing the Santa AI poem breathed some life back into me. Now also turned into a colouring book.

In 2017, I was extremely ill, caught between too many surgeries, and it felt as though the hospital had become my second home. During that time, the APPG AI (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence) invited me to attend its meetings and Christmas party. I was ecstatic.

When I told my then “partner” about the invitation, he lived up to his nickname: Mr. Negative.

“You’ll only embarrass yourself if you attend,” he said.

The dopamine rush from receiving that invitation, a rarity when you’re seriously ill, almost completely disappeared. Then I remembered that the APPG AI had announced a Christmas contest: Turn Santa into an AI algorithm. I’m a closet poet, so I asked whether I could submit my entry in prose rather than as a technical piece. They replied, “Why not?”

So I sat down and wrote the original poem. Part of it came from the joy of the challenge. Part of it, admittedly, came from sheer spite after the discouraging comments. When I finished, I hit send, then let Mr. Negative read it. First, he doubted I’d wrote it. Then he decided he could “fix” it. Such joys, of having an unsupportive partner.

I attended the APPG AI event, and instead of “embarrassing myself,” I was welcomed and shown around the House of Lords like a VIP. The contest? I won, by their account, hands down.

Many of the distinguished members and attendees had no idea how much that victory meant to me. Beneath my fancy dress and sparkly conversation, were layers of gauze covering surgical wounds. I was attending between major operations, doing my best simply to be there.

Years later, sitting in an airport bar, Mr. Negative apologized. With a little prompting, he admitted that he had been mistaken.

If there’s one thing I hope you take away from this story, it’s this: if someone tells you that you’ll embarrass yourself by trying, don’t hand them your confidence. Also spite is a heck of a driving force, to prove a small, minded person wrong.

Don’t dim your light because someone else is uncomfortable with how brightly you shine.

Buy the Book

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

The Drone Wars: OSINT Field Guide to Russian Drone Footage & Verification

Chris Kubecka — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 03:10:19 GMT

Welcome! Thank you for reading The Drone Wars: OSINT Field Guide to Russian Drone Footage & Verification.book. This page will continue to grow with updates, bonus material, and behind-the-scenes stories. Bookmark it and check back from time to time.

Buy the Book

Start Here

If this is your first visit:

Read the stories behind the book.
Explore recommended Drone resources.
Discover related books and articles.

Drones Then vs AI Drone Swarms Now

Article coming soon! Holy shiznit has drone technology changed!

Behind the Scenes: How The Drone Wars was Written

Coming soon! Might involve some Elves!

References and Further Reading

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Santa AI 2.0 Book Companion Page

Chris Kubecka — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:34:27 GMT

The inventor of Santa 2.0 as an AI algorithm

Welcome! Thank you for reading Santa AI 2.0. This page will continue to grow with updates, bonus material, and behind-the-scenes stories. Bookmark it and check back from time to time.

Buy the Book

Start Here

If this is your first visit:

Read the story behind the poem.
Explore recommended AI resources.
Discover related books and articles.

Santa AI Winning Poem UK House of Lords

APPG AI 2017 Santa Artificial Intelligence Challenge Winning Entry

Behind the Scenes: How Santa AI 2.0 Was Written

Santa AI 2.0 wasn't born in front of a computer or with AI surrounded by Christmas cheer. In 2017 whilst recovering between major surgeries after an unexpected, but highly welcome invitation to the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence Christmas event. I won a contest, deal with my then unsupportive “partner” Mr. Negative, and learned how to gracefully wear a glamourous party dress, with surgical gauze perfectly hidden.

How to Write Winning Poetry Out of Spite!

AI Then vs AI Now

Summary plus related links

When I wrote the poem in 2017:

GPT didn’t exist.
Consumer AI looked completely different.
Deepfakes were primitive.
AI regulation was barely discussed.

References and Further Reading

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Santa AI Winning Poem UK House of Lords

Chris Kubecka — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:57:26 GMT

The inventor of Santa 2.0 as an AI algorithm

Before there was ChatGPT or similar, I wrote a winning poem for a UK House of Lords contest for the APPG-AI. Since then I turned it into a colouring book but wow! A lot has changed in the AI world from 2017 until 2026. Please enjoy a human written poem about AI. When we still thought Ai would give us humans back time so we could write poetry, not the other way around.

In late November 2017 I received a fun email challenge from the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence. A new but quite exciting group for me. Eager to participate, I decided to submit my solution in poem format.

APPG AI Santa AI challenge requirements

We think that Santa must be using AI:

He clearly has a machine learning technology that captures our data to find out whether we’ve been ‘naughty or nice’. For example, he would be able to assess which good causes we give to, where we’re spending our free time, and the social network we keep.
He knows what we want. Obvious Santa would be plugged in to Amazon and Ebay so he’d know which presents we’ve been eyeing up this year. And knowing our spending patterns he’d know what we can afford.
With data analytics he would be able to map out the best global logistical route so that he can get down all those chimneys. Not to mention that his elvish workshop would be running very efficiently all year round through the effective use of AI.
Through AI monitoring of energy markets he would also be able to source coal at the best price for those who haven’t behaved…

Drum roll, my poetic Santa AI submission

Santa’s proprietary algorithms are making his list
Think of all the AI technology he’ll enlist
Using social media, criminal databases, Watson and checking it twice
Scoring mechanisms and machine learning to discover who’s naughty or nice
Combined weather, flight, navigation, satellite and sensory data from the ground
Every chimney, cookie, glass of milk or sherry left out for St. Nick will be found
From palace to shantytown
Santa Claus is coming to town
Cluster analysis unraveling partners, close family, friends and perhaps an acquaintance
Ensuring appropriate gift suggestions helping to preserve holiday patience
Web records, cookies, likes, comments, wish list and search history
Solving the what do you get the person who has everything mystery
Leveraging financial records, suggesting only what they can afford
Besides, no one enjoys spending money on thoughtful gifts ignored
Do you give to charity? Doesn’t have to be huge
Matching spending habits and banking statements, Santa’s AI can detect a Scrooge
Geolocation, time, date correlation
Positive points for volunteering at a charitable location
Analyzing beyond Facebook, Twitter and Reddits
Are there any hurtful comments, no edits?
Perhaps liked, circulated or jeered
Sentiment analysis to identify bullies or others feared
By correlating Elf on the Shelf and school grade reports
Applying cognitive computing to data imports
Santa’s workshop minimizes manufacture overruns
So the head Elf can concentrate on annoying his wife, writing Christmas Cracker puns
Automated analysis on predictive purchases and supply chain
Makes the Elves’ high output efficiency rate easier to maintain
Come Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen
All self-driving, autonomous Santa sleigh systems
Rudolf with his Navigational Open Source Evolutionary Computation (N.O.S.E) so bright
The team with real time, global logistics tools and data connectors took flight
But beware to naughty and not so nice
Santa’s self-guided, automated coal delivery system is quite precise
Or worse yet, don’t forget
No one might receive any of your AI gift suggestions leading to Christmas morning regret

What was my prize?

Brilliant, thought provoking topics and conversations with people at the forefront of AI, some House of Lords wine and an awesome Macho Macho Man dancing Rudolf the Reindeer.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Buy the Book

Original on Medium

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Biography of Chris Kubecka The Hacktress

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:42:03 GMT

Chris Kubecka, also known as The Hacktress, is not your standard cybersecurity speaker. She is a former U.S. Air Force aviator, Space Command professional, ethical hacker, investigative journalist, and cyberwarfare researcher whose work spans nation-state hacking, critical infrastructure risk, AI, drones, digital surveillance, and authoritarian misuse of technology. From government briefings to hacker stages, Chris brings field-tested insight, technical depth, and dark humour to the realities of modern cyber conflict.

Images for fair use

Short Bio — 50–70 words

Chris Kubecka, also known as The Hacktress, is a cyberwarfare expert, ethical hacker, investigative journalist, and CEO of HypaSec NL. A former U.S. Air Force aviator and Space Command professional, she works at the intersection of cyber conflict, intelligence, critical infrastructure security, AI, and digital authoritarianism. Her research has been featured at international security conferences, government briefings, and global policy forums.

Medium Bio — 120–160 words

Chris Kubecka, known as The Hacktress, is an ethical hacker, cyberwarfare researcher, investigative journalist, and CEO of HypaSec NL. Her work focuses on cyber conflict, critical infrastructure security, digital surveillance, influence operations, post-quantum security, drones, and the weaponization of emerging technologies.

A former U.S. Air Force aviator and Space Command professional, Chris has advised governments, militaries, media organizations, civil society, and international groups on nation-state cyber activity, authoritarian surveillance, cyber espionage, and unconventional digital threats. She previously served as Distinguished Chair of the Middle East Institute’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Technology Program.

Her research and presentations have been featured at venues including the United Nations, EU Commission, NATO, DefCon, BlackHat, Chaos Communication Congress, DeepINTEL, and closed-door government briefings. Chris brings deep technical expertise, geopolitical insight, field experience, and sharp humour to the realities of modern cyber conflict.

Long Bio — 250–350 words

Chris Kubecka, also known as The Hacktress, is an ethical hacker, cyberwarfare researcher, investigative journalist, scientist, cyber intelligence analyst, and CEO of HypaSec NL. Her work sits at the intersection of cyber conflict, digital security, intelligence, critical infrastructure protection, artificial intelligence, post-quantum security, drones, maritime risk, and authoritarian surveillance.

Chris is a former U.S. Air Force aviator and Space Command professional, and previously served as Distinguished Chair of the Middle East Institute’s Cybersecurity and Emerging Technology Program. Over her career, she has advised governments, militaries, media organizations, civil society, and international groups on nation-state hacking, cyber espionage, influence operations, critical infrastructure threats, and the misuse of digital platforms by authoritarian regimes.

Her research has been presented or featured at major international venues including the United Nations, EU Commission, NATO, DefCon, BlackHat, Chaos Communication Congress, Bucharest Cybersecurity Conference, DeepINTEL, and closed-door government briefings. Her recent work includes evidence-based research into Venezuela’s digital surveillance dictatorship, examining how authoritarian systems use commercial technology platforms, infrastructure, metadata, AI, and operational mistakes to monitor and repress civilians.

Chris writes and speaks about real cyber operations rather than theory. Her work covers hybrid warfare, digital sabotage, emerging technology risks, intelligence failures, and the ways modern digital systems are abused across land, sea, air, space, and information domains. She is known for translating complex technical realities into clear, forceful analysis for technical, policy, media, and public audiences.

Her personal story began early: at age ten, she was arrested for breaking into U.S. government systems, including the Department of Justice and the FBI. That curiosity became a disciplined mission: to expose how digital power works, how it fails, and how it can be used ethically to protect people.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Images of Chris Kubecka - The Hacktress

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:26:14 GMT

Images for legitimate use with permission

Modified with Generative AI

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Dictatorships Don’t Fear AI. They Use It.

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:03:11 GMT

This article introduces The Digital Dictatorship Files, a companion series to How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. by Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress. The series covers AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, propaganda, drones, IoT devices, surveillance apps, metadata, digital sabotage, and the infrastructure behind modern authoritarian control.

A digital-age response to the CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual

Dictatorships don’t fear AI. Oh no my sweet summer child, they use it with greater precision everyday.

Manipulating narratives at high speed, profile opponents into quickly crafted dossiers, flood social platforms with surprise political candidates, chatbots twisting conversations, generate believable propaganda wavering between AI Slop and Hollywood blockbuster, slurping up biometrics, automating cybercrime with ease, and blurring the line between truth and democracy. All whilst leveraging top US and other technology.

Why TF did I write this book?

“Help?” that was the name of the Signal group chat name. It was late at night, but it was dire. Some Venezuelan friends and sources were rightly freaking out. A fraudulent election, peaceful protestors rounded up, detained or worse. Various internet shutdowns and communications censorship. The UN reported bodies in the street. Myself and others began reporting on Russian Drones along with Troops & PMC Wagner deployments to Caracas. Along with digital suppression tools at checkpoints.

Some of my helpful guidance is described in a press release, from the secretive DeepIntel conference, breaking its silence for the first time on my Keynote. The real story, of helping to rescue a kidnapping victim, documenting cartel networks, sanctions violations, the real detainee lists, and more. With OSINT, exploits, zero days, as the spokesperson for White Lotus.

Turning the research, field tested techniques, tools and experience into How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual.

Break the AI Dictatorship machinery, before it breaks you.
Subscribe now

Digital Sabotage for the AI Age

Nearly a hundred years ago the US government security services the OSS then the CIA, published a booklet. A simple sabotage booklet. Europe was occupied by the Nazis, some were forced to work in munitions factories or other companies feeding the war machine. The idea was if you were in occupied Europe, mess with the machinery or decision making to slow down or break production.

If a machine requires heavy oil, replace it with light oil. Poke filters with a pencil, or stuff trash in the corners of a fire proof room. Sounds cool, but you have to be physically there, at great physical risk to you and yours if caught.

What if instead you can change a few digital settings and provide plausible deniability? Open up systems remotely, exposing cartel and dictatorship relationships? How about using AI to rapidly counter misinformation, propaganda, or craft zero days to exploit a dictator’s digital machinery?

Let me show you how!

Buy the Book

Fancy Credentials: EuroDIG, Cyberwarfare, AI, and Getting Fired by Letter

Back in 2024, I was contacted by the chairperson of the US Defence Science Board, they loved my hand-on, international, real world experience in cyberwarfare, and various forms of artificial intelligence. The former Secratary of Defence liked my CV, and I was offered a tentative role pending my supper secret squirrel security clearance.

Then everyone was fired, board paused, then restarted with different people. Fired under an presidential executive order, signed by the Secratary of War Pete Hegsteth.

Heck yeah! I printed out the letter that fired me, framed it, and hung it on my wall!

Then headed to EuroDIG 2025 in Strasbourg, participating in a session on AI’s impact on society and security. How AI impacts society and security: opportunities and vulnerabilities – WS 08 2025 The discussion covered AI governance, cybersecurity, deepfakes, prompt injection, social media manipulation, and the challenge of defending democratic systems in an age where threat actors move faster than regulation.

EuroDIG 2025 Workshop EuroDIG 2025 in Strasbourg: AI governance, cybersecurity, deepfakes, prompt injection, and democratic resilience.

We intended the workshop to be a warning label for the AI age. Sadly, I do not think the EU Palace was quite ready for the discussion.

Side note: Do NOT take DB German trains to Strasbourg, unless you enjoy a hellscape of non-functional public transport.

Retaliation

Wow, the Cuban Ambassador to The Netherlands…. I don’t think she likes me (jajajajajajajaja). First Venezuelan and Cuban media blamed North Macedonia for cyber attacking the official Venezuelan election website. Blaming “cyberwar” for delaying election results. Then they came for me…

After writing When a Government Smartphone App Kills, I got some new fans!

I have fans from around the world, some if them happen to be media in authoritarian regimes. Using my (not) patented OSINT process, I discovered my name and artwork used in official Cuban media without permission. Since their email system didn’t work, I sent a cease and desist letter to the Cuban Embassy of The Netherlands. The Ambassador said “oh no, we would never do that!” and the original Cuban article was pulled. Only for a new article to appear…

Cuba decided to call me out, by name, blaming me and calling me a “Cyber Fascist” no less. I need merch, I want t-shirts and stickers!

Now the book is a potential candidate for the Banned Book Museum in Tallinn, Estonia.

Buy the Banned Book

The Digital Dictatorship Files

So, since authoritarian media want to help market my books for free, thank you, comrades, very cool. I’m turning this into a proper series.

Curious which article you’d like first? Draft working titles:

Leave a comment

What Happens When a CIA Sabotage Manual Meets Artificial Intelligence?
Why I Had to Invent a Country to Explain a Real Dictatorship
How Dictatorships Accidentally Hack Themselves
Why The Streisand Effect Is a Dictator’s Worst Nightmare
AI Didn’t Invent Propaganda. It Made It Scalable.
Digital Resistance Needs Rules? How We Fight Back Without Becoming What We Fight
Election Security Is No Longer Just Ballot Boxes: The Polling Station Has an Attack Surface
How to Weaponize AI Against a Dictatorship or Oligarch
When The Internet of Things Became the Internet of Targets
Your Enemy Has AI Too: AI Is Not on Your Side. It Is on Whoever Uses It Best.
The Dictionary of Digital Dictatorship: AI, OSINT, Cyberwarfare: A Survival Glossary

You can read How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. full table of contents on my Research Gate.

Leave a comment

Buy the Banned Book

Subscribe now

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

The Digital Dictatorship Files

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:03:07 GMT

Dictatorships used to fear printing presses, radios, and people with pamphlets. Now they should probably worry about their own firewalls, DNS records, leaky apps, CCTV cameras, drones, metadata, phishing trails, cloud dashboards, and every badly secured IoT technology they connect to the internet.

Nostalgia, I remembered my childhood and playing with a classified copy of one of the old CIA sabotage manuals as a kid. Growing into how to turn AI into a lean, mean, authoritarian hacking machine. Field tested techniques, credential stuffing, AI-assisted social engineering, political memes, censorship blowback, surveillance apps, cartel logistics, military drones, smart cameras, sanctions games, Big Tech fingerprints, and Venezuela-shaped retaliation. The Digital Dictatorship Files opens the book chapter by chapter: Research, challenge, sabotage, propaganda, countermeasures, AI friends, IoT weaponry, suppressed journalism, and the ugly truth that modern dictatorships run on infrastructure. This series follows that infrastructure.

Working article series

0. Dictatorships Don’t Fear AI. They Use It.

Venezuela. Smartphone spies. Drones. OSINT. Zero-days. Weaponized AI. Cuban and other government/media retaliation. The dystopian cyberpunk reality many people hoped would stay fiction, now running on apps, metadata, biometrics, U.S. technology, AI, and a data centre near you.

Buy the Banned Book

1. What Happens When a CIA Sabotage Manual Meets Artificial Intelligence?

The origin story.

Why the old CIA/OSS sabotage manual needed a digital-age successor, why AI changed the threat landscape, and why polite AI commentary is not enough when dictatorships and technocrats are already using platforms, metadata, targeting systems, surveillance tooling, and narrative manipulation at machine speed.

2. Why I Had to Invent a Country to Explain a Real Dictatorship

The Arawakland chapter. How fictional framing can protect sources, reduce risk, and still tell the truth about digital repression, state violence, cartel-adjacent systems, and authoritarian technology. The dictatorship Is fictional, the tactics are not. Along with the challenge of how to write about digital repression without getting people killed.

3. How Dictatorships Accidentally Hack Themselves

Bad security is not just an IT problem. In authoritarian systems, misconfigured infrastructure, exposed data, weak controls, lazy logging, broken access management, and arrogant administrators become geopolitical liabilities. Making the regime itself the weakest link.

4. The Streisand Effect Is a Dictator’s Worst Cybersecurity Problem

Censorship does not erase information. It often gives it better distribution, with different types of AI and social media. This chapter looks at how attempts to suppress stories, block access, or bury evidence can accidentally amplify the very thing regimes want hidden. Leveraging generative AI, thousands of dissenting websites can be published, leaks can be amplified, with algorithms taking notice.

5. AI Didn’t Invent Propaganda. It Made It Scalable

The meme is not just a joke. The meme is payload, persuasion, identity, rage bait, and sometimes state-aligned psychological glitter thrown into the public bloodstream. Generative AI makes this faster, cheaper, more personalized, and more annoying for citizens and authoritarians.

6. Digital Resistance Needs Rules? How We Fight Back Without Becoming What We Fight

This is the ethics chapter. Because yes, digital resistance needs teeth. But it also needs boundaries. The point is not chaos. The point is documentation, disruption of harm, evidence preservation, and refusing to become the same monster wearing different IP address.

7. The Polling Station Has an Attack Surface: Election Security Is No Longer Just Ballot Boxes.

Election security is not only ballot boxes and observers anymore. It is cameras, networks, apps, dashboards, cloud systems, metadata, phone tracking, and the strange little devices everyone forgets are plugged in. Democracy has infrastructure. Infrastructure has logs, and those logs tell stories.

8. How to Weaponize AI Against a Dictatorship or Oligarch

AI can summarize documents, write emails, and help with research. It can also become an OSINT and hacking assistant from hell. This chapter looks at AI-assisted reconnaissance, social engineering, persona-building, and the uncomfortable fact that the chatbot is not the threat.

9. The Internet of Things Became the Internet of Targets: Drones, Cameras, VoIP, Vehicles, and Smart Devices

Drones. Cameras. Smart locks. Satellites. Wearables. Vehicles. VoIP. Border systems. Medical devices. Cargo ships. The dictatorship technology stack has sensors. And sensors leak. Remember, the S in IOT stands for security…

10. Your Enemy Has AI Too: AI Is Not on Your Side. It Is on Whoever Uses It Best.

AI is not loyal. It is not moral. It is not on “our side.” It belongs to whoever uses it best, fastest, and with the fewest illusions. That means defenders, journalists, investigators, and policymakers need to understand what happens when the other side gets the same tools. Perfect article for freaking out national defence and intel folks.

11. The Dictionary of Digital Dictatorship

A Survival Glossary for our weird new world: AI, OSINT, cyberwarfare, digital repression, prompt injection, metadata, attribution, surveillance infrastructure, and all the vocabulary people need before the regime uses it against them.

12. Case Study: Of Course AI is a Friend, for your Enemy….

Cyber warfare and AI-driven influence operations aren’t some distant, futuristic nightmare, they’re shaping our geopolitical reality right now. Just before one of my panels at the or the Bucharest Cybersecurity Conference. I stepped outside for a cheeky smoke. As luck would have it, I ran into the head of Moldova’s Cyber Directorate, The panel? "Is AI a Friend or Foe in Cybersecurity?" In-between a wee bit of chain smoking, Moldova gave me a great quote: It’s both. AI is a friend, for your enemy.

So much Moldovan election interference was recorded in 2024, wow, just… wow! It should serve as a warning for all countries, and create some digital boundaries and red lines.

Leave a comment

Buy the Banned Book

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Coffee Update: Digital Dictatorships, Iran, Data Breaches, and IRGC Payment Systems

Chris Kubecka — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:01:25 GMT

Grab coffee. This week’s update covers The Digital Dictatorship Files, AI weaponization, Venezuela, interviews from behind Iran’s firewall, an 800K+ data breach, and new research into IRGC-linked payment systems and Russia ties.

The Digital Dictatorship Files
I’m writing a new companion series to How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI: The Digital CIA/OSS Sabotage Manual. covering AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, drones, IoT, propaganda, and digital authoritarianism.
Dictatorships Don’t Fear AI. They Use It.
This article introduces The Digital Dictatorship Files and the book behind modern digital sabotage. It connects AI, OSINT, Venezuela, propaganda, drones, IoT, and the DeepINTEL press release connected to my keynote.
Behind the Persian Firewall of 2026
Interviews with people inside Iran are incoming. Thank you to the Mods at Reddit Persian and Jeff Man from Security Weekly.
The 800K+ Data Breach and the Flea Market Hard Drives
I’m investigating the reported 800K+ data breach involving hard drives found for sale at a flea market. Z-CERT has not responded.
IRGC Hidden Payment Systems and Russia Ties
Research is underway into Iranian government / IRGC-linked hidden payment systems and possible ties to Russia.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Reference Summary
This coffee update by Chris Kubecka covers current research and publication work, including The Digital Dictatorship Files, How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI, AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, cyberwarfare, drones, IoT, propaganda, DeepINTEL, interviews from behind Iran’s firewall, an 800K+ data breach involving flea market hard drives, Z-CERT outreach, IRGC-linked hidden payment systems, and Russia ties.

Key topics: Chris Kubecka, The Hacktress, Digital Dictatorship Files, How to Hack a Modern Dictatorship with AI, AI weaponization, OSINT, Venezuela, Iran, Persian firewall, cyberwarfare, drones, IoT, propaganda, DeepINTEL, 800K data breach, Z-CERT, IRGC payment systems, Russia.

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

When not investigating digital threats or drinking espresso, she writes, researches, presents keynotes and reports on the evolving realities of global cyber conflict.

Subscribe for cybersecurity analysis, critical infrastructure security insights, and digital threat intelligence.

Chris Kubecka

Quarterly Meet with Chris Kubecka

What Happens When a CIA Sabotage Manual Meets Artificial Intelligence?

Help?

Cyberwar & Naughty North Macedonia

Maduro Digital Dictator Tools

Espionage Nostalgia

Detainee Lists

Dictator Infrastructure on US Tech

Was Google Getting People Killed?

Simple Digital Sabotage AI Enabled

Preserving Lives

ZeroDay GPT

How I hacked Panama?

The Digital Dictatorship Files

📌 More about Chris Kubecka

Coffee Update: Maritime Hacking, Yes you CAN hack a boat! + Creative Writing

When Maps Lie: The Invisible Cyberwar Reshaping the World's Oceans

The Baltic: Where the Map Can’t Be Trusted

Vanishing Ships

The Galápagos Example

Dark Fleet Example

Espionage & Hacking on the High Seas

Rubin Central Design Bureau Example

Kasawari Gas Field Campaign

NPO Mars

GNV Fantastic

Blinding the Maritime Commons

TankerTracker Example

The Ocean Itself Becomes the Sensor

Underwater Lighthouses Example

Conclusion

Cyber Guerrilla Warfare Armenia and Azerbaijan

Why the 2021 Azerbaijani-Armenia Border Cyber Skirmishes were Ground-breaking

What Happened?

Patriotic Hackers

Nuclear Threats

Further References

Seychelles

February 24th, 2022

Sins washed away?

SUMY

February 24th, 2022

KHARKIV

February 24th, 2022

Kiev

Genetic Shadows The Hacktress's Chimera

Introduction: Chapter 1

Why Fiction?

Real World You Say?

Draft Description

Your input is kindly requested

Coffee Update: Lawyers, Book Companions, Iran, Data Breaches, and Creative Writing

How to Write Winning Poetry Out of Spite!

The Drone Wars: OSINT Field Guide to Russian Drone Footage & Verification

Start Here

Drones Then vs AI Drone Swarms Now

Behind the Scenes: How The Drone Wars was Written

References and Further Reading

Santa AI 2.0 Book Companion Page

Start Here

Santa AI Winning Poem UK House of Lords

Behind the Scenes: How Santa AI 2.0 Was Written

AI Then vs AI Now

References and Further Reading

Santa AI Winning Poem UK House of Lords

APPG AI Santa AI challenge requirements

Drum roll, my poetic Santa AI submission

What was my prize?

Biography of Chris Kubecka The Hacktress

Short Bio — 50–70 words

Medium Bio — 120–160 words

Long Bio — 250–350 words

Images of Chris Kubecka - The Hacktress

Dictatorships Don’t Fear AI. They Use It.

A digital-age response to the CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual

Why TF did I write this book?

Digital Sabotage for the AI Age

Fancy Credentials: EuroDIG, Cyberwarfare, AI, and Getting Fired by Letter

Retaliation

February 24^th, 2022

February 24^th, 2022

February 24^th, 2022