‘Tradecraft’ – In Focus

Series: Tradecraft

“Our opinion on the trade of espionage”.

Introduction

Disclaimer: The content in this article may not be suitable for all audiences the misuse or misapplication of this information can harm you or others around you. We do not recommend that you apply any of the topics we may discuss unless under the direct supervision of a trained professional. Always ensure you have the proper authorization and legal justification before you do anything related to the topics contained here. Please review our terms of service and promptly exit our site if you violate them, thank you.

The following content is the opinion of the CIG admins based on prior history, knowledge, experience, and/or research. It doesn’t necessarily reflect current intelligence agency practice, strategy, or capabilities nor does it mean that this content is accurate, truthful, or even useful. For all you know we are making this up, no sources are cited unless we are providing an analysis on a publically available document because of this. That said, we believe that the community can benefit from knowing a little bit about the ‘dark arts’.

What is ‘Tradecraft’

Tradecraft is a general collection of the tools, tactics, techniques, and knowledge that go into a “trade’s” “craft”. It’s often associated with spies and espionage, but the term is about as applicable by definition to any ‘trade’. For example, a carpenter’s tradecraft includes a hammer, nails, drills, and the knowledge of how to build, design, and perform their job. Under this definition, we can start to peel back the layers. Of course, for our purposes, we are talking about spy tradecraft (so if you were looking for a tutorial on how to build a shed you might want to look somewhere else).

What ‘Tradecraft’ Isn’t

It’s probably easier to start talking about tradecraft by describing what it isn’t. We don’t mean to disappoint, but it isn’t your gateway into the field. Those who are trained and those who know are different and there’s often, in a manner of speaking, a certain set of mannerisms that are involved with those who are trained. Sort of like learning how to ride a bike, you’ll stick out to anyone who knows. To those who know but aren’t a professional, they tend to.

So, if tradecraft isn’t your golden ticket then what else is it not? We don’t want to burst your bubble here but it’s rather unsafe to go around telling people you know about the ‘dark arts’ (Lord Voldemort might want to have some words with you). By common association, it means you might look like a spy to a ‘real’ spy. That can put you, your friends, and your family in an incredibly dangerous position. Tradecraft isn’t a cool badge you get to put on your resume or tell your family about. It’s a set of tools and skills that you use, often, to not die in a foreign country.

We also want to take a moment and state some considerations for this series. We will be focusing our attention on the skills, tools, etc that are useful to cybersecurity and law enforcement (we presume intelligence knows or perhaps will get a kick out of this). Our version of tradecraft attempts to cut out some relevant and not-so-relevant fat (such as lingo/slang/etc) that you don’t need as a professional. We aren’t trying to manufacture untrained copycats, we’re trying to provide ‘food-for-thought’.

What ‘Tradecraft’ Is

Now that we know what it isn’t we can start to know what it is. For simplicity, we break tradecraft into the following categories.

1. Tools: Physical and Digital Tools – Things you use
2. Skills: Knowing how to use the tools
3. Techniques: Making this more of an art than a science
4. Knowledge: Your personal library – What you know (or should)

Those four categories might make things look simple and easy, but we want to accentuate the fact that these are not digestible. We can’t know anything about it by breaking it down like this. Part of this series will be to unravel each of these categories further. Since there’s a lot of dense material here we won’t be breaking tradecraft down too much further. Granted, we will in the future. Instead, we will preview each category and give you something to digest until the next article comes out.

Tools

Tools are an essential part of the tradecraft discussion and although much of the field has shifted towards cyber operations and cyber tools (much of which would be legally ambiguous to share here as a whole). We have a GitHub setup and ready to go for the occasions that we discuss some of the more technical parts of the craft. We may analyze some leaked tools, develop our own, or see what the community decides. Additionally, we will focus on grassroots on-the-field smash-and-grab tradecraft. We will focus on the tools to bring or use (lockpicks, cameras, detectors, etc), how to use them, and most importantly the kinds of things you might not want to bring with you. As you’ll come to understand the digital age has made it easier than ever to track and detect you so a part of your toolbox will be anti-surveillance and countersurveillance tools.

Skills

Skills are a subset of your knowledge, however, it’s very specific and large enough to be its own thing. There’s some knowledge that comes with experience and then there’s some that you can build through guides and how-to’s. Our tradecraft skill series will be focused on learning how to use tools and techniques to build knowledge. We are calling these skills for our purposes. Tradecraft is very much an art as much as it is a science and needs to be developed over time.

Techniques

Techniques are the finesse to the skill. They’re often the difference between being “good” and being “bad” at something. Yes, you can do it, but can you do it well? Just like most people know how to throw a punch many do not know how to throw a punch with proper technique let alone without breaking their hand or wrist. Much like you can evade surveillance or detection, know the skill, and potentially practice it, if you don’t have good technique the effect and impact of the skill decreases dramatically. So, we will teach you some of the techniques you need and some of the things that will make you a little better at the craft.

Knowledge

Knowledge is the sum of the parts here, but most importantly it’s also the things that you do not know. You might be able to pick a lock, do it well and fast, and make it look like nothing happened, but what about that do you not know? What about it should you know? Say, the building you entered did have cameras, what do you do now? Knowledge includes experience, it includes the little exceptions and the little what-ifs. It includes the things that maybe you should know but didn’t consider. Part of it is learning how-to but part of it is learning not-to.

To avoid being any more cryptic, our knowledge sections will discuss a variety of topics from old papers, manuals, and research methods (for example cybernetics). It’ll discuss ways that you can know what you don’t know and how to develop what this series can’t or won’t give you. A large part of the craft is being “crafty” and that’s something that can only be quantified in knowledge. We intend to teach you about a variety of unrelated things and hopefully graduate you with a solid understanding of what you don’t know and potentially never will.

Some End Notes

Being a small blog we acknowledge that we aren’t going to gain exposure on this so we have a little bit of flexibility with our content and site management. We assume our readers are deeply interested in this topic so please email us with suggestions at [email protected] or leave a comment down below. Being small allows us to give more attention to our readers and their interests than blasting content out onto the net. We use a secure email vendor for communication so your email provider may put us into spam (please whitelist us). All of our messages are encrypted and have a signature and public key attached. Do not send anything inappropriate, harmful, illegal, or would otherwise violate our terms of service. Data security is not an excuse to be deviant.

If you think to yourself “That can’t be how it’s done” it’s likely that we’ve adapted some concepts or “how to’s” to fit what’s available on the consumer or law enforcement market(s). We want to be practical and legal; we don’t want the feds emailing us about “conspiracies” or “contracts for hire”; we will get a good laugh though so send them over to [email protected]; we’ll read them and post them to our [free] subscribers-only section as we receive them. Make sure you join us to gain access.