Hot spies apparently make lousy geeks
Frédéric Filloux and the great Jean-Louis Gassée are back again with another very interesting blog entry. Their Monday Note blog is rapidly becoming mandatory reading, which begs the question: if you're male and French, are you by definition a metrosexual?
I know this is yet another article about the hot Anna Chapman and her spying ways. But wouldn't you rather read about her than yet another diatribe about Steve Jobs' Pinky and the Brain-style plans to take over the world or some dry story about Congressional oversight? Sure. I knew you would.
See also: Video: Ultra-hot Russian superspy talks Internet entrepreneurship
See also: The Cold War just got hotter. Deep undercover with a sexy Russian spy.
Monsieur Filloux seems to have the same level of fascination we all do about the lovely Anna and her band of suburban commandos, even after most have them have been traded back to Russia for a bunch of wheezing old counter-spies, too sick to make it on the New York society party circuit.Filloux went ahead and dug up the actual Department of Justice Complaint vs. the Russian spies and set himself to reading the legal-speak version of a spy novel.
What he discovered about Anna and her Montclair mafia was almost disappointing. Apparently, being an ultra-hot superspy doesn't automatically provide you with mad geek hacking skilz.
Filloux describes practices that involved the use of unchanging MAC addresses, passwords left out in the open, easy-to-detect steganography, easy-to-intercept point-to-point WiFi links, and more.
With all the prurient, gossip-laden joy that we in the chattering class have been able to extract from this story, it's even okay that the Vice President couldn't get Dmitry Medvedev to take Rush Limbaugh in trade. After all, if we had to give the Russians ten spies including a hotty in trade for four western spies, we probably would have had to send over the Playmate of the Year to get them to take Rush, even for a week.
Oh, don't get your knickers all in a bunch! I like Rush. I don't know if I'd want him to visit my home before I locked up all the meds in the house, but he's certainly entertaining.