Hacktivists Say They Hacked Belarus Rail System To Stop Russian Military Buildup (arstechnica.com) 71
Hacktivists in Belarus said on Monday they had infected the network of the country's state-run railroad system with ransomware and would provide the decryption key only if Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko stopped aiding Russian troops ahead of a possible invasion of Ukraine. Ars Technica reports: Referring to the Belarus Railway, a group calling itself Cyber Partisans wrote on Telegram: "BelZhD, at the command of the terrorist Lukashenko, these days allows the occupying troops to enter our land. As part of the 'Peklo' cyber campaign, we encrypted the bulk of the servers, databases and workstations of the BelZhD in order to slow down and disrupt the operation of the road. The backups have been destroyed [...]." The group also announced the attack on Twitter.
A representative from the group said in a direct message that the Peklo cyber campaign targets specific entities and government-run companies with the goal of pressuring the Belarus government to release political prisoners and stop Russian troops from entering Belarus to use its ground for the attacks on Ukraine. "The government continues to suppress the free will of Belarusians, imprison innocent people, they continue to unlawfully keep... thousands of political prisoners," the representative wrote. "The major goal is to overthrow Lukashenko's regime, keep the sovereignty and build a democratic state with the rule of law, independent institutions and protection of human rights."
At the time this post went live, several services on the railway's website were unavailable. Online ticket purchases, for instance, weren't working [...]. The representative said that besides ticketing and scheduling being disrupted, the cyberattack also affected freight trains. According to reports, Russia has been sending military equipment and personnel by rail into Belarus, which shares a border with Ukraine. @belzhd_live, a group of Belarus Railway workers that tracks activity on the 5,512-km railway, said on Friday that in a week's time, more than 33 Russian military trains loaded with equipment and troops had arrived in Belarus for joint strategic exercises there. The worker group said at the time that it expected a total of 200 so-called echelons to arrive in the coming days.
A representative from the group said in a direct message that the Peklo cyber campaign targets specific entities and government-run companies with the goal of pressuring the Belarus government to release political prisoners and stop Russian troops from entering Belarus to use its ground for the attacks on Ukraine. "The government continues to suppress the free will of Belarusians, imprison innocent people, they continue to unlawfully keep... thousands of political prisoners," the representative wrote. "The major goal is to overthrow Lukashenko's regime, keep the sovereignty and build a democratic state with the rule of law, independent institutions and protection of human rights."
At the time this post went live, several services on the railway's website were unavailable. Online ticket purchases, for instance, weren't working [...]. The representative said that besides ticketing and scheduling being disrupted, the cyberattack also affected freight trains. According to reports, Russia has been sending military equipment and personnel by rail into Belarus, which shares a border with Ukraine. @belzhd_live, a group of Belarus Railway workers that tracks activity on the 5,512-km railway, said on Friday that in a week's time, more than 33 Russian military trains loaded with equipment and troops had arrived in Belarus for joint strategic exercises there. The worker group said at the time that it expected a total of 200 so-called echelons to arrive in the coming days.
Guts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding something to kill for is easy. Something to die for - that's not so simple.
Re: (Score:2)
When you hold the weak cards, launching a futile preemptive attack is idiocy. Sure it's only a cyberattack, but the only thing it does is give Belarus a better reason to advocate for and join a Russian invasion.
The goal of a Ukranian patriot would be to launch this sort of cyberattack as retaliation after Belarus helps a Russian invasion, so that it acts as a punishment to make them doubt they made the right decision rather than as an incitement to assure them that the Russians are right about the lawless U
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Finding something to kill for is easy. Something to die for - that's not so simple.
Finding something to die for is easy. Religion, Nationalism, any of the *isms really. They are all great at giving people something to die for. Just look at all those people willing to die for some cause or other just so they can die believing it will actually mean something in the grand scheme of things.
But finding something worth Living for? Not so easy.
You've been listening to the propaganda again. (Score:3)
Plenty to live for. Plenty to kill for. Nothing worth dying over (six million of my ancestors to the contrary).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
My experience is bullies are afraid of actual fighting and flinch at the first chance of actually getting hurt themselves. Then they leave you alone forever and go after weak targets.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The effect of this would be merely to annoy Putin and at best cause a delay, it will not stop an invasion.
At what point did Putin become a force of nature in which all his wishes and desires should be thought of as fait accompli?
He's just an average dictator, who's ultimately done a poor enough job running his country that he's in need of external conflicts and crises to distract the people back at home. His objective is a quick and easy win which can be touted as a show of his strength.
Against that, the more democratic West has well-known weakness in mounting a decisive or consolidated response. But that becom
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The effect of this would be merely to annoy Putin and at best cause a delay, it will not stop an invasion.
At what point did Putin become a force of nature in which all his wishes and desires should be thought of as fait accompli?
When the Republican party became his 5th column.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a coded message from QAnon to the top-secret Covfefe division.
Re: (Score:2)
America, particularly the Deep South, is all in favour of Putin. The longer they get to win back both houses and the presidency, the better their chances are of supplying the Russians. Agreements only matter when those doing the agreeing want roughly the same thing.
Causing Putin delays is the ONLY plan. If it can be called that. There certainly isn't anything better, and there won't be by the time November rolls around.
Things tend not to be binary. The opposite of a delayed deployment isn't a singular optio
Re: (Score:2)
America, particularly the Deep South, is all in favour of Putin.
We've hated and mistrusted Russia long before it became fashionable for the American left.
Re: (Score:2)
Not as long as right-wingers have any say in any government in the West, because they're adopting Putin's playbook... In order to even formulate an alternative to delay, the entire fifth column within Western politics has to be utterly removed.
In an exchange about al-Qaida during the debate, Obama attacked Romney for calling Russia “without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe” earlier this year.
"Gov. Romney, I'm glad you recognize al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida," Obama said. "You said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. Because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policy of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s."
https://www.salon.com/2012/10/... [salon.com]
Re:Annoy (Score:4, Interesting)
The effect of this would be merely to annoy Putin and at best cause a delay, it will not stop an invasion. In fact it might make things worse. Fools have no strategy.
Yes, but hundreds of little incidents like this would collectively constitute a major impediment. As for 'Fools have no strategy', Russia has managed to unify NATO, overcome NATO's reluctance to deploy troops in support of non allied countries in Europe, triggered a flood of lethal aid into Ukraine, caused NATO to seriously contemplate deploying massive forces to the eastern flank. Furthermore, when this latest crisis dissipates, get ready to see the Ukrainian military further strengthened and the Ukrainian air force and air defences overhauled from the ground up courtesy of NATO and that includes Ukrainian aircraft and crews showing up regularly and in numbers at Maple Flag. The only thing that will permanently end the simmering mess in the Ukraine is upgrading Ukrainian military power until the prospect of an invasion carries the risk of a serious defeat for Russia. Meanwhile every Russian land grab plays into the hands of the west by removing enough Kremlin stooge voting ethnic Russians from the Ukrainian electoral rolls to ensure pro-western forces in the Ukraine dominate elections. So if you have ever wondered why the Kremlin is sending special forces into the Ukraine to try and organise a coup, it's because they simply have no hope of getting their stooges into power through normal elections.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, NATO is still reluctant, and NATO's involvement in Eastern Europe was the pretext Putin needed to begin with. Supplying him with more pretexts probably won't help much. Pro-Western forces in Ukraine won't dominate the elections in Ukraine for the same reason that Pro-Western forces will lose out to the right-wing Trump/Putin supporters in America in November.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, NATO is still reluctant, and NATO's involvement in Eastern Europe was the pretext Putin needed to begin with. Supplying him with more pretexts probably won't help much. Pro-Western forces in Ukraine won't dominate the elections in Ukraine for the same reason that Pro-Western forces will lose out to the right-wing Trump/Putin supporters in America in November.
To hell with any fear of giving Putin 'more pretexts', no matter how hard you try Putin can turn anything into a grievance and use it as a pretext. Putin sees anything as weak unless it carries a bigger stick than he does. The time of appeasement has ended. It has to be made clear to him that if Ukraine is going to be a buffer state it may not join NATO but isn't going to be a Russian puppet where Putin gets to install his puppet dictators at will. The only way that Ukraine the buffer state will work is if
Good use of hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the very few times hacking is justified. Anything to slow or stop the moves of a dictator is a good thing.
In this case, it will give Ukraine more time to disperse all those NLAWS, Javelins, and Stingers across their forces. A welcoming gift for Vasily and his buddies. Who knows which one they'll receive.
Re: Good use of hacking (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Putin is not a nice man but... Eastern Ukraine is mostly Russian speaking and its mostly old soviet industry still heavily tied Russian business. Its not the least bit clear a majority of the people who live there would not rather be Russians! Though opinion has soured some since the Crimea. Of course Western Ukraine is tightly coupled to Europe. For economic reasons Kiev would never voluntarily give up the eastern industrial area. So what you have here is disperse majority with its concentration far away t
Re: (Score:2)
Countering Chinese aggression toward Taiwan has much much clearly national security interests.
Does it now? Europe is one of the biggest markets for US products and services on the planet. Any major shooting war in Europe, courtesy of Putin, will severely affect the US economy. The US has major national security and economic interests in there being no shooting war in Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
ah but there is effectively a 0% change of Russia expanding a shooting war into NATO territory. The market that matters to the US is Western Europe.
Meanwhile if China took control of Taiwan they would have such complete control of key supply chain, that we'd be a marionette puppet with China at the strings. Having a market to sell other than ag products into would be quite literally the least of our worries.
Re: (Score:2)
There's one problem. Well, two problems.
First, America. The Republicans will win in November, and the Republicans back Trump and Putin. There's a decent chance a Republican Congress would provide material support to Russia or to Ukrainians who favour a dictatorship. They will certainly curtail any support of a pro-democracy movement in Ukraine, just as they oppose democracy in America itself.
Second, you're assuming Ukraine hasn't been infiltrated at this point and that all of those weapons are in the hands
Re: (Score:2)
1) The Republicans have about a 55% chance of winning a majority of Congress or the Senate. Trump will NOT be in power, no matter what. Biden will still be in charge and has the power to continue to fight back.
2) The weapons is a good argument. There is the chance that bad actors will end up with them. But the 'no good guys or bad guys' is total bull shit. That is an argument you will lose. It is pushed by the bad guys, mainly by pointing out to the many circumstances where both sides are bad guys
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really want *anyone* using the national transportation system as a weapon?
When Russians do this on US soil, you may feel less certain.
I would rather hackers stayed out of warfare and politics entirely.
Too many good hackers turn out to be stupid people. Or sell out.
How's that false flag thing supposed to work? (Score:2)
I don't believe it was US Cyber Ops. I hope it was; it would mean this is just a foretaste of things to come if they don't act right. I don't know how much Russian and Belorussian infrastructure share, but I'll bet it's a lot. After all, Belorussia didn't leave th
Re:Smells like bollocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Russia against the dominant Western powers has been a story since at least the Napoleonic Wars. At this point, I'd say it's one of the constants of modern (19th century to now) geopolitics. We'll play nice with the Russians when we have a common enemy (Napoleon buddying up with Alexander I, Russia, Britain and France in 1914, Soviets and Western Allies in WWII), but in general the relationship has always been built on mutual distrust. I will criticize Clinton, Bush and Obama (the latter two in particular) for moving the walls eastward, but all things considered, can you blame countries like the Baltic states and Poland, and yes, even Ukraine, for wanting to get out from underneath the Kremlin's sphere of influence. Moscow has rarely been a kindly taskmaster.
But in general, I agree the turning of a number of old Warsaw Pact countries into NATO members, and the attempts under the Bush and Obama administrations to push right to the Russian frontier (Ukraine and Georgia in particular) were incredibly provocative and could only lead to one outcome; a pretext for Putin to seize regions like South Ossetia and Donbas, where there are significant Russian. minorities. And while enthusiasm is nonexistent in Germany in particular for some massive NATO buildup in Ukraine, for all the bluster from the White House and some other NATO partners, I cannot imagine Biden actually wanting to put US forces in a position where there's even the chance of an accidental shooting war between NATO and Russian troops, so we're at the postering stage. Still incredibly dangerous (this. kind of postering has caused wars before). Honestly, I think Biden is just hoping that even a major Russian buildup costs the Russian treasury so much money it tries to find a diplomatic way out of it. I don't know if it's a bet I'd take.
The logical end game here is for the West to push Ukraine to abide by the Minsk Protocol, basically making Donbas an autonomous region, and Ukraine becoming like Austria; a neutral nation. It's worked pretty well for Austria for nearly 80 years, and hasn't prevented Austria from joining the EU. But honestly, Ukraine has a lot of domestic work to do before anyone can reasonably contemplate it joining the EU, though it's possible that this current standoff may make that impossible in the short or medium term.
Re:Smells like bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
The logical end game here is for the West to push Ukraine to abide by the Minsk Protocol,
The logical end game is to get Russian troops off of Ukrainian soil and to abide by the Budapest Memorandum [wikipedia.org]. Failing that, to kill several thousand more [glasnostgone.org] Russian soldiers and their mercenary terrorists.
Re: (Score:2)
If Putin is so worried about the Baltic countries joining NATO, why did he take three decades to respond?
Re: (Score:2)
In Russia there's a general sentiment that NATO took advantage of Russia in the years following the collapse of the USSR. They view western involvement in the Balkans War and NATO enlargement as provocative actions taken at a time when Russia was politically and economically prostrate. I don't think Putin imagines he can ever get the Baltic states back, but he clearly wants to prevent any more NATO incursions into regions Russia has long viewed as there area of influence. The whispers of old Panslavism stil
Re: (Score:2)
In Russia there's a general sentiment that NATO took advantage of Russia in the years following the collapse of the USSR. They view western involvement in the Balkans War and NATO enlargement as provocative actions taken at a time when Russia was politically and economically prostrate. I don't think Putin imagines he can ever get the Baltic states back, but he clearly wants to prevent any more NATO incursions into regions Russia has long viewed as there area of influence. The whispers of old Panslavism still rears its head.
Yah, it's funny how the Russians seem to think the entire ex-Warsaw Pact countries should be their slave vassals by divine right and how quickly some people in the west manage to jump up and argue that that's nothing more than Russia's right and privilege. Putin bitched Victor Orban and uses him to sabotage the EU but it's not as if the EU has rolled legions of tanks into Hungary and staged a forcible regime change now is it. We put up with the Hungarians' chosen reincarnation of God King Árpád ho
Re: (Score:2)
He has diplomatically opposed it from the outset. If you mean why hast he militarily opposed it before now? Two possibilities
1) he isn't the bellicose expansionist threat certain western powers want to distract their public with
2) he did not think he was in a strategic position to do so before now.
My vote is (2) but both can be true.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying the logical end game is to risk an all-out hot war across Europe, killing tens of millions of civilians and possibly resulting in terrorists "accidentally" obtaining nuclear weaponry from a mysteriously abandoned Russian depot. (The best way to defeat NATO's anti-missile systems is to use a car.)
Re:Smells like bollocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Your comment overall was really well thought out and I agree with the main points. In case anyone's interested I figured I'd try and give some context on this notion of 'neutrality' from the Nordics: here in Finland and Sweden, the policy of ongoing neutrality is being debated as tensions in Ukraine rise, and Russia has increased its maritime acitivity in the Baltic (even though this is likely just a ruse to draw attention away from the Ukrainian front). Neither of the 2 countries has ever been in NATO, although we both joined the EU in the 90s, and Finland maintains a fairly credible conscription-based (similar to Israel) defense for our size (around half a million trained men and women). Obviously Russia has a massive advantage looking at sheer total numbers, but it would take massively more men and resources to attempt anything against us than they used in Ukraine. And more importantly: In the case of any actual conflict in the Baltic region, Finland and Sweden are also nearly guaranteed to immediately integrate our collective defences; while Sweden has considerably less men (since they've moved away from conscription and maintain a smaller professional army, although some conscripts are still used) they have more planes and ships (especially submarines, which we lack), so the 2 systems complement each other nicely. Sweden recently announced they're about to increase their defence spending by 40 % in the next 5 years [theguardian.com] due to Russian activity and they also moved some additional troops into the island of Gotland [euronews.com] in reaction to the increased Russian navy-traffic. Also just some days ago, former defence ministers for both Finland and Sweden co-wrote an op-ed piece where they called for the countries to train and permanently place some troops into each other's territory. While mutual military excercises are commonplace, permanent troop placement would be a big step up in terms of developing the (unofficial) alliance.
Currently, slightly over half of Finns are opposed to NATO-membership (and last I checked, the same applies in Sweden), as it is deemed that bringing NATO troops directly to our border with Russia will increase tensions and the threat of conflict (and as both countries are likely more keen to develop European mutual defences instead of just relying on NATO). However both countries have a high level of co-operation with NATO already as peace-time partners and both countries have emphasized their right to join should we want to. In his speech on new year's day, president Sauli Niinistö said this openly on his new year's day speech: [ecfr.eu]
What I'm getting at here is that 'neutrality' currently works for us, the Swedes and say the Austrians because none of the countries are 'neutral' in any real sense of the word: sure we're not in NATO, but being in the EU means that an attack on any of us would be an attack on the whole Union (which also happens to be the largest trading partner of Russia). The Union has a common security and defence policy [wikipedia.org] and its own
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with increased defence spending is that it subtracts from the rest of the economy. It's not hard to force a country into recession or collapse by forcing it to divert more than it can practically afford from services, infrastructure, education, and other essentials. It's how America took out the USSR.
Re: (Score:2)
Now apply exactly this logic to Russia with her 100k soldiers practicing with heavy equipment for well over a month now. I can't believe, that Russian tax payers are still willing to fund this.
Re: (Score:1)
That'd be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that the Minsk protocol is unimplementable.
It demands that Ukraine pull it's forces back, and Russia also withdraws, but the problem is Russia is simply denying it's forces are there, so any demand for Ukrainian military withdrawal is simply a demand for Ukraine to stop fighting back so Russia can push even deeper into Ukrainian territory unopposed, because that's exactly what's happened every single time Ukraine has tried to fulfil it's end of the barg
Re: (Score:2)
It sure feels like the fed playbook. Amazing how all these political 'hacktivists' are always aligned with the interests of the united states government. Pure coincidence, I'm sure.
Not a coincidence. Nothing nefarious, either. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What?
One of the ultimatums Putin puts forward is that NATO should shrink to its 1997 size. Which excludes my country.
The aim is clear and Putin says it; these countries are our spheres of influence. You state that too.
As a Bulgarian I am telling you directly to go to hell and never go back. The Bulgarian people joined NATO specifically to get away from the "sphere of influence" that nobody asked us to be in! Thinking like yours left eastern Europe in the hands of a murderous dictators for decades. The Russi
No better .. (Score:2)
Hacks from one side or the other do pretty nasty things .. while a response to the other's sides acts is warranted , fact is that what we accuse of Russia of doing .. we do. One side ain't better than the other.
Re: (Score:2)
One side ain't better than the other.
Truly, activists who peacefully delay the army of an authoritarian regime on its way to invade a democratic neighbor are no better than the invaders themselves. gtfowts
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid attack, does nothing (Score:3)
1) the rail website, at least in English, is up and you can buy tickets. So good job, replaced in a few hours.
2) Russia is stationing troops to up the ante and force the West to agree to it's terms. It's unlikely to invade in at least the next 1-2 weeks as the US has promised a response by Jan 30. Any damage this hack would cause would be fixed if they do mount an attack, and the Russians already have overwhelming force (~100,000 troops and armor and air support) in the theater.
3) At best, this slows down the forces moving from Siberia, but again it won't slow down an actual attack because the servers would be repaired and fixed before it goes up and the Serbian forces would be 2nd wave anyways.
4) I've never ridden Belarusian rail, but i imagine it's on the older side. Meaning the Russians don't need to buy tickets, they just commandeer the trains, run them on manual, and tell all other trains to get the hell out of the way.
5) meanwhile the new servers will be hardened and protected and watched so this won't happen again very easily.
This is an annoyance and doesn't change the WHY Russian troops are there. it doesn't change anyone's strategic calculus, and it's both too late to stop the buildup and to early to stop the invasion. What a stupid waste of time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1) They hacked the systems that control the trains, the fact that you can buy tickets is worthless.
2) This is about slowing the deployment of additional Russian troops, which it HAS done.
3) Yes, that it what it is supposed to do. How much do you expect civilians to be able to do? But slowing supplies and troops is a HUGE effect. It is the difference between having 100k soldiers facing 50k, killing them with losses, then having to repeat it 3 times, and having 100k soliders face 200k and losing.
4) Any idi
Re: (Score:2)
The actual articles state that the only thing affected was teh services to issue electronic travel documents; meaning tickets. That's all they affected. The hackers themselves state that "automation and security systems were not affected to avoid an emergency situation". Ok, so the trains can still be managed and run because not all systems were affected. Therefore the Rus
Weak sauce (Score:1)
Trains can run without computers, computers just make it easy.
You want to bring their rail network down?
Create some simultaneous train derailments and disable or obfuscate their switching and signaling systems.
Or even better, remove some actual tracks or bring some bridge crossings out of commission.
Disabling their website is kids games.
Re: Weak sauce (Score:1)
Without telling me (Score:2)
In just a headline, tell me a critical state service is using Windows without telling me they're using Windows.