Ukraine Busts Alleged Russian Bot Farm Using Thousands of SIM Cards (vice.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Ukraine's Security Service said it has shut down a troll farm in the city of Lviv. "The SSU cyber specialists uncovered and dismantled two bot farms in Lviv with a total capacity of 18,000 fake accounts," an SSU press release said. "According to preliminary information, organizers from Russia supervised the administrators of the bot farms." According to the press release, three people in two different residences were involved. Two gave over their apartments to the operation while a third took care of maintaining the accounts and equipment. "The bot farms worked mostly in social networks: distributed fakes to spread panic," the press release said. "The bots also published false information about bomb threats at various facilities."
The SSU said it seized two sets of GSM gateways, 3,000 SIM cards, laptops, and accounting records. GSM gateways are equipment that allows people to use SIM cards to connect to networks outside the default network they're meant to be connected to. They're popular tools for hackers and other cyber criminals, who can use them to manage several phone numbers, and to connect to Voice Over IP, or VoIP networks. The photos of the bust show dozens of GSM gateways stuffed with blurred SIM cards.
The SSU said it seized two sets of GSM gateways, 3,000 SIM cards, laptops, and accounting records. GSM gateways are equipment that allows people to use SIM cards to connect to networks outside the default network they're meant to be connected to. They're popular tools for hackers and other cyber criminals, who can use them to manage several phone numbers, and to connect to Voice Over IP, or VoIP networks. The photos of the bust show dozens of GSM gateways stuffed with blurred SIM cards.
Re: (Score:1)
"and avoid real genocides — even if they still engage in forced sterilization [apnews.com] and the non-murderous cultural [cadmus.eui.eu] genocide [nypost.com]."
How is this not real genocide? It simply takes longer. China has this on deck for the Uyghurs, has been practicing it on the Tibetans, and has it in store for the Taiwanese. The CCP is without moral principles and an evil force any way you slice it.
Re: (Score:2)
By definition [princeton.edu] — there is no systematic killing.
Do you know, what the "cide" part refers to in the word "genocide" [etymonline.com]?
Cultural genocide is to genocide, what meatless meatballs [nytimes.com] are to meatballs.
Re:Probably just some police action (Score:4, Insightful)
Lviv is geographically westernmost, but population-wise it's not a part of western Ukraine. It used to be a Polish (and mostly Jewish) city of Lvov, whose inhabitants were expelled to lands in turn stolen from people who got expelled from their homes to Germany. A good part of the new population was Ukrainian (as Stalin moved people around to disrupt local structures), but the rest were random Soviet citizens who happened to be at hand. Thus, it's easier to find someone with Russian ancestry there than in Kyiv.
And you say "for profit not political control" -- why not both? Few people would pay considerable costs from their own pocket, but if they can hurt their neighbours they hate and get paid for it, that's a tempting opportunity.
Re:Probably just some police action (Score:4, Insightful)
The other view of the matter is that it always was a Ukrainian city, with ethnically Ukrainian towns and cities extending far into Poland. Historically Poland was engaged in ethnic cleansing, so most are now "Polish". I am not pointing fingers, all parties in the past were involved in this atrocious practice. When Lviv was under Polish occupation there was a significant insurgency. These facts lend credence to the opposing opinion that Lviv was always Ukrainian and was only temporarily under Polish rule. My suspicion is the truth is more of a nuanced grey zone, as Lviv is more of a city near the border of the two historically great Slavic powers. That area of both Poland and Ukraine is also considered part of the Lem people, who are a nation without their own nation. Perhaps it is theirs? A concept of historical ownership naturally gets fuzzier the further back one goes in time. Considering the good relations between Poland and Ukraine today, it's probably not beneficial to raise the issue.
Re:Probably just some police action (Score:4, Interesting)
Lviv is geographically westernmost, but population-wise it's not a part of western Ukraine. It used to be a Polish (and mostly Jewish) city of Lvov, whose inhabitants were expelled to lands in turn stolen from people who got expelled from their homes to Germany.
"Stolen" from people who got expelled to Germany?! If the Germans stayed at home in 1939 they'd be perfectly free to also stay there after 1945. But that's not the history we had, was it?
Re: (Score:2)
Those people stayed home. It's not their fault that someone else, speaking either the same language or a language from the same language family participated in a war.
Soviet crimes here were especially appalling against Silesians, who did not even speak German but two of their own languages: germanic Schlasisch and slavic Slunska Godka; the former was far more prevalent before the war, after half a century of violent suppression it's basically extinct, while even the slavic language suffered during communis
Re: (Score:2)
Those people stayed home. It's not their fault that someone else, speaking either the same language or a language from the same language family participated in a war.
Yes, yes, of course all the war atrocities were committed by some mythical "Nazis", who are not related in any way to Germans. A race of aliens that landed in Berlin in 1939, came out of their UFOs, took control of Germany for 6 years, and then magically disappeared, leaving poor, innocent Germans who had absolutely nothing to do with them to suffer the consequences of their crimes.
Re: (Score:2)
But then, Polish concentration camps in 1945-56 somehow were not Polish but either German (after original builders) or communist (because those were a mythical race of aliens not related to Poles), right?
And I fail to see how innocent Silesians and Germans should suffer for crimes of a bunch of people who happened to share language with them. And, with all the recent usage of "national" for every govt crime in Poland, I really hope no one blames me for deeds of our current crop of bastards.
Re: (Score:2)
But then, Polish concentration camps in 1945-56 somehow were not Polish but either German (after original builders) or communist (because those were a mythical race of aliens not related to Poles), right?
Actually, unlike nazism on Germany, communism was imposed on Poland by an external military force, despite (hopeless and doomed) armed opposition from Poles, so yes. But more importantly: no, they were not concentration camps, they were internment camps for (suspected) war criminals. No, they did not operate gas chambers or any other methods of mass execution there. And trying to draw tortured parallels between those and the Holocaust by using the same terminology makes one a very special kind of a lying as
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe this is just your run of the mill Ukrainian cybercrime gang and they needed to put a russian slant on it so they picked whoever had some Russian/Eastern Ukranian background and made the story center on that.
It is certainly what our side does all of the time.
Re: (Score:1)
It's their way of telling everybody that Ukraine is open for business again and that it's safe to invest all of your money there.
Re: (Score:2)
"It is certainly what our side does all of the time." Evidence?
Re: (Score:2)
Evidence of systematically blaming Russia of grand conspiracies ? I dunno,you could start by taking every claim about Russia you take for granted.
"...hackers and other cyber criminals" (Score:2)
Somebody STILL doesn't get it.
I bet this was no the only use (Score:1)
Similar troll farms are operating in the West as well...
antivaxers, social unrest, brexit, trump, elections in various countries...
western democracies have real problem...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder, how many such bots are posting on Slashdot — while passing the occasional mod-points to human-handlers...
Re: (Score:2)
Probably more than zero, but much less than some people's wild imagination.
Or is it all bots, all the way down?
Phone verification or inefficient "VPN"? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems unnecessarily expensive and complicated to use actual SIMs. VPNs exist. Tor exists. Free emails that don't require phone verification exist (Yandex is just one).
Plus, authorities using a stingray or carriers using mapping tools can easily see local high densities of active SIMs where there isn't physical space for a crowd of 3k.
Does anyone know what purpose having a bazillion SIMs offers other than being able to VOIP war dial phone spam?
Comment (Score:2)