Ukrainians DDoS Russian Vodka Supply Chains (infosecurity-magazine.com) 60
Ukrainian hacktivists reportedly disrupted alcohol shipments in Russia after committing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against a critical online portal, according to local reports. From a report: Alcohol producers and distributors are required by law to register their shipments with the EGAIS portal, loosely translated as the "Unified State Automated Alcohol Accounting Information System." However, several entities in the sector told local news site Vedomosti this week that DDoS attacks by Ukrainian hacktivists downed the site on May 2 and 3.
The outage impacted not only vodka distribution but also wine companies and purveyors of other types of alcohol. Government sources quoted in the report claim that the site is running normally and any excessive waiting times are merely due to heavy demand. However, one company, Fort, had failed to upload about 70% of invoices to EGAIS due to the outage, according to the report. Its supplies of wine to retail chains and restaurants were apparently disrupted on May 4 due to the incident.
The outage impacted not only vodka distribution but also wine companies and purveyors of other types of alcohol. Government sources quoted in the report claim that the site is running normally and any excessive waiting times are merely due to heavy demand. However, one company, Fort, had failed to upload about 70% of invoices to EGAIS due to the outage, according to the report. Its supplies of wine to retail chains and restaurants were apparently disrupted on May 4 due to the incident.
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Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Whole country is about to get the DTs and start drinking cologne and antifreeze.
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They're doing them a favor. If you look at the history of vodka in Russia, it's like a slow-motion WMD.
If they wanted to destroy the Russian Army, Ukraine could salt the Donbas with thousands of cases of vodka, withdraw, then let nature take its course.
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^ This ^
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It could backfire spectacularly...
Russian soldiers might become more effective if they're sober.
Nuclear option (Score:5, Funny)
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This is the high quality content. Moderators, please +1.
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This is the exact opposite of chemical warfare -- instead of poisoning the populace, you remove poison from it. Sounds like a strange tactics, if you ask me.
You have probably never had to recover from an addiction? I quit smoking 10 years ago, and was a total wreck for about 6 months. Maybe that is the plan.
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... in some places.... (Score:2)
... this is considered a war crime
in related news.... Ireland has declared its support of Russian outrage at this latest development
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Southeast Asia needs them. They are having a shortage on french fries and other processed potato products in their restaurants.
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> ... this is considered a war crime
It must be against the Geneva convention, I'm sure.
Re:Ukrainians or pro-Ukraine crackers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I understand this hurts the people, rather than those who are in charge. However... Revolutions have started for less.
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Russia started a war of aggression.
Lies!
US/NATO started it with the 2014 coup.
2014 when Ukrainians protested an extremely corrupt and pro-Russian Ukrainian President who eventually ordered security forces to fire on the protesters?
And the resulting outrage caused the legislative branch to call for early elections and impeachment so this pro-Russian President... fled to Russia.
To me that looks like Ukrainians taking control of their own country (and the pro-Russian President being more interested in lining his own pockets than serving the country).
But I suppose it's more convenient fo
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One group is taking control helped with a few $B of US money handled by the "Fuck the EU" Neocon Victoria Nuland -- wife of another top level Neocon, Robert Kagan -- now the undersecretary of state in Biden's administration.
"Who is Victoria Nuland? A really bad idea as a key player in Biden's foreign policy team"
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/... [salon.com]
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One group is taking control helped with a few $B of US money handled by the "Fuck the EU" Neocon Victoria Nuland -- wife of another top level Neocon, Robert Kagan -- now the undersecretary of state in Biden's administration.
"Who is Victoria Nuland? A really bad idea as a key player in Biden's foreign policy team"
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/... [salon.com]
As a non-American who's generally critical of the US I think way too much is made of the idea "anti-US intellectuals". What I do sometimes see however is Americans who are so arrogant that they actually dehumanize and infantilize non-Americans. And that article is a perfect example.
For instance, consider this line: "the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraine's elected government — and America's responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe
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US/NATO just had to stir up a bunch a far right nationalists to start the ball rolling
Yeah.... because "we want to join the EU and NATO" is the rallying cry far right nationalists everywhere.
like they did with the mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the late 70s to draw the Soviets in there, and it worked. The Iron Curtain came down
You mean when the mujaheddin rebelled against their own government, the government asked the Soviets for assistance (which they granted), and the mujaheddin asked the US for assistance (which they granted).
Again, the primary players were the Afghans and Soviets. The Americans were basically just being opportunistic in taking a shot at the USSR by helping out the Afghans. But Americans weren't the primary
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Goodness, what a surprise. An anonymous coward posts Russki Mir death cult propaganda on Slashdot. The West has you Nazi vermin figured out after we saw the handcuffed dead bodies on the streets of Bucha and the basements where the fingernails were pulled out. I have seen many bad things in my long life but the lies coming out of the Russian administration about the things they are doing in Ukraine are the most disgusting I have heard in decades. It is not peoples politics that I hate, it is the lies they t
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Russia will pay for its war crimes. That will not absolve the US government of its moral responsibility for creating the conditions for the war.
And if you think the US government is telling the truth you are naive at best.
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The US government told the truth when they said the Putin was going to invade Ukraine. Subsequently the Putin did invade Ukraine.
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Yes Russia 'started the aggression' (remember this is all about freeing Ukraine from Nazi Rabid Zombies, it all start from a noble cause)
Yes they got a bit overly enthusiast in the fire of the action, executed civilians, bombed hospitals, raped young girls, those kind of things you do when the adrenaline is taking over, but they meant no real harm.
Now retaliating by depriving them from Vodka, WTF ? how seriously vicious has one to be to get to even consider such dras
This might lead to a nuclear war (Score:3)
Sleeping giant (Score:1)
Russia was willing and able (uh, Stalin was, anyway) to deploy 34 million and lose a whopping 10 million soldiers in WWII. Right now the total troop commitment in Ukraine is 200,000 .. Russia could walk over Ukraine in one day if it summoned the will to do it. If you do stupid provocative things like disrupt their vodka supply .. well good luck with that.
Re:Sleeping giant (Score:5, Funny)
A few million detoxing unarmed Russians staggering into Ukraine sounds like a land bridge in the making.
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Russia could walk over Ukraine in one day if it summoned the will to do it.
Modern Russia is not in the same category as Soviet Union. I don't think they could mobilize WW2 army, as logistics and military production is simply not there. Last but not least, mobilization on such scale would arm population, which could result in armed insurrection.
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Neither could the Soviets at the start of that war, with their communist economy led by an autocrat. The famine during that war was lethal to approximately one million Soviet citizens.
Re: Sleeping giant (Score:2)
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> It is the unstoppable force meeting an immovable rock problem.
Finally we would be able to see the solution!
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Yeah, well, Stalin had two things that are now lacking in Russia. First, safe borders because nobody anywhere that would threaten them, so he could throw his whole army against Germany. And while the Americans also supply the war here, it's not exactly going towards Russia.
Ok, the ordnance goes, but the delivery systems don't.
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The delivery systems aren't en route to Russia yet. That's the fear, the unifying force, that Putin is using to keep Russia together during this war. It's the same fear of the Nazis that Stalin used during World War II, which is partly why Nazis in Ukraine were an excuse for this war.
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Yeah, well, Stalin had two things that are now lacking in Russia. First, safe borders because nobody anywhere that would threaten them, so he could throw his whole army against Germany. And while the Americans also supply the war here, it's not exactly going towards Russia.
Ok, the ordnance goes, but the delivery systems don't.
Stalin was also initially on the defensive in an easily justifiable war.
Like most soldiers, the Russian soldiers generally come from the poorer areas of Russia (hence the novelty of flush toilets for some of them). If you want a big army then you need to start conscripting from the middle class as well, and that's the point at which the "Nazi" and "defend from NATO" narratives become much less convincing.
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Stalin was also initially on the defensive in an easily justifiable war.
Eh, what? He STARTED the war, by invading Poland together with his buddy Hitler in Sept 1939, and it was an aggression without any justification.
There's also considerable evidence that Operation Barbarossa was a desperate preemptive strike against Soviet betrayal.
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Stalin was also initially on the defensive in an easily justifiable war.
Eh, what? He STARTED the war, by invading Poland together with his buddy Hitler in Sept 1939, and it was an aggression without any justification.
The invasion of Poland (and Finland) was certainly unjustified, though it's quite possible Hitler would have invaded Poland either way. Regardless, when Hitler invaded the USSR it was pretty easy to justify why you were fighting to defend yourself. Especially when Nazis were even more brutal to the areas they occupied than the Soviets.
There's also considerable evidence that Operation Barbarossa was a desperate preemptive strike against Soviet betrayal.
Maybe Hitler was thinking that, but it seems unlikely that Stalin was planning a betrayal given how much Barbarossa caught him off guard.
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Only about 60% of those soldiers were Russian; the rest were from the other "republics" of the USSR. 20% were Ukrainian.
At the final census , Russia was 56% of the Soviet Union's population and Ukraine, about 20%. The break up from Ukraine separated Russia from a huge chunk of what had been the Soviet Union's human capital, including industrial and aerospace know-how.
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I had the same experience of googling it and discovering that Russia is only 3x the population of Ukraine. 3x isn't nothing but it's not necessarily overwhelming when you factor in the defender's advantage in occupations, plus Ukraine's unlimited supply of Nato weapons, guided by US Intelligence which clearly is having a field day de-pantsing Putin.
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During WW2, the USSR was also receiving a lot of western support and was fighting a defensive war against an enemy invader. Very much like Ukraine today.
Quite a lot of the Russian navy - including their aircraft carrier and the Moskva that was sunk recently, were built in soviet Ukraine.
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Not Russia, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine formed a significant part of the USSR too. Russia may have been the biggest part of the USSR, but the second biggest part is now hostile to Russia and most of the other parts are neutral.
From a quick search during WW2, 4.5 million Ukrainians served in the Soviet army, and 1.4 million of them were killed.
The USSR during WW2 was highly motivated to protect their homeland from a hostile foreign invader.
Ukraine may be smaller than Russia, but they are not insignificant.
Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union (Score:3)
Someone ancient enough for that UID has no excuse for such confusion including failure to compare and contrast demographics (and supply, Stalin survived thanks to Lend-Lease).
For those not familiar, the Russian Federation is in severe demographic decline with no end in sight. It cannot support much armed force expansion because Ukraine was the key Soviet military hrdwaresupplier. Russia doesn't have ten million humans fit to fight let alone 34 million and relies on rural ignorants to die while Muscovite and
Now we're talking! (Score:2)
This is how you win this war, haha!
Not sure I would interfere (Score:2)
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After all, the more time the Russian soldiers spend drunk the better.
Given the shambles the Russian supply chain is in, what makes you think the invading soldiers are getting any alcohol at all?
That probably explains their ineffectiveness, come to think of it. They're all in severe withdrawal...
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They'll steal it, or brew their own rotgut. I'd expect supply line issues with starches or anything sweet from their food supplies.
Na zdorov'ya (Score:2)
I'll drink to that.
Booze... finds a way. (Score:2)
That's an absolute (Hah!) guarantee. No matter what competing forces are at work, booze will flow as it needs to. If it takes Russian Vodka to fulfill the total needs of the market, then Russian Vodka will flow.
doing it the wrong way (Score:1)
This seems backwards (Score:2)
Wouldn't improving the vodka supply lines, especially to the front, reduce Russian productivity overall?
Well (Score:2)
Sneaky move by Ukraine (Score:2)
The Russian army is totally screwed. How do you run a mindless mob without vodka? Goodness knows what political repercussions would ensue when the Russian people sober up. Anybody got any hangover cures for an entire nation?
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