'Vulkan Files' Leak Reveals Putin's Global and Domestic Cyberwarfare Tactics (theguardian.com) 42
"The Gaurdian reports on a document leak from Russian cyber 'security' company Vulkan," writes Slashdot reader Falconhell. From the report: Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations. Its weapons are more advanced than those of Peter the Great's era: not pikes and halberds, but hacking and disinformation tools. The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. On the surface, it looks like a run-of-the-mill cybersecurity consultancy. However, a leak of secret files from the company has exposed its work bolstering Vladimir Putin's cyberwarfare capabilities.
Thousands of pages of secret documents reveal how Vulkan's engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, train operatives before attacks on national infrastructure, spread disinformation and control sections of the internet. The company's work is linked to the federal security service or FSB, the domestic spy agency; the operational and intelligence divisions of the armed forces, known as the GOU and GRU; and the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence organization.
One document links a Vulkan cyber-attack tool with the notorious hacking group Sandworm, which the US government said twice caused blackouts in Ukraine, disrupted the Olympics in South Korea and launched NotPetya, the most economically destructive malware in history. Codenamed Scan-V, it scours the internet for vulnerabilities, which are then stored for use in future cyber-attacks. Another system, known as Amezit, amounts to a blueprint for surveilling and controlling the internet in regions under Russia's command, and also enables disinformation via fake social media profiles. A third Vulkan-built system -- Crystal-2V -- is a training program for cyber-operatives in the methods required to bring down rail, air and sea infrastructure. A file explaining the software states: "The level of secrecy of processed and stored information in the product is 'Top Secret'."
Thousands of pages of secret documents reveal how Vulkan's engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, train operatives before attacks on national infrastructure, spread disinformation and control sections of the internet. The company's work is linked to the federal security service or FSB, the domestic spy agency; the operational and intelligence divisions of the armed forces, known as the GOU and GRU; and the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence organization.
One document links a Vulkan cyber-attack tool with the notorious hacking group Sandworm, which the US government said twice caused blackouts in Ukraine, disrupted the Olympics in South Korea and launched NotPetya, the most economically destructive malware in history. Codenamed Scan-V, it scours the internet for vulnerabilities, which are then stored for use in future cyber-attacks. Another system, known as Amezit, amounts to a blueprint for surveilling and controlling the internet in regions under Russia's command, and also enables disinformation via fake social media profiles. A third Vulkan-built system -- Crystal-2V -- is a training program for cyber-operatives in the methods required to bring down rail, air and sea infrastructure. A file explaining the software states: "The level of secrecy of processed and stored information in the product is 'Top Secret'."
Russia is so behind (Score:5, Funny)
disinformation tools. The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan
See, this is why Russia will lose this one: in America, disinformation is generated by machines now.
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disinformation tools. The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan
See, this is why Russia will lose this one: in America, disinformation is generated by machines now.
I was going to sarcastically say "What? You expect America to be jealous of this??"
Re: Russia is so behind (Score:2)
I am an American, and I care greatly about facts. I make up at least three before breakfast every day.
Intentional typo? (Score:2)
Guardian, please. Or Grauniad if you're a Private Eye reader. To a UK reader (or a citizen of the newspaper world), the irony of making a typo in the name of The Guardian is delicious.
Re: Intentional typo? (Score:2)
I wondered about that, and it appears to me that WikiLeaks (WikiLeaks.org) hasn't leaked anything for several years.
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Vote Trump in 2024!
The grand jury voted for him today.
One unanswered question (Score:3)
Is Ambassador Sarek implicated in any way?
Re:This is the same Graudian....? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the same criticisms could be levelled at other UK papers (obviously flipped depending on politics), so let's TL;DR this and say "the same paper whose politics probably don't align with Budenny's" and move on, after reading what the paper itself said about the slavery issue: https://www.theguardian.com/ne... [theguardian.com]. I look forward to a similar explanation of the business dealings of the Barclay brother(s, RIP) in the Telegraph, or Murdoch's tentacles in the Times/Sun, or any meaningful apology for the lies that led to Brexit and the daily dripfeed of lies that foster racism from the Mail and Express.
I'm a British citizen (Canadian resident) whose politics do more closely align with the Guardian's and I feel just as strongly that most of the "serious" UK press (the Daily Nazi, the other Daily Nazi and the broadsheets that either employed Johnson or wished that they did) are guilty of just as many crimes and sins of omission as the Guardian/Observer. But I will always allow investigative journalism from any of them - who else would do the investigating if not the flawed press?
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Bonus points for using the obviously false Nazi slur. Fun fact: they were socialists.
Morgan Freeman: "They were not, in fact, socialists."
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Nazism was not sufficiently coherent to be socialism, or anything else. There were whatever it was convenient to be in the moment. Early on they called themselves "socialists" because in the post WW1 milieu there was a widespread conviction that capitalism was doomed, but as soon as they were capable of coopting capitalism for their purposes they violently purged the ideological socialists from their ranks. But they weren't capitalists either; they just used capitalist sentiment the way they used sociali
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and it can arise anywhere on the political spectrum other than, perhaps, the center.
I'm gonna make a guess that you are not someone who follows Serbian politics.
Cause if you want your centrist authoritarianism... The Serbian Progressive Party [wikipedia.org] has it for ya.
Basically... all you need is populism, the willingness to lie constantly about everything - and a strong grip on power.
Politics and government is generally about as much about norms as it is about laws.
So... you flaunt and break the norms until you get enough power to dodge, flaunt, break and finally rewrite the laws.
That's your basic re
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Extreme conservatism or liberalism are equally out of step with the real world. They're both Utopian, the main difference is when they imagine Utopia lay -- in an imagined past or an imagined future. Far-right types are anti-intellectual; far-left are idea fetishists who develop ideological schemas so complex and flexible that they can explain any away any inconvenient outcome. In practice neither side is constrained by facts so it's more a difference of style than substance. So I don't see that you're an
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In practice neither side is constrained by facts so it's more a difference of style than substance. ...
Which presents more danger really depends on the cultural tendencies of a country, in particular which groups are most easily scapegoated.
Not really.
That "anti-intellectual" bit and tendency toward fetishization of outdated ideas and concepts makes the right the wrong.
As for the left... It's more about "ideaL fetishism" - starting with the notion that the ideal human is the average man plus education (i.e. morality and ability can just be uploaded into a fully formed human brain and all brains are the same) to the ideal societies.
The thing is, that is not necessarily bad - it's just not realistic.
The problem is... While actual far-left (anarc
Re: This is the same Graudian....? (Score:2)
Perhaps they just linked to an english site because the original Süddeutsche Zeitung article is in german https://www.sueddeutsche.de/pr... [sueddeutsche.de] and if there's a better one in english you could just link it?
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Show me on the doll where The Guardian hurt you.
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This is the same Guardian that arranged Snowden's flight to Russia, thus materially contributing to the efforts that it now reports with shock and horror?
You think Russia invaded Ukraine because Snowden was living there?
Walled (Score:5, Informative)
https://archive.is/4PZw2 [archive.is]
"Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons." (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I could remember where I heard this first, "Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons." The most effective weapons Russia has is the ability to deny energy to much of Europe and Asia, and to drop nuclear weapons if that doesn't work.
Cyberwarfare from Russia doesn't concern me much. Their inability to sell energy (be that coal, petroleum, natural gas, or uranium) means their ability to import electronics has been diminished. Russia has gobs of land to produce prodigious amounts of raw materials but they lack the ability to turn this into much of anything modern. Right now they are pulling 1950s era tanks out of storage to get refurbished and upgraded as best they can. These tanks will lack night vision, or if they do have night vision then it will likely be then old active type that need to illuminate the area with infrared. Those IR emitters will shine brightly to the newer passive systems on NATO tanks, looking like Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer on a foggy night. In other words the NATO tanks will see them long before Russian tanks can see anything. Without digital ballistic computers their effective range will be diminished. Then if they score a hit it's a 100 mm gun up against NATO tanks built to hold up against 120 or 150 mm shells. It's still going to sting if a Russian tank gets a hit in but the NATO tank and crew have a high probability to fight another day. These old Russian tanks may have owned the battlefield in the later years of World War Two but today they look like a light tank, or maybe self propelled artillery.
NATO is also sending Ukraine weapons like HIMARS, Patriot missiles, MANPADS, conventional artillery, rifles, machine guns, body armor, helicopters, and potentially jet fighter aircraft.
Let us not forget that Russia offered prisoners a pardon for their crimes if they complete a six month tour in the military. Many of them were lost in the fighting and the rest are coming up to the end of their contract. What happens then? Will the prisoners go home and live law abiding and productive lives? Take the skills they learned as soldiers to cause trouble in Russia? Maybe they go to Ukraine to live a life of crime? Perhaps they join the fight on the Ukrainian side?
Russia is likely to do fine in the war. They have a lot of land for food, water, shelter, clothing, medicines, manufacturing, and energy. Putin will not do well though. The government is not the nation. Russia will be fine in the long term. In the short term they have to deal with Putin. What is becoming more likely every day is there being fewer people willing to fight Putin's war, with more willing to choose a fight against Putin instead of Ukraine.
Re:"Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons." (Score:4, Interesting)
"What is becoming more likely every day is there being fewer people willing to fight Putin's war,"
The NYT has an op-ed. If that is to be believed, the Russian cannon fodder have no problems signing up. According to the article, it is combination of poverty (the Red Army promises to pay well during the time they are alive) and patriotism since they are bathed in the Great Puini's declaration that the war is somehow a recap of WWII. In some ways it is, but he's more like Hitler in thinking he's somehow a great general. The authors of the op-ed say it is unclear how well this "enthusiasm" will hold up over time. I don't think the op-ed can be entirely believed or the Great Putini wouldn't have had to order a conscription and be forced into using prisoners and putting them between the Ukrainians who want them dead and the rear guard troops who want them dead if they try to run backwards.
One bright spark at the Pentagon remarked, after the Red Army got their ass handed to them after the invasion, that the invasion was clearly designed by spooks in that none of the infrastructure necessary to support an invasion was considered.
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The less one has to lose the lower the stakes are when the gamble is life or death. While the person who chooses may technically be the same person cold in a trench somewhere those people are separated by a lot of time, distance, and effective propaganda.
Someone could level most of the world by dropping of ATMs that spit out free cash until unavoidably exploding, just dress them up like gambling machines and make the risk of death part of the fun!
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Long term might be right. Putin is very good at one rather important thing for Russia's stability (such as it is), and all the potential candidates for a successor that have been mooted - one of the oligarchs, Prigozhin, Gerasimov, or Shoigu - don't seem very likely to be as adept at it, namely balancing the oligarch, mafia, military, and intelligence factions off against one another. I've seen the situation rather neatly described as four chains pulling in different
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We're looking at the prospect of a civil war where at least one side has nuclear weapons.
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Let me guess, this is why we need more nuclear power.
In fact Germany was able to fairly quickly remove reliance on Russian gas. It wasn't ideal, but the Germans were not stupid enough to become absolutely dependent on it. Russia is now in a bad position where everyone is only taking its gas as long as it's cheap, and are ready to replace that supply at the drop of a hat.
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Let me guess, this is why we need more nuclear power.
It is why we will get more nuclear power.
France learned long ago that with their minimal sources of fossil fuels, hydro, and geothermal for energy that they needed to build a large fleet of nuclear power plants to keep the lights on. So they did. Since then wind and solar power has come down in price but that still leaves France with insufficient land area to rely on energy sources that are so dilute and intermittent.
Russia is building more nuclear power plants because even though they have considerable r
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Well bad news for France then, they are putting all their effort into building new renewables, while keeping their existing nukes going long enough for them to be replaced. If, as you seem to think, France cannot get by with a large amount of renewable energy replacing its old reactors, they are in for a bad time.
I have a feeling they will be fine though.
Getting a Star Trek vibe (Score:2)
And in it the Russians are the Romulans, with Putin the current top-dog Praetor.
Star Fleet has monitored their breakthrough of a variation of their cloaking technology, and anticipates it being used in a destabilizing fashion. Logic dictates a preemptive strike, but the obvious choice to lead the team for that suffered a last minute accident. An immediate choice must be made, to either go with the young but brilliant second in command, or to release from the brig the headstrong officer who breaks the rules
We don't need this stuff (Score:2)
Invalidate all the CIDR block assigned to Russia. (Score:2)