Ukraine's 'IT Army' Targets Belarus Railway Network, Russian GPS (reuters.com) 61
Ukraine's "IT army" of volunteer hackers announced a new set of targets on Thursday - including the Belarusian railway network and Russia's homegrown satellite-based navigation system, GLONASS. From a report: "We need to mobilise and intensify our efforts as much as possible," a post on the "IT army" Telegram channel said. The post listed the top priorities targeted by the group, including Belarus' railway, Russian telecom companies, and GLONASS, which is Russia's alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation network. Ukraine has called on its hacker underground to help protect critical infrastructure and conduct cyber spying missions against Russian troops, Reuters previously reported. Kyiv announced the formation of its "IT army" on Saturday. A hacking team focused on Belarus, which has been used as a key staging post for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, called the Belarusian Cyber Partisans told Reuters on Tuesday they had disabled railway traffic systems there and attacked the network because it had been used to transport Russian soldiers.
Someone forgot to read Bismark (Score:1)
What a load of ratshit.
Some actuals from observing the situation and talking to Russians who were on the receiving end: Ukraine (most likely with our assistance) did some very good job at poisoning their key DNS serves on Sunday and on Monday. That is about it. It is not fancy, but it allowed a lot of stuff - injecting content into websites including TASS and main news agencies, etc.
That
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That kind of thing is a stunt. What Russia really needs to do is degrade Ukraine's command and control, government communication, and cellular phone service, which they *should* have done on day 1 if they could.
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Re:Someone forgot to read Bismark (Score:5, Insightful)
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Recovery from initial problems is going to be costly in lives, equipment and coin, and buys more time for Ukraine's forces to go ground. They cannot hope to beat the Russians in an open field of combat, or even in the more complex theater of urban warfare, but if they change tactics to become an insurgent resistance force, providing we can find ways to keep them in bullets, they can make a long-term occupation a dreadfully deadly enterprise. Of course, unfortunately, the cost of all of this for Ukraine will
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With the Russian economy in a bad state there is a possibility that unpaid soldiers might refuse to fight eventually.
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Given the casualties the Russian army has been seeing, they may not be able to man the field long enough to declare victory.
Yep. Unless they depose Putin (Score:2)
You're right Russia absolutely will win the first weeks, the military-vs-military war. Unless the Russians decide they've had enough of Putin.
Over the centuries Russia has invaded and "conquered" Ukraine repeatedly, even banning the Ukrainian language - then the Ukrainians keep taking their country back. There area u in Russia, and some in the Kremlin, who think invading again is pretty pointless.
Also, there are soldiers who don't see any reason they should be blowing up and shooting their neighbors. That c
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We are coming to some kind of turning point. The most obvious outcome will be a pyrrhic Russian "victory" which is followed by a catastrophically costly occupation, accompanied by major setbacks in Russia's geopolitical goals. It'd be better for Russia to leave now with their tail between their legs, but of course they won't do that.
Ukraine can't keep Russia from entering Kyiv; but they sure can make Russia regret doing that. Russia is using air power to soften them up, but if they enter Kyiv underest
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> We are coming to some kind of turning point. The most obvious outcome will be a pyrrhic Russian "victory" which is followed by a catastrophically costly occupation,
Agreed, that seems likely.
The result of THAT will likely be that they need to lean more heavily on their friends. Their friends is China.
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The result of THAT will likely be that they need to lean more heavily on their friends. Their friends is China.
Which is not a happy scenario for either of them. I suspect that the Russia-China security partnership was always going to end up with Russia as the junior partner, which would have been a bitter pill for Russian pride to swallow. But now it won't be just a gradual realization that they're the second fiddle, it'll be abject dependence right from the get go.
As for China, if it wanted a dysfunctional friend that can't really do anything useful for them but costs them headaches because it can't be allowed
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If you, you know, plan ahead a little when conducting a major border incursion on a neighboring country.
You mean like supply [9gag.com] (translation in the comments) and logistics [yahoo.com] planning? Who needs that?
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That would require telling the conscripts the agenda, and PutiePie desperately wanted to avoid that.
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There are a good many open questions about the poor quality of Russian air support. Targeting communications infrastructure, particularly cell services, is pretty much the cause celebre of an air force, not to mention softening up resistance so ground forces can penetrate deeply and quickly. There are some real questions about Russia's actual air support and capacity.
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I assume the air force, considering themselves elite, are not behind Putin.
A coupe is probably imminent.
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I think Russia is fairly low on the tech ladder. Their soldiers are using cheap Chinese Baofeng ($25 at Amazon) radios with unencrypted analog voice communication. Easy to eavesdrop on and easy to disrupt.
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No idea what will be next, but it will be not in Ukrainian's favour (even with us openly helping them). A third world nation against a tier one power.
I don't think Russia qualifies as a tier one power in any category - economically, militarily, governing are all well below average. So why do you call Russia as a tier one? According to what metric?
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Sheer size and inertia.
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Ukraine ranks 55th out of 216 nations in nominal GDP and 40th in GDP by parity purchasing power.
Ukraine is also the seventh largest producer of wheat in the world, an active nuclear energy sector with four plants operating 15 reactors placing it 7th in the world for installed nuclear capacity, and an arms manufacturing sector that is 12th in the world, (down from 4th since the initial
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Most of their arms sector and all their nuclear capacity is Soviet legacy.
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Most of their arms sector and all their nuclear capacity is Soviet legacy.
And.... ?
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And that means they don't own the technology, the best they can do is to use it until it breaks.
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Access to technology / weapons is the least of their concerns these days.
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Unless it ends in a global thermonuclear war, there will be an afterwards.
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By definition they were second world. However given the last decade and shifts in alignments with the the second time the Russians invaded them I think they firmly qualify as a first world nation.
People just serially misuse the terms.
Economic sanctions (Score:2)
No idea what will be next, but it will be not in Ukrainian's favour (even with us openly helping them). A third world nation against a tier one power. That is something which even cyberspace cannot even up.
There's a fair bit of evidence that Russia's economy will collapse in the next couple of days. As in, the ruble will might very well be worth *zero* by this time next week(*).
It's also looking like the 40-mile Russian convoy is completely stalled(**), and unlikely to be restarted in time to conquer Ukraine before that happens.
I think end of business (in the US) on Monday will be instructive: at that time, it's likely that the Russian economy will be in complete ruins.
If Ukraine can hold out that long, they
Re:Economic sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you are confusing long-term consequences of economic sanctions with a short-term problem of Russian Army logistics and lack of planning for prolonged invasion. The only event that could stop the convoy is if Putin loses control of the military.
Re:Economic sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
The short term problems include conscripts surrendering and sabotaging vehicles. Plus allowing Ukrainians to steal vehicles (the government assures it's citizens that a stolen Russian vehicle will not be taxed).
In a sense, Putin HAS lost control of some of the military.
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Collapse of Russian markets does not necessary translates into collapse of Russian military or Putin's government. All that means is that Russian economy will go fully domestic. Soviets were bankrupt for at least 10 years before USSR disintegrated.
Probably not but the situation is not the same. USSR population was not integrated into the international system.
It's a small example, but the delays on subway stations because people couldn't use Apple-pay are an indication of that to me. In USSR days, you could not even officially buy US dollars; buying any foreign-made electronics required having good connections.
Re:Economic sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
To follow up on your excellent post, I just posted a link further up about that convoy north of Kyiv. It appears it's not moving both because it's low on fuel and other supplies as well the Ukrainian forces continuing to attack it. And the huge lack of morale in Russian forces.
As to the economic portion, Russia is screwed no matter what happens. Even if they come to some kind of ceasefire with Ukraine, the sanctions are not coming off any time soon. One person commented it could look like the collapse of the Soviet Union back in the 90s with the economy a basket case. As of now, rating agencies are calling Russia uninvestable, a downgrade from emerging.
I read somewhere it's costing Russia roughly $15 billion each day to prosecute the war. If that is to be believed, that means it's already cost them $105 billion. Whether those costs [9cache.com] include the replacement [9cache.com] of all that equipment [9cache.com] is unknown [9cache.com]. The sheer amount [imgur.com] of abandoned [imgur.com] equipment is staggering [imgur.com] considering the Russians aren't (yet) retreating.
However, based on the continuing flow of pictures and videos [9cache.com] from inside Ukraine [9cache.com] where farmers [9cache.com] are hauling away [twitter.com] Russian military hardware, it's hard to imagine all this destroyed and abandoned equipment is not included in the costs.
Somewhere early on I remember reading comments to the effect that if Russia hadn't succeeded in 15 days it would be out of money. I don't believe they'll collapse by Monday, but at the current rate it won't be much longer. Ukraine won't "win" in the strict sense, more like survive, but most likely what will happen is Russia will consolidate its gains in the South and occupy that portion similar to how they've occupied part of Georgia. That leaves Ukraine with the decision to either try to get that land back through military means, or accept it's out of their control (for now).
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"Even if they come to some kind of ceasefire with Ukraine, the sanctions are not coming off any time soon."
Well, I agree, but would add that Russia will likely suffer effects more devastating from sanctions than those of prolongation alone. Sanction hysteresis is a real thing; historically, they have not been removed when crossing backward across the same condition that provoked them. In particular, Russia will likely have to meet these conditions for the revocation of sanctions:
1. Pay repatriations to Ukraine. Russia will be paying for everything that Putin blows up in Ukraine and for everyone he murders.
2.
oops (Score:2)
repatriations --> reparations
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I read somewhere it's costing Russia roughly $15 billion each day to prosecute the war.
And 1000 deaths a day (or more). That's not a sustainable fight.
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I read somewhere it's costing Russia roughly $15 billion each day to prosecute the war.
And 1000 deaths a day (or more). That's not a sustainable fight.
The number being quoted, 9,000, is a combination of dead and captured, possibly wounded as well. For now, there is no way to verify, but certainly, based on what is being shown of destroyed Russian columns in the open and the remnants of Russian attacks on towns and cities, the Russian military is suffering severely. That number does not, I believe, take into account the number of desertions.
Also, came across this tidbit [twitter.com]. If true, that is even more devastating. It means Russia completely botched everything
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The number being quoted, 9,000, is a combination of dead and captured, possibly wounded as well.
Of course, Russia claims a number at ~10% of that.
The Ukraine sites work fine for me (Score:3)
> All Ukraine government and local government sites carried the same message
Where did you read THAT? They've been working fine for me. For example:
https://ssu.gov.ua/ [ssu.gov.ua]
https://www.mil.gov.ua/ [mil.gov.ua]
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Agree. https://www.kmu.gov.ua/ [kmu.gov.ua] for example is fine. Links or it didn't happen. The poster of that comment appears to be unable or unwilling to back what would seem to be an easily verifiable claim.
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It's like all those youtube vids of hackers doing good and hacking bad scam artists. While this may cause a brief disruption it won't stop what's going on.
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they woke the bear.
Any insinuation that Ukraine has done something, or could do anything, to inflame the situation is ratshit indeed.
Re: Someone forgot to read Bismark (Score:1)
Not applying the Minsk treaty for 8 years ?
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Unable to find any links to screencaps or refererences to any actually hacked UA site. https://www.kmu.gov.ua/ [kmu.gov.ua] for example is fine. Links or it didn't happen.
do they have an criminal liability? civil liabilit (Score:2)
do they have an criminal liability? civil liability?
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This is the modern equivalent of privateering. You are a criminal if and only if the other side gets its hands on you.
They've got a fair number of Polish volunteers. (Score:3)
There are a fair number of Polish people volunteering to aim their DDoS machines at Russian servers. I know a couple of them.
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Oh there's a definite element of fear which is being slightly soothed by "I can't do much, but I can do this, so I will do this", but they know full well that their activities are going to be very low priority on law enforcement's radar, and that means an opportunity to try things they haven't tried before. They'd be rather enjoying it if it wasn't for the reason the whole thing is happening.
And the funny part is... (Score:2)
We all know that this monkey knife fight between Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, with all of its previews of what cyberwarfare can do, will result in zero regulations that meaningfully harden our civilian infrastructure at the expense of greater costs to the owners.
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BUY GOLD NOA! YOU WANT GOLD! www.totallynotascam.com/buygold. You know you want gold.
That's what you sound like...
Satellites (Score:2)
It's probably beyond the abilities of anyone outside of a few national hacker teams, but if someone managed to hack Russian spy satellite controls and caused them to de-orbit, that would be impressive. Simply doing denial-of-service attacks is expected in situations like this, and barely qualifies as news (though more so on a technology site like this).
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I'm pretty sure the Russians already degraded GLONASS service (at least in the western part of Russia and beyond) to keep the conscripts from using their phones to find out where they were. I think that, in turn, made their cargo planes easy targets due to using easily predicted routes.
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The reports are that when the conscripts were sent to the staging areas, they confiscated their phones, swapped out their blanks for live ammunition, but never told them that it wasn't a training exercise. So they don't have phones to check their positions in the first place.
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Belt and suspenders. I know they didn't get every phone because videos have gotten out.
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