Ukraine Arrests VPN Operator Facilitating Access to Russian Internet (circleid.com) 53
penciling_in writes: Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illegal VPN service that allowed users to bypass Ukrainian sanctions and access the Russian internet (Runet). The VPN, active since Russia's invasion, enabled Russian sympathizers and people in occupied territories to reach blocked Russian government sites, social media, and news.
Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.
Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.
A long way since tapping undersea cables (Score:1)
We've certainly come a long way since the Zimmerman telegram [wikipedia.org] — and even the full-scale war takes "only" hundreds of thousands, rather than millions deaths...
That's progress, no?..
So, just like Putin would? (Score:1)
Ditto.
Just like EVERYONE would (Score:5, Insightful)
No country would knowingly allow enemy intelligence to maintain communication channels with spies and/or saboteurs behind the front-lines. Doubly so during an actual shooting war...
Re:Just like EVERYONE would (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no proof of that, just mere speculation.
Ukraine is in an existential war with a genocidal invader. They have every right to block the russian internet.
This isn't a war of choice for them, they are using every tool they can to limit the russians from gathering intelligence information. Of course the russians would use this for intelligence gathering.
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What do you think an existential war is?
In WW2 the UK had a unity government and suspended elections. Because it was an existential war.
Wars like Iraq and Afghanistan have given people brainworms for not being able to distinguish the difference between a war of choice and a war where your very existence is on the line.
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
"They have every right to do whatever they want in Ukraine, but I thought the basis of Americans waving around Ukrainian flags was that Ukraine was somehow a democracy that aspired to our values."
We would do the same thing, and oh yeah, we have unconditional warrantless citizen spying programs in this country right now. This is actually less fascist than what we do every day.
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We also imprisoned citizens during WWII based upon their ancestry. We also have had plenty of instances during peacetime where communciations with certain countries were forbidden, first amendment be damned. When national security is involved then pleading about one's civil rights becomes moot.
Has there ever been a case in history where a spy was exonerated in a court because the actions were considered free speech?
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No, it does not. What do you think, the beloved FDR [wikimedia.org] would do, had someone attempted to run a direct cable across Pacific from San Francisco to Tokyo, for example? A VPN, though much cheaper and easier to set up, is the same thing..
Heck, even a much milder act of setting up a rebroadcast of Axis Sally [wikipedia.org] and/or Tokyo Rose [history.com] over the US proper would've been shut down immediately — and rightly so.
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How do you think the Americans handled civilians collaborating with the English during the War of Independence? A little slap on the wrist, a wagging finger and a reprimand to please not do it again?
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Are US authorities preventing American citizens from accessing Chinese websites?
The US is not at war with China. The US has been in a conflict with Al-Quaeda since after 9/11. Websites that were within reach of US diplomatic influence were shut off, webmasters extradited and imprisoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] On their side, Ukraine (and the UN) have done what they could with their diplomacy and influence to extradite and imprison the wanted war criminals behind www.government.ru, but yet have not managed, so Ukraine have to resort to blocking.
I thought the basis of Americans waving around Ukrainian flags was that Ukraine was somehow a democracy that aspired to our values.
Ukraine aspires to EU values, ha
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Dear Putin, congratulations, your English is getting better!
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In hindsight, it doesn't seem like a good trade.
Of course it was good. Over 70,000 Russians are now dead [bbc.com]. And these are just the ones we know about. More than likely that figure is over 100,000 with all those who were vaporized, buried in mass graves [rferl.org], or cremated so the muscovite midget doesn't have to pay the families for their dead relative. So many Russians are dying every week that Russia is running out of cemeteries [newsweek.com] to bury them in.
But at least Zelenskyy has a yacht.
Kindly show us his yacht. Not som
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Russkies learned how to use VPN when The Government decided to block Telegram.
Blocking russkies, genocidal or not, from Ukrainian internets might require blocking more than just Russian Internet.
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What I do not believe is it will have any effect on Russian intelligence gathering. However much it is fashionable to think Russian military are complete morons, the war is still not over.
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What I do not believe is it will have any effect on Russian intelligence gathering
It'll have no effect?
What?
It'll have a deterrent effect, it will make it harder for services like this to exist without risking the attention of the security services.
It will make it harder for the russians to recruit, it'll make it harder for the russians to carry out information warfare operations, it'll increase the costs for the russians where before they might be able to contact someone directly they may have to risk an on the ground asset.
Of course it won't completely stop it, only an idiot would thin
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Ukraine is in an existential war ...
to a point. ukraine will likely continue to exist, just in a different, mutilated form. russia at no point has threatened ukraine as a whole, just its geopolitical alignement and a few border territories for specific reasons, and it doesn't even have the capacity to begin with. but yeah, the ukraine pre-2014 is history, and what's left is in a very dire situation so there is a non negligible risk of implosion. but there is as well a non negligible risk of the war escalating into a greater world war (they ar
Re: Just like EVERYONE would (Score:2)
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There's no proof of that, just mere speculation.
Of course there is. It is the nature of this conflict that there are tens of thousand of spies on both sides. The historical link between Ukraine and Russia, and the significant expression of the pro-Russian party in Ukraine just before the war, makes for a pool of several millions of pro-Russians right now in Ukraine. Many of them, but not all, have moved to live behind the Russian lines. Spies get arrested and it makes headlines.
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Any yet every country with a war taking place on their own soil has suspended civil rights in some way. The action of merely fighting back against invading soldiers is a violation of many countries' rules (you forgot to read them their rights first maybe). If you get to the point where actual martial law is in effect in places, then forget about any of your civil laws or rights because they've been put on hold.
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Just because a country is at war, it doesn't absolve a persons' right to free speech
Again, freedom of speech is no guarantee of freedom from consequences. Remember the whole, "Loose lips sink ships"? You were free to talk about what you knew of U.S. military facilities. You were also subject to arrest and execution.
Stop the bullshit about free speech. There is nothing absolute except death and taxes.
On classified information (Score:1)
Though you happen to be on my side for once, your particular argument is so dumb, it hurts.
No, you were not free to publicize classified information — it was provided to you on condition, you'll not talk about it. Those, who obtained it accidentally/socially, could legally speak of it, although those "loose lips" posters asked them not to.
Inte
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Not really. The Ukrainians just arrested the guy, in Russia he would have "fallen out" a window.
Re: So, just like Putin would? (Score:3, Insightful)
Russian Censorship done for the purpose of keeping their people ignorant = BAD!
Ukrainian Censorship done for the purpose of defending against Russia = GOOD!!!
Fixed that for you, tovarich.
Odd (Score:3)
I'd have expected them to track the users to find potential spies and collaborators.
You can always let people just trying to keep in touch with relatives off with a slap on the wrist, but finding out who is selling you out is valuable intelligence, especially if you can co-opt their communications to learn what the enemy is doing or to feed them false info.
But maybe they've been doing that and it was no longer a net benefit.
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I mean honestly, I think it's about "Stopping Russian propaganda" at this point more than stopping spies. And by that I mean, things are not looking good for Ukraine's prospects in this war, and as much as possible those at the top want to keep a lid on people being angry about that fact.
There's a lot of news sites (and specific journalists? I don't read Ukranian, google translate is dubious) on the list [ukurier.gov.ua], not so many social media sites and the like.
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You don't need to worry much about Russian and propaganda inside Ukraine; they know which cities are falling to Russian advances. Stopping Russian VPN links from Ukraine doesn't stop Russian propaganda internationally.
As far as how they're doing... It seems that when Russia is doing too well, suddenly Western restrictions are relaxed or more money flows. I assume the goal is to grind Russia down as much as possible using Ukrainian blood to lubricate the process.
At this point, Russia will not be permitted
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It started because Putin and his pet oligarchs had drained Russia to the point of collapse and needed a fresh wealth injection. Ukraine was right there, prosperous. The NATO stuff is just more domestic propaganda - like the "we are saving them from Nazis" crap - to justify the genocidal conquest attempt.
Putin's politically cornered. To fail in Ukraine is the end for him, he is too invested.
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Ukrainian ultra- nationalists are determined to eradicate Russian influences of all kinds. They are even banning Russian books, movies and art along with any historic monuments that are Russian or Soviet in origin. As I understand it, Ukraine banned all non-state media and opposition parties right at the start of the war.
I don't think they really believe in democracy unless it serves their interests. But this is a war. And as Churchill (paraphrasing) said "Truth in war is very precious. So precious it sho
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You don't have to be an ultra-nationalist to want to remove everything a foreign invader put in place as part of their cultural and ethnic replacement campaign, especially those things that make it difficult to become more integrated with countries that aren't trying to invade you and offer opportunities for economic prosperity.
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They're easy to shut down if you know about them.
China's war on VPNs is a bit of a cat and mouse game. New ones pop up, under the radar, they get popular, they get noticed, they get squashed.
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I think you're overestimating the use of signint to find VPNs and underestimating the use of humint to find them. "Oh hey, here's people talking about a new way to 'climb the wall', sign up for it, get the connection information and we'll ban it"
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Ironically, I think VPNs are way less targetable than distributed systems like tor.
Tor was destroyable because everyone using it had to agree on how to set things up. Everyone using it had to work with the same entry nodes, and routing protocols, and it became extremely easy to seek and destroy for China.
VPNs can pop up easily, mask themselves as normal HTTPS servers, and be replaced when one is caught-and-killed.
Their centralized nature also makes them decentralized in a way.
Re: Real Americans oppose this. Resist. (Score:1)
Everything is very simple in your privileged little imaginary world, isn't it?
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Re: Real Americans oppose this. Resist. (Score:2)
Since that is a Russian snowflake, yes I do. But there will just be another snowflake hidden inside of it...