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The Military Security

Ukrainian Hackers Claim To Have Destroyed Major Russian Drone Maker's Entire Network (theregister.com) 129

Posted by BeauHD from the Operation:-Payload-Null dept.
Ukrainian hacker group BO Team, with help from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and possibly Ukraine's military, claims to have wiped out one of Russia's largest military drone manufacturers, destroying 47TB of production data and even disabling the doors in the facility. "Or, as described by the hacking collective (per Google translate), they 'deeply penetrated' the drone manufacturer 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization and denazification,'" reports The Register. From the report: BO Team (also known as Black Owl) announced the breach on its Telegram channel, and claimed to have carried out the operation alongside fellow hackers the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance "and one very well-known organization, the mention of which makes Vanya's bottle receivers explode," according to a Google translation of the Russian text. While the "very well-known organization" isn't named, BO Team included a link to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.

The military intelligence agency, working alongside the attackers, "carried out large-scale work to capture the entire network and server infrastructure of Gaskar Group, collect valuable information about the UAVs being produced and prospective, and then destroy the information and disable this infrastructure," the Telegram post continued. This reportedly included 47TB of technical information about the production of Russian drones, and BO Team claims to have destroyed all of the information on Gaskar's servers, including 10TB of backup files. "By the way, from the information we received, China is providing assistance in the production and training of specialists of Gaskar Group," the hackers added via Telegram. BO Team also posted what they claim to be confidential employee questionnaires [PDF].

On their own Telegram channel, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said they also stole "all the source code" before destroying everything. "The network went down so thoroughly that the doors in the building were blocked," the pro-Ukraine crew wrote, per Google translate. "To open them, the administration had to turn on the fire alarm. Most likely, the defense order is on the verge of failure, and thousands of drones will not get to the front in the near future."

Ukrainian Hackers Claim To Have Destroyed Major Russian Drone Maker's Entire Network More | Reply

Ukrainian Hackers Claim To Have Destroyed Major Russian Drone Maker's Entire Network

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  • Bottle receivers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CalgaryD ( 9235067 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @08:48PM (#65528170)
    Just for your information, "bottle receivers" here means butts. This references the tradition of russian police to sit people they do not like on empty bottles to make them uncomfortable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
      Intriguing titbit, I'll try and avoid getting arrested by Russian police anytime soon :)

    • Also cute to say "denazification" since that is one of the potpourri of justifications the Kremlin has used for the war.

      • It was a bizarely hypocritical claim from the Kremlin since their previouslty favorite mercenary group was literally run by a neo-nazi. And pretty much any military anywhere in the world is going to have members of pretty much any political affiliation you could imagine, so yeah, that was a stupid accusation.

        • Azov Brigade (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Friday July 18, 2025 @12:28AM (#65528436) Homepage Journal

          Yeah, let's give "removing Nazis" as the reason to invade a country that just elected a Jewish president, while having the Wagner group(named after Hitler's favorite composer) play a leading role in the operation.
          The Azov Brigade/Regiment, based in Mariupol, was indeed a far-right group, nationalist, that seemed to like Nazi symbology. To be fair, liking Nazi symbols isn't unusual, the Nazis themselves stole most of them because they looked cool.
          Seemed to substitute hating Russians for hating jews. To be fair, Russians actually pulled a lot of shit with Ukraine and the region (See Holodomor, and more)
          Anyways, Ukraine was presented with a dilemma with their politics being problematic but being a dedicated fighting force in a time when Ukraine needed just that. Reading between the lines they came up with a very interesting and useful solution for it.
          They integrated the Brigade, and promoted it to being a Regiment.
          By being made officially part of the government, Azov obviously got a lot more support - resources, manpower, and such. But by being part of the government, they had to accept government rules for things like recruitment. Even the wiki notes this: [wikipedia.org] observers noted a government strategy of integrating far-right militias into the regular military while attempting to limit ideological influence.
          And Ukraine promptly expanded it from a few hundred to a couple thousand. Which with the new rules on joining, meant that a lot of non-hardline right wingers joined up, diluting the hard-right nature of the Brigade way down in the new Regiment.
          As in, Ukraine through a "absorb and dilute" strategy had taken care of the problem already when Russia invaded.
          And the Azov proceeded to sell themselves incredibly dearly in fighting against the Russians, leading to memes similar to the Spartan 300. There aren't many of the hardliners left, they died fighting against their favored enemy. Fairly gloriously, I'd argue.
          Meanwhile, The Wagner group ended up revolting against Russia and Putin. Oops.

          • the Wagner group(named after Hitler's favorite composer)

            Wagner was a raging anti-jew. He wrote pages and pages about why he hated Jewish music (mostly because Mendelssohn was better than him).

        • Tit-for-tat... Mano-a-Shahed

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        That's the Godwin point for you.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      This references the tradition of russian police to sit people they do not like on empty bottles to make them uncomfortable.

      That is *so* much better than where I thought you were going. Apologies to Russian police.

  • Wait until they figure out how to hack drones that are enroute to destroy "bad guy A" and make them turn around and hit the places where they originally came from!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      They use so many western chips, if we knew what the programming was, and actually cared to, we could contaminate the smuggling routes with compromised chips to do exactly that.

      Heck, we could probably do it with rough guess work if we actually cared. For GPS receivers it's obvious how to manipulate them, but even in CPUs, if you see e.g.: two floating point registers with values that look reasonable for latitude/longitude coordinates in a non-occupied part of Ukraine, and another two registers that look reas

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Really, computer chips are the *hardest* thing we could compromise. It's way easier to e.g. compromise mechanical or electrical parts so that they fail under stress.

  • ... are belong to us

  • Uh oh (Score:4, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @10:50PM (#65528306)

    Sounds like we should expect news about yet another senior Russian official "committing suicide" soon... or accidentally falling out a window.

  • Calling it "denazification" makes no sense. The Russians are fiercely anti-Nazi. In fact one of their justifications for invading Ukraine was "denazification". Here, from NBC news: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/... [nbcnews.com] "Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't"

    • Re:Calling it "denazification" makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @11:01PM (#65528328)
      I think Russia started the Nazi talk and Ukraine is bouncing it back at them - because as you said it's the biggest insult they could hurl at each other. They are justly proud of the high price paid to defeat Hitler. But it also turns into propaganda.
      • The test as to who is a "NAZI" I think comes down to one thing: Who invaded who? Who is crossing the international border into another peoples Country? Pro-Russian people (MAGA's) insist that Ukraine invaded Russia somehow. I saw it with my own eyes, on the news, at the time, Russia most certainly invaded Ukraine. The gaslighting and lies on this is overwhelming.
        • Nazism != Invading another country.
          • It seems like a really simple test. If Putin was a Man, he would lift up Russian lives with the vast natural resources that Russia already has at his disposal, instead he is feeding his people hate, and lusting after what other Nations have.
          • Think about it, if Ukraine has independence, they would use _Ukrainian_ language, if russia absorbs Ukriane, they will be using russian language, exactly the way it was before Ukraine got independence in 199x. So... who is the "Nazi" here? Who hates who's nationality?
            Did Ukraine invade russia to stop russians from using their language?
            • Did Ukraine invade Russia??? I see no evidence of that.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by drnb ( 2434720 )

                Did Ukraine invade Russia??? I see no evidence of that.

                Putin believes that Ukraine is "Russian" territory, that it always has been. So modern Ukrainians that want to integrate with the west, rather than Moscow, are in Putin's eyes, rebels trying to secede from "Russia", hostile forces on "Russian" soil, "invaders" of a sort.

                Recently a part of the Soviet empire, a part of the Czarist empire before that, etc. He's just trying to reestablish the empire that is the "natural" way of things in his mind.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          ... Pro-Russian people (MAGA's) ....

          Wow, you are such an idiot. That is about as accurate as Putin's nazi claims. Could he find a Neo nazi in Ukraine? Sure. Could we find a pro-Riussian in the US? Sure. Both are extremely rare outliers. Even among MAGA. Believing otherwise is just propaganda. Some people like such propaganda, it's so much easier to demonize and dismiss a political opponent than to come up with rational arguments against.

          • The problem is the man of MAGA himself has made so many pro-putin and pro-russia statements. People try to shame MAGA into remembering their Republican predecessors, to get them to support Ukraine, to stop trusting Putin over US intelligence, to stop brushing off Putin's murder of reporters, etc. etc.

            It does seem like Trump is turning a corner now. But many lives have already been lost and it's confusing and threatening that Trump has acted this way.

        • Pro-Russian people (MAGA's) insist that Ukraine invaded Russia somehow.

          MAGAs started opposing Ukraine because they wanted Biden to look bad. It's definitely a case of motivated reasoning (to the extent that there is any logic at all).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        The USSR fought the Nazis to the last Ukrainian.

        The highest price in that war was paid by Ukrainians and Belarusians.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        I think Russia started the Nazi talk and Ukraine is bouncing it back at them - because as you said it's the biggest insult they could hurl at each other. They are justly proud of the high price paid to defeat Hitler. But it also turns into propaganda.

        It's also straight from the far-right playbook going back beyond when Hitler was a lad.

        Poisoning the well. Accuse the other side of doing what you're doing (or being what you're being) so that when you do it, it's less of a shock and you can claim it's just in self defence. It also tends to take the sting out of the other side pointing out that you're actually the Nazi like ones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Moryath ( 553296 )

      In fact one of their justifications for invading Ukraine was "denazification".

      So you're a Putin-Dicksucking little bitch who's too fucking stupid to understand that Putin the Nazi Shitbag's "denazification" claims were a smokescreen. Fucking kill yourself you disgusting Putin-Dicksucking Genocidal Little Nazi Bitch.

    • Hitler wasn't exactly a fan of any Slavic people so pretty much all of Eastern Europe is fiercely anti-Nazi if that's what we are calling Russia still, including Ukraine who lost like 8 million themselves in WWII.

        • Every nation has it's problematic fascists sometimes. Ukrainians get Bandera and the USA get Stephen Miller, what a world eh?

            Turns out too much nationalism is a bad thing usually.

      • Time to open some ww2 history books on, say, Croatia and Ukraine...

        • Time to open some ww2 history books on, say, Croatia and Ukraine...

          How about reading up on the secret portion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact [wikipedia.org] where Stalin and Hitler agreed to split up Eastern Europe into Nazi and Communist spheres of influence. The jointly invaded Poland, starting WW2. Germany first, followed soon by Russia pretending to come to Poland's defense. Oddly they only killed Poles, not Germans, until much later when Germany violated the Pact first and invaded Russia.

      • I live in Eastern Europe and all the old people I talked with and lived in that times, they agree Russian occupation was much worse than Nazi occupation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          I guess it depends on who you were. If you were Jewish, the Nazi occupation was definitely worse. Stalin was more of an equal-opportunity atrocity-committer.

          It is kind of darkly funny how similarly Hitler and Stalin thought, though. For example, Hitler cited positively the Holodomor and the collectivization of Ukraine, and planned to use the Holodomor as a role model for resource extraction during scarcity, and to maintain the collectivization of Ukrainians set in place by the Soviets. He likewise viewed Uk

      • Hitler wasn't exactly a fan of any Slavic people so pretty much all of Eastern Europe is fiercely anti-Nazi if that's what we are calling Russia still, including Ukraine who lost like 8 million themselves in WWII.

        And before WW2 the "Russians" (Soviets actually but they were basically Russian led) killed anywhere between 4 and 10 million Ukrainians depending on the estimates used. Either way, there was quite a bit of hatred towards the Russians/Soviets over this. Later Nazi atrocities put this hatred on hold, and Ukraine became a significant part of the WW2 Soviet force, but Ukraine never forgot the Russian/Soviet mass murders.

    • Re:Calling it "denazification" makes no sense (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Friday July 18, 2025 @12:12AM (#65528416)
      Yes, the Russians are anti-Nazi which is why calling them is that is such an insult. Of course, the fact that Putin is a classic fascist makes it hit even harder, since it is almost true.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Stalin was perfectly happy to ally with Hitler for the conquest of eastern Europe. The USSR only turned "anti-Nazi", not for ideological reasons, but because the Nazis betrayed them. Today in Russia, "Nazi" is used as a general insult for any external perceived enemy of the state, with any actual connection to Nazism not being at all required. Yet actual support for the actual principles of fascism within Russia is well tolerated. For example, Putin's good friend Dmitri Rogozin, now governor of occupied

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Yes, the Russians are anti-Nazi which is why calling them is that is such an insult. Of course, the fact that Putin is a classic fascist makes it hit even harder, since it is almost true.

        It's more recent history. They have an even bigger dislike of the Nazis (I mean the actual ones, they seem to be fine with the concepts and tenets of fascism) because of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) is such a huge and well respected symbol in living Russian Memory, even more so than the earlier revolutions against the Imperialists. As the enemy of the Great Patriotic War were the Nazis, Nazi is a particularly bad insult. Putin calling Ukraine "Nazis" is more for the benefit of controlling Russia than infl

    • This make Ukraine different from America how? leon saluted hitler recently. Don't read too much into the history of the robber barons of the 20's and 30's [thehistoryreader.com] You might not like what you find out.
      • America has not invaded Greenland yet. Although, with the military buildup, I'm thinking that may be the plan.

    • "saying police broke the law makes no sense. They enforce the law, so they can't possibly have ever broken a law".

      Are you sure you don't want to maybe think about this idea a bit...?

    • Maybe Russians aren't Nazi, but they definitely are fascist. And "denazification" wasn't a justification for invading Ukraine, it was a pretense.

      • It was a pretense. As this goes on longer and longer, the more I think that Russian Citizens are suckers. They are either stupid or scared .. of Putin. They need to rise up and say they have enough, they don't need Ukraine.

    • Calling it "denazification" makes no sense. The Russians are fiercely anti-Nazi.

      So they say, but how do they (Putin, Stalin) act?

      WW2 started with Stalin partnering with Hitler to invade Poland. They had a secret treaty to split up Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe into Nazi and Communist zones of influence. Hitler happened to break this secret treaty and invade the other first.

      In fact one of their justifications for invading Ukraine was "denazification".

      Have you considered that they might have lied? Like Hitler and Stalin at the beginning of WW2?

    • Calling it "denazification" makes no sense. The Russians are fiercely anti-Nazi.

      Is that why the former deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin is on video doing Hitler salutes?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Who can forget the fine people of Rusich and Wagner?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Or my personal favorite a lynch mob of hundreds in a Dagestan airport looking for Jews to kill.
      https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

      "Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't"

      In the latest round of parliamentary elections in 2019 the far right won a whopping 2% of the vote. I think they even managed win a single seat.

      Meanwhile here in

  • Cyber warfare (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @11:04PM (#65528332)
    So far I think Cyber Warfare has not been as important as many thought it would be. And these two countries are both good at it. Signal jamming is widespread, but "hacking" per se doesn't seem to have had a huge impact. I would guess this factory will be making drones within a couple weeks, or a small number even sooner for symbolic effect.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      if the destruction is what they claim to be, that is. so they pwn a drone factory, acces 47tb of data, including sensible communications, steal "all the source" and all they show is a couple of totally uninteresting job application forms from 2023 that don't even have the company name on them? mkay ...

      i guess cyberwar operations are indeed at play, but both sides will want to be very discreet and we don't get to know about them. this is probably just a group bragging for lulz, or propaganda, or both.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The West should be providing them with help here. Instead of just trashing all the computers at the factory, they could have introduced subtle errors into the drone's flight control systems, damaged the batteries, made them randomly explode when turned on. More like what was done to Iran's centrifuges.

    • It's harder to engage in real cyberwarfare when each country's infrastructure wouldn't look that out of place in the previous world war. I suspect the discussion would be very different if it were e.g. America / Europe engaged. The scope to royally screw things up is much larger there. You think Putin launching some missiles at a few substations is bad, imagine the damage you could do with remote access to a high tech centrally operated electricity grid.

  • Just how secure are similar facilities in the US or EU? It could be the Russians doing it to someone else next.
    • I think that if American Manufacturers were smart, they would have two networks in every Company. One for the people in marketing, and another for Manufacturing. The computers in Manufacturing can certainly have their own networking, but none of those computers should be on the internet. The marketing people can be connected to the internet. Let the Engineers run the computers in Manufacturing, and let the IT people run the computers for Marketing, HR, and whatever other crap people want the interne
      • Nice idea, but the company I worked for had all its manufacturing controls visible on-line. The plant engineers could, therefore, monitor the operation remotely and senior people at HQ could see what was happening. Very useful when something goes wrong in the middle of the night. Even if they were not supposed to have the ability to actually control anything, a bad actor could probably use this system to penetrate the operation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        I have worked on airgapped systems, this is annoying, and generally only done in a classified environment.

        Almost all desktop OSes, development environments, etc... expect an internet connection nowadays. For updates, package management, etc... It includes security software. Some systems work well with local mirrors, others, not so much. You can't even do things as simple as an web search. And no remote work, obviously.
        Usually, on the side, you have a second computer that is connected to the internet and use

  • Would secret sabotage be better? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With something so noticeable presumably they could restore from backups.

    Imagine if instead of doing something so noticeable, you secretly modified the drone firmware etc so that they do stuff like malfunction or blow up on launch if it's X days after the manufacture date or after a particular date, whichever is later.

    That way the Russians might not know better and ship out pwned drones to their frontlines.
    • I was thinking something similar. With manufacturing specifications, they could have changed the type of glue, or change a few millimeters here and there, for example. If they had years to screw with the plans, they could have made all of their output just stupid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      Right, clandestine sabotage would have been far better: explode N seconds after launch, or explode N seconds after its neighbor launches, or just brick itself.

      That would be the difference between a group looking for fame, and a group looking for results.

      I'm inclined to think the hackers are using the word "destroyed" in the contemporary, overblown 1337 sense, and that no actual damage was caused. But I hope the retrieved records prove useful in future counter-ops.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pz ( 113803 )

        Even better: when launch is initiated, disarm weapons, disable remote command, and land gently at intended target, so as to provide materiel to the Ukranians.

    • Given my experience with most IT departments in private companies, I wonder if they have ever attempted to restore data from backups. That's the part of the recovery process that's very poorly tested and often fails in the most wonderful ways.

  • It's one thing to delete a bunch of technical information that, if the organization is half-competent has an off-site backup. It's another thing entirely to get into the actual machines and put them in a state outside the normal envelope of operation to cause physical damage, such as with Stuxnet.

    This event sounds more like the former, and less like the latter. Unless, of course, triggering the fire alarms engaged sprinkler systems and flooded the place. That might have caused some physical damage.

    The bi

  • In case you're curious: https://gaskar.group/en/drones [gaskar.group]
    These drones are used for reconnaissance and surveillance.

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