This is excellent. If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find that most of the Russian tank crews and troops were told that they were doing an exercise and kept completely isolated "on mission" for a couple of months. Then they get orders to proceed into Ukraine, probably spun without any collateral information or lies. At this point under DDoS their usual news sources are GONE. That means no propaganda available from the Russian government. The only sources available to them, if they get access to them, are saying that they're the bad guys and that is soul crushingly demotivating when you don't know why you are where you are.
> If you look elsewhere on the Internet you will find that most of the Russian tank crews and troops were told that they were doing an exercise and kept completely isolated "on mission" for a couple of months....At this point under DDoS their usual news sources are GONE.
Germans allow German weapons to be sent to you, Dutch will send. Poland is sending truckloads.
I've already been looking up Norwegian politicians this morning to ask them to somehow get rid of their old law to not export weapons to countries at war (I think it was meant to be against profiting from war, not to prevent helping, in which case maybe it would be OK if they sent it for free? Norway has some seriously good weapons tech so it could help.)
I got an offer the other day that I normally wouldn't take but will possibly take anyway to help oil&gas/defense.
Edit:
Russian athletes will be banned from competitions. Champions League finals will not be in St. Petersburg, World Cup Skiing final will not be in Russia etc.
They have provided a "user-friendly ddos tool" here [1] as discussed on reddit [2]. This does exactly what you'd expect it to do – it makes a large number of connections every second. It's completely and utterly dumb (and beware clicking the link!) but I imagine that such attempts sufficiently at scale are large enough to have a significant effect.
Whether or not rt.com going down internationally materially affects Vladimir's plans or place in the world, however, is another question.
Here's an alternative, that includes a bit more infrastructure, that potentially participates in the military supply chains + state-owned social networks: https://lostmsu.github.io/hack_russia/
The mental health of so many people watching powerlessly is also worth something. This gives anyone a chance of doing something. It might help very little, but it _is_ at least a grain of sand in the machine of death.
P.S. I'd encourage you to have a look at the js source code before opening this page. It seems to be relatively clean, readable and straightforward indeed.
People often underestimate the effect of propaganda. I know very high profile and highly intelligent people, think doctors and lawyers, who think it still is an act of self-defense against neo-nazis.
I can understand the argument of NATO encircling Russia, but the invasion of a sovereign democracy can't be justified. Russia was on losing track because of Russia, not Ukraine.
To be fair the second panel be more like: "Someone found an open window in the CIA's poster-printing factory and used it to gum up the cogs in one of the conveyor belts."
I dunno, it's a bit different when the "poster" is a weapon unto itself, in the theatre of information warfare. It's more like "hackers incapacitate CIA mind control device".
I didn't think the banner of Anonymous as-used-by leftist hacktivists was still active after the FBI's crackdown a decade ago. Imagine a world where the FBI treated white supremacist terrorists the same way they treat hacktivists.
Anonymous doesn't really have any political allegiance and doesn't do things for the reasons you think they do them. Most of those videos are made by non-technical people and are basic propaganda - and that's a big part in shielding Anonymous from too much federal heat. The people actually doing the work are mostly there for the laughs and clout. Second, Anonymous is mostly decentralized, much like terrorist networks. They gather on image boards you're probably detestful of and post messages on plain sight alongside a stream of repulsive content. They also splinter themselves across various IRC networks and now probably use more modern decentralized encrypted comms. That makes them difficult to track.
Hacktivists are not white hat hackers. They are black or grey and justify actions with personal morally. Judge each case by it's own merits. A lot of regular people get treated as terrorists when they do things like hack their school.
I haven't ever heard of white supremacist terrorist. I've heard of terrorist, I've heard of white supremacist, but I don't think the groups bi-sect. What is the last white supremacist terror attack you remember?
The justification is that those sites are used to spread false information to the Russian public. By blocking access to them, they might start looking elsewhere, and won't be bombarded with the "denazification" brainwash attempts.
There's a sibling post (by tgv) that makes a decent case for why this is actually good and meaningful, why it actually hurts the Russian propaganda effort, why maybe it'll affect Russian morale. I hope so.
But I do understand your reaction.
The West's response has felt so underwhelming that I have been angry at its apparent impotence. All symbolic nonsense, it feels: "We're going to add Vladimir Putin's name to a list! So that, should he hypothetically want to change some numbers at one of our banks, he can't! That'll show him!"
Like, what the hell is that? Block the man's bank accounts? No, if you weren't full of shit you would "find, fix, and finish" him. Talk talk talk.
There was an interview on DW with the Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski. DW was doing its usual hemming and hawing (which, let's be honest, I normally like; it tries not to go crazy in any way), but Mr. Sikorski simply minced no words: Germany gets about 1/3 of its gas from Russia and was going like "should we stop buying it? We don't know! It's such a hard decision!", while he, from Poland, which depends on Russia for 70% of its gas, was already going "cut off all purchases of Russian gas; I don't care if it hurts". He wasn't crude but he was blunt, and clear, and incredibly refreshing. You immediately thought: This is the sort of leader we need. Forceful and intelligent.
Poland -- fucking Poland -- had donated Stingers to Ukraine. (Like, to its credit, Britain had shipped Stingers and Javelins.) There!That is at least doing something. And meanwhile Germany, which actually has a significant arms industry, is sitting on its ass and, I don't know, investigating a steering committee.
And even on the front that merely is the shuffling of assets, the West is going, "I don't know? Should we shut off SWIFT? We still need some escalation options...". Dude, the man is rolling goddamn tanks around and killing people; cutting off SWIFT doesn't even rise to the level of proportionate response. You need to have done it yesterday.
Oh, and, if you're publicly saying "we can't do this because we need to keep some leverage", it's exactly equivalent, informationally, to you having done it and had no additional leverage; it is a public admission of impotence. Putin has already priced this shit in.
"You and what army?"
I was reminded of that "physicals vs. virtuals" essay. Yeah, I know it was sort of an apologia for -- well, first, the Ottowa truckers, who may or may not actually be the evil right-wingers Trudeau says they are (now that Putin's using it, this word "de-Nazification" takes on a different ring, no?); and by association, maybe also an apologia for the actual right-wing grifters (Trump et al) who are trying to capitalize on them(?) -- but I still thought it captured something that's been bothering me for a long time. At some point there is reality, and you cannot approach life purely as a matter of public relations and the shuffling of assets.
I found a video on YouTube of a column of Russian tanks rolling essentially-unopposed, single-file, on a bridge across the Dnieper. A few token potshots. What the hell is this? Even I know how you take out a motorcade: You ambush the lead and the tail vehicles so the rest are sandwiched, and then you deal with the rest as you're able. (Or, it's been months, why are there no charges on the bridge? Is this incompetence or some level of strategy above my pay grade: "We'll need that bridge later"?) I guess they didn't have antitank weapons? Is that not itself a failure?
And then I look at the public reaction in the West and it just sickens me. It's all "mourning" (What? The cause isn't even lost yet!!) and "oh my heart is breaking!". Ok, yes, my heart is fucking breaking because Europe is devouring itself again, but are we really so exhausted that all we can do is roll over with the blue-state version of "thoughts and prayers"?
My hope is that the Western powers are doing more than is reported. That the apparent silence is just good opsec. That they simply want to avoid attribution, when facing a nuclear power.
So, fine, sending a flood of HTTP requests might be better than nothing. But I better also start to see some high-level Russians end up mysteriously dead.
There you go. Putin and his forces are really shaking in their boots over those predictable DDoS attacks from Ukraine's Anonymous finest. /s
It's as if that is all they can do, compared to Ukraine themselves getting hit by the same attack from Russia and throwing a malware wiper in the mix, propagating all over. Ukraine has nothing to fight with really in cyber defences.
Might need to find a better way of attacking them rather than using predictable attacks like that which are easily mitigated against.
[+] [-] hughrr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
Really? I though RT was part of Russia's foreign propaganda effort, so I wouldn't expect it to have much effect on domestic news consumption. IIRC, actually Russians get their news from domestic outlets like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia-1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_Russia.
This is good news, but mainly because it interferes with Russia's foreign propaganda operations around this attack.
[+] [-] yarpen_z|4 years ago|reply
That's why we see so many smartphone recordings made by civilians, but not by the military.
[+] [-] poisonarena|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rusras64|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weaksauce|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reitanqild|4 years ago|reply
Things move slowly but they move!
Germans allow German weapons to be sent to you, Dutch will send. Poland is sending truckloads.
I've already been looking up Norwegian politicians this morning to ask them to somehow get rid of their old law to not export weapons to countries at war (I think it was meant to be against profiting from war, not to prevent helping, in which case maybe it would be OK if they sent it for free? Norway has some seriously good weapons tech so it could help.)
I got an offer the other day that I normally wouldn't take but will possibly take anyway to help oil&gas/defense.
Edit:
Russian athletes will be banned from competitions. Champions League finals will not be in St. Petersburg, World Cup Skiing final will not be in Russia etc.
[+] [-] jacquesm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ch4s3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azalemeth|4 years ago|reply
Whether or not rt.com going down internationally materially affects Vladimir's plans or place in the world, however, is another question.
[1] https://stop-russian-desinformation.near.page/ [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t18qm4/you_can_ddo...
[+] [-] lostmsu|4 years ago|reply
You can also easily fork it: https://github.com/lostmsu/lostmsu.github.io
[+] [-] markvdb|4 years ago|reply
P.S. I'd encourage you to have a look at the js source code before opening this page. It seems to be relatively clean, readable and straightforward indeed.
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
I can understand the argument of NATO encircling Russia, but the invasion of a sovereign democracy can't be justified. Russia was on losing track because of Russia, not Ukraine.
[+] [-] 52358|4 years ago|reply
how does this change anything? feels more symbolic than anything
[+] [-] spansoa|4 years ago|reply
I thought these were defacements, but it's just your common DDOS playbook.
[+] [-] tentacleuno|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tartoran|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hatenberg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yyyk|4 years ago|reply
https://xkcd.com/932/
[+] [-] jancsika|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dTal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nunez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otterley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willis936|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1_player|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bckr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] befeltingu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ipaddr|4 years ago|reply
Hacktivists are not white hat hackers. They are black or grey and justify actions with personal morally. Judge each case by it's own merits. A lot of regular people get treated as terrorists when they do things like hack their school.
I haven't ever heard of white supremacist terrorist. I've heard of terrorist, I've heard of white supremacist, but I don't think the groups bi-sect. What is the last white supremacist terror attack you remember?
[+] [-] mrtweetyhack|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ChildOfChaos|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tgv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurent123456|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Angostura|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FooBarBizBazz|4 years ago|reply
There's a sibling post (by tgv) that makes a decent case for why this is actually good and meaningful, why it actually hurts the Russian propaganda effort, why maybe it'll affect Russian morale. I hope so.
But I do understand your reaction.
The West's response has felt so underwhelming that I have been angry at its apparent impotence. All symbolic nonsense, it feels: "We're going to add Vladimir Putin's name to a list! So that, should he hypothetically want to change some numbers at one of our banks, he can't! That'll show him!"
Like, what the hell is that? Block the man's bank accounts? No, if you weren't full of shit you would "find, fix, and finish" him. Talk talk talk.
There was an interview on DW with the Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski. DW was doing its usual hemming and hawing (which, let's be honest, I normally like; it tries not to go crazy in any way), but Mr. Sikorski simply minced no words: Germany gets about 1/3 of its gas from Russia and was going like "should we stop buying it? We don't know! It's such a hard decision!", while he, from Poland, which depends on Russia for 70% of its gas, was already going "cut off all purchases of Russian gas; I don't care if it hurts". He wasn't crude but he was blunt, and clear, and incredibly refreshing. You immediately thought: This is the sort of leader we need. Forceful and intelligent.
Poland -- fucking Poland -- had donated Stingers to Ukraine. (Like, to its credit, Britain had shipped Stingers and Javelins.) There! That is at least doing something. And meanwhile Germany, which actually has a significant arms industry, is sitting on its ass and, I don't know, investigating a steering committee.
And even on the front that merely is the shuffling of assets, the West is going, "I don't know? Should we shut off SWIFT? We still need some escalation options...". Dude, the man is rolling goddamn tanks around and killing people; cutting off SWIFT doesn't even rise to the level of proportionate response. You need to have done it yesterday.
Oh, and, if you're publicly saying "we can't do this because we need to keep some leverage", it's exactly equivalent, informationally, to you having done it and had no additional leverage; it is a public admission of impotence. Putin has already priced this shit in.
"You and what army?"
I was reminded of that "physicals vs. virtuals" essay. Yeah, I know it was sort of an apologia for -- well, first, the Ottowa truckers, who may or may not actually be the evil right-wingers Trudeau says they are (now that Putin's using it, this word "de-Nazification" takes on a different ring, no?); and by association, maybe also an apologia for the actual right-wing grifters (Trump et al) who are trying to capitalize on them(?) -- but I still thought it captured something that's been bothering me for a long time. At some point there is reality, and you cannot approach life purely as a matter of public relations and the shuffling of assets.
I found a video on YouTube of a column of Russian tanks rolling essentially-unopposed, single-file, on a bridge across the Dnieper. A few token potshots. What the hell is this? Even I know how you take out a motorcade: You ambush the lead and the tail vehicles so the rest are sandwiched, and then you deal with the rest as you're able. (Or, it's been months, why are there no charges on the bridge? Is this incompetence or some level of strategy above my pay grade: "We'll need that bridge later"?) I guess they didn't have antitank weapons? Is that not itself a failure?
And then I look at the public reaction in the West and it just sickens me. It's all "mourning" (What? The cause isn't even lost yet!!) and "oh my heart is breaking!". Ok, yes, my heart is fucking breaking because Europe is devouring itself again, but are we really so exhausted that all we can do is roll over with the blue-state version of "thoughts and prayers"?
My hope is that the Western powers are doing more than is reported. That the apparent silence is just good opsec. That they simply want to avoid attribution, when facing a nuclear power.
So, fine, sending a flood of HTTP requests might be better than nothing. But I better also start to see some high-level Russians end up mysteriously dead.
[+] [-] rvz|4 years ago|reply
It's as if that is all they can do, compared to Ukraine themselves getting hit by the same attack from Russia and throwing a malware wiper in the mix, propagating all over. Ukraine has nothing to fight with really in cyber defences.
Might need to find a better way of attacking them rather than using predictable attacks like that which are easily mitigated against.
[+] [-] andrewstetsenko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply