Anti-Lukashenka hackers seize senior Belarusian officials' personal data
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en.currenttime.tv
It is undoubtedly possible to secure systems to the degree hacks are impossible, but it requires effectively banishing any degree of convenience which computers bring. True security requires years long development and testing efforts, and no lock is secure to someone smarter or more determined than the people who made it. This allows governments to effectively deploy surveillance on their entire populations, and allows populations to hack their governments if they wish so and are willing be to bear the risks. The same system that holds power over people also has a gun pointed at the same people holding power.
Good job to the Belarusian hackers, they have done what was needed of them to preserve their freedom. If recent history has taught us anything, it's that there's no way to win in a direct stick contest with a greater enemy. The only way is to use subterfuge to hit the enemy where it hurts until they are no longer willing to fight. Threatening the people who are continuing the cycles of suppression and their families is the only way forward, a government whose supporters are afraid for their lives cannot last long. Furthermore, this is proof that such a thing can and will continue to happen.
This era may seems dystopian, but it seems information is a double-edged sword, there is no way to grasp it without hurting oneself too.
If we are doing analogies, allow me to compare modern digital world to a feudal age. The companies wage war to capture land, prestige, and peasants^w users. Users are then exploited for their data so the companies can sell it and use the monies to wage advertisement wars to capture more users... Alas, the analogy is not perfect for it does not account for hackers stealing the data or peasants revolting and overthrowing the kingdom.
Considering the are attacks from Russian state-sponsored/run/tolerated groups against important US targets makes it more sensible to note how unlike MAD this battlefield is, even in contrast to, for example, conventional warfare, which isn’t core to the mechanism of MAD but has, in the past, been subject to the restrictions that follow from it.
It's Iran killing US soldiers in Iraq. It's the US killing Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. It's China or the USSR killing US soldiers in Vietnam. And so on.
In that case, there was very clear troop presence on the ground by both of them.
I think this is a very naive assumption
Is Bellingcat an independent investigation organization? Why would this one be any different?
The whole republic population is 10 million. There is a suspicion all phone calls are recorded. Did the hackers got access to phone call records of every citizen?
Update: commenters below point out that phone codecs have much lower bandwidth than mp3. So it becomes even more likely the hackers have phone records of every resident.
MP3 is about 1MB/minute
Assume 5 minutes per person per day on average
AWS Glacier costs 0.4 cents per GB per month
So I get a yearly cost of:
(365 days) *
(5 minutes / day / person) *
(1MB / minute) *
(0.001 GB / MB) *
($0.004 / GB / month) *
(12 months / year)
==
$0.088/person/year
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/23/22...
It is probably still a drop in the federal bucket.
Depends on the bitrate and number of channels.
Phone calls are mono and probably something like 48kbps (96 / 2) which would be about 360kB per minute.
More importantly, in order to effectively exploit these phone calls, they'll want to transcribe them. Transcription AI is getting better and cheaper every year, especially when you can use custom hardware. Then, you can store the full voice recording for "interesting" calls (e.g. activists, their contacts, people with "suspicious" patterns etc. - it doesn't have to be accurate, storage is cheap) for a few years, and transcripts for everyone basically forever.
Encrypt your calls people!
That's how in the beginning of Brazil 1985 film Archibald Buttle got arrested.
It’s not only acceptable, it’s widely used. I.e. lots of companies use g711 codec with 64kbps for internal intra-office communication and g729 with 8kbps voice bitrate for inter-office communication (with transcoders on the perimeters). It has been quite a standard approach to corporate voip design for years (decades). That said there is currently a shift to modern high- and adaptive-bitrate codecs, but it’s not instant.
Why do they do that?
Even if 1000 people are making a phone call at the same time, that's just 64 Mbps each way if go for the full bandwidth, and an office this size surely must have a beefier Internet connection than that. Why skimp on something so cheap?
After all it's all very well having every phone call, but you can't possibly listen to them all, so you need a way to find those that you do want to listen to.
"Pervasive Monitoring is an Attack" is current policy of the IETF and accordingly new protocols are intended to combat such monitoring, but there is a lot of metadata revealed by your activities and masking it takes considerable effort, while outfits like the NSA are very enthusiastic about gathering whatever metadata they can find and discovering new ways to collect more.
From what we found only a small fraction of the population's recordings are stored on the Militsiya servers. This does not rule out the possibility that all phone calls are recorded and only some are being transferred to the servers of the Militsiya when requested.
What is the exact size of the archive? How many phone numbers does it include?
Also, please respect privacy of citizens, even those you dislike, including the emergency service callers. First, user data is user data, no matter if it's stored by a lawbreaking, in your opinion, organization. (Consider: google was fined for fiscal fraud - does it entitle anyone to steal google user's data?). People complained about car signals were in their right - traffic rules forbid signalling in the city, except to prevent accidents. And similarly for most of the cases, I think. And your access to their data will never be rightful. Second, exposing the people can fuel the division in the society and alienate the sides. What was done in a moment of annoyance, after being exposed, and possibly followed in bullying or hate campaigns, can make those exposed people scrupulously report all opposition supporters. Neighbor against neighbor, colleague against colleague, etc.
We protect the data of ordinary citizens. "user data is user data, no matter if it's stored by a lawbreaking, in your opinion" - we never claimed it is. We leak only personal data of people that committed crimes or assisted the fascist regime in Belarus in committing crimes.
We won't leak anymore data of people that just reported car signals and alike (even though they knew what would be the consequences of making such reports). We're focused on more high profile crimes.
Devision in the society already exists. We influence the "game theory" equations, deter people from being violent towards others in the future.
According to the twitter thread.
On the other hand, it's a glimpse into the future and it's scary. Apparently, the Belarus government collected a centralized database of all citizens' communications. And it was hacked and leaked. I think it's reasonable to assume that any centralized database of extreme value will be hacked and leaked one day, and it's just a matter of time. Any backdoor demanded by government will at some point be exploited by a rogue actor.
Then, find a way to assure amnesty for the first 5,000 defectors.
@cpartisans_security https://t.me/cpartisans
I don't speak Russian, but it clearly looks like government photos and sounds like a phone conversation at least.
Woman is Lukashenka's press-secretary and man is a commander of Belarusian Militia Special Purpose Squad(that's responsible for the most horrible acts of violence in Belarus since 9th Aug 2020 presidential election day).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTyFi4GEv-Q - this one is interesting cause they are talking with the same woman and Dmitry Shakuta(former or present MMA fighter I suppose) who's related to Roman Bondarenko's murder(exact evidence is hard to acquire as Belarus is judicial grey zone currently). As another commenter writes below they are agreeing to be in contact directly and the commander of militia basically recites his mobile number.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbHVt8-4dE4 - last part is just a confirmation and further details being discussed at a later time. But it's also nastiest one cause woman is using a phrase "We don't need stripes, we need heads". For extra context protesters were marking fences in their districts with stripes with national symbols on them. So the phrase means that we don't care about the symbols, it's just a way to lure protesters out of their homes. Also she's literaly using word hunting and jokes that protesters are in red list like animals. Such attitude shows her cruel and inhuman personality in its best.
How do you think they would be protecting the symbols?
No, I think your definition of politics is too restricted. There's no need to support opposition of any politician to be political. If it were, anarchists wouldn't be classified as political, which is absurd.
That's my whole point, it's simply an uninteresting discussion about which definition of politics is "best".
Russia wants to retain influence and de facto unity. Basically maintain status quo.
China is threading belt road via Belarus. Massive economic interests and consequences for failure to achieve this.
US wants to reduce influence of both of the above and pull Belarus into its own sphere of influence.
Edit: just noticed their logo is Lithuanian has coat of arms (vytis). Kinda weird to disclose your ethnicity, but Lithuania is doing a lot to support Belarus, especially amid Belarus weaponising migrants. Hope details of that going to be public soon.
This is my biggest outrage with Western demeanor.
They will sanction a country to the neck, babble strong, and mighty on TV about commitment to anti-corruption, and then...... they invite all these rotten part-time billionaire government employees, and their spawn to hide their stolen money, and live happy, and merrily in their Mayfairs, and Rivieras, spending their honestly stolen billions.
This is might be too cynical, but it characterises my country’s relationships with totalitarianism.
Instead not only there is not only no action, but the Cleptoville in London gets bigger with each year, and soon London will straight become a district of Moscow.
https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1424734523519025152
Is that really the case? Wouldn't this kind of breach be best used silently. They could have used this access to alert those targeted by the regime ahead of raids etc..
This just seems like letting the regime their front door is entirely unlocked.
If the parties involved had similar powers possibly yes, but their government is already a lot more powerful compared to the people, so they need to act quick in order to disrupt the status quo, possibly also gaining some time.
It is also safe to assume that if the hackers have access to the conversations of all people, then also the government does, so it's entirely possible that the police already have their targets set and could soon escalate this to arresting everyone not explicitly pro-government, hence the need to disseminate the information to create some panic in the high ranks while buying some time.
If the goal is deterrence - as the attackers seem to be claiming - quiet use is counterproductive.
The proposed use is doxxing of police and intelligence employees who are involved in political repression, including revealing the apartments and cars they use when on the job.
If the population is fed up enough to be willing to resort to violence, simply releasing this list with no prior warning would likely cripple the security apparatus, and make everyone think twice about participating in it in the future.
If that was the case trying to promote anti-lukashenka narrative through wikileaks wouldn't work very well.
I always feel like my kung-fu is inferior when I see stuff like this.
Some IT personel had clearly been running the system for years, and if they weren't bribed enough to lose their conscience, it's very likely that someone decided to fight the tyrants with the access they had instead. Sort of like Snowden.
If so I really hope they've left the country.
This is a treason act by definition, not sure how actions like these are meant to help them overthrowing Lukashenka.
Leaking and destroying their network abroad wouldn't jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of the belarusian people in any way, on the contrary it would protect the from the criminal activity of the KGB inside Belarus and abroad.
Not to mention all the people well served by the dictatorship. Dictators can't stay long in power without plenty of allies. The Al-Bu Nasir tribe was just around 35000 people, yet practically ran Iraq for decades.
So that the citizens will have no access to these revelations.
Basically the recordings are revealing , among many things, the tactics and fed's personnel the state uses to 'bite' anti-government protesters and then arrest them.
Certainly, similar tactics were used by USA Feds to lure in Jan 6 protesters inside the Capitol building, in USA.
Names of fed agents, NSA-like IT personnel, are also appear to be revealed.
As western countries loose the moral authority to judge other dictatorships, the suppressed populous will have to rely on themselves to bring on the changes they want.
Perhaps their closest neighbors (Poland, former Baltic republics, Ukraine), and ... Russia, of course, will play the deciding role in this struggle.
It will not be countries like USA -- these have lost all the moral authority to judge others. Engaged in bloody coops through out the world, throwing their reserve-currency status to dictate policies for other nations, suppressing/spying/imprisoning opposition at home, politicians taking bribes all over (via book deals, insider stock tips, real estate), etc), protecting sexual predators -- these fake 'leaders' of freedom lost all the credibility.
I hope Belorussian people (who never won a revolt, who were murdered by millions in WW2 (20% of the population), who suffered the most from Chernobyl disaster), will finally find help and direction from their neighbors...
If Belorussians reading this -- do not trust USA, Germany, UK, France.. Look for support, carefully, in your neighbors.
I hope countries like Poland, Lithuania will offer automatic citizenship to Belorussians who held Bel. passport for 4 years or longer, or who is under 16, and who does not have connections to the revealed names.
This way the saboteurs, that the regime will likely to implant into the emigration waves -- will have harder time doing that.
This is the most nonsensical thing I've ever read on Hacker News.
I’m in Europe and have also seen a lot of stories out of Belarus. I doubt the governments here were all in on the plan.
I have no idea how any US action in Belarus would remind the EU of anything? Belarus isn’t in the EU, nor does the regime enjoy any support.
A map of Russian pipelines is rather devastating for your case, showing the exact opposite of what you assumed, i. e. that Belarus is a major transit country for oil and gas: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Crude-oil-and-natural-ga...
The administration changed, the people in DC, largely, did not. When presidents change only the political upper echelon changes. The ppl who do all the planning and all the work stay.
Can you share any positive stories or explain how his utter disregard for human rights and the people of Belarus is actually a positive?
There are plenty of examples of the first two conditions, but I don't recall any that meet the third one.
Medical interventions are judged by their track record. It's high time military and political ones got the same treatment.
Note that this does not make me a pro-Lukashenka bot. One can not be a fan of mental illness and still oppose lobotomy. Same principle.
Japan would be the closest I can think of. The motivations don’t align but the occupation and nation building effort of the Marshal Plan is in stark contrast to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.