Classified tank specs leaked on War Thunder game forums again
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
ukdefencejournal.org.uk
When I worked for company B I had learned through friends some really really juicy intel about competitor A (which I never shared).
Through that experience and seeing all of these other examples, I’ve come to realize that there is an intoxicating effect of having info that can make you a “hero for a day” in the eyes of some audience.
Has anyone else ever felt this allure before?
back in the day you would be tainted if you had read any of this material. today those lines have been blurred and even my employer, who was known to viciously keep tainted people out of the kernel, is nowhere near as strict
By only allowing people who don't know anything secret to work on a product, you keep the product safe from allegations (justified or not) of illegally incorporating third party material.
If you don't do it, you risk that a competitor claims "your product contains our proprietary material, pay us royalties or we'll sue your customers". Even if you're 100% in the right, until you've had that decided in court, your customers have to worry about getting sued, and you'll lose business (and also spend a lot of money on lawyers).
The model is particularly known/used in reverse engineering: One team (that is not tainted with knowing any NDA'd materials, I assume) looks at the product you're trying to reverse engineer, and writes a specification. Another team (not tainted by NDA'd knowledge or knowldege of the code of the original product) then implements the spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
How about security secrets which directly impacts the customer?
For most jobs, if you've worked in the industry for 20 years, you have seen 'secret sause' of several companies. They often look remarcably similar. Indeed thats kind of the value of an experienced hire?
Well, that not not even funny, more of cringeworthy.
LOL, I like to play with salespeople because I know their responses are scripted. So although I like being commended on my intelligence, I change my job title and pedigree just to see if that gets the same accolades
“You’re a lightbulb repairman so I know you’re smart, you can see this offer is the best for you” says the person making an offer that is not the best for me.
Helps me keep a clearer head in negotiating
If you can provide for your family by JUST repairing light bulbs, you are probably REALLY good at it.
First: this leaker simply mailed a packet to a random foreign government address which allowed usps to flag it?! Otherwise seems pretty shot in the dark they found it. 1234 Russia KGB, Russia ;)
Second: the FBI either got the cooperation of said unknown country, or was able to somehow make a signal looking like it originated from their embassy (maybe as comical as we'll fly our countries flag, which happens to always be flying). Maybe it's an ally?
Third: this person had a good amount of access? It sounds like schematics/info on the small nuclear reactors in the subs? Maybe that's not super valuable info?
So much I want to know! Would make a good dramedy someday if it's as dumb as it sounds.
The foreign country has not been identified, but Russia is not the one on most rumor-mongering lips. There's precedent (Pollard, Nozette) for Israeli intelligence interest in US Naval secrets.
For example: this is my #1 for why COVID Was Not A Lab Leak. The incentives for someone involved to blab are just way too high. If there was an incriminating email anywhere, we'd know. (Edit: and right on cue multiple people want to storm in arguing why this principle is not applicable in this particular situation. That's how you know it's "juicy", not how you know it's true!)
For the tank manuals a) is likely hundreds of thousands of people, and b) is zero unless the leak is traced to them, and they possibly don't expect much even if it is.
For the lab leak, b) is a strong deterrent - every virologist working on even moderately risky research would face trouble (in the form or stricter restrictions and possibly bans on the category of research) if the theory got confirmed, and for the people working in the Chinese lab, embarrassing the Chinese govt is probably pretty far up on the "mistakes you don't get to make twice" list. a) is less clear: They might not even be aware of a lab leak if it was one. However, one piece of sensitive info that could leak would be "we worked on something that was more similar to SARS-CoV-2 than the previously known sample", and I'd expect that to be reasonably well known at a research institute.
However, that adds a third aspect: Verifiability of the leak. Even if a drunk scientist sat in a pub in Wuhan, telling his friends that it totally was a lab leak, and someone overheard that - what then? They post on Twitter "I heard some people talking that it totally was a lab leak"? Even if their friends say "hey, I know someone from the place and it totally is a lab leak", it'd at best be yet another unconfirmed and unconfirmable rumor that would be unlikely to make it far.
Just because there are many leaks, doesn't mean there isn't also a lot of spicy information that never becomes public. These leaks are news because they're rare, even when hundreds of thousands of people have access to a piece of info. Reduce the circle of people in the know to 100, and the probability of a leak drops drastically.
But tank kid is going to jail for sure.
If they somehow escape from country (very unlikely) China government may threaten/disappear/imprison/kill their relatives in the country. China can also take hint from Russia and kill them abroad.
Stakes for leaker are much much higher than short prison sentence like in west.
Besides no major western university will touch this person - there are consequence for crossing China. (from protest from Chinese students to economic consequences).
You're deflecting by invoking another juicy, tempting-to-believe conspiracy that, by this same principle, would seem to be trivially easy to verify because someone who knows about it would have said so...
I tell people this whenever I'm asked about something I'm not supposed to reveal. "You want me to risk my _ just so you can satisfy your curiosity?"
Historically, they'd be very interested in what you'd say to your friends, family, etc. But the allure of internet fame would seem to have a more pursuasive effect.
They're not included in Standard Form 86, latest revision November 2016: https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf
That's not to say it's excluded from polygraph questions; I can imagine a world where online associations are very relevant to an agency in need of a CI or full scope poly for compartment access.
It's similar because there are lots of false negatives, but few false positives.
But more importantly... Participating in online communities, and caring about one's online presence, is statistically normal behavior for working-age people in first world countries with Internet access... Moreso the younger you get. But the point is, it's massively normal behavior.
So if you tried to use your questions to predict potential leakers, you're just playing the "Most serial killers eat bread" game.
In order for your question to be a useful predictor, it would have to have low rates of both false positives, and false negatives. That doesn't seem very likely.
Seems a more difficult question, but a more indicative one, which is why I included it.
Per my experience, you can easily find individuals who spend similar amounts of clock time in online communities, but are very different in how much the community can influence them.
F.ex. HN could offer me dang's karma count, and I wouldn't feel any compulsion to leak classified information here.
[1] https://www.ecampusnews.com/2010/09/15/google-engineer-fired...
Option 2, he has a humiliation/degradation kink and got exactly what he wanted.
Maybe they just feel alone, depressed, underappreciated and like nobody cares about them?
Revealing it to total strangers somewhat obscures potential negative impact, while still getting them to feel important for a day.
I only speak for myself, and I no longer have a clearance. But the idea that depression excuses disclosure of classified information... that's not how depression works. That's not how clearances work. It's anathema to me. If depression is an excuse for disclosing classified information, then depression is cause for denying a person a clearance. It is cause for revoking a clearance from a person who seeks mental health assistance. No thank you. It is much better to prosecute depressed people who violate their clearance agreements and to continue to permit depressed people to gain clearances than it is deny a clearance from every depressed person.
I support giving clearances to depressed people, and I support sending depressed people who violate their clearance agreements to prison.
I see your point, in not trying to worsen things for depressed people - but don't you think on a general base, a mentally unstable person is more liklely to disclose something? And when you are really, deeply depressed - you don't care about anything anymore, except if it makes you feel better in that moment.
First, reread everything that you wrote, and substitute "depressed person" for some racial minority. Most of what you have said is still valid and there is a possibility that it is even true. However, you must see that this would be so offensive that your post would be flagged.
Instead of fostering predjudice against people of a racial minority, you are (probably unintentionally) fostering predjudice against people with mental health problems. Do you not see why this is offensive?
Lack of caring for elemental things, including life, is a common trait of depression, not race.
But I did not say, depressed people should not have any clearance. I say, mentally not stable persons can simply not be trusted with every tasks. No generalisation. It depends on the task. So I doubt, you would offer the guarding of the red button for example, a suicidal person. And deep depression, is mostly combined with suicidal thoughts. There was a pilot some years ago, piloting a full plane to join him along his suicide. So much for extreme examples.
And as for the secret new release of the hot new game console x? I don't care about their security. But I see, that companies would want stable persons there, too.
An intelligence agency get more intel per dollar spent goading active duty people into revealing military secrets on obscure forums than you do with traditional bribery.
The only upside to anything more than that is to impress or feel important.
humans are curious by nature
It's probably understandable that people want to 'feel important' for a moment, but if they had the 'big picture' they'd realize that 'doing their job' is the most important thing they could do. It's easy for regular people to lose sight of that, just as it's easy for some people in power to take their roles a bit too seriously.
But there's also shyness and paranoia: what if whatever I say makes me look bad? What if it comes back to screw me over later?
The Internet dilutes the latter a bit because you're anonymous. But you can still get caught e.g. if someone goes through your post history and recognizes you.
Some people are very paranoid and don't like to share anything because they're afraid somehow it will affect them later. I guess on the other hand, there are people willing to share confidential information for attention without protecting themselves adequately (or at all!).
His ideas are strange.
His conversational style is combative.
He published a book. He used his forum nick as the author name.
He won't let anybody even know his age. Forget occupation or nation.
Par. A. Noid.
Hi Google! It's Robert Hackerman, here with the County Search Engine Inspector Office.
Google: Hi Bob! How can I help you?
Robert: I have a bunch of phrases passed through your Google Translate, can you help me find the IP that submitted them? Thanks.
On a more serious note, if you're going to that level of security, you're probably using something like TOR anyway (otherwise they simply ask the site the text was posted on for the IP). Additionally, you can use multiple services for each translation, obscuring the trail further. Good luck getting that data from Yandex.
Lastly, I'm not sure whether Google (and others) really log every sentence entered, but as described before, you can easily avoid that. Or read the privacy policy.
Why do it? Because people like sounding off.
Back when I was in industry we all knew what everyone else was working on including big IPs and next gen console stuff. That might have also been a factor of how small and tight nit of an industry it was.
When I was at Google a TechStop employee couldn't "help themselves" and shared a picture of an unreleased Android phone. Apparently it wasn't hard to figure out who it was and they were subsequently fired and everyone got a lecture at the Friday meeting.
I have not seen much literature on whether or not there are ways to mitigate that "feeling." (sure there are the 'you'll be fired if you tell anyone') but this comes up in all sorts of scenarios like seeing a VP from your company out on what looks like a romantic date with someone who isn't their spouse.
I believe this last one, the E covers what you are talking about. People who know something special can share it and thus appear in the specific circumstanc as special themselves. This strokes their ego which motivates them to share more.
Being a "social construct" is not the same as being ideology.
This is the document I was using: https://cyberwar.nl/d/fromCIA.gov/Burkett-MICE%20to%20RASCAL...
In this case the person just shared a work anecdote that was relevant to the discussion, arguably.
Not sure am fully comfortable with that idea. Not all whistleblowing is idealogoical, some just expose straight up illegal activities or corruption
Is it true that not all whistleblowing is idealogoical? In order to be idaealogoical, it must be motivated by idaealeogoy. Whistleblowing is definitionally motivated by opposition to the leaked activities, making it ipso facto idaealogoiacal. Why do you think it's not idaealaogoiacal?
There are certain "political stances" which cannot coexist with a peaceful, modern society.
That said, I don't think I agree with this idea that the dominant ideology is no ideology at all. It seems a bit like the tendency to think that one's own accent is no accent at all.
Not whistle blowing on illegal activities in some jurisdictions is in itself illegal and makes you accessory to the crimes being committed. I wouldn't think that kind of whistle-blowing as ideological.
P.S. Yes, I made a spelling mistake while typing a comment on the phone, I regret that and happy to learn when pointed out.
Do keep in mind not everyone's first language is English, making fun of that is not a good way to encourage people to learn the language better, if new speakers stop putting in the effort to improve because the feedback is negative you( and we) don't get to interact with speakers from distant lands , learn new and interesting ideas.
There are non-ideological reasons to follow laws as well, such as avoiding punishment, but that would presumably fall under coercion.
All behavior is motivated by either seeking gratification/pleasure or for avoiding pain, however such a reductive mental model is not useful work with in this context. Coercion in the context of leak (MICE) usually is understood as unwilling participant who is being blackmailed to leak. Money, Ideology and Ego are voluntary, Coercion is forced is the idea i believe.
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[1] I am talking about the conventionally held definition of Civil Disobedience, non-violent and public are generally accepted qualifiers . It is not really required under many definitions.
Ellmann states that covert lawbreaking is just valid way of expressing your morality ( ideology ) as public disobedience. There are similar arguments for revolutionary and violent variations as well. It boils down does common(yours) morality allow deceit or violence under this situation. Morality being more subjective( you may agree violence is justified someone else will not) most popular commentators try to stick to non-violent and public conditions to make their case stronger and widely supported. Whether that public or non-violent is a component or not it doesn't matter.
The point I am trying to make is: if is ideological then consequences will be readily accepted, otherwise it just common crime.
I would say if you're only doing something to avoid being imprisoned or killed, you're an unwilling participant being forced to perform the action. Even if the entity threatening to imprison or kill you has a monopoly on force, it's still a gun to your head. I don't know how it could be called money, ideology, or ego.
[0] https://courses.lumenlearning.com/teachereducationx92x1/chap...
Pizza isn't ideological. Birds aren't ideological. Things that are explicitly in the domain of ideology are, yes, ideological.
There's no such thing as 'no accent' just because you have the dominant accent, and no such thing as 'no ideology' just because you follow the dominant ideology. Your rationale is a bit like people who consider climate change protests to be 'political', but themselves, and their desire to ignore them and go to work, to be ... well, just, normal. Or something like that.
> Do keep in mind not everyone's first language is English
This is fair enough. I wasn't intending to mock your English, I just thought it was a funny accidental property of your message. I've absolutely made the same mistakes myself in the past!
Wouldn't this fall under C, Coercion: the state threatens with prison, unless you "leak" info about the crimes?
(Could be a good kind of coercion? How unusual)
1) Lack of service delivery
2) Lack of corrective action (i.e ignoring for months or years reported security holes)
Sure there are many more examples.
"investors are counting on us", "people will lose their jobs", are examples of how people fit this ideological stance, into their morals, their ethics.
Maybe your local area / country has co-opted it, to only mean a subset?
If you look at the dictionary, I think you'll see that it is not defined as 'radical' or 'extremist' only.
What is your objection to my usage? How do you see it misused?
And frankly, political stances have caused more losses to state secrets than religion. EG, "commies!", or alternatively state ideological "long live the king, for the kingdom!".
Democracy, and capitalism are alternative ideologies. The means for profit is on the list, and all the nuances in between.
Take profit over health (cigarettes companies), profit over culture/society (facebook), this is an ideological stance.
Profit above all else.
Not 10 minutes later, one of the attending journalists was blabbing about it on Reddit under a user name that was linked to his publication.
Another 10 minutes later, said journalist was walked out of the room, well before the really interesting stuff was talked about.
I wonder how he explained that to his editor. What an idiot…
I feel excited by the trust and camaraderie that goes with having secrets. I'm protecting something with real value, that we all worked hard for, rather than destroying it.
I always think it is amazing how many buy into the lifes at risk hyperbole. Even if we assume that the content in the document isn't already known to all the "players" in the field, how much "advantage" can be gained from the manual (I suspect if it really was that important they would not put it in the manual). Moreover, if leaking the manual really puts the lifes of the crew at risk, would not leaking also put lifes at risk, i.e. the one of the people fighting the tanks?
Thats the point. No military is interested in making it easier for its enemies to fight you.
And with irregular conflicts, you cannot assume everyone knows everything anyway. If you would have to fight this tank for real, don't you think, you want any information possible? Weak spots, sensors,.. or even getting enough knowledge to take over the tank. Military secrets have their reason, no matter how you judge the stance of said military.
Is this game made by the military?
These reasons are only tangential to the public good, which is better served by transparency and democracy.
"Oh, the armor is weak in the back?"
I have seen the same problem in companies, where manuals and reports are hardly accessible and thus effectively lost in the name of confidentiality ...
So these leaks in all likelyhood are not militarially damaging in anyway, but may weaken public perspective of the military (incompetent with keeping 'vital' information safe for instance).
I see no particular reason though to openly share these documents from first sources either. Security through obscurity is bad security on its own, but can be an extra layer when combined with other tactics.
"Oh, we can recreate this, only better or more of them"
"Oh, this missile uses IR, we can come up with a counter"
"Oh, this device uses such and such chip, our hackers know an exploit for that one"
Come on, use some imagination.
I'm thinking back to the Cold War - one way of seeing the rivalry between the US and USSR is as a game of making the other side spend more and more money, in hopes the enemy's economy will give out and collapse before yours does.
The only real downside I can see of public manuals are the risk for adhoc use of captured equipement. However I believe the upside of having the operators being able to use the equipment properly easier is greater.
You can't actually view it on the Internet, because as it notes, it has a dissemination restriction to US government agencies and contractors only, but it is unclassified and the soldiers on the crew are employees of a US government agency and entitled to read these. Reading paper is fine. In fact, when you're actually on a tank, it's your only option. You're not usually going to have a ruggedized computer that can access the Internet with you, if there's even a network at all serving wherever you happen to be. Information needs to be available in the absence of connectivity.
Could the rivals conceivably peek in the game at some behavior they can't really discern through binoculars at testing and races? The sport had its moments of hide-and-seek in the past, with both FIA and competitors—e.g. the chassis that changed its height after driving out of the pits.
Granted, the F1 series isn't spectacularly realistic, and Codies admitted some of the cars' behavior is softened relative to the reality, to not be too hard on the players (again, the gears).
Although as others have said the F1 series isn't known for its physics.
1) Print it out 2) Cut out the parts you want to redact 3) Scan the paper
This might be more work, but 1) It's easy enough for anyone to understand 2) It's really, really hard to get wrong
redact on pc -> print -> scan
Pretty much as infallible and saves a huge amount of scissor time.
From the screenshot provided it appears that the argument may have been about the turret rotation speed (probably as listed on Wikipedia?), whether it is 9 or 12 seconds for full rotation of the turret? The 9 second rotation speed was added to Wikipedia 5 years ago[1] and the 12 second rotation speed information added 8 years ago[2]. It appears the original information was perhaps sourced from a book titled "Char Leclerc - De la guerre froide aux conflits de demain" by author Marc Chassillan and published 16 years ago[3].
I find it hard to believe turret rotation speed would warrant classification given how readily observable this metric would be to an enemy. The chance of a tank operator accidentally demonstrating maximum turret rotation speed during a training exercise, public display or otherwise would also be very high, even if tank operators were instructed to never operate the turret at maximum rotation speed to avoid showing off a better metric than what may be known publicly.
I would assume the concern, if warranted, would be for some other type of information that may be less observable e.g. a statement to the effect of "If you rotate the turret at maximum rotation speed for more than X cumulative seconds, the turret will enter a safety mode and only operate at maximum speed of X% of the normal maximum rotation speed. Maintenance procedure XYZ will need to be conducted to restore full performance of the turret."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leclerc_tank&diff...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leclerc_tank&diff...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-272689...
Pretty low battlefield survival probability with being a dragon gunner since they were relatively slow compared to the Soviet era tanks ability to get a shot off at the big puff of smoke you just created.
The US seems to be happy showing off the turret rotation speed of the M1 Abrams at public demos as shown in [1], [2], [3] and [4]. There is no rotation speed listed on the Wikipedia page for this tank but elsewhere on the Internet appears to state 9 seconds for full rotation, which appears to match up with what the videos show.
I find it hard to believe there is much benefit if any in classifying turret rotation speeds, or for that matter, most other parts of a tank in 2021. The underlying technology is ancient and readily described in all manner of books and videos. The overwhelmingly important factor in tank warfare today would be whether another platform with better visibility of surrounds (UAV, satellite, etc) has communicated enemy positions to the tank crew.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKHcKEc_2Nc
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxLWb2AHLzw
Everyone who actually cares about French tank turret turn rates and might get a very slight advantage from being able to train their tankers on slightly more accurate simulators (e.g. the Russians) already knows jt.
If they didn't do some of this , their site may get blocked or get sued by the government.
Despite the fact that Gaijin Entertainment lists itself as a Cyprus-based studio,
it was originally founded in Moscow, Russia, where it still has offices today."
You don't see many submarine warfare simulators either, for essentially the same reason.
Command: Modern Operations is your best bet. It's a $70 game. They sell the "Professional Edition" to the military for $20,000 per license.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1076160/Command_Modern_Op...
https://pro.matrixgames.com/game/command-professional-editio...
That's not the case for other vehicles: no one person understands a Nimitz carrier from top to bottom.
I think the most recent ship in game is Colbert, a French AA cruiser commissioned in 1959. And in game, she doesn't feature her missile conversion in the 70ies.
Plus most of the "high tier" designs are paper ships with a varying level of fantasy from the game devs.
Lastly the game is far from a simulation, it's extremely arcady.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/classified-challenger-tank-s...
Even if poor countries have all the access to classified information, they can't do anything with it, as you said.
However, the information can be sold.
For all intents and purposes the AK is the opensource weapon. Hard to see how open source weapons would benegit rich countries, they already have the designs.
There's a difference between knowing how to do something (even without classified information) and being able to pull it off.