Ukraine calls on hacker underground to defend against Russia
reuters.com
reuters.com
I'm based in the US. The problem is that the US, unlike Russia, will not simply agree to allow attacks against foreign targets so long as its suits their strategic purposes. And I suppose that's for the best. In the meantime, myself and people like me simply aren't going to risk our entire careers to retaliate. I suppose if we felt strongly enough we would've joined the NSA and done this legally. I wish Ukraine the best and hope our "official" hackers are doing their best to assist or will be unleashed soon.
So, have at it.
I wish there was another option. I wish people in Ukraine weren't suffering.
That's a huge gamble.
What you're talking about is not.
Sure, don't take legal advice from me. Use a VPN.
I'd take away "by and large" here.
Many of them are also exceedingly generous, open and friendly and cares deeply. This holds true for both sides of the political spectrum.
They've also suffered a lot to end two world wars that they didn't start.
This is even more true of the Russians, and as an outsider, I'm wondering how much of their politics is informed by those memories.
It never ceases to amuse me how ignorant I am in my comments despite my attempts at being smart, wise and fair.
Of course you are right.
That said, this invasion is still a crime and I am utterly fed up by Russian actions in neighboring states, their constant lying, especially after MH17 was shot down, getting more or less away with state sponsored cheating in sports, simulating bombing raids against Swedish power plants etc. We should have seen this coming a long time ago.
(In my defense however, note that from the very start of this, even before the protests in Russia were known to me I think I have not said a bad word about the Russian people, barely a bad word about the men in boots and only after they started aggression and mostly - I hope - just about the leadership.)
> This is even more true of the Russians
No, it is not. The First World War was started because Russia backed up Serbia's refusal of Austria's ultimatum after a Serbian operation assassinated Austria's crown prince (and France & the UK backed up Russia, while Germany backed up Austria, and the whole powder keg blew up). The Second World War started because of the German invasion of Poland — and who else invaded Poland sixteen days later? The Soviet Union, which had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with its supplementary German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. Moreover, modern-day Poland is really an amalgamation of western Poland and what used to be eastern Germany: the Soviet Union kept about one third of what had been Poland.
They where allied with the Nazis in the second one and invaded 16 days after the start.
1) you will never be able to travel to Russia or a Russian controlled territory. Ever.
2) you will always be at risk for a hack-back or other issues when the dust settles and they seek revenge.
The idea is that a jury is allowed to make its decision without any outside interference. A jury can acquit a person even it they think the person is guilty. Thus a jury could give you a fee pass on hacking Russian systems, but you'd be relying on them to realise that and then think the moral reasons for acquittal out weigh the legal reasons for conviction.
Obviously courts don't like jury nullification try to prevent it, without harming a juries independence.
So possibly not a good idea to rely on jury nullification as your get out of jail free card.
California’s state Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that jury nullification is not a valid decision… and my understanding is if the outcome case can be attributed to “jury nullification” (i.e. could be as obvious as the defense suggesting it as an avenue to the jury, which ironically itself is legal, or as technical as the jury refusing to consider or explicitly refusing a piece of evidence that is entered in the record— think a moral objection to the law, or “evidence undeniably shows the defendant left the scene at 7pm, but we the jury contend it was 6pm”) it legally would be considered a mistrial and allowed to be re-litigated— and the sole person who has the power to attribute something to jury nullification and/or declare mistrial? The judge.
You should delete your comment before you cause someone to go to jail.
"before you cause someone to go to jail"
If you take legal advice from pseudo anonymous users on aggregate websites you deserve to go to jail. Even in writing that, the users did not "cause" anyone to go to jail; the moron reading and acting on that comment did. Have some respect for individuality mate.
(To any dumbarses reading this comment, launching cyberattacks against adversarial nation states will land you in prison if you're lucky, a body bag if you're not)
-- from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incitement
Here's the more relevant wikipedia link:
Obviously, you'd want a real legal opinion.
I do wonder at what point the US just declares Russian computer systems beyond the protection of US law. At some point, that happens, right?
But Russia can be an ally against certain enemies like isis because interests align. Similiar to China.
Ukraine is a democracy ally which puts them on another level and talks about them joining nato also put them on a different level.
The Ukrainian American veterans flying to Poland to defend Ukraine right now are also breaking US law, but there will not be any legal consequences for their courage and bravery.
For another country to go after US citizens, the country has to first file paperwork in US federal court, and then, have a judge care enough to proceed.
What drugs are you on to think Russia has any standing in US court regarding _anything_ that happens in Ukraine?
I doubt the US would prosecute you though for hacking Russia.
* Detect and notify the Ukrainian government about threats or upcoming attacks.
* Identify coordinated manipulative behaviour on social media.
* Last but not least contact Patreon's management to release the funds that have been donated to Ukrainian veterans (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30461038)
Feel free to add to the list, as there is going to be a lot of work in the upcoming days.
* It looks like there won't be a Ukrainian government to speak of in a few days.
* Manipulative behaviour has been identified on twitter and Facebook almost every day for the last few years, and it hasn't really led to much anything. The Ukrainian government can't do anything about that, if the independent banana republics of FAANG don't decide to act, nothing is gonna change.
* Likewise for patreon. It's a private Company and thus sadly, regrettably, out of reach of public scrutiny or regulation. Thoughts and prayers are free and abundant though! Besides, what is the Ukrainian government gonna do with money right now? I bet tanks and air defense systems have long lead times these days, chip shortage and all.
Sorry for the overboarding sarkasm... I guess. But these are my points.
Edit:
Collecting downvotes for that. Not surprised, but I'm not seeing any counterpoints, really. It's okay if you just need a valve to let off your frustration, have at it, but what the parent suggested seems.... pointless, sorry to be blank. I mean, this sort of soft influence might be useful, but we ("the west") have been proving, on an ongoing basis, for multiple years now, that corporate decisions shall not and will not be questioned by our governments, that essentially an american-based platform has unbridled control over what they want to do, and that if they don't care about trolls and bots and harassment and nationalism andandand then there's not much "we" (read: the government, first of all the US government) can^Wwill do. What is the ukraininan government gonna do with more intel on russian propaganda? What's the actionable on that? Start a war with twitter?
As for the first point. Yeah... I don't see the mechanism by which any of this will slow down the physical process of soldiers marching on Kyiv. No NATO state will enter into this conflict, Putin has been pretty openly threatening with nuclear annihilation. And I would doubt that the russian soldiers will be hanging out on twitter enough to really get distracted by some well thought-through anti-propaganda measures.
But you are right that social media networks are strong enablers of evil and helpers to enemies of freedom and democracy. Facebook and Twitter could easily stop (almost) all the misinformation and propaganda, but they don't because it makes them money.
I also should point that any defense of the freedom of speech also defends freedom of misinformation and propaganda.
If they are actual misinformation and propaganda and you are unwilling to even admit existence of that category, then you yourself are threat to freedom - of speech or otherwise.
> I also should point that any defense of the freedom of speech also defends freedom of misinformation and propaganda.
Nah. Defenders of free speech not being willing to criticize misinformation and propaganda, calling those "valuable vantage points" and being quick to criticize and attempt to shut up criticism of those is what is dangerous for free speech.
Pointing out misinformation and propaganda as such is a good thing.
But the biggest issue in my mind is that fake news, misinformation and bot bullying makes social media money, so they are never going to stop it.
"The answer to the speech is... more speech"
And I agree that this is exactly the problem - winners are who have more energy and opportunity to speak. "Drowning the voices" as you pointed out.
But, how to determine which voice is normal?
Per your suspicion that fake news and misinformation make money, fact checking is alleged to make money to Facebook and fact-checking Facebook affiliates. The links on fact checking materials divert viewers from one arrticles to other and increase clicks and retention at Facebook.
Yes, you are right again - misinformation may bring money to FB, at the very least, when FB tries to fight it. I guess it is a nature of capitalism, to try to make money out of everything.
Yet those are classes of speech.
Let me point out that I was answering the call to stop these classes of speech nearly completely, using magic of Twitter and Facebook.
I really doubt they could stop propaganda before the message is sent without deleting a ton of accounts that are false positives.
Do you know the future for 100%? If not doesn't it worth a try?
(Why is it not hopeless? Russian forces suffer large losses and their morale is breaking, after all, what sane person wants to shoot their peaceful neigbours and relatives? Russians are already taking to the streets to protest the madness one day into this stupid war, who would have expected such bravery from the already suffering Russian people? Half of the European population is already looking for anything they can do to support Ukraine, ordinary Russians raising up or to make Putin and his closest people suffer. Pro Russian trolls who were previously tolerated since we wanted to hear all sides are now kept down. The list probably goes on.)
Every free human is now at war, and for now, for us it is information warfare.
So lets make sure the madmen get nothing for free. Don't run their errands.
> no sane person wants to shoot their peaceful neighbors and relatives
and this is the case for all Russians even most of the ones in the army in Ukraine, right now. People do not want war. Period. For a human being to go to war, he/she needs to be heavily indoctrinated to the point of partially losing is normal references. Even today, with heavily indoctrinated armies, only a small subset of the forces are effectively shooting bullets.
War is decided by crazy leaders (and I am polite) far away from the lines.
From listening to people who grew up with the veterans here in Norway I've learned that:
- Germans were told they came here to protect us against the British so they would - in the beginning of the war - shoot to suppress, not to kill. I guess Russian soldiers coming into Ukraine has been tricked to believe the "peace keeping" nonsense too and had a rude awakening.
- Norwegians however were already mad and shot to kill. I guess this holds true for Ukrainians too. This is natural and we've seen it in Afghanistan, Iraq etc too I think.
- German soldiers would cryingly admit to POWs already at the start of the war that they were absolutely not voluntarily there, they'd just be shot if they refused.
No shit they weren't there voluntarily, no sane people want to go to their death, but those were the rules for mandatory conscription for them back then.
Even today some European countries still have mandatory conscription, and while they won't shoot you for refusal, if you don't show up for conscription, military police will come to your house and arrest you, and if you run away, an arrest warrant will be issues on your name.
So yeah, you have to do your mandatory service, even if you don't want to.
I didn't leave because of that, but I did delight I telling them I was beyond their reach. Finally picked up the phone the very day I left.
My dad and uncle both served 3-4 months in prison for refusing as a matter of principle, and my intent was to do so too until we decided to move our startup at the time to London.
Of course the main reason for that conscription was the Soviet Union/Russia. It's gotten very lenient since I left in 2000, as the size of the Norwegian military has been scaled back to the point they only need a small portion of potential recruits.
Unless you decide to go full career in the military, once you're done with the month long boot camp, if there's no war, national crisis or natural disaster that will get the grunts mobilized, the rest of the 5 months of service, are spent by the recruits dicking around on the taxpayers' money, doing useless busywork around the garrison.
And there's almost no way to avoid it unless you suffer from a severe physical or mental illness making you unsuitable for service, as even after you get out of prison for refusal, you'll be drafted back in.
PS: funny that you moved from Norway to London as many Brits I've met look up to Norway as a role model, so I'm really interest in your story
If you're a lower earner, quality of life in Norway is much better, but if you're a higher earner, London is great. And at the time funding in Norway was tricky. But, yeah, I look on British politics with great bemusement and a some sadness - so many lost opportunities.
My grandfather on ny mothers side served and helped hold the nazis back for a few days in his home country and maybe helped some people get away. He later had to surrender and spent a short time in a POW camp before being released.
I respect both very much but I decided to do as my dad and serve.
It absolutely felt like the right thing to do for me.
My main objection was not with the service in itself, but with it being compulsory under threat of prison. Of course today the "compulsory" nature of it is mostly a charade - if you want out it's trivial.
I shyed away from education / officer training because I felt the risk of being sent on peace keeping to the middle east, but 20 years later I see I could safely have done it.
Just because the US did it, doesn't mean that Russia is justified or less wrong, both are wrong, and neither get to call out the other for humanitarian reasons.
But I can remember stories from my childhood about Russians tying up Afghan fighters and driving over them with tanks to make an example, so again without defending drone strikes on weddings or Abu Ghraib or anything other spectacularly bad I
1.) think it wouldn't have been much better if it was the Russians who went in
2.) think the reason why the Russian government hasn't been involved in more badness in the middle east until recently has not been its peaceful nature but the fact that they have been cash strapped.
You could also look at some of the responses and choices made by the people/cultures native to this region over the years since then. Yes, "cultures" is plural.
You can certainly question whether that was worth the cost.
Please forgive those of us who where tricked into it, too young to vote etc.
I'll try to do my part to prevent more of it.
Edit: as for the phrase "the free world", read it to mean "freer to those inside it" if that helps.
Then you blame the voters of America when their government started an illegal war based on falsehoods.
As a UK citizen, of voting age for 20 years now, I'm guilty as charged. I voted for Blair before the Iraq war, but like many others protested on our streets in the build up (and I haven't voted for them since).
Doesn't make us wrong about Putin though.
That's not really an argument in itself tho.
I’m all for blaming the US where it’s warranted, but I don’t think that particular instance is it.
The difference might be that at least it proclaims them, and good people like yourself can hold them accountable to those values.
Seems to me you can't really hold the US military to account, any more (or less) than you can the US police. Maybe a win here-and-there for political PR, but overall no.
Do we do it again?
Not the US. Maybe they did some time unintentionally, but with Putin it was part of his plans.
> they supported [the] Kurds
Of course, the Kurds and the US and Iraq were fighting together against Daesh (the so called Islamic State).
You're giving the impression that you like Assad, Putin, Erdagon, possibly Daesh as well. What kind of person are you, I start wondering.
Agreed that the US has done lots of bad things in the middle east though. (Eg helping the Talibans climb to power, supporting Saddam Hussein for quite long etc)
No one here said they were.
You're misreading.
"Seems someone likes Assad, maybe X" does not mean "Assad and X are allies".
It's possible for someone to like both Stalin and Hitler although they weren't allies (in the end).
No, but to say that the instigators of anti-russian sentiment in Ukraine are not mostly Neo-nazi's is ignorant. These articles go back years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/azov-far-right...
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/136008/commentary_56.pdf
Oh my, this is disturbing. What was the probably cause? WMD's? :^/
Apparently ethnic Russians were being killed in Ukraine (or they have been the last 8 years, but more serious shelling started on February 17, 2022) and that is why Russia invaded.
At least according to Putler's propaganda.
> ethnic Russians were being killed in Ukraine
Far, far more ethnic Russians were not being killed in Ukraine.
Sure, some of the instigators, perpetrators, and fellow travellers of the armed insurrection in East Ukraine are (or were) ethnic Russians, but they:
A) Are being killed for being armed insurrectionists, not for being ethnic Russians.
B) Are (or were) themselves killing ethnic Ukrainians in the course of their armed insurrection.
C) Probably themselves killed quite a few ethnically Russian members of the Ukrainian armed forces.
> (or they have been the last 8 years,
Yeah, exactly: Since they started an armed insurrection.
> but more serious shelling started on February 17, 2022)
Oh, what a convenient date.
> and that is why Russia invaded.
Putler says that is why Russia invaded.
Oh: And so do you. Coincidence?
I don’t see why this would be true. The legitimate government doesn’t have to be in kiev to coordinate the defense of the country.
I think the psychological effect of losing Kiev would be much lower if they planned on that from the start too, but I guess that bird has flown.
NATO's mission has always been mutual defense of members. Ukraine is not a member.
The threat of Russian nuclear weapons has been more poignant in the past than today. Neither of your conclusions was true before.
We can see this security guarantee in action right now. Same will happen with NATO's mutual defense guarantee.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-put...
Documenting the behavior and collecting intelligence is a difficult skill and intensely valuable even if it is not direct retaliation.
I imagine if you are on an isp or IX backbone you could observe flows of packets. But how do you do that from a vpn?
Or should they break in to target systems first, shore up the defences, and then document who else tries to break in?
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1506903/BBC-blast...
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1497043/BBC-backl...
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2021/09/27/what-...
And the government promising the send the army in?
When looking at the 30-40min delays in filling in which was largely concentrated in cities, how many people sat queueing for fuel were considering an electric car? And then those filling up were limited to £20 or £30 of fuel so they experienced the same range anxiety as someone with an electric car.
Sometimes its not the message that is important, its the resulting changes that are more important. So the fuel crisis created an uptick in electric vehicle sales.
Its not just Govt discounts for new tech like solar cells that cause a change in behaviour, other entities can also take advantage of situations, or just be manipulated into reporting it.
Take the chip shortage and the Ukraine crisis when thinking of Ukraine being the largest Neon producer and its relevance to the chip supply chain. Neon production is a global supply change risk at the moment so events are making changes occur. Bosch is now fabricating their own chips albeit 300mm https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/07/bosch-opens-1-2-billion-ch... and Intel have also announced a new chip fab in Germany. https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/23/report-intel-build-new-c...
So Russia going into secure Ukraine and thus Neon means the EU & US get a stick poked into their bike wheel!
Nothing is ever what it seems!
Panic buying begins
Prepare for the worst
Winter of discontent
Fuel rationing
ARMY to step in
BBc headline was
“Petrol shortage, don’t rush to buy say ministers”
You mean the Russian propaganda, or the West's propaganda?
Seriously, two years after "two weeks to flatten the curve" everyone is at it _again_ and it's embarrasing.
For this reason, just like how our troops are not in Ukraine but in surrounding countries watching, our NSA hackers are most likely standing down as well, as tragic as it may be.
As a result, even if that binding is still in power, is it worth defending Ukraine by going to war against Russia? That would literally start World War III. Letting Ukraine fall is terrible, awful, painful - but it's better than WWIII.
Quote from the article:
> "Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," the post read, asking hackers and cybersecurity experts to submit an application via Google docs, listing their specialties, such as malware development, and professional references.
If you're not Ukrainian, I guess the request is not aimed at you. Probably exactly for the reasons you mention. And if you were, the request is to fill in the form, not to go rogue.
Edit: @dang maybe change the title to "[...] calls on its hacker underground [...]" to make this a bit more clear?
Maybe there could be some formal initiative to clear out the grey/black area's so white hats can not fall upon their ethics.
read up on "unlawful combatant" and "irregular combatant"
Now if look more specifically at cyber, then there are laws such as
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
The Stored Communications Act (SCA)
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)
The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)
By analogy, if A does crime to B, it isn't B who prosecutes, it is the appropriate governmental organization.
I used to work for an anti-phishing firm that you’ve likely never heard of. We routinely disrupted and dismantled phishing campaigns and bot networks being used by Russian crime networks as well as suspected IRGC (those folks have to get currency somewhere and importing an crack cocaine is apparently not their style)
Our malware research and SOC folks were pretty much all former Feds or Military Intelligence. They would routinely counter-hack servers we couldn’t take-down through legitimate means. While it was most certainly a “let’s not discuss this in an email” it was understand and briefed by our legal department that it was a “grey area” and that the USG would never even bother us as we were hitting adversarial nations anyway.
If you’re gonna play hackerman for UA, just do it smart.
The joke of sanctions implemented by the EU and the US, and they are a joke, since EU continues to import gas from Russia, and SWIFT use continues by the Russian Federation, is a symptom of the same attitude seen on many Ukraine residents just 48 hours ago.
A kind of cognitive disconnect between the obvious war coming your way, and a refusal to accept it, until it is at your door.
You have a ex-president of the United States openly praising the Russian president on the media, and also US TV networks openly doing the treasonous job of promoting Russian views in the US. If the Russian army quickly overtakes Ukraine you have Russian troops staring across the border to Polish troops. Some of the small countries that are now members of NATO, still have small pockets of Russian speaking communities. You think Russia will not claim they are also being discriminated and need another peace keeping operation?
In case of a conflict between Russia and a NATO member, it's mushroom clouds we are looking into. So I find your legalistic concerns incredibly detached from the seriousness of the current situation.
Poland would be a more difficult target to justify than the Baltics; only 0.1% of Poles speak Russian; 30% of Latvians are native Russian speakers. I could see Putin going there next.
So, not likely that Latvia is next.
"‘If a war starts, they will come here first’: Latvia mounts a wary border watch"
https://www.politico.eu/article/war-russia-ukraine-latvia-mo...
I am not, even slightly, sure that this is the case anymore. Economic sanctions is as far as anyone is willing to go anymore it seems - and half-assed ones at that.
I absolutely cannot see the US, England, or any other NATO countries sending people to die in Latvia. There just is zero stomach for that in most of the world.
And people like Putin know that, is the problem, I think.
There is another very dangerous scenario that has not been considered. A Russian inspired coup in one of the existing NATO countries with a not so small large Russian speaking population. That government then saying they want to leave NATO.
On another side, it's not even mentioned that in the middle of the war action in Ukraine, nobody seems to have noticed Putin just annexed another country, Byelorussia. The Russian troops were supposed to leave at the end of their 3 week long exercises, but they are now leaving...never.
Belorussia has been a Russian puppet since the collapse of the USSR, nobody's noticed it because nothing has changed.
"Referendum on Belarus’ constitutional amendments set for 27 February" https://president.gov.by/en/events/referendum-po-vneseniyu-i...
Arguably, gas is of military value, so maybe it's more advantageous to allow Russia to have the money and have the gas than the other way around. Depends on if the money goes towards other armaments - but I'm sure Russia has plenty of those in any case.
That said, why wouldn't Russia stop selling? Hmmm.
> ex-president of the United States openly praising the Russian president on the media
> US TV networks openly doing the treasonous job of promoting Russian views in the US
Can you clarify, I feel there might be a dubious definition of 'praising' and 'promoting' at play here.
You had US military and ex-military, doing work for Russian's since the 2014 Obama administration. That explains a lot of what has emboldened Russia.
"Trump being advised by ex-U.S. Lieutenant General who favors closer Russia ties" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-adviso...
"Michael Flynn—Once Indicted Over Russia Communication—Voices Support For Russia Ahead Of Potential Ukraine Invasion" https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/01/24/michael-fl...
But I think the other stuff (Flynn in Trump admin) is old-news; Biden administration had also talked of better diplomatic ties with Russia recently, before the invasion started. Dems have been somewhat more pro-China than Trump also, and I'm somewhat hesitant to distinguish being "pro-China" vs "pro-Russia"; both are strong mutual allies, at least in backing each other up both in terms of resources and PR.
Also, could you respond in full e.g. "Flynn was pardoned by Trump, meaning that..." so I don't have to guess what you mean.
EDIT: ok it was done, thanks. Although I'd add he was caught not disclosing talking to an ambassador (he is afaik allowed to do so), and then accused of lying about it to the FBI.
Per my post, there was a lot of politicking in that incitement that by itself would have justified the pardon.
TBH, I just don't know - which is what I mean by "politicking"; The more I read the more I feel I'm either missing something, or fed mis-information or a skewed perspective.
There was a whole thing about altered or manipulated notes during the Flynn incitement - yet Wikipedia page for Flynn barely mentions it, or McCabe, and McCabe's page mention his firing (which he says was based on an attempt to discredit him) but barely mentions Flynn..
Was that important? Was the DOJ justified in dropping charges, or was Barr corrupt? Was the Pardon justified given the FBIs shady tactics (although shady tactics might be their modus-operandi..), or not? Or maybe the pardon was more motivated by Flynn being "inner-circle" than anything FBI or Russia based. I just don't know.
I'd pick you up on "lying about it" - I consider the FBI to be heavily politically active, esp in the Trump/Comey times, so describing them as "law enforcement" in these situations is misleading.
I added detail to my previous comment, but I don't really trust the outcome of an incitement where the FBI held all the cards - you get the same thing when people accept one-sided plea deals from the police - "they even admitted they did it".
There's a whole lot of context around this. For example, you can characterise the FBI as simply "Law enforcement", but you could characterise the DOJ-under-Barr the same. If you have reason to doubt/discredit the DOJ, them you should equally allow for the same wrt the FBI-under-Comey.
He was paid $45,000 for his appearance, but again "forgot" to report that income. What is the US bar for the word "treasonous"?
You are cherry picking facts without context, and just repeating tabloid headlines.
Not sure what you mean by SWIFT being the last option before war, war is happening right now.
> Not sure what you mean by SWIFT being the last option before war, war is happening right now.
The War isn't happening for NATO. NATO as we all know won't do anything regarding the Ukraine invasion. If Russia starts to bulk troops on the Polish border - or any other NATO member, EU will try to solve it diplomatically using the SWIFT option before really going to War.
Just belatedly noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30471631, perhaps you hadn't seen it
2. Console tool for unplanned load testing Link - https://github.com/codesenberg/bombardier/releases/tag/v1.2.... Example usage - ./bombardier-linux-amd64 --duration=240h --connections=1000 --latencies https://lenta.ru
UPD: For some of the sites, you may need to run Chrome with CORS disabled: https://alfilatov.com/posts/run-chrome-without-cors/
Windows: Right click on desktop, add new shortcut, Add the target as "[PATH_TO_CHROME]\chrome.exe" --disable-web-security --disable-gpu --user-data-dir=~/chromeTemp , Click OK. OSX: open -n -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --args --user-data-dir="/tmp/chrome_dev_test" --disable-web-security , Linux: google-chrome --disable-web-security
Windows: Right click on desktop, add new shortcut, Add the target as "[PATH_TO_CHROME]\chrome.exe" --disable-web-security --disable-gpu --user-data-dir=~/chromeTemp , Click OK.
OSX: open -n -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --args --user-data-dir="/tmp/chrome_dev_test" --disable-web-security Linux: google-chrome --disable-web-security
The best way is to create some node or binaries (rust/go/c++) and run them.
But of course never browse the web with this instance of disabled security.
DDOSing Russian news websites just allows them to cry victim - “look, they don’t want you to hear the truth!”.
Disrupting the Russian internet in general also harms any anti-war protesters trying to organize.
People like to act as though they'd be the person in the crowd who would rush a lone gunman first. Sure - you'll die, but the group will get the gunman and everything will be better. They definitely love to proclaim that some other bugger in that situation should be willing to take the bullet.
I, personally, hope I never have to make the decision between dying doing the right thing and living doing the easy thing. I've no intention of judging those who do.
Just because a country claims to represent you, you don't have the moral obligation to oppose it while risking your personal wellbeing.
Voters got rid of Bush but this did not stop the unjust American wars.
The Russian citizens are people just like us, powerless and with their own peace to protect.
If you're referring to Bush Sr., then this is also incorrect. The economy and Ross Perot got rid of him.
They don't know there's a war going on.
Anyway, most Russians probably thought this was all bluster by the West and Russia wasn't going in. They need to know they're engaged in an actual war.
The comment above is a pretty accurate picture: protecting Ukrainian civilians, soldiers defecting to Russian side without even a fight, military generals telling success stories of their daily peace keeping operations and other face palming tales such as indeed a repeated idea that they fight against nazis to protect motherland under threat from evil NATO and the Americans.
(Then there is also the interesting issue of American biolabs in Ukraine (and other countries bordering Russia). There were reports of what the US does there but we will see whether the Russians can still find anything or whether it's too late.)
Anyway, it's pretty much already over and the West won. Putin/Russia got painted as the baddies + more sanctions (e.g. Nord Stream II suspended, so now the US can sell their shitty, overpriced fracking stuff to the EU). The Ukraine got screwed over/played by the West but they had already achieved a lot of goals (getting access to all the rich soil + controlling it for example as well as dividing brothers and sisters by supporting nationalists to the point where we now have those language/racial laws). But hey, apparently a lot of Western people support such a government. "Slava Ukraini/Heil Ukraine", as they say.
No defensive or tactical advantage whatsoever.
It just means that they have nothing to fight with. Internet field marshals that are doing last minute squeaking towards Russia. They are at best reactionary attacks which are predictable and easily mitigated against.
The cost of inaction has gone up, and up, and up. Now the Ukrainian people are paying that price in blood and subjugation. How much higher should we allow it to go?
DDOS-ing a website is nonviolent. Severe, crippling economic sanctions are nonviolent. We should wage all-out economic war and accept the costs, which will be real and painful. Gandhi and other pacifist leaders didn't advocate inaction, he advocated forceful and determined nonviolent action that caused as much inconvenience and difficulty for his opponents as possible. We should at least be doing that, surely?
P.S. I don't care about downvotes. I'm surprised the account is not shadow banned.
(Not linking the URL in case that's why the comment is dead)
BTW, the script is self-contained and pretty trivial, and can easily be modified to include more sites.
I will accept pull requests for any improvements: https://github.com/lostmsu/lostmsu.github.io/blob/master/hac...
Sounds like interesting research!
That tab did not seem to generate much traffic. LOIC is outdated and I think is protected against nowadays.
Now the people are the censors? In the fog of war, how can we judge information if we have no access to the information?
Is it fake news that the U.S. said that they would not let N.A.T.O. into Ukraine?
As with all technologies, they come with responsibility. Acting as self censors is just as bad as letting the government do it for you.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but think of what happened at the begging of the Iraq war and the lies of WMDs.
No difference with Fox News, Sky News and most TV channels from Spain, them.
They tried to pass a Chinese explosion (causality) as a war bombing from Russians.
Read more here: https://www.imperva.com/blog/gbps-pps-rps-ddos-attacks/#:~:t...
Unfortunately, we have not seen understanding with any government. Looks like, all people who got to government or state organizations, work on classical totalitarian scheme - "for friends all the best, for all others - severity of the law". Mean, system is so much disbalanced, that any government got totalitarian power and does not account on people. And laws are created, to make all people offenders, and with very wide possibilities of interpretation, so state officials and their friends become above law.
If you really want to help Ukraine, better to contact volunteers-entrepreneurs, who where on Maidan, and who struggle for economic freedoms, and support Ukrainian army as private persons, without government/state.
You could just donate, or you could create some business opportunity, so Ukrainians will make business, export working hours, or export some products to world.
Business opportunities much better, because Ukraine now have critically huge dependence on Russian market, close to 50% of all trade, need much-much more export to world.
Thank You!
> You could just donate, or you could create some business opportunity, so Ukrainians will make business, export working hours, or export some products to world.
This makes sense, but I wonder if this would help in the short time. Maybe investing would help over the years; if Russia invades, investments may not help avoid the consequences?
What I see now, kremlin for sure have not prepared for long term war campaign, they just have not built hospitals for wounded (thanks to western sat photos, provided by official sources), and this is extremely important, because in real war, 80% wounded die within 24h if have not received medical care in nearest 1-2 hours. And if will be resistance, attacking forces will have very large number of wounded, so they will be forced to stop attack, because have not enough medicine institutions to heal wounded.
So I think, kremlin accounted for similar to 2014 behavior of Ukrainian soldiers, I mean, in 2014 many Ukrainian soldiers or even officers just drop weapons and surrendered, to avoid bloodshed, because they think it is not war, they think it is provocation.
Now I have some under the hood tools, and with them I see totally different reaction. I know that border guards tried to stop occupants; I know that pilots got very clear instruction "You could fire if you sure see enemy"; I know, in many places, air defense fires on "unknown aircrafts".
And it is important, that count of Russian military forces, prepared before occupation, where close to current Ukrainian army. And technical power of armies are similar now, except of aviation - Ukraine have approx few tens military planes and helicopters, but occupants have more than hundred, same thing with tanks. But Ukraine now have Stingers, Javelins, Bayraktars, and some other modern weapons, so powers similar.
So, I think, in approximately 30 hours, hot phase of war will end, and will continue similar to "ATO", mean struggle on east, but possible in few additional places.
Or if You have good understanding of Israel history, or history of Korea, their hot war phases, usually does not last more than few weeks, some oven few days, and between of those hot phases, where very-very long periods of economy struggle or just information wars.
I have before analyzed Japan success, and I think, they have V-shape economy grows on every big earthquake, because they had to rebuild lot of things from scratch, this is very good for market competitiveness. Ukraine before 2014 does not seen so large examples of market falls, because of this Ukrainian business was not ready for real life, and I think, now its time to change selves.
https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...
So at the moment, I could suggest most trustful for me organization and person, who are ready, and please be patient, I believe, after Monday hot phase will end, and people will answer faster. Also I will give more info as will got news.
Serhiy Prytula https://www.facebook.com/serhiyprytula/posts/505236280960977
Back and alive https://www.facebook.com/backandalive/posts/2231987336958691
For others, either I think they are ineffective (like official government organizations, which accumulated huge money, but don't have spent them), or they have not created reliable system organization, or I just don't know them good enough.
Without Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, Russia loses sea access to the Black Sea and thus the Mediterranean for their navy (and also for trade), which historically has been a primary determinant of Russian military influence in Europe. Otherwise, they only have northern ports which are frozen and easily choked off (and ports way over on the Pacific - imagine having to sail your navy around Eurasia in order to attack or defend).
More importantly, Ukraine's geography is easy to move large forces across, in that respect a major battlefield (with due respect to Ukrainians). Napoleon and the Nazis both crossed through that region on their way to Russia, and when Russia attacks West, they go through Ukraine. Russian wants to control it and to prevent others from controlling it.
By controlling Ukraine, Russia can put more pressure on, have more influence over, Ukraine's neighbors, including Poland, and further cut off Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia from their NATO allies.
Finally, Putin wants glory - don't underestimate the personal characteristics, such as ego, of unaccountable dictators - and to recreate the Soviet empire and the illusion of power. An independent, democratic Ukraine both undermines that appearance (and perception is everything for dictators) and embarasses Putin's claim to power as an authoritarian dictator.
Hitler yes. Napoleon no. The French neither attacked nor retreated through what is now Ukraine.
That "Mystery of Russian Soul" lies among the lines of "Kiev - mother of Russian cities" (term of 12th century Primary Chronicle) and too many other historical facts. Like Wild Steppe (south of Ukraine) were fought for and liberated from Crimean Khanate by Russian Army. Modern Kherson, Nikolayev, Sevastopol, and Ekaterinoslav(Dnipro/Dnepropetrovsk), were established by Gregory Potemkin (Empress Catherine times) and populated by peasants from Russian heartlands - Tambov, Ryazan, Pskov, etc.
All that is well known and well remembered facts by Russian public. So we should not expect that Russian people will be so against all that. If in doubt then see the above.
Putin view Ukraine as a natural part of the Russian Empire - they are his vassals.
They can't have a free and prosperous Ukraine that has 'gone to the side of the west'.
The Crimean peninsula is just a bonus.
That's untrue. Sevastopol is the main port and naval base in the Black Sea, but Russia has plenty of others, and some are even undergoing expansion - Novorosiisk ( the backup one). Sevastopol is in Crimea, but was shared under an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian navies. So in reality, Russia gained nothing there besides an extra front for their current invasion of Ukraine.
Romania, Bulgaria doesn't border Russia , Turkey is not on the land border and they have decent relations with them. But sure, they're likely not happy with that either - they just can't and will not do anything about it. With Crimea/Ukraine - they could.
I have never seen someone claim that Novorosiisk was a sufficient port. Maybe it's a capacity issue?
> Sevastopol is in Crimea, but was shared under an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian navies.
It is in a foreign country, an unfriendly one. That greatly limits Russia's freedom of action.
It's not 'what it has' it's 'what it is'.
Putin views the Ukraine as 'part of Russia' - that's it.
I don't understand why people have such a hard time with this.
Imagine if Mexico invaded Texas in 1950 and 'won'. A lot of Americans would want to 'take it back'.
Now I don't believe that this analogy is real in terms of the Ukraine situation (Imagine if those Mexicans wanted to be Mexicans and definitely did not want to be part of the USA...), but you can see how Putin + Co. propaganda would like you to see it.
I'm wary that there will be much of an insurgency in Ukraine - it's big, open, spread out, there are few places to hide.
We'll see.
A better analogy would be Australia and Canada. Both were part of Great Britain and both became independent after the British Empire collapsed.
Example of the Queen's representative interfering in local politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
Ironically it happened the other way round.
For one, Putin seems to want to reassemble the USSR as a vanity project. Further, this all started (years ago) when the Ukrainians removed out their Moscow friendly president. Putin doesn't like reminders that months of sustained protests can really effect change and remove leaders, especially so close to Russia.
Crimea is the only "warm water" port that Russia has access to to gain access for the end and the Atlantic.
The Ukraine has a ton of farmland. This may be more valuable soon because China imports a ton of food and if you're planning on a Sino-Russo alliance cut off from western powers, food is important.
Similarly, it shares a lot of the fresh water sources with the rest of Europe. I don't know if it's something he can attempt to monopolize, but controlling water into the region is at least as good as natural gas, and less seasonal with less ability to diversify like to green energy.
The USSR located some specialty heavy industry in Ukraine. If it still exists, it might be valuable. I read, but can not confirm, that it was part of the strategic goal of the USSR to make sure each constituent state wasn't self sufficient to encourage national unity. But that could just be BS. Reasoning like that is almost certainly why Crimea was given to the Ukraine.
This is bullshit propaganda, sorry. Russia has over 1000km of coast at the Black Sea, to the East of Crimea.
I will say, even if it were true, that wouldn't justify what Russia is doing. But I can see how it would be useful for domestic consumption.
Its straight out of Imperial Russia's propaganda book. Kind of proof that Russia since ~1600 has always been the same country, just with a different coat of paint (the one between 1917 and 1991 happening to be red paint).
Putin has almost exclusively bad things to say about the USSR, it is the Russian Empire he wants to restore.
But you contend that Putin doesn't want the western tip of Ukraine, but instead to reclaim Finland, Alaska and parts of Poland? Because that's the only difference in his territorial ambitions.
The fact is that democratic countries with leaders elected yesterday are at a disadvantage to these perpetual dictators with low accountability and strong convictions.
Putin is a snake. I would say he’s the most dangerous man in the world. He absolutely cannot be trusted, and his agenda really does involve damaging and weakening other sovereign nations seemingly for the sake of it.
The only game he knows and when he sees a winning move he can get away with he can't not take it.
Peter Zeihan predicted this in 2017. There is first of many wars to come.
Very similar to what WW1 and WW2 causes.
- In approx 1900, Germany becomes one country (before, there where many small principalities, and no central power lasts long).
So appear new country, powerful country, and they look on world and see colonial system, where nearly ALL powerful countries has colonies. I mean whole world where divided between top countries.
First, Germany tried to reach an agreement with top countries, to cut some colonies from other countries and assign to Germany, but without fast success, because pre WW1 agreements system where extremely sophisticated, and they just cannot rebuild this system fast.
Than German powers conclude, that they could faster got wanted if make war, that's all.
To be more precise, Russia is large, but economically, it's position is worst in world, except Mongolia. - Russia have longest in world size of land borders, near no borders on mountains, very little number of possible sea ports; extremely large territory is just ice, nothing could grow there.
- Russia really have reliable access to sea only in few places - Baltic, Black sea/Azov, and on Pacific, this is extremely little, for so large number of citizens (approx half of US).
BTW, current Russia situation is much better, than for example 200 years ago, because that time they had neighbors, who demand very high fees for access to sea. To solve this, Russians occupied their neighbors - 300-200 years ago, Russians near constantly invade neighbors and assimilate them into their empire, so now they have another problem, google Belfast.
Now, Russians trying to work less crude, they trying to place puppet governments in all neighbors countries.
Ukraine have borders with three EU countries, and is one of the largest counties on Black sea, so Ukraine is extremely interest for logistics.
And unfortunately, current Ukraine don't have effective government system, as I said on another comment, current Ukraine officials are extremely corrupted and extremely illiterate.
So Russians concluded, that Ukraine could be easy target for occupation and/or to place puppet government, and prepared for invasion and invade.
I don's think, Russians really plan to assimilate Ukraine, most probably, planned scheme where similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact
BTW exists excellent movie, very good show atmosphere in Warsaw Pact countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Spies_(film)
Didn't Biden explicitly say yesterday that they were preparing for the war and in fact built field hospitals, brought blood supplies, etc.?
Analytics said, Russian have TECHNICAL resources for war, but unknown in which condition those resources.
This remember me old anecdote, in 1960th, American analytics count overall area of all Russian secret enterprises, than compare it with American rocket enterprises, and give to Senate defense comitee prediction, how many rockets USSR already build, to suggest huge increase of defense spending.
Members look on this prediction, and asked one simple question: how they could been sure, that all those enterprises made just rockets? And where Soviets build cars, trains, other mechanics? Analytics could not answer to this, and where got out with shame.
Returning for technical resources, we have not before invasion know, what will be used.
And sure Biden insured for worst possible case, he thought, and we also thought, that Russia will attack with modern high precision weapons, but fortunately, this does not happen.
Now we know exactly, that Russian army mostly have extremely old machines, approximately 1970th if account from Western technical level, not Russian.
Thanks for sanctions on Russia, they have not modernized much machines for modern level.
And 1970th machines, are totally depend on people, they are not automatic at all, and to be exact, they are just support for infantry, which is extremely vulnerable for Ukrainian weapons.
Second question where, if Ukrainians will resist, or like in 2014 will drop weapons and surrender - we have Great answer for this question.
If Ukrainians where not resist, Russians would be used Ukrainian medical infrastructure.
So, kremlin mistaken. To be honest, all mistaken, underestimated Ukrainian forces and Ukrainian people, and overestimated Russians.
Because of these mistakes, I could talk to you from Kiev, and we still resist, and I believe, we will win, all world will win, with independent Ukraine.
They might not care? Significant casualties might be part of the calculation, if it's an all-or-nothing move by their leaders. The existence of their mobile crematoriums suggest something like it.
It is impossible.
I know Russians very deep, they are not demons. Russian outlook, as I know, is very close to just ordinary beggars, some are criminal, but not many.
So most of them have not strong moral values, but they don't want to be wounded or die. So they will not care too much, if they just need to press button or "just attach box to pipe in concentration camp".
And we also know, that Russian army is in reality not high tech army, most their weapons are based on 1960th technologies, no electronic computers at all, paper maps, old analogue radio, etc, so their technologies cannot work without people (US have large number of modern automatic weapons).
And even before invasion, we know about very low morale in Russian army, but if Russian soldiers will conclude, that nobody will care wounded, they will surrender just after see Ukrainians without any shoot.
I browsed Ukraine web shops and found at least Spar has an open webshop: https://shop.spar.ua/ . If anyone has an address to order for I'll try ordering some goods for the front line, bunkers or what do I know.
In the longer term I'll do what I already do to China:
I happily pay 20% more for small goods not made in China and in fact I try to avoid buying Chinese.
At the same time I'll happily pay even a bit more for Lithuanian goods after their brave stance the last few months. (Lithuanians, make sure "Made in Lithuania" is visible on everything you ship. You guys rock!)
In some cases smaller European countries' manufacturers prefer to put "Made in the EU" because it's more reputable. No idea if the Lithuanians do it too.
These two contacts seem most trustful for me:
https://www.facebook.com/serhiyprytula/posts/505236280960977
https://www.facebook.com/backandalive/posts/2231987336958691
I will write additional info when will have.
Very annoyingly.
(I can only chalk the downvotes (this comment was grey at time of my reply) up to pOlItIcS)
How do you hope to defeat Russia without coordinating with the lawful and most powerful institutions in the country? Note also that probably all foreign government assistance, especially the motherlodes of assistance from NATO states, including cyber, will be going through the Ukranian government.
> You could just donate, or you could create some business opportunity
How will creating business opportunities do anything to protect the freedom of the Ukranian people or defeat the Russian invasion? It seems like a major distraction from a crisis.
> any government got totalitarian power and does not account on people
Calling the Ukranian government undemocratic is a leading talking point of Russia and their allies. How do we distinguish what you are saying from them?
All your points seem to reduce support for and divert it from the Ukranian government and their military. Isn't that absurdly dangerous in this moment?
> I'm Ukrainian activist for 10+ years, have been on Maidan, etc, know many other activists.
With due respect, in this atmosephere, how can we take the word of an anonymous person on the Internet? Would you trust such a person? How would you distinguish them?
Almost none of the people on HN have anything to contribute to the Ukranian military. At the same time, all of the things related to actually living as a person in any country, at war or peace time, revolve around jobs, the economy and technology, things people on HN have a lot to do with.
https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/
https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...
If you want to donate I would try to find some small scale relief effort that probably has no free Central bank money raining over it.
Given the success of Turkish drones against older Russian weaponry during the recent conflict in Artsakh, maybe the Turks could be convinced to test the drones against more modern versions? Although your point is correct, that the time to have arranged this has passed.
Many people here could participate in their cyber efforts, and/or know others who could. I would think HN would be an especially fruitful recruiting ground.
Also, public support worldwide is essential, as is evidenced by both sides' intense investment in it.
Unfortunately, Ukrainian government extremely corrupted, and Ukrainian army affected by this corruption.
- Ukrainian officials so much feared about potential military junta (btw, like Putin and all officials of exUSSR countries), so purposefully hold army weak, make all possible to assign least initiative army tops, and slow down reformation of army.
For example, I hear from insiders, that to build in Ukraine factory of NATO standard rifles/shells, West have to "hook Ukrainian tops balls", because all normal human measures where ineffective.
Other important thing, you may not believe, but just today I seen calls from most trusted Ukrainian activist, to buy to Ukrainian army food.
Tell me, how possible, army in Kiev does not have normal food supply?
- Even in USSR regulations, written, that every military unit, should have long last food supply for at least 10 days, and today is just 3rd day of invasion, and we hear calls. I think their supplies are just plundered by officials.
If you interested, later I will supply long list of what where designed for army in Ukraine, but Government does not made payment or used some other bureaucracy tricks to not buy those things.
> probably all foreign government assistance...will be going through the Ukranian government
Sure. Western officials MUST at least show, they act openly, because Western people will not understand.
But in exUSSR countries, many things are not done acting openly, because extremely large part of officials here working from USSR times, they just do not have modern habits.
And even young officials are not ordinary persons from street, but mostly relatives of old officials.
For example, after 2014 revolution, activists created database of Ukrainians with good western background, even from ivy League, who want to become officials, even considering extremely low compensations and begin from very beginners positions. - Totally about 3000 persons enroll, but less than 200 where accepted by govt organizations, and in just one year only about 30 still worked there, all others quit, because of extremely toxic atmosphere. - In Ukraine now near 300k people considered government workers, and approx 80k officials.
> How will creating business opportunities do anything to protect the freedom of the Ukranian people or defeat the Russian invasion?
You remembered me words of Poroshenko, who once said words, which every person lived in USSR or in other totalitarian country, understand absolutely right, as: "do not critique me! Or Putin will invade!"
And it is extremely important, that Russia invades its neighbors all few hundreds years it exists. And I have not seen any serious scientific foundations that this Russian behavior will end in some observable future.
So we have situation, very similar to Israel-Iran, one of our neighbor will be our enemy forever, constantly waiting for good opportunity to attack us.
You really think, we should not make reforms now?
Sure, I don't ask to drop support on official channels just now, but hot phase will not last more than cup of weeks, and than we will return to the same words, "do not critique me! Or Putin will invade!"
> Calling the Ukranian government undemocratic is a leading talking point of Russia and their allies. How do we distinguish what you are saying from them?
Easy. I talking with people, I answer all questions, and I learn, and act, but nearly no one of exUSSR presidents will. We name this phenomena, "they become bronze man".
> in this atmosephere, how can we take the word of an anonymous person on the Internet? Would you trust such a person? How would you distinguish them?
I'm understand your words very well. Because I have worked as CTO of startup, and have to hire people I cannot get much info about.
So what to do? - I have talked with few candidates, asked them questions; than I have tried to work with them; for some of them I created test assigns, etc. And yes, some of my choices where mistakes, but others where good enough fit.
You may say, that we in Ukraine should make similar, again and again choose new officials on elections, but Ukraine have elections for more than 20 years,and results are very far from good for now.
For example, Poland is just few years ahead, but their results far better, even 10 years ago, they perform much better, and last year I hear opinions, Poland just become country of 1st world.
So I have made conclusion, that I have to make something more, something other, than just participate in elections.
I'm not too much scientific person, to write foundations to trust me, I'm practitioner.
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"[1]
1. https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/12/frank-wilhoit-the-tr...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory#Polit...
Avoiding WW3 should have higher priority than short-term gas imports.
But Germany thinks it will save its economy still buying gas from RUS, so there's that...
I have absolutely no idea why you say this, and I can assure you that I am not doing this.
Fuel poverty in Europe and the UK are among many reasons why those nations should take what's happening in the Ukraine very seriously. My concern is that the ruling parties don't take these things seriously enough.
To reassure you: I completely agree that states should look after their citizens who cannot eat or keep themselves warm. Unfortunately, this demonstrably does not happen.
The situation in Ukraine is dreadful, and I certainly do not think it is minor. Quite the opposite.
https://energyindustryreview.com/analysis/energy-poverty-a-t...
Another option is just to give up with your kind of argument, and pay up Russia. That's looking increasingly like shooting our own foot in long term. The idea he will stop and be happy just with Ukraine is dangerously naive and ignore his own steps and statements.
If this won't be a wake up call in Europe then nothing will. Ramp up military budgets (I hate the idea, but that's how you deter bullies and we have one greedy fucker right now next door), and prepare infrastructure for withdrawal of anything russian. Long term that's good for Europe and world too.
> While a complete loss of Russian gas imports, currently making up almost half of Germany’s gas needs, “will lead to bottlenecks in some European countries”, supply shortages “would be limited to up to 10% of demand”.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/europe-winter-...
Elderly and poor will be hurt the most, that is true. If the source I linked to is correct, it claims it would only impact 10% of demand. While I don't know what that would look like in practice. I sincerely hope (and expect) that it would not lead to anyone, including the vulnerable, freezing to death, or getting seriously ill.
People in privileged positions often talk about making small sacrifices to fulfil some grand end. It always impacts the least privileged the most, whether that be through poverty or something like old age. We've just had 2 years of it with the pandemic, and now we're seeing it with war, and you've extended it to the boycott of a company providing a very necessary resource.
> it would only impact 10% of demand
What would it do to prices? My advice to you is to try imagining what it's like to run out of money before the end of the month and have to freeze your way to the next, then as an elderly person. The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/03/us-sanctions-may-see-russia-...
And Bank of Ukraine accept wire transfers as well. But I just donated to Come Back Alive cause I don't trust the bank of Ukraine effectively using the money.
Donate and help Ukraine!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-imag...
Winning the ground war will probably be easy for Putin. Governing the resulting quagmire will be much more difficult.
https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/1496954233492541444
https://twitter.com/YourAnonOne/status/1496965766435926039
They are claiming responsibility for taking down RT.com and some other Russian sites.
It is actually not allowed to organize raids or other Anonymous-style hacktivities that are against US law on 4chan. So, calling for cyber war may just net you a warning from moderators. The board is not the bastion of absolute unregulated free speech people think it is!
More broadly, outside of the current geopolitical context, trying to pick a target and rally anons against it is in bad taste. If you try, you may be told that "4chan is Not Your Personal Army" (NYPA).
As a result, the various "Anonymous" groups really don't have a home there.
A DDoS attack is hardly a ‘complex’ attack against Russia and is easily mitigated against these days vs a malware wiper already spreading all over Ukraine. A DDoS is not even remotely considered a ‘hack’.
Anonymous is not exactly sophisticated like the ‘Equation Group’ and these sort of DDoS + shodan.io lookups are what script-kiddie jokers do. They have nothing to fight with compared to Russia.
Ukraine needs higher calibre cyber security teams to defend itself, not predictable script kiddie DDoSers.
DDoSes are simple tools, but they can be extremely effective at stopping Russian propaganda mills.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/how-the-truth... has a good overview of how exactly it works.
Good thing to note, have neve read an article from them and chances are I won't in the future so it will probably not have much direct impact.
Could be, or not considering I've never read an article from them and couldn't name a single headline (which is why I asked the question)
The state news agencies are only problematic as sources when they are writing about their own government or immediate enemies... in that they will tend to prefer publishing what their leaders are saying vs what the enemy is saying about them.
So the next time a giant scandal about Anonymous's secrets is uncovered or if the BBC airs something that Anonymous doesn't like in the UK, maybe they will run a DDoSing tool against them?
Almost as if every other news network and media company is not a propaganda operation meant to serve interests, and RT is the odd one out.
> Why does RT (Russia Today) claim that Americans are forced to use unsanitary public laundromats because federal law prohibits hanging clothes on clotheslines to dry?
> The TV show "Russia Today" said the USA is collapsing because of the super rich. Is this true or not true?
It seems to me RT does not necessarily lie to its viewers, it just never skips a chance to make America look bad. Many more examples in the article, "Russia Goes Viral: How the RT network built a US audience":
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/09/how-the-rt-network-b...
Classic social engineering trick, gain trust and "cash out" later.
"The purpose of Russia Today is to make sure you have no idea what’s actually happening in Russia today."
So it’s mission failed successfully?
[1] https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/dns-amplification-d...
While this account cannot claim to speak for the whole of the Anonymous collective
If it will be possible to use hacking or similar techniques to generate noise so:
1. Who wants to protest is harder to detect online ( i.e. can be arrested only once in square actually protesting )
2. The information about Russians protesting against war spreads to how many Russians as possible, so every person that wants to join will know and will can
I believe protests in Russia can help resolving this situation.
Unfortunately I don't have any knowledge on how to help with this possible plan, but in this thread there're people with that knowledge
Sounds remarkably similar to the actions of western governments in response to recent protests about mandates. But now Russia bad so forget all that.
I wouldn't assume the "results" would be very visible or civilian facing. More along the lines of accessing military systems, intercepting communications, etc.
I don’t know a lot about this space, but I don’t know especially how many skills translate from offense to defense.
Is this basically just a call for folks to turn in their 0days and access or something? Seems wt least marginally more useful than trying to train up a bunch of script kiddies to fight GRU…
But what actually would be good cyber warfare is hacking Putin’s family. Notoriously private and says his family is off limits and he never talks about them. I’m sure his kids aren’t normal like he claims.
> For the daughter of a billionaire dictator, John Oliver made her sound fairly normal
Most people are fairly normal :) Not every rich powerful kid goes full Uday Hussein.
That said, the law in most places isn't going to allow/support this. It could maybe even interfere with state sponsored operations.
It would be interesting to see a sort of privateer license in this space. If I remember correctly, Russia pretty much doesn't care about people violating cyber laws in Russia so long as the victims are in other countries.
It's a good idea, which has come up in the (relatively) recent past, although not specifically in the cyber domain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque#21st-century_...
> "Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," the post read, asking hackers and cybersecurity experts to submit an application via Google docs, listing their specialties, such as malware development, and professional references.
You'd be amazed at how well offensive skills translate to defense. Some of the best blue-teamers are former red-teamers. If you don't have offensive skills, it's very easy to overlook things, especially when it comes to pivoting and exploit chaining.
So it's effectively a free honey pot for Russia to get information on Ukranian cyber security professionals and a free pass to infiltrate them?
But it sure is disingenuous using something as low sec like Google docs. At least get people to submit it via GPG or something...
And even if you reduced it to a few megabits snuck in and out for the whole country, the military would use that and what's impacted is civilians. Bad for the economy? Meh, if all countries were already convinced to be against russia, then trade would be at a standstill and no comms for civilians would not matter that much financially.
That's not to say it's not worth a try, but I expect it won't be effective, or if it is, I'm skeptical that it would hinder them much more than any traditional trade limits already could.
It'll be a possible sanction because it will hurt the Russian population and businesses. But it won't avoid any cyberattack.
They wouldn't see the outpouring of support for the brave souls in Russia who take to the streets to protest the madness.
They wouldn't be able to keep contact with friends, family and ex-colleagues who can provide them with unfiltered (or at least with other filters applied) information.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0173GKOM2/ref=ox_sc_act_ti...
The item represents a pseudo-flag with a separatist connotation and outrages the Flag of Ukraine. Namely: the russian coat of arms on the National Flag of Ukraine with a provoking "Odesa Republic" (Одесская Республика) и "Novorossia" ("Новороссия") or "New Russia" labels.
This is NOT acceptable and the only usage of the item is separatism agitation, the outrage of the Ukrainian national symbols.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya_(confederation)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command#Op...
> Only if you’re an amateur
> "Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," the post read, asking hackers and cybersecurity experts to submit an application via Google docs, listing their specialties, such as malware development, and professional references.
As long as you're in a country where it's not illegal to help the Ukraine, I say put in an app and see where it goes :-)
Anonymously set up a Bitcoin VPS in a country that won’t care about a little heat, only connect to it using SSH over Tor, preferably from a public wifi. I think this the BEHIND SEVEN PROXIES of 2022, but still not watertight based on a traffic correlation attack from one of the many glowing Tor nodes.
Or just practice in your home lab, like me. If you have a computer and internet, it’s free.
However, that is functionally equivalent to equipping a protracted, bloody insurgency, and it’s far from obvious that that would be a good outcome for anyone.
It's tricky, though, talking about illegal things online. I feel like the internet was more free ten years ago. If anything was illegal then you put a "for educational purposes" disclaimer on it but the information was available or hypotheticals could be discussed fairly freely. People can think for themselves if they want to put anything into action, and might decide more based on morals than, say, their employer's contract. Indeed one does not hack russia, inform their employer in writing, and advertise their name in the tcp handshake in case they want to send them vodka.
How would you act if it was your country being attacked, would you still think "but that's illegal" ? Not saying that, thus, you must now do something illegal. I don't want to push you in either direction. But if you want to do this by your own morals (not anyone else morals) then, well, that's the thing the submission is calling for, not for consulting with your employer because their legal department is going to tell you to not do anything ever.
Seriously? That doesn't seem to match the outcomes of regular breeches, 0-days, etc. - many reported right here. The state of security is often considered terrible and unrepairable; experts advise assuming you have been breeched.
Only oligarchs are going to stop Putin and the only way to get them to do anything is take away all their toys in every other country.
Take their yachts, take all those apartments like in Florida and New York. Take them all.
Sanctions unfortunately also splatter and punish the rest of the people in Russia who have zero control over this.
But you take their yachts and real-estate in every other country, suddenly there is some motivation where it counts.
It was random hackers-4-hire after all!
To anyone with the required skill set. Please, this is you chance to remotely help UA.
“Hello my fellow Americans!”
It's easy to personify what we could call "brands" like Anonymous, but the reality is there are many "tribes" who range in size and culture, frequently working collectively towards disrupting power structures.
This was covered in the 1995 documentary “Hackers”
Given the Crimea conflict lasted 8 years, pure motivation without pay won't survive that.
But yes. It would help. It would hurt those that are a victim of the war already most, though. The Russian economy is hurt bad. This will reach moms&pops soon, if not already.
Leading to unrest, potential bankrun, local protests and even deserting of troops.
If you believe putting up Russian people against Russian authorities helps, then taking the livelihood or extra income of thousands of these people, will be adding to unrest.
Had a Russian/enemy state website had a similar thread that condoned cyber-attacks against the USA critical infrastructure, they would be flagged as terrorists and 'empire' publications like major US newspapers would be all over it as "war against the USA".
All this bluster from capitalists merely reflects hypocrisy.
Look up the difference between belligerent and victim, and the word compassion.
I don't see why you're dragging another political topic, capitalism, into the conversation when it's about thwarting what you call terrorists. It seems flamebaity but I'm replying in the hope you're seriously interested in the conversation.
I'm wary that this is a little too late.
If you want to help, call your Senator and demand that they supply Ukraine with as many Javelins and Stingers as they can, unlimited small arms, equipment and medical supplies, naval defence missiles, mobile surface to air missiles with radars, drone and possibly some cruise missiles.
And then for the US to scuttle a few Russian ships and blockade all of their ports.
And then to sabotage their infra, their internet, their pipelines, railroads and electricity.
Because that would actually be useful.
The events unfolding right now are as big as 9/11 and we will witness similar tensions over Taiwan. After the loss of Hong Kong and 'cutting losses' in Afghanistan - and a global pandemic - it's vey bad for the world.
I'm wary that reading headlines on seems a whole lot less meaningful than it did a few days ago.
Folks, I remember the tail end of the Cold War as a kid and it was not a happy time.
I remember when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed it was like a giant global fear lifted from everything. We used to make movies and TV shows all the time about global nuclear annihilation.
I believe that's why maybe GenX and Boomers are less afraid of 'Climate Change' - because it's something we can and will eventually conquor - we've been there before.
But living with an intransigent Russia who is hinting and 'things which have never been seen' (aka some kind of nukes) while invading a country - and having the West mostly twiddle their thumbs and watch, is ominous for what it means in the future.
We could see another few generations of really existential angst, where, once it sets into everyone's psyche's, we kind of 'forget' what normal peace feels like.
I don't think hacking is the thing at this point.
I don’t agree with you on blockading Russia or escalating conflict over Ukraine but it will be a different situation if Russia makes a move on Estonia or Latvia or—God forbid—Poland.
For me, my response to increasing global instability is the same as it was during the riots of 2020: get the heck out of cities, especially coastal cities. It’s not going to get better any time soon. In a small town in a flyover state, I can at least grow my own food and raise my own family with minimal worry about the outside world, aside from diesel prices.
Every, little, thing you consume has a long supply chain of value add at each step, that's what makes it all work.
The reason that we have to care about Ukraine, is because otherwise, we are faced with a mother Cold War. That is very bad.
This war is a battle for the future of the world order, in which everyone is a part.
An easy victory for Putin almost guarantees the Chinese Generals will be pushing for Taiwan and Xi will listen.
A costly bloody failure an economic ruin and a political coup in Russia means Xi knows the price for failure in Taiwan will be his head, almost literally.
Aside from geopolitics, there is a moral issue in all of these situations - Ukranians deserve to not live behind another Iron Curtain. Just like Poles, Czech, E. Germans etc..
And no, I would not enjoy suggesting surrender to any Ukrainian either and I understand that people want to fight. But a better future can only be build with acknowledging the present and taking options from there.
Of course there could be opportunities if Ukrainians hold out as long as they can, but either case of getting outside help or being able to repel the invaders currently seems almost impossible. You can make the war more expensive for the Russian, I guess, but that would cost more lives and might result in the same end.
I think the best solution would be for Ukraine to see the writing on the wall - declare itself neutral and not be part of NATO.
The bit about NATO is Russian propaganda.
The Russians - and I mean Russians as a whole, not just Putin, want Ukraine under their thumb.
The rest is an excuse.
Think of how ridiculous this statement is.
Should we then remove weapons from Ukraine so that they lose more quickly? And then reduce the damage?
Nonsense - we should be arming and supporting them as much as possible, and especially preparing for an insurgency.
There are any number of things we could be doing both militarily and economically.
In addition to boycotting Russia, citizens of the world should be boycotting German products until they agree to ban Russia from SWIFT.
Putin is risking World War III and Germany has decided to let it slide to avoid some short-term economic pain. Not cool.
The message that weaponizing SWIFT will send is that the platform is no longer as reliable for financial purposes. In the long term, it will increase the interest for alternative solutions that will further fragment payments and markets.
Bankers do not like uncertainty. They will find ways around this restriction and likely keep the alternatives. If this happens, SWIFT is not coming back to Russia when this is over.
Blocking Russia from SWIFT would kill half of EU economy.
Many Russian banks are already under sanction.
Inside Russia the Kremlin eliminated most voices of opposition journalists. Those in power now are only hard-line Putin cronies. The NGO's have been expelled, the media silenced or murdered, and anyone who could be a strong contender to take Putin's place is in jail.
They have sent murderers to Europe to carry out assassinations, downed a civilian aircraft, infiltrated our political systems by funding racists and fringe-group fuck-mongers, and continue to laugh at us for being weak simply because we prefer diplomacy over violence.
If you're living in Russia and the only thing you're prepared to do is protest then have at it if it eases your mind. But if you have some skills you could do a lot more if you really wanted to help:
- leak financial records,
- if you have access to ICS take them down
It would help see bank details, company formation documents, info on shell companies, or transactions between RU based shells and Cypriot, Maltese, London banks.
You could help highlighting old stories that haven't aged well - that show how Europe is still complicit by not having acted over the past decades other than with "a frown, a concern, or a stern warning" here some stories but there are actually dozens of high traffic headlines for every country:
- Arron Banks & Nigel Farrage using Russian money to finance Brexit,
- Austrian politician Kneissel inviting Putin to dance at her wedding,
- Gerhard Schröder and many in German politics parachuting into board seats of Russian businesses.
- Marine Le Pen accepting Russian money to fund her racist party
- Russian stooges inside the GOP, ...
We need to throw shit at those responsible in our own countries to make it clear what happens if you defend dirty Russian money under the pretense of diplomacy.
asap and reject Russian, ban all Russian state media from Tech platforms, etc. I'm afraid that any form of help which goes beyond mere lip service will never be accepted by Europeans (or US) because it means accept some risk/suffering ourselves. And Putin has many people in EU / US / UK government who own him a favor.
Also don't remove Russian banks from SWIFT because this hits mostly the lower income groups and not those strutting around EU capitals with their Chanel bags and designer clothes who anyway have their assets tied up in EU real estate.
To fix this we have to set the offshore financial system on fire and have more transparency over who the beneficiaries are in inbound/outbound financial transactions.
Also if you have the stomach and skills then hunt down people close to the Russian state pretending to have a civilian life in Europe. This includes RU embassy employees, employees of RU state media who been poisoning our own culture with propaganda for years.
Nobody who works for a country that fires missiles at Europe shall ever feel safe in a European country. The West (and especially Europe) must speak a language that they understand. Time for diplomacy is over when war goes kinetic.
Putin'); DROP DATABASE RUSSIA; --It didn't end well for them IIRC.
Both under the ‘hacking’ laws as well as under laws prohibiting private citizens from interfering in international diplomacy.
Really surprised such a thread is permitted on HN.
Can you elaborate?
Going even further, a democratically elected leader asked their citizens to help. Once again, why does American law matter?? Does America claim sovereignty over Ukraine now too??
Putting aside the politics of what side the US government is on...
It seems very equivalent to me to when some southern states declared secession from the northern states (in 1860), there was a civil war. To Russians, Ukraine is integral to them and their identity, even if that has been the case since 1991 (a situation forced on Russia at the time).
So, if we can leave the politics aside, accepting that there are institutions such as countries etc, what would be the right thing here?
Why should Western countries even involve themselves in this? I mean - Russia certainly is going to roll over Ukraine - how does it help anyone to arm them - isn't it just inviting more retaliation - isn't it making a bad problem even worse?
Ukraine is a sovereign state independent from russia. russia dreams about soviet union comeback. Some countries are out of reach now, e.g. Baltic states which became EU and NATO members.
After russians being assholes to their neighbours for decades (if not centuries) - some neighbours decided that it's time to leave abusive relationship.
To russia Ukraine is integral only for couple of things - land buffer from the west influence, land bridge to the black sea (Crimea).
Ukrainians see how russia abuses them (e.g. frequent embargoes or price jumps for gas, and other tightly coupled economical relations they are not allowed to escape) and attempts to leave this. That's a deep blow to russia and their maniac dictator cannot allow this. F
For ages - instead of russia attempting to build proper strong and attractive economy are using force on their small neighbours. I think every single neighbor of russia (or russian empire or soviet union) was either at war or occupied in previous 100 or 200 years. Neighbouring nations (the people, not the politicians or greedy oligarchs) are attempting to flee russian influence zone, due to constant economic pressure and imminent danger. russia now attempts to paint this as "NATO expansion" or "US imperialism", but they are just old-school bully.
My point really is that - to an outsider with no dog in the race - if you take a long view, it seems equivalent to the US civil war. What you just said, couldn't you equate Russia/Ukraine to US/southern states?
Ukraine is an independent sovereign nation _de facto_ and _de jure_, recognized by probably every single country in the world including the aggressor russia to.
Why you thing I have "a dog in this race"? It's just old-school war, russia does not know how to use it's soft diplomatic power. It's threats all the time, and when Ukraine does not give up on idea to westernise for at least 8 years - russia treat is a threat - thus they invade.
If I'd compare - I'd compare it to Winter War. When WW2 started - they saw that Finland is too close to St.Peterbug for russias comfort - thus they started the war. Same here - Ukraine wants to free themselves from post-soviet economy and modernise to western model, it's a threat to putin - because then the "western" economical and political borders will be too close for his comfort.
Thank God not all nations are like that!!