Alleged full dump of Russian military personnel, including IDs and SSNs | Hacker News Reader

Alleged full dump of Russian military personnel, including IDs and SSNs

sliv.top

86 pointsdrops60 comments

> The documents contain full names, passport numbers, addresses, tax IDs, as well as the military units of ex-soldiers.

Original:

> В документах содержатся ФИО, паспорта, адреса, идентификационные коды, а также воинские части несения службы бывших солдат.

Has this crisis been the equivalent of the Streisand Effect for Russian national cyber security?

Kinda. Putin is ending up making Russia look more like a more powerful and unhinged version of North Korea than a legitimate world power. He might end up going way too far and alienating China.

Scary stuff, Putin seems like an "if I can't have it, nobody can" tyrant.

Will someone be working through this list and speaking to each family to try to encourage them to get their son/father/brother to defect?

you're someone. Go for it

It's pretty useless, probably. I've read a couple of interviews with family members of the captured soldiers (for example, ¹). They don't seem to have any idea where those soldiers are and have no way to communicate with them. Although it may all be lies in an attempt to lessen their guilt, considering the rest of her speech ("he didn't know where he was going, he didn't do anything, those bad Ukrainians for taking him prisoner").

¹ https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/02/27/ia-ne-schitaiu-c...

This would need official support, some kind of visa. The "Good Russian" visa.

Don't like what Putin, Inc. is doing? Hire away all the talent.

Keep pressure on Russian's government to change, and let's keep our compassion towards the Russian people! Let this conflict cease.

A few years back China obtained equivalent data on US service members from an OPM breach.

Not just service members. It was most people who had ever held a security clearance, civilian and military.

Only ones not included were agencies that did not use OPM for background investigations (which was only one or two).

Even then, many of the employees of those agencies previously worked for the ones who used OPM’s systems.

Yup. For a while I was getting love letters from the OPM every quarter or so.

Same - pretty sure I’m still enrolled in whatever credit monitoring they provided for people at the time as well.

There was a recent claim from the Anonymous of a similar dump... which turned out to be a fake. Is it the same ?

Why would Russian military personnel have Social Security Numbers?

It doesn’t literally say SSNs, but “идентификационные коды” which translates as (and sounds like) “identification codes”.

Are their identification codes used as a shitty master password to their life too?

I'd love to get to a system where your tax id was assumed to public knowledge

Sweden for example implements the public knowledge side of it, forcing identification to be reliable and 2FA.

> The link between a person and the identity number is established through the civil registry and through identity documents and secondarily through the widespread use of the number in various contacts with authorities, businesses etc. They are necessary for personal service at banks, authorities, health care and other services which use the personal identity number. Most people are familiar with their full number and those of their children without hesitation. Personal identity numbers of individuals are openly available from the Swedish tax authorities to anyone who asks (over phone, letter, over the desk, but not over the internet), according to the Swedish principle of freedom of information. Redistribution of these numbers using computers is, however, governed by the law of personal details, an implementation of the Data Protection Directive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_number_(Swed...

Then 2FA through BankID, with a chain of trust started with the KYC of your bank. No SMS, "state something only you know" or similarly awful methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BankID

Useless information about the wrong country

It sounded to me like GGP was interested in hearing about any SSN that was assumed to be public knowledge, and Russia's was just the igniting spark for the question. GP makes it clear that, yes, there exists an example where the SSN is a public identifier.

GGP:

> Are their identification codes used as a shitty master password to their life too? I'd love to get to a system where your tax id was assumed to public knowledge

They are being facetious.

They are from a country where SSN where its a shitty master password for their life, and was wondering if Russia was the same way or if it was potentially implemented better.

You might want to re-read the thread again. Your comment was uncalled for.

“Are their” meaning possessive, meaning Russian SSN, not “are there” meaning does any exist somewhere

Is there anything specific you want to point out in my reread?

> I'd love to get to a system where your tax id was assumed to public knowledge

I think in most countries in Europe the national id number is enough to link taxes to specific people (identity card numbers are to most effects public), even though for official international documents you need to provide the accepted Tax Identification Number (TIN) which you can find in https://www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange/crs-implementati..., but more as a convenience than anything else.

That keeping secret your SSN is a thing is something that mostly affects the US.

It depends what you mean by "secret." At some point, people decided that maybe we shouldn't be willy nilly broadcasting our SSNs, e.g. it used to be your driver's license number in many states. But given how widely it's used, most people (rightly) don't assume it's a deep dark secret.

Why wouldn't they?

It just seems odd that there would be identification numbers for a U.S. agency included in a data dump of a foreign military.

It's sort of how USians say "zip codes" for foreign addresses when they mean "postcodes" (the Zone Improvement Plan, from which ZIP is taken, is a US thing).

What is a usian?

American

"Citizen of the USA" is a mouthful. People tend to use "American" but that's ignoring the fact that there are 35 countries in America.

A lot of languages have a word like USian, e.g. "états-unien" (French), "estadounidense" (Spanish). I have used "USAmerican" myself when "American" would be ambiguous.

Using America to refer to every country in North and South America is imprecise at best, if not outright disingenuous. Nobody thinks you're talking about Brazilians or Argentines or Canadian when you say "American."

That's us. It's our word. You can pry it from our cold dead lips.

Your America-first approach to naming is fine in American circles but don't be surprised when other people use other terminology. No, America is indeed a continent. I have a lot of Brazilian/Peruvian/Canadians colleagues and have been in contexts where we've discussed American (continent) vs European points of views.

I am not sorry if my attempt to use precise language when precision is needed is "disingenuous" to you. What a weird thing to get rude about.

There's always Yanks, but as a Yank, as a side effect we generally assume the person saying it is British.

Could be Australian. But we also use "Seppo", from a fairly tortured rhyming slang etymology: "Yank" -> "Septic Tank" -> "Seppo".

Oh goodness. Is this like Cockney? As mentioned, Yank here, but never could figure out how folks figure that stuff out.

If there were another North or South American country that went by America (e.g. if Brazil was instead called the "Eastern American Republic") then what you say would make sense. As is, it just sounds like you're trying to stick it to the man.

Do you really never ever use the term "European"?

The same concept exists elsewhere, usually with more or less the same name.

In Russia everyone has a social security number called SNILS. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNILS_(Russia)

So they have a number associated with their social safety net (ie: security), not a Social Security(tm) Number

Soviet Nuclear Intercontinental Launch System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNILS_(Russia)

Russia has its own social security system, and it also uses numbers for identification.

Table headers are quite suspect, there is a column named "state, federal territory, etc". In Russian "state" refers exclusively to US states or Micronesia states, and "federal territory" refers exclusively to German feredal states.

If they don’t have social security number (or ID) they can’t be protected by the Geneva convention

That's not true. You don't need an ID to be protected by the Geneva convention.

Why wouldn’t they?

I think you are asking this as if they are receiving social security benefits? We all have these numbers in Sweden for example. Its birth date plus 4 unique digits amounting to a hash code (and gender)

Could someone help me understand what this does/is supposed to accomplish?

Reduce morale among the Russian troops. Arguably a reason why Chechnya won out in the first was against them.

This seems to be a positive example of doxing.

Erm ... no? Principles exist on both sides of the coin.

So you genuinely believe that doxing the Russian aggressors is a bad thing?

What principle would this go against exactly?

I think the parent was trying to point out that if one side abandons principles the other side will be motivated to retaliate likewise, making the outcome of a treacherous race to the bottom becomes far more likely.

what would be the bottom? complete transparency? I can think of worse things

What principles could possibly be abandoned here?

The “principle” of not doxing enemy soldiers? hah.

This is asymmetric warfare. Whether or not it's "good" in a vacuum is kinda irrelevant. This may enable Ukraine and its allies to make life miserable for the soldiers holding the country under siege.

Not sure whats going on here but interested. Anyone have a TLDR for the non-Cyrillic readers?

The article says almost the same thing as the title on HN, just more emotional and personal.

https://sliv-top.translate.goog/2022/02/26/top-sliv-vseh-voe...

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