820GB Database Dump of Roskomnadzor (Russian Government Censorship Organization)
ddosecrets.substack.com
ddosecrets.substack.com
Who "Roskomnadzor" is:
> The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (Russian: Роскомнадзор), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
What would it take to take over the TV broadcasting system?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=russia+...
Just very recently http/port 80 traffic in russia is now being redirected to a page trying to get people to download and trust a government run root CA for TLS, which would enable MITM of TLS1.2/TLS1.3 traffic.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1758773
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-polic...
See also:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-takes-action-to-...
Mozilla is the only browser vendor that maintains their own root CA list independently.
If you can get the operator of a windows 10/11 or MacOS device, or ios or android client device to insert a root CA into the OS trust store, then edge, chrome, and safari will trust it.
Another interesting tidbit from Russian internet. Municipal services in Moscow are suggesting that folks move over to Russian browsers [2, in russian]. Some claim it's because Roskomnadzor is planning to sniff all traffic, even SSL. Some are saying it's because CAs are revoking Russian keys.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashkortostan
[2]: https://politota.d3.ru/cheburnet-prodolzhaet-okuklivatsia-22...
I wonder if there's rule which disallows CAs to revoke certificates without reason. It seems that those actions undermine the whole web security model.
Kazakhstan was wise to introduce national root certificates.
Another example is cbr.ru (Central Bank of Russia): https://crt.sh/?id=6051080112
Otherwise, the list of revocation reasons otherwise (4.9.1.1 Reasons for Revoking a Subscriber Certificate) doesn't seem to cover anything that would apply here.
They are related, the Soviet Union had a 'top level' administrative division, the (eventually) 15 'Soviet Republics' which became independent countries after the dissolution of the union. Some of these republics (mostly Russia) also contained internal 'Autonomous Republics', among other administrative divisions of their own. Bashkorostan was once of those 'ASSR's. This is a bit of an over-simplification since some of these definitions changed over time as did the status of some of the regions in question but the main thing is, there were several kinds of 'republic'.
Warfare is coordinated, controlled violence, not indiscriminate violence. The vigilante stuff is very dangerous and probably achieves little. Leave it to the NSA, CIA, etc.
It's a mistake to think that Internet cyber operations are different.
I doubt Ukrainian civilians see it that way right now.
It could be a wide variety of things, including both defined and undefined behaviour
And add to that, I would most certainly not trust a normal virtual machine to be a big enough boundary.
> Users are advised to be extra careful as some directories, like ПОЧТА Приемная, appear to contain large numbers of email attachments. Email attachments are often a vector of malware and phishing attempts, so use caution and tools like Dangerzone (https://dangerzone.rocks/) and others.
> This dataset was released in the buildup to, in the midst of, or in the aftermath of a cyberwar or hybrid war. Therefore, there is an increased chance of malware, ulterior motives and altered or implanted data, or false flags/fake personas. As a result, we encourage readers, researchers and journalists to take additional care with the data.
But the wars in Iraq/etc were atrocities whose primary positive outcome was to fatten the owners of defense companies. That's a hell of a reason to kill as many people as we did.
Again, I'm not saying "USA is as bad as Russia", I much prefer the USA being the world superpower. But I think we have very limited moral high ground as it is. I would like us to earnestly try building a bit more of it!
No doubt those things have happened and are very serious, especially to the victims, but morality is a property of sinners; it's not meaningful for saints. What makes morality special and meaningful is that we have it and use it despite our sins, despite having the free will to chose evil. Saints don't exist anyway - we would have no morality if it required them.
The world is rallying around Ukraine because of morality, because of a belief in freedom, self-determination, and justice. That is why the United States has so many allies, and countries like China and Russia have very few - it is possibly the great realist, geopolitical advantage of the US: we have allies who trust us, welcome our bases, invite our intervention, because of the (limited, human, very flawed) morality.
> I would like us to earnestly try building a bit more of it!
I could not agree more! Thank you for saying it.
If China doesn’t implode and becomes way more powerful than the United States, we will lose most of our allies regardless of popular opinion.
But I really like your attitude!
I am? What basis do you have for saying that? Do you have expertise in this field? Do you know more about it than I do?
The US has been the sole superpower only since the Soviet Union imploded in the early 1990s. The US led and leads an alliance based on shared values; NATO is arguably the strongest, largest, and IIRC the longest-lasting military alliance in history. Note that the US is a great ally even of the countries it defeated in war, Japan and Germany, probably because it gave them their freedom rather than pillage and destroy them. There is zero threat of betrayal and war between NATO allies - France and Germany will never fight, something that never happened before.
The people with expertise say that shared values create strong, long-lasting alliances that can change and move relatively rapidly and with flexibility. For example, imagine the response to Ukraine if there weren't shared values about democracy, soveriegnty, and appeasement of dictators - those baseline beliefs enabled a rapid response. It's the people without expertise who like to imagine that amorality is more 'hardcore' and 'real'; somehow it's trendy to insist that humans must be sociopaths, despite abundent evidence to the contrary.
> If China doesn’t implode and becomes way more powerful than the United States, we will lose most of our allies regardless of popular opinion.
That's not how international relations typically work. Usually, if one country becomes much more powerful, the others ally with each other against the power in order to balance it. The US is unusual in that the other powers allied with them.
But again, what basis is there for your claim?
(1) We didn't do it. (I think this story also had “Ukraine bombed it themselves”, but that may have been added by unofficial proxies and not part of the official explanation.)
(2) We did it, intentionally, but it is long out of use as a maternity hospital and is instead an Azov base and so part of our legitimate war against Ukrainian Nazis, and the pregnant women shown are crisis actors.
(3) We’re investigating what actually happened.
I wouldn't think Russian politicians called for hospitals and Ukrainian schools to be hit, but that's just not how war works. Certainly, US politicians weren't calling for an Afghan hospital to be struck with missile fire.
Russia is admitting to intentionally attacking the hospital.
Their claim is that the hospital was long abandoned by patients and has been used by the Ukrainian military. Ukraine says the hospital was in use by patients and that 3 were killed and 17 were injured. There are photos of injured pregnant women walking away from the debris. Russia claims these photos are staged. Speculation from the West is that Russia is attacking civilians like this intentionally to break the Ukrainian people's spirit.
Now you know both sides. Do with it what you will.
By analogy, if you hate the prison system, make sure you are punishing jailors rather than prisoners
Stay classy.
you mean more public than it already is?
The scope is pretty well-defined.
I mean, sure, those aren’t the offenders. But because Russia is a terrorist state, targeting civilians instead of opponent’s military, any act against them - anything that hurts Russia - would be morally justified. It’s just a lesser evil.
What about the US and what they did in Iraq, such as at Abu Ghraib, or during the war on terror? Who meets your standards?
Censorship? In Russia? Why, I never.
And it's just, OK now for us to be releasing stolen files from foreign governments ? We are not at war with Russia (yet).
I'm not really onboard with this kind of thing. Flip the switch and imagine some Russian hackers doing it to your country, you would be annoyed.
(I'm not pro-russian or anything; fuck Putin and the horse he rode in on -- I just think this is largely pointless, some script kiddie trying to show how j33t he is, and will just escalate things further for zero gain.)
Who are "us" in this context? This was released by individuals, not a entity acting for a foreign governments. Leaks happen when your security is poor. For all we know, this hack could have been done by a Ukrainian individual, who very much is at war with Russia now, would that make you feel better?
This may be your personal reaction, and though valid according to your (and my) personal experiences, it is not necessarily the reaction of others. Some people might need direct, firsthand evidence to be swayed. And still others would never accept any evidence whatsoever.
Besides, this may reveal exactly how and where Russia censors, particularly in instances that may be unexpected. Perhaps it will even reveal their thought processes and goals.
With a strong emphasis on MIGHT.
There are plenty of discussions of stolen files originating from the American government (and others!) on Hacker News all the time. Wikileaks, NSA dumps etc.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Why is it suddenly a bad thing when it's Russian documents?
It's generally okay to release files stolen from our own government, though it is often illegal to steal them in the first place. But, yes, generally the main exceptions to that generality don't apply to foreign government files, so it's even more okay to release them.
> We are not at war with Russia (yet)
So? The New York Times wasn't at war with the United States when it published the Pentagon Papers, either.
What sear for?
What is an incremnating phrase that should be looked into?
Data is always data if we cannot interpret? Another language is always gibberesh without context or understanding?
Plz Respond.
Wait for journalists and others to dig through the data and read the articles when they come out instead.
Words of misleading intent: Portray, cover up, hide, mislead, sneaky, clever
Words of cult-like organizational foundations: Believe, disbelieve, abandon, relationship
Sensitive terms for global conversation: Human rights, torture, war crime, international partners
Emotive words: Swear words, rude names like "Nazis" etc.
Those should be a start