Tag Archive for: Putin’s

SSU dismantles an infowar botnet. HIMARS, atrocities, provocation, and disinformation. A Russian disinformation mouthpiece raises the prospect that there are highly placed traitors in the GRU. Rewards for Justice works toward securing elections from Russian meddling. The case that Russia’s war is genocidal. The case that pan-Slavism has found wayward, but sincere, expression in Mr. Putin’s war.

/in


At a glance.

  • SSU dismantles an infowar botnet.
  • HIMARS, atrocities, provocation, and disinformation.
  • A Russian disinformation mouthpiece raises the prospect that there are highly placed traitors in the GRU.
  • Rewards for Justice works toward securing elections from Russian meddling.
  • The case that Russia’s war is genocidal.
  • The case that pan-Slavism has found wayward, but sincere, expression in Mr. Putin’s war.

Ukraine claims to have taken down a massive Russian bot farm.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) says it dismantled a large Russian botnet operation that was being used to spread Russian propaganda and disinformation. The bots, about a million strong, were herded from locations within Ukraine itself, in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Vinnytsia, BleepingComputer reports. Their output took the form of social media posts from inauthentic accounts associated with fictitious personae. The SSU describes the operation as follows: “Their latest ‘activities’ include the distribution of content on the alleged conflict between the leadership of the President’s Office and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as well as a campaign to discredit the first lady. To spin destabilizing content, perpetrators administered over 1 million of their own bots and numerous groups in social networks with an audience of almost 400,000 users. In the course of a multi-stage special operation, the SSU exposed the leader of this criminal group. He is a russian citizen who has lived in Kyiv and positioned himself as a ‘political expert.’”

On the other side of the information war, BleepingComputer also reported earlier this week that Ukrainian hacktivists, “Torrents of Truth,” were bundling instructions on how to bypass Russian censorship into movie torrents whose intended audience would be Russian viewers.

HIMARS, atrocities, provocation, and disinformation.

The killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Olenivka is by now clearly a Russian atrocity–the prisoners were apparently murdered by their captors. (And we note in passing that the International Committee of the Red Cross still has not been given the access to the prison international law requires.) The prisoners did not die in a…

Source…

I warned about Putin’s cyber army and now I’ve caught Russian hackers trying to spy on MY home computer, says our reporter Toby Walne

/in


The Russians are coming. They might not be knocking down our doors, but cyber hackers are already invading our computers. And I can vouch for the disruption they are causing. My personal computer has been crippled by ‘attacks from Russia,’ as they have tried to hijack my email account. 

It has been a harrowing experience because my computer is like an extra limb – and essential for my work. 

As a victim of the Kremlin’s red army of online fraudsters, I can no longer send or receive emails. Worse still, I am worried the Russians could be watching my every move – with KGB-style online eavesdropping. 



Advice: Expert Colin Tankard helps Toby Walne tighten up the security on his computer system following the attack

© Provided by This Is Money
Advice: Expert Colin Tankard helps Toby Walne tighten up the security on his computer system following the attack

Quite why I have been targeted I cannot say. Journalist I may be, but my emails are full of tips on bleeding radiators to keep heating bills down – not the codes to Britain’s nuclear arsenal. 

It has left me feeling not only violated, but also paranoid. At any moment, they could plunder my computer files and demand money in a blackmail ‘ransomware’ attack – or by stealing enough data, even empty my bank account. 

The trigger for the attacks on my machine remains unknown, but may have been a result of me downloading ‘Bad Rabbit’ software – malware – when I pressed a button thinking I was updating software. Such malware ransacks your computer of information and appears to originate from Russia. 

Then again, perhaps the Kremlin found my details on the dark web – where it appears my personal information and passwords had been leaked, following hacks into services I have used in the past. 

Or maybe I had been targeted following a warning article written in The Mail on Sunday in March about ‘Putin’s hackers’. 

Frightening though the experience has been, at least I am now aware what is going on and can take action. And according to cyber experts, I am not alone. The Russians are targeting thousands – maybe millions – of people’s computers in order to disrupt Western economies following the invasion of Ukraine. 

This is not just revenge for sanctions – creating disruption and panic for computer users – but to swindle us…

Source…

‘The Cold War was over, I think it’s restarted’ — Putin’s cyberwar judo tactics, and how to deal with fear of hacks

/in


Russian President Vladimir Putin was stripped of his judo title recently, but experts say he employs the same principles of that martial art in his cyberwarfare strategy: Use an opponent’s strength against them.

Putin, a big fan of judo, lost his status as “honorary president and ambassador” for the International Judo Federation and his “honorary 9th dan black belt” from World Taekwondo, bestowed upon him in 2013, following his invasion of Ukraine. Experts are concerned, however, that he will use the approach he honed in those disciplines through Russia’s enormous cyberwarfare complex.

Russia has long been considered one of the largest practitioners of state-sponsored cyberattacks, regularly receiving mention in cybersecurity-company watch lists. The country has regularly used that capacity in an asymmetrical manner to disrupt adversaries where open hostilities would not be prudent. Against the West, that means targeting a growing reliance upon interconnected networks and open-source software to power government and financial organizations.

Also read: The prospect of more Russian cyberattacks seems increasingly likely. What can you do to protect yourself? Quite a lot, it turns out.

That said, Putin’s greatest weapon in cyberwarfare is using an opponent’s reliance upon intertwined networks and information against them. When Russia hacked into Ukraine’s power grid back in December 2015 and managed to turn the lights on and off for about a quarter-million customers, the most harmful result wasn’t so much the loss of electricity, but the fear it could instill by showing they could simply do it, Sandra Joyce, head of global intelligence at Mandiant Inc.
MNDT,
+16.05%,
told MarketWatch in an interview.

“There is definitely the risk of Russian cyber-aggressors utilizing their current accesses from which to launch an attack,” Joyce told MarketWatch. “It’s the risk of that happening that has increased in the event that Russia decides to retaliate against our sanctions and other measures that we’ve been taking.”

We have nothing to fear but fear itself

Joyce said Russian hackers can already be inside compromised networks like…

Source…

Putins asymmetric arsenal presages more hacking attacks

/in


But less than a month later, hackers from Russian military intelligence were breaching the computers of the U.S. Republican National Committee, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

The Kremlin denied involvement in the latest attack, as it has in all previous ones, but that did nothing to relieve the pressure on Biden from critics of his efforts to repair relations with Russia.

For Moscow, cyber weapons are just one of the tools used in the increasingly fierce standoff with the U.S., and warm words at a presidential summit aren’t enough to change that, according to former officials and analysts.

Just last week, Putin signed off on a new National Security Strategy that called for the use of such “asymmetric” tactics in response to “unfriendly actions” of other nations. A Russian law passed earlier this year formally categorizes the U.S. as unfriendly.

“Hacker attacks are the simplest tool for Moscow to deploy,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, who worked as a Kremlin political adviser during Putin’s first decade in power until 2011. While sophisticated operations to breach computer security take time to prepare “they could have been ready, just waiting for the go-ahead at the right time,” he said.

Russia’s U.S. Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said Wednesday that Moscow wasn’t involved in hacks against U.S. infrastructure and that cybersecurity issues are likely to be a topic of discussion when U.S. and Russian officials meet as soon as next week for another round of dialogue.

“Don’t forget there is a lot of mistrust between the United States and Russia, there are a lot of problems,” Antonov said on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power” with David Westin. “We are in close contact with various agencies of the United States.”

There is “ongoing high-level engagement from our national security officials with the Russian government” about cyber attacks, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday.

Source…