5 ms·

before anyone jumps on the pedantry bandwagon, its worth noting that even though open war hasn’t been called: the attacks on infrastructure especially cyber war

by dijit 9mo ago

before anyone jumps on the pedantry bandwagon, its worth noting that even though open war hasn’t been called: the attacks on infrastructure especially cyber warfare is extremely active and, crucially, direct. It is totally fair to say that in a digital context, Russia is absolutely at war with Europe. As far as I can tell, they don’t even try to hide it.

reactordev 9mo ago
Not to mention the information war they have been waging globally since 2016
- naryJane 9mo ago
  True, but they’ve certainly been doing it much longer than ten years. I’ll never forget this headline [0] that struck me as purely devilish, especially in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Combine that with the knowledge that Trump has been anti-NATO since the 1980s [1]. Who knows how long Russia has been nudging him along. Who knows how many avenues they traverse? Take for example the letter to Senator Tom Cotton about Greenland [2]. What an embarrassment. I can only hope we are equally successful in our own PsyOps. [0] https://www.rt.com/news/265399-putin-nato-europe-ukraine-italy/ https://www.rt.com/news/265399-putin-nato-europe-ukraine-ita... [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-nearly-100000-on-an-ad-criticizing-us https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-t... [2] https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2018djo https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2018djo
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    You don’t remember Trump Moscow? Ivanka? Trump and Russian connections go all the way back to Epstein’s early days.
    - mrtesthah 9mo ago
      So much dirt. https://spookyconnections.com/2024/10/19/donald-trump/ https://spookyconnections.com/2024/10/19/donald-trump/
    - Applejinx 9mo ago
      Yes, and it's successfully got to where his people are able to dismantle American infrastructure at scale, deliver IT systems to Russian hackers directly and coordinate death squads on the streets. I figure the primary reason we're not seeing 'little green men' in Minnesota, for instance, is that Russia cannot spare them. But the war here is arguably as important or MORE important to Russian war aims than the war in Ukraine. Certainly more successful here than in Ukraine, for what that's worth. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion but they've certainly succeeded here a lot more than in Ukraine.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- Avamander 9mo ago
  It has been ramping up a bit. Most recent case has been Russian (sock)puppet activity on Wikipedia, where they actively try to rewrite the language used, the narrative to be more suitable for them. It has even gotten news coverage. First link in English I found: https://balticsentinel.eu/8394326/wikipedia-s-baltic-battle-estonian-journalists-warn-of-coordinated-pro-soviet-edits-lithuania-reports-similar-targeting https://balticsentinel.eu/8394326/wikipedia-s-baltic-battle-...
- exoverito 9mo ago
  The US, UK, and Western powers have been waging information war for far longer than 2016. Look at Canadian PM Mark Carney's latest speech at Davos, he admits the 'Rules based international order' was a fiction, and the US has had a very long history of covert operations, 'enhanced interrogation', destabilization campaigns, funding of terrorists, propping up of dictators, bombing and invading of many countries... To be specific consider how many lies have been told by the American mainstream media around the narratives of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Syria, Libya, etc. Israel has the most surveilled and well defended border in the world, the Mossad is sophisticated enough to launch pager attacks to decapitate Hezbollah leadership, yet somehow they got caught with their pants down and Hamas combatants could raid their country for 12 hours without a response. The US also had funded Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, knew Al Qaeda was plotting another attack on the WTC, and the Neocons in the Bush administration wanted a new Pearl Harbor as outlined in the Project for a New American Century. Russia is not uniquely or even particularly evil here, it's entirely rational for them to not want a major neighbor to join an enemy alliance. Look at how America has treated Cuba for decades. People should stop being so naive.
  - Throaway1982 9mo ago
    Unfortunately its also entirely rational for Ukraine to want to join an alliance against Russia!
tosapple 9mo ago
What I am starting to appreciate about these digital infrastructure attacks is that they may be reversible and or temporary. It can be a nice feature.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  Then you're missing the point. If they succeed they may well not be reversible. The question is if this had succeeded would we have shrugged it off again or responded appropriately?
  - tosapple 9mo ago
    I wasn't commenting on any particular case. I was stating that flipping a switch is less costly to reverse than blowing up a dam.
    - jacquesm 9mo ago
      These attacks are not at the level of 'flipping a switch'. If they succeed they can destabilize the grid and that has the potential to destroy gear, and while not as costly as blowing up a dam it can still be quite costly.
      - tosapple 9mo ago
        During WW2 both germany and the UK as example were carpet bombed to assail industry, does that help you to understand my position better? Vietnam too.
        shakna 9mo ago
        Not really. If you succeed in attacking the grid, you achieve the same widespread industry impact, without the cost of the munitions. It can take decades to recover from a cyber attack like this, if it succeeds.
        9mo ago
throw310822 9mo ago
[flagged]
- bnjemian 9mo ago
  This completely ignores that: 1. Russia was the aggressor in Ukraine, 2. Putin has made clear his desire to pursue expansionist goals through military action targeting prior members of the Soviet Union, 3. Putin regular threatens nuclear war with Ukraine, 4. Russia has shown outward hostility towards Western democracies and sought to manipulate elections with information warfare to reach their goals (most notably, 2016 US Election and Brexit), 5. Russian regularly cuts cables connecting countries, and 6. Though completely unrelated, Putin has a history of assassinating political opponents. That's wolfish behavior if I've ever seen it.
- Zagitta 9mo ago
  You're conveniently omitting these all happened in response to the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. But thanks for proving the point about Russia's disinformation war.
  - throw310822 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - RealityVoid 9mo ago
      Did you actually read all the posts pointing this and all the _other_ aggressive actions Russia is taking against the EU? Regardless, Russia is a bully and sticking your head in the sand won't make them go away.
      - brabel 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        lucketone 9mo ago
cookiengineer 9mo ago
Some could say that in the cyber realm, they are not petty, ya! Well, or something like that. Eversince notpetya and the colonial pipeline hack, the cyber strategy game changed a lot. Notpetya was genius as a deployment, because they abused the country's tax software deployment pipeline to cripple all (and I mean all, beyond 99%) businesses in one surgical strike. The same is gonna happen to other tax software providers, because the DATEV AG and similar companies are pretty much the definition of digital incompetence wherever you look. I could name other takedowns but the list would continue beyond a reasonable comment, especially with vendors like Hercules and Prophete that are now insolvent because they never prioritized cyber security at all, got hacked, didn't have backups, and ran out of money due to production plant costs.
RobotToaster 9mo ago
The cold war never ended
- 127 9mo ago
  ...for Putin
brabel 9mo ago
Europe is the main supplier of weapons to Ukraine which is in actual war with Russia. Of course Russia is at war with Europe, the only reason bombs are not falling in Poland and Germany is that Russia wouldn’t have the capability to defend itself against retaliation. Do people really believe their countries can openly take sides in a war and not be targeted??
- hardlianotion 9mo ago
  This has been going on from well before the Ukraine war. It has just intensified. The real question is: should the affected states develop some counter-capability to deter this opportunistic behaviour?
  - yetihehe 9mo ago
    Fortunately Russia in their benevolence tries to limit the damage, so that we don't feel the destruction all at once. This means some people will be annoyed for day or two and everyone is reminded to increase security pretty constantly. Just recently we got news about ONE furnace (from several in that heating plant) being probably hacked. The furnace shut down. Operator didn't notice, because the display on furnace was already malfunctioning and operator just restarted it. They checked everything only after our "cybersecurity" forces notified them. That was in local news this weekend. I know about it because I'm responsible for another city heating network, we take security pretty seriously. All devices are in vpn and if someone outside needs to login remotely, he is granted access only for the time needed, so window for actually worming the network through vendors is very small. All staff accessing the system has computer security training. But not every heat provider operates like this, some small ones (like the one affected) are a little more sloppy.
- pqtyw 9mo ago
  Well be the same definition Russia was at war with the US in Korea and Vietnam (or Afghanistan). To a much bigger extent to be fair since there were actual Russian pilotes deploying to both countries. I'm not sure whether Johnson or Nixon (during periods of sobriety of course) were considering directly attacking Russian territory because of that...

by dijit 9mo ago

reactordev 9mo ago

Not to mention the information war they have been waging globally since 2016

naryJane 9mo ago
True, but they’ve certainly been doing it much longer than ten years. I’ll never forget this headline [0] that struck me as purely devilish, especially in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Combine that with the knowledge that Trump has been anti-NATO since the 1980s [1]. Who knows how long Russia has been nudging him along. Who knows how many avenues they traverse? Take for example the letter to Senator Tom Cotton about Greenland [2]. What an embarrassment. I can only hope we are equally successful in our own PsyOps. [0] https://www.rt.com/news/265399-putin-nato-europe-ukraine-italy/ https://www.rt.com/news/265399-putin-nato-europe-ukraine-ita... [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-nearly-100000-on-an-ad-criticizing-us https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-t... [2] https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2018djo https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c2018djo
- reactordev 9mo ago
  You don’t remember Trump Moscow? Ivanka? Trump and Russian connections go all the way back to Epstein’s early days.
  - mrtesthah 9mo ago
    So much dirt. https://spookyconnections.com/2024/10/19/donald-trump/ https://spookyconnections.com/2024/10/19/donald-trump/
  - Applejinx 9mo ago
    Yes, and it's successfully got to where his people are able to dismantle American infrastructure at scale, deliver IT systems to Russian hackers directly and coordinate death squads on the streets. I figure the primary reason we're not seeing 'little green men' in Minnesota, for instance, is that Russia cannot spare them. But the war here is arguably as important or MORE important to Russian war aims than the war in Ukraine. Certainly more successful here than in Ukraine, for what that's worth. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion but they've certainly succeeded here a lot more than in Ukraine.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
Avamander 9mo ago
It has been ramping up a bit. Most recent case has been Russian (sock)puppet activity on Wikipedia, where they actively try to rewrite the language used, the narrative to be more suitable for them. It has even gotten news coverage. First link in English I found: https://balticsentinel.eu/8394326/wikipedia-s-baltic-battle-estonian-journalists-warn-of-coordinated-pro-soviet-edits-lithuania-reports-similar-targeting https://balticsentinel.eu/8394326/wikipedia-s-baltic-battle-...
exoverito 9mo ago
The US, UK, and Western powers have been waging information war for far longer than 2016. Look at Canadian PM Mark Carney's latest speech at Davos, he admits the 'Rules based international order' was a fiction, and the US has had a very long history of covert operations, 'enhanced interrogation', destabilization campaigns, funding of terrorists, propping up of dictators, bombing and invading of many countries... To be specific consider how many lies have been told by the American mainstream media around the narratives of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Syria, Libya, etc. Israel has the most surveilled and well defended border in the world, the Mossad is sophisticated enough to launch pager attacks to decapitate Hezbollah leadership, yet somehow they got caught with their pants down and Hamas combatants could raid their country for 12 hours without a response. The US also had funded Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, knew Al Qaeda was plotting another attack on the WTC, and the Neocons in the Bush administration wanted a new Pearl Harbor as outlined in the Project for a New American Century. Russia is not uniquely or even particularly evil here, it's entirely rational for them to not want a major neighbor to join an enemy alliance. Look at how America has treated Cuba for decades. People should stop being so naive.
- Throaway1982 9mo ago
  Unfortunately its also entirely rational for Ukraine to want to join an alliance against Russia!

tosapple 9mo ago

What I am starting to appreciate about these digital infrastructure attacks is that they may be reversible and or temporary. It can be a nice feature.

jacquesm 9mo ago
Then you're missing the point. If they succeed they may well not be reversible. The question is if this had succeeded would we have shrugged it off again or responded appropriately?
- tosapple 9mo ago
  I wasn't commenting on any particular case. I was stating that flipping a switch is less costly to reverse than blowing up a dam.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    These attacks are not at the level of 'flipping a switch'. If they succeed they can destabilize the grid and that has the potential to destroy gear, and while not as costly as blowing up a dam it can still be quite costly.
    - tosapple 9mo ago
      During WW2 both germany and the UK as example were carpet bombed to assail industry, does that help you to understand my position better? Vietnam too.
      - shakna 9mo ago
        Not really. If you succeed in attacking the grid, you achieve the same widespread industry impact, without the cost of the munitions. It can take decades to recover from a cyber attack like this, if it succeeds.
        9mo ago

throw310822 9mo ago

[flagged]

bnjemian 9mo ago
This completely ignores that: 1. Russia was the aggressor in Ukraine, 2. Putin has made clear his desire to pursue expansionist goals through military action targeting prior members of the Soviet Union, 3. Putin regular threatens nuclear war with Ukraine, 4. Russia has shown outward hostility towards Western democracies and sought to manipulate elections with information warfare to reach their goals (most notably, 2016 US Election and Brexit), 5. Russian regularly cuts cables connecting countries, and 6. Though completely unrelated, Putin has a history of assassinating political opponents. That's wolfish behavior if I've ever seen it.
Zagitta 9mo ago
You're conveniently omitting these all happened in response to the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. But thanks for proving the point about Russia's disinformation war.
- throw310822 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - RealityVoid 9mo ago
    Did you actually read all the posts pointing this and all the _other_ aggressive actions Russia is taking against the EU? Regardless, Russia is a bully and sticking your head in the sand won't make them go away.
    - brabel 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - lucketone 9mo ago

cookiengineer 9mo ago

Some could say that in the cyber realm, they are not petty, ya! Well, or something like that. Eversince notpetya and the colonial pipeline hack, the cyber strategy game changed a lot. Notpetya was genius as a deployment, because they abused the country's tax software deployment pipeline to cripple all (and I mean all, beyond 99%) businesses in one surgical strike. The same is gonna happen to other tax software providers, because the DATEV AG and similar companies are pretty much the definition of digital incompetence wherever you look. I could name other takedowns but the list would continue beyond a reasonable comment, especially with vendors like Hercules and Prophete that are now insolvent because they never prioritized cyber security at all, got hacked, didn't have backups, and ran out of money due to production plant costs.

RobotToaster 9mo ago

The cold war never ended

127 9mo ago
...for Putin

brabel 9mo ago

Europe is the main supplier of weapons to Ukraine which is in actual war with Russia. Of course Russia is at war with Europe, the only reason bombs are not falling in Poland and Germany is that Russia wouldn’t have the capability to defend itself against retaliation. Do people really believe their countries can openly take sides in a war and not be targeted??

hardlianotion 9mo ago
This has been going on from well before the Ukraine war. It has just intensified. The real question is: should the affected states develop some counter-capability to deter this opportunistic behaviour?
- yetihehe 9mo ago
  Fortunately Russia in their benevolence tries to limit the damage, so that we don't feel the destruction all at once. This means some people will be annoyed for day or two and everyone is reminded to increase security pretty constantly. Just recently we got news about ONE furnace (from several in that heating plant) being probably hacked. The furnace shut down. Operator didn't notice, because the display on furnace was already malfunctioning and operator just restarted it. They checked everything only after our "cybersecurity" forces notified them. That was in local news this weekend. I know about it because I'm responsible for another city heating network, we take security pretty seriously. All devices are in vpn and if someone outside needs to login remotely, he is granted access only for the time needed, so window for actually worming the network through vendors is very small. All staff accessing the system has computer security training. But not every heat provider operates like this, some small ones (like the one affected) are a little more sloppy.
pqtyw 9mo ago
Well be the same definition Russia was at war with the US in Korea and Vietnam (or Afghanistan). To a much bigger extent to be fair since there were actual Russian pilotes deploying to both countries. I'm not sure whether Johnson or Nixon (during periods of sobriety of course) were considering directly attacking Russian territory because of that...