[HN Gopher] An update on the threat landscape
___________________________________________________________________
An update on the threat landscape
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 592 points
Date : 2022-03-07 22:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| paganel wrote:
| > as well as services like Liveuamap that are designed to help
| people find information. We expanded eligibility for Project
| Shield, our free protection against DDoS attacks
|
| Really nice that they're doing that. I had noticed Liveuamap
| giving lots of 5* error codes earlier in the invasion, for
| obvious reasons, but now it looks like it works pretty well.
| Again, good job from the people of Google (I usually am very
| critic about them).
| natch wrote:
| Google flags its own generated emails sent from itself to its
| gmail users as phishing emails. I am not making this up. Think
| about that.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The occasional disconnect there isn't surprising at all.
| Whichever group at Google works on anti-phishing attacks
| probably has rules like "does it say it's coming from Google,
| does it look like a Google email, is there a picture of a
| Google logo, does it talk about your account, did a whole bunch
| of emails that look just like this one just get sent to a bunch
| of gmail users," etc. Legitimate emails from Google trip pretty
| much all of those alarms, and it makes a lot of sense to lean
| on the side of "phishing warning" if you're not sure. Plus,
| those teams are probably pretty far from each other on a big
| corporate organizational tree. Seems like a very reasonable
| sort of mistake to make.
| natch wrote:
| Whether it's reasonable for them to make the mistake or not
| (see my other replies) the possible detrimental effect of
| this is summed up by the well-known "boy who cried wolf"
| story. So it's a mistake they should fix.
| natch wrote:
| The teams don't need to be close. The anti-phishing team is
| just not doing its job.
| creato wrote:
| Or maybe parts of google are sending emails that look too
| much like phishing. It wouldn't be the first time my
| personal phishing meter triggered on some corporate emails.
| natch wrote:
| They have been sending them for around 20 years. It's not
| like these are new emails. The phishing team has been
| flagging them for a few years now, not sure how long.
| miohtama wrote:
| Does anyone remember REvil arrest anymore?
|
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/01/at-request-of-u-s-russia...
|
| Those people must be now be back to the business, national heroes
| and the era of ransomware diplomacy ended as fast as it started.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Russian version of a recruitment drive?
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Those 14 are just a drop in the bucket. Neither their arrest
| nor release will make much of a difference
| javajosh wrote:
| Why is Russia so into hacking? Would it help if there was a
| startup community there to absorb the talent? Or is this the
| inevitable byproduct of bright people living under a brutally
| corrupt and dishonest dictator and his cronies for most of
| their lives?
| uluyol wrote:
| What makes you think Russia is special in this regard?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well, you hear about Russian hackers on the news a lot,
| which would seem to indicate that either:
|
| 1) they are very good at hacking
|
| 2) they are not so good at hacking
|
| 3) Russia is a popular place for hackers to set up
| proxies
| oefrha wrote:
| Alternatively, news about hacking that you read,
| including their primary sources like
| Google/Microsoft/FireEye/whatever, usually suppress news
| about hacking by U.S. and allies. IIRC last year Google
| publicly announced a zero day actively exploited by the
| U.S. which was considered highly unusual, since
| apparently they usually just patch it without fuzz. The
| article was discussed here but I can't find it now.
| fomine3 wrote:
| That's why Kaspersky is important. I wish they survive.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This thread was kicked off by discussion about ransomware
| hacking, though. I'm sure US intelligence agencies get up
| to all sorts of no good, and I'm sure our news is less
| likely to report on it, but there doesn't seem to be an
| equivalent ransomware industry in the US (and the news
| has no reason to cover for petty hacking criminals in the
| US).
|
| Actually I don't see a _ton_ of news about national-
| security related hacking by Russia.
| oefrha wrote:
| Oh, TFA is about nation states so I was talking about
| that.
|
| Asymmetric commercial hacking is pretty easy to explain:
| hacking foreign entities is safer than hacking domestic
| ones in terms of risk exposure, and hacking entities in
| countries richer than yours is more attractive than the
| other way round.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| How about non-nation states, such as the US?
| dhosek wrote:
| Pedantry is seldom useful or interesting.
| weq wrote:
| All of the above!
| xtian wrote:
| 4) The news is not geopolitically neutral
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| 4) You're only looking at American propaganda.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Nah, most of the stories are about ransomware type
| schemes from Russian criminal gangs. I'm sure both of our
| intelligence agencies get up to no good, and US news
| sources are less likely to cover US intelligence
| agencies, but they have no real reason to cover for petty
| hacking criminals.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > most of the stories are about ransomware type schemes
|
| And where are these news stories coming from?
| rank0 wrote:
| are you living under a rock? Do you remember the recent
| oil pipeline and meat packing facilities that got
| ransomwared? Ton's of government sites and corporations
| get hacked. It's way more than what's publicly available
| too. Most of the time entities just pay up and keep it
| secret. Lots of the attacks come from russia. They pump
| out a shit load of malware.
| lmm wrote:
| There are obvious incentives to present Russia as a
| lawless criminal wasteland and the US as a good global
| citizen.
| giaour wrote:
| I don't think they're obvious, and this comment strikes
| me as baseless innuendo.
|
| What precisely are the incentives for multinational
| corporations to censor news about American cyber
| malfeasance, especially given how acute and prolonged a
| regulatory headache unchecked American surveillance
| created for them in Europe?
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Why is Russia so into hacking? Would it help if there
| was a startup community there to absorb the talent? Or is
| this the inevitable byproduct of bright people living under
| a brutally corrupt and dishonest dictator and his cronies
| for most of their lives?_
|
| It may be worth taking a look at the conditions that first
| gave rise to the eastern European malware scene in the late
| 80's, particularly in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria:
|
| https://bontchev.nlcv.bas.bg/papers/factory.html
|
| In particular, the presence of the necessary information
| and lack of economic opportunity gave rise to the original
| scene, and today that has transformed into an environment
| where the economic opportunity is directly tied to various
| for-profit black-hat activities (ransomware, identity theft
| and credit card fraud, etc.).
|
| It is possible to link the relative lack of _other_
| economic opportunities to corruption, and that is a valid
| observation, but if black hat activities weren 't
| profitable and relatively safe from retaliation (as long as
| you avoid Russian targets), the scene would still be
| typified by disaffected individuals rather than organized
| professional groups.
|
| I'm not sure if creating a bunch of startups to soak up the
| extra talent would work, as the incentives to get a leg up
| on the competition via the Dark Arts (DDOS your competitor,
| spear-phishing their sales people, etc.) would still be
| pretty strong.
| er4hn wrote:
| This is the key comment. Free college education, glut of
| college trained programmers, lack of a legitimate job
| market.
| afr0ck wrote:
| France and Germany have free college education.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| And an economy. Russian has the economy of Spain, with
| three times the population. And that economy is 50
| percent oil and gas.
| astrange wrote:
| Spain itself has extremely high unemployment, but I don't
| hear about software from there often. (There's one app I
| use developed there.)
| eloisius wrote:
| This kind of stat boggles the mind. How are they one of
| the top ~3 formidable military powers in the world while
| being no richer than Spain?
| thereddaikon wrote:
| They dont? Everyone assumed they did but given their
| performance in the last 2 weeks I'd say it was overblown.
|
| The reason everyone thought they were a great military
| power is because the Soviets were presumably a great
| military power with a large army and a lot of hardware.
| Tanks, aircraft, artillery etc etc. And when it all fell
| apart the Russians inherited the lion's share.
|
| Russia has lower costs in terms of personnel, lower wages
| and the like will somewhat lower the overhead of their
| military. But I think everyone overestimated how much
| that would help. See, raw materials costs the same around
| the world more or less. Titanium costs the same in Russia
| as it does in the US. Same for steel or any other
| resource that is on the global market. So Russia can only
| build a tank so much cheaper than Europe or the US can,
| but there is a floor to that price. On top of that they
| have been under sanctions for years for a lot of
| important things they can't make domestically like
| advanced semiconductors.
|
| Then there is the fact Russia is a well known
| kleptocracy. They may very well have nominally lower
| personnel costs but that's likely balanced by much higher
| corruption.
|
| And when you think of the sheer size of their military,
| all of those nuclear subs. All of those ICBMs, there are
| a lot of expensive things there that will easily take up
| large chunks of their budget.
|
| I think much of the conventional side of the Russian
| military was left to rot and much of what we were shown
| pre-invasion was just that, a show. T14 functionally does
| not exist. Same with Su-57. They are cool show pieces but
| the real military are using 30+ year old hardware that
| has been piecemeal upgraded and not well maintained.
| croon wrote:
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Someone here recently said:
|
| Russia has a big and advanced army. But the advanced army
| is not big. And the big army is not advanced.
| wolf550e wrote:
| They inherited the military of the Soviet Union, which
| was overhyped but large and not obsolete. They have
| invested money into keeping up with tech in principle,
| i.e. a few demo units, but they don't have money to
| actually equip their military with the new tech or to
| train correctly. So the Russian military has Soviet nukes
| and otherwise it's a Potemkin village. It may be that the
| nukes are also a Potemkin village, but it's dangerous to
| check.
|
| Russia has been doing asymmetric operations, e.g. buying
| the US republican party was a lot cheaper than winning a
| war against the US but effectively was almost as good.
| Helping far-right, anti-democracy, anti-EU, anti-NATO
| politicians worldwide has been destabilizing. Organizing
| both the racist and the anti-racist demonstration at the
| same place and time has kept people and governments
| distracted. They do a lot of mafia style things to bribe,
| intimidate and kill people into doing what they want.
| Turns out going after politicians is more effective than
| going after military officers because counter-
| intelligence is more hesitant to act when they suspect a
| politician of working with/for Russia.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Is the appearance of a deep state the main reason why
| counterintelligence is reluctant to act when it's
| politicans being bribed instead of military officers?
| wolf550e wrote:
| Right. Without really solid evidence, it might look like
| a military junta asserting control over the people's
| elected representatives. Someone who's not an elected
| politician would have just lost their security clearance
| and been let go, if the authorities decided to not pursue
| espionage charges.
|
| Another thing is that the US military has been trained to
| be deathly afraid of appearing to have an opinion on
| politics, and this is both good and bad.
| simonh wrote:
| Their buying power within Russia is probably 3x that or
| more, plus because they have an extractive economy a
| disproportionately high proportion of GDP goes directly
| to the state, and because they are an oppressive state a
| disproportionate amount of that goes to the military.
|
| Russian defence spending is about 1/12 that of the US,
| but between having lower grade equipment, conscription
| and cheaper domestic prices they probably get 2x to 3x
| bang for their buck, at least on paper. As we can see in
| Ukraine, in practice much of the bang is over hyped, but
| it still gives them the brute muscle to do a lot of
| regional bullying.
| _blu wrote:
| and the gas is actually just fart
| labster wrote:
| Which would you rather earn, 1000 rubles or 1000 dollars?
| Corruption is much more profitable than honesty in Russia.
| bregma wrote:
| This sort of thing has always been the domain of organized
| crime syndicates.
|
| Narcotics, prostitution, gambling, smuggling, and computer
| crime all take organization and capitalization. It's just
| that in some places such organizations control the reigns
| of political power brazenly and shamelessly.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| 1. The Russian gov't looks the other way. Hackers in any
| other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but
| Russian hackers are protected as long as they don't attack
| Russians. There was some malware going around at one point
| where someone realized the payload didn't run if the user
| had a Russian keymap installed.
|
| 2. Kind of a "worse is better" phenomenon. This is
| apocryphal but while Americans and Europeans were digging
| into Apple IIs and Commodores, Russia just had crappy
| knockoff machines that didn't follow the behavior of the
| machines they were meant to be clones of, so anyone who
| stuck with it long enough basically taught themselves
| reverse engineering and the operation of "weird machines",
| how to operate in environments of undefined behavior. Thats
| just how I heard it, I'd like to learn more about their
| history since their space program was pretty one-to-one
| with ours, they definitely had computer engineers and
| programmers just as sophisticated as USA
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The Russian gov 't looks the other way. Hackers in any
| other country might fear prosecution & extradition, but
| Russian hackers are protected as long as they don't
| attack Russians._
|
| You can see some of this with Anonymous and the FBI these
| days, too, and NSO Group and Israel. I wouldn't be
| surprised if most countries do this, now.
| javajosh wrote:
| How does that even work? Does the NSA post on 4chan
| asking for l33t hax0rs to do a job?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'd imagine direct and indirect infiltration. Hackers
| charged with crimes, who are part of a larger group,
| sometimes get plea deals. As part of their deals, they
| might give up accounts, keys, data, or evidence from the
| group, and/or work as confidential informants for the
| government.
| taneq wrote:
| You really think there _aren 't_ computer security
| experts from government organisations on 4chan? I thought
| half of its schtick was it was a wide range of humans
| from all walks of life, pretending to be (or actually
| being) whatever-it-is that humans become without any form
| of supervision.
| infogulch wrote:
| I found Lex Friedman's interview with Nicole Perlroth
| discussion of hacker culture and the mechanics of
| creating and selling 0-days to nation-state actors
| interesting.
|
| https://youtu.be/hy2G3PhGm-g
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Aren't they famous for going to hacker conventions and
| looking like another fellow hacker instead of a suit? the
| NSA even has given talks at DEFCON.
| dylan604 wrote:
| They run operations like Cicda3301 to recruit to ones
| that make it to the end.
|
| https://www.cicada3301.org/
|
| /s
| saagarjha wrote:
| Ok but seriously they fund things like USAMTS which I
| assume gives them access to a list of promising young
| Americans.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's boring maths though. Great, they found some people
| that can do hard maths. Cicada3301 winners prove they
| have a wide range of abilities. You're "tests" would be
| fine for the NSA types that just sit in a gov't cubicle
| going blind on cyphers. CIA wants people that can figure
| things out without getting caught.
| saagarjha wrote:
| The parent comment asked about the NSA, and, well, they
| happen to do a lot of math.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> they definitely had computer engineers and programmers
| just as sophisticated as USA_
|
| Russians also have a world-class reputation in math and
| physics. At least they did in the 20th century. Now that
| experiments are so capital intensive, theoretical physics
| has become unfalsifiable silliness, I would assume that
| these people went into software. Although I could be
| wrong.
| godelski wrote:
| > Why is Russia so into hacking?
|
| Same reason NK is. Same reason every country is. It is
| rather cheap in comparison. I mean even the largest super
| computers only cost a few hundred million. That's rather
| cheap when you consider other military adventures. One
| state of the art super computer is roughly the price of one
| (maybe 2) modern jets. The biggest cost is people. And you
| can do a ton of damage with hacking.
|
| The costs are low, benefits are high.
|
| [0] Summit was $350m, and a F22 costs $140m (per jet, not
| including development costs which is hundreds of billions)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| What do super computers have to do with hacking?
| speed_spread wrote:
| Successfully hacking the Gibson it the ultimate
| challenge!
| godelski wrote:
| Not really much, but it was giving an example of the
| costs of computing in general. More like an upper bound.
| That you could buy crazy expensive computers and it would
| cost nowhere near what actual weapons systems cost. I was
| just trying to say that the cost for hacking is more in
| man power rather than machinery. And man power is far
| cheaper than machinery.
| tspike wrote:
| The most immediate use case that comes to mind is
| breaking encryption.
| mrep wrote:
| Where are you getting hundreds of billions? Wikipedia
| says "As production wound down in 2011, the total program
| cost is estimated to be about $67.3 billion, with $32.4
| billion spent on Research, Development, Test and
| Evaluation (RDT&E) and $34.9 billion on procurement and
| military construction (MILCON) in then year dollars."
| blobcode wrote:
| Although not the F-22, modern fighters such as the F-35
| can cost 100's of billions of dollars in R&D[0] (~150
| billion iirc, with ~1.3 trillion total program cost).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Li
| ghtning...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Less opportunities for startups for running actual stable
| business products there isn't helping either. I have heard
| a first hand story how the government just stopped some
| cloud access, which caused some company that had built its
| product on top of it to immediately close down.
| raverbashing wrote:
| On that subject we might ask if the Eastern recruiters care
| about things like background searches, "polygraphs" or what
| recreational substances the subjects use on their free
| time.
|
| But yeah it's all of the factors you mentioned.
| steve76 wrote:
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Since the war began, a number of supposedly independent
| ransomware groups have publicly announced their allegiance to
| the Kremlin and the war effort, and their intention to carry
| out strikes. So the idea of the January arrests was probably
| part of a larger pattern of arresting criminals and telling
| them they get out of jail free if they come work for the state.
| Whether these particular ones have already been turned into
| assets useful against Ukraine is not clear. At minimum they're
| not working against Putin.
|
| The idea of "ransomware diplomacy" was probably just a side
| benefit.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| '...and that's why we're buying Mandiant.'
| benatkin wrote:
| A few days ago there was another post about Google and Ukraine. I
| took another look at it and found an update that I hadn't seen
| until now:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528022
|
| The author of the post, which was about marks on Google Maps,
| determined that the marks were innocuous.
| obblekk wrote:
| Interesting that they're targeting media publications - those
| users (journalists) are probably less technical / security
| hardened than operators of critical infrastructure, but have a
| great deal of influence over the country's wellbeing nonetheless.
|
| I wonder what other similar professions are? Doctors and lawyers?
|
| This combined with the announcement that software piracy is legal
| in Russia now perhaps suggests a new front is opening up again in
| cyber.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| If the BBC World Service hasnt taught people a thing or two
| (winning hearts and minds through propaganda), what will?
|
| Its interesting that some tech firms are jumping on this, there
| isnt that much data sharing going on between tech firms, I know
| of email domains which will not work on some webforms or
| websites, but I think Europes higher levels of privacy and anti
| surveillance will be a disadvantage at this time.
| mvc wrote:
| Yep. Definitely lawyers (specifically those involved in high
| value transactions) are targeted.
|
| All you need to do is convince one of their customers that you
| are speaking on behalf of the lawyer and get them to send the
| money to you instead.
|
| I know this because I've been a victim of this attack.
|
| Not sure how you'd monetize patient/doctor communications in
| the same way but I'm sure someone could think of something.
| fragmede wrote:
| Spear-phishing is the industry term for that, where the
| attack is specialized towards a specific target and not a
| mass-mail phishing attempt.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> All you need to do is convince one of their customers that
| you are speaking on behalf of the lawyer and get them to send
| the money to you instead. I know this because I've been a
| victim of this attack._
|
| IIRC, there was a guy who was sending letters to the finance
| department of big tech companies and was claiming to be the
| CEO and that they had to make various payments to his
| accounts, and they were paying him without anyone at the
| company questioning this. He got away with millions before
| getting caught and he wasn't part of some crime group but
| some random guy sending letters from home, lol.
|
| Maybe people should be trained in snail mail phishing
| detection too.
| [deleted]
| mvc wrote:
| > Maybe people should be trained in snail mail phishing
| detection too.
|
| This attack would might be even more effective as snail
| mail actually because in my case, that's where the official
| notification of recipient account was supposed to be
| delivered (and was a couple days later). If you can sleuth
| the email comms to find an address, you'd probably send the
| fake info to both.
|
| To protect yourself from this attack, always, always,
| always speak with person to get the account details to
| which you're sending a large amount of money. Preferably
| face to face.
| [deleted]
| scoofy wrote:
| HN has been awkwardly silent on the ongoing conflict. I'll be
| curious to see where the discussion leads when the conflict
| starts escalating in the info/itsec areas. I read the Nicole
| Perlroth's book this year, and I'm not excited about this at all.
| 323 wrote:
| Multiple times I noticed a technique being used to push
| undesirable articles off the first page - you flag an article
| and then quickly unflag it (1-2 minutes). It will be bumped off
| the first page, but very few will notice the fleeting flagging.
| boogies wrote:
| Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active. It's been
| practically overflowing with Ukraine and Russia stories for
| days now, to the point it's almost a bit of a chore to pick
| through them all and find discussion of anything else.
| laurent92 wrote:
| There were many posts which reached the front page about the
| war in Ukraine. Although I devoured them with interest, they
| are off-topic, therefore it's good that HN doesn't dwell on it.
| Other social media became single-topic about the war for a
| week, HN offers a reprieve by keeping IT and startups at the
| center.
| agumonkey wrote:
| why this choice of words ?
|
| frankly the amount of noise and fog of war is still high..
| whatever we say is of low importance and value
| BongoMcCat wrote:
| I have other sources that I read when I want general
| information about what is going on in the world.
|
| HN is something that I read for a very specific subset of
| information.
|
| I don't find this to be that strange.
| chockchocschoir wrote:
| It has already escalated a lot in terms of "cyberwar" or
| whatever people call it nowadays. Ukrainian infrastructure is
| under heavy attack from Russia and Russia is under heavy attack
| from volunteers from literally ever single country in the
| world, so heavy that Russia is now cutting off the rest of the
| internet because they can't handle the attacks.
| trhway wrote:
| According to Ukrainian TV US cybercommand in Europe is
| actively engaged in fighting Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine.
| astrange wrote:
| That sounds a bit fanciful because how do you "actively
| fight cyberattacks"? It's all attack and no defense - even
| the passive defense is attack (via red teaming).
| madrox wrote:
| I don't think it's awkward silence...there's just very little
| so far that meets HN's guidelines for on-topic:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| It was on the frontpage the other day when Elon Musk gave UKR
| access to Starlink.
| albybisy wrote:
| so for HN users is more important Elon Mask than ....
| vikingerik wrote:
| This. There's just not that much to say. There's nothing to
| debate; we're pretty much unanimously for peace and against
| aggression. There's nothing that we techies and entrepreneurs
| are going to do to make any difference, unless you're up at
| Elon Musk's scale. The only arguing is going to be politics
| (NATO response, appease Russia, etc) and that's exactly what
| HN tries to avoid.
|
| At most we're involved in tangential economic affairs, like
| cutting off the payment infrastructure. Topics like that do
| seem to be getting about the right amount of attention here,
| a thread or two per day.
| loxias wrote:
| Feature, not bug.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| I can see how one would want to know What The Other Nerds
| Think about any given topic in the global narrative but it
| truly is better this way
| nostrademons wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports,
| unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
| Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If
| they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
|
| It's not unusual for top breaking stories to get flagged off
| the HN front page, simply because they're top stories that are
| broadly covered in the mainstream media.
|
| Now, niche responses to ongoing current events (like the
| InfoSec, supply chain, or technical aspects of the Ukraine
| invasion) are another matter, and I've seen several of them on
| the HN front page recently.
| awb wrote:
| It's unclear to me when and how exceptions are made to this
| policy, but there have been plenty of "world news" stories on
| Ukraine / Russia lately.
|
| Here are a few I posted that made it to the front page:
|
| * Russia's top bank quits Europe due to sanctions:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528503
|
| * Russia Makes Calling Ukraine War an 'Invasion' a Criminal
| Offense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30556430
|
| * Russians are trying to flee - data from Google Trends:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30568557
|
| * Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its
| media: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30469237
|
| I know there have been many others. You could also try
| searching for 'Ukraine': https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ukraine or
| 'Russia': https://hn.algolia.com/?q=russia
| tediousdemise wrote:
| I think war is an interesting new phenomenon, similar to a
| pandemic. It's a black swan event that warrants discussion.
| NavinF wrote:
| Dunno if I'd call it a black swan event. Prediction markets
| like Metaculus were at 50% way before the invasion and 75%
| days before; Tho most of the pundits didn't see it coming:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ukraine-
| warcasting?s=r
| Arnavion wrote:
| Discussion, sure. Discussion here, not necessarily.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The silence isn't due to a lack of submissions or upvotes [1],
| but the articles usually get flagged off the front page
| relatively quickly.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
| notacoward wrote:
| They often get flagged into oblivion _after_ they become
| infested with flamebait. Guidelines preclude speculating as
| to the authenticity of the often-new accounts engaging in
| this, but authenticity is not the same as intentionality and
| polluting the comments is a well established way to get a
| story off the front page.
| ask_b123 wrote:
| Wow, I actually hadn't noticed I could flag stories and
| even comments, I assumed it had the same points threshold
| as down voting (I say this as a relatively new account).
| [deleted]
| d4mi3n wrote:
| Speaking for myself working in cybersecurity, I suspect a lot
| of corporate and government IT/InfoSec folks are too busy
| rolling out recommended mitigations and observability
| improvements to have too much to say. Mainstream media does a
| good job covering where our (InfoSec/IT) industry fails. A job
| done well you will likely never hear about.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > HN has been awkwardly silent on the ongoing conflict
|
| I hate to be the "you're holding it wrong" guy, but...
|
| Like most major, general-interest news, it doesn't make the
| front page or, if it does, it doesn't stay very long.
|
| But if you check /newcomments, it's been a continuously active
| discussion. And an absolute majority of current stories on /new
| relate to the conflict in one way or another.
|
| HN isn't "awkwardly silent" on the ongoing conflict.
| antifa wrote:
| Maybe they meant dang and/or other mods/admins have been
| silent? HN has been the only place I've been following for
| news on the war.
| Mezzie wrote:
| It's not my only news source given I work in
| politics/civics, but HN is what I use for understanding the
| way the conflict is impacting the Internet on a technical
| level and the discussions of tech politics. For example,
| the request to ICANN, discussions on whether or not to cut
| off Russians' ability to use foreign infrastructure, etc.
|
| It's invaluable for helping me follow this one specific
| area.
|
| Edit: Also, I would like to say that the idea that 'every
| place on the Internet has to address every major event' is
| not really great for anybody who works in a related area.
| Think of political issues taking over hobby subreddits: I'm
| literally a civics educator, it's not super fun for me to
| log in to talk about video games and get greeted with 'if
| you don't agree with VERY REDUCTIVE BASIC 101
| POSITION/don't want to see discussion in these spaces,
| you're terrible.' I put in almost 40 hours a week and do
| more than you do, random (likely 16-20 year old) Reddit
| mod. I don't need your lectures, I need to see crazy ways
| to break video games.
|
| Like no. It's just that it's like being a math teacher and
| logging in to see people sharing (often wrong) math test
| answers in your beer group. You need a break for your own
| mental health.
|
| I'm starting to get _really_ concerned for the overall
| mental health of the journalist class + political staffers.
| The ability to step away from the pressure cooker is
| integral to maintaining your stability.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Totally agree with this. My work and study involves a
| fair amount of statistics. Yesterday I got accidentally
| nerd sniped by some bad date based numerology which I
| promptly spent 20 minutes angrily demolishing. It would
| have been nice to not see numerology on my fb feed
| because I could have put that effort towards something
| more constructive.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I work in communications for a non-partisan
| civic/political non-evil organization (Think like the
| Congressional Research Service or parts of NARA, nothing
| sexy or cool) and my graduate focus was on filter
| bubbles/social media algorithms/information policy (back
| in 2015). I also do front-end/UI/UX work.
|
| There have been multiple times when I've logged into my
| social media (or my _regular_ media feeds) and felt
| nauseated. I can just _see_ all the fingerprints
| everywhere, pushing us this way and that, and I have also
| seen the effect that it has had on my loved ones over the
| past 7 years. It 's like everything now is covered with
| this disgusting, vampiric slime that prevents you from
| making genuine connections with others.
|
| But I cannot move the ocean with a thimble.
| Gatsky wrote:
| This is probably a good thing. HN discussions about geopolitics
| are usually poor.
|
| But I share your curiosity on the seeming lack of discussion,
| or on another level, organisation. I feel disturbed by Russia
| indiscriminately murdering people, and threatening the end of
| civilisation, all conducted with gleeful mendacity. They have
| also shut off a large proportion of global food supply which
| developing nations rely on. I feel I should be doing something
| about it, but I don't know what to do.
|
| But in the end, HN is just a bunch of people on the internet.
| xvector wrote:
| Are there any forums with high-quality geopolitics
| discussions, as HN is for tech?
| agumonkey wrote:
| didn't dig a lot but I peek at r/geopolitics (not great,
| not terrible)
|
| OSINT on twitter yields some finer news
|
| I'm asking people around for more serious chat groups but
| nothing comes up
| [deleted]
| sudosysgen wrote:
| reddit.com/r/geopolitics used to be good, now it went into
| terminal decline. There can not be a good geopolitics forum
| that scales it seems, sadly.
| stuu99 wrote:
| cheeze wrote:
| Maybe it's just me but these seem rather... tame?
|
| Phishing campaigns? I'd assume those happen year round, war or
| not.
|
| Am I wrong here? Missing something?
| huntsman wrote:
| (Author here) Yeah. Much of this activity is pretty consistent
| with what TAG generally sees in the region and from these
| actors.
| dhosek wrote:
| A recent Science Friday segment observed that there's been less
| big cyber than expected so far
| https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/cyber-warfare-russia-...
| chockchocschoir wrote:
| Since Google doesn't really own much infrastructure outside of
| the US, I don't think Google can do much, and maybe doesn't
| even have that much insight on what is going through the pipes
| elsewhere.
|
| There is a lot more things happening that just phishing attacks
| though, from both sides. While Russia is attacking Ukrainian
| IT-infrastructure, Russian IT-infrastructure is getting hit by
| every other country at the moment.
| [deleted]
| slig wrote:
| >and maybe doesn't even have that much insight on what is
| going through the pipes elsewhere.
|
| Chrome and their DNS can be used for that.
| usr1106 wrote:
| > Since Google doesn't really own much infrastructure outside
| of the US
|
| What is that claim based on? I think they have alot of
| presence here in Europe. I doubt it would be economically to
| transfer too much data over the atlantic. Think of every
| Youtube video that is being watched. However, for services
| requiring central storage longer like e.g. email, I have no
| idea. I am not sure whether mailboxes have a home region.
|
| Disclaimer: No insider knowledge here. Just what Iremember
| from tracouting years ago and trying to apply some common
| sense.
| achernya wrote:
| https://peering.google.com/#/infrastructure has maps of
| Google CDN infrastructure.
|
| (work at Google, and on the CDN)
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Don't think I could ever be a hacker because phishing folks
| doesn't sound exciting at all
| weq wrote:
| Its not one person, these are groups of people who likely
| have a single strength in a particular area. the guy who is
| good at hacking, is the guy sending phsining emails isnt the
| guy setting up the bank accounts.
|
| My novice POV is that you would expect russians to have a
| higher ratio of hackers to script kiddies as opposed to a
| country like Ghana who scams just as many that is mostly just
| script kiddies trading techniques on underground markets.
| tbihl wrote:
| If you think that sounds bad, you should see how most of the
| peacetime military spends its time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| or diplomatic negotiations where people just talk past each
| other delivering pre-written speeches repeatedly like
| someone is going to hear something new the 3rd time you
| read the speech.
| yosito wrote:
| > Missing something?
|
| From what I've seen on OSINT Twitter, I think what you're
| missing is that Russia is not actually all that good at
| cyberwarfare in terms of hacking high security systems, or even
| securing their own systems. There was a story today about a
| high ranking general who was killed and it was picked up by the
| OSINT community due to Russians using unencrypted phones to
| communicate on the battlefield. Extremely rookie mistake.
| Russia's cyberwarfare strengths seem to end with simple DDoS
| attacks and propaganda bot nets on social networks.
| dylan604 wrote:
| At the same time, there's a difference between cyberwarefare
| strengths and operational security being practiced (or not)
| by the soldiers in the field. It only takes one person to
| break protcol and pull out an unsecure device. Or it could be
| done on purpose as a bit of plausible deniability of
| sabatoge.
|
| There's a bunch of reasons I can think of than just Russia is
| weak about secure comms.
| astrange wrote:
| It's an insecure protocol rather than a device. If they'd
| used an encrypted VOIP app it would literally be secure,
| but they banned those out of paranoia and weren't able to
| provide their own replacements.
|
| I think the actual intercept was real intelligence tapping
| the cell phone network and OSINT accounts just repeated it,
| but not sure.
| yosito wrote:
| One weak link and the whole chain is weak.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Is it not worrying that this kind of response is left to Google?
| They are not a benevolent actor but a business who ultimately
| only does things to improve their own bottom line and their reach
| over the internet. [edit: I'd appreciate a response if you are
| going to downvote as is being done to me]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is it not worrying that this kind of response is left to
| Google?
|
| What do you mean "left to" (or "response" for that matter)?
| Google chooses to do report this information (which is a mix of
| info gathered from other sources and it's own work to protect
| it's own critical infrastructure), no one leaves it to them.
|
| The government does it's own publication of _extensive_
| cybersecurity information of this type, too; see, generally:
|
| https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas
| fulafel wrote:
| Many governments do, not just the US.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| You have a point, but I recall that when WW2 started many car
| companies started making tanks, etc, and mostly for the same
| reason: a specialized skill set that the government simply
| didn't have the capacity to meet at that time. The unmet need
| for IT security related work in government is vast.
| lrem wrote:
| Disclosure: I work at Google.
|
| Look at this from pure selfish Google perspective. With the
| large market penetration, Google earns some share of the total
| ad revenue of the Internet. Hence, it is in Google's selfish
| best interest to see the Internet grow and stay healthy.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I am yet to see Google putting effort in keeping internet
| healthy. Have you heard of AMP?
|
| We might have drastically different definitions of "healthy".
| curt15 wrote:
| No company is benevolent. Every company ultimately seeks to
| maximize its bottom line. The whole premise of capitalism is
| that in a healthy market there will be some agents whose
| selfish interests happen to align with your own. For example,
| while Apple finds it advantageous to play up the privacy angle
| when competing with Google in the US, its PR statements
| shouldn't be confused with benevolence. In this case, Google
| burnishes its image from flexing its internet muscles to "help
| the little guy".
| KarlKemp wrote:
| There is absolutely no way that Google will derive direct
| financial benefits from defending some Ukrainian journalism
| project from DDOS attacks. So it should be obvious that your
| assumptions about their motivation is wrong.
|
| Yes, maybe their actions will garner some sympathy among the
| public. But that mechanism is so generic, it just leads to the
| same conclusion, i. e. that companies are capable, interested,
| and legally free to act in the public interest.
| dhosek wrote:
| This recent Science Friday segment talked about that (among
| other things) https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/cyber-
| warfare-russia-...
| vinkelhake wrote:
| The question you ask is valid. If I were to guess (I didn't
| downvote you), it's because of your second sentence. It hints
| that you're thinking about it in a zero-sum kind of way. Google
| benefits from a healthy and secure web. This means they are
| going to engage in projects that aren't directly tied to what
| they do, like letsencrypt, Project Zero and TAG.
| runeks wrote:
| > They are not a benevolent actor but a business who ultimately
| only does things to improve their own bottom line and their
| reach over the internet.
|
| Google has interests, just like you and I. Neither you, me or
| Google are "benevolent actors".
|
| I don't at all mind when less-than-perfect entities help people
| -- regardless of what else they do that is right or wrong.
|
| Google, as a group of human beings, does both good and bad. To
| claim that it's problematic to accept help from people who are
| members of a group of people who also do bad things means we
| would also have to deny help from e.g. well-meaning Russian
| citizens.
| philovivero wrote:
| > Neither you, me or Google are "benevolent actors".
|
| This is nihilism. Google is definitely not a benevolent
| actor, as we can determine by examining the actions of the
| company over the past many years.
|
| I assume you also are malevolent, by your own admission.
|
| But your insinuation, that no-one is a benevolent actor, is
| so far off the mark I struggle to imagine how you hold that
| opinion. Have you considered therapy?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| How about Google hire these Russian hackers?
| dotancohen wrote:
| How would Google pay them, with the sanctions?
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