[HN Gopher] Ukrainian hackers destroyed the IT infrastructure of...
___________________________________________________________________
Ukrainian hackers destroyed the IT infrastructure of Russian drone
manufacturer
Author : doener
Score : 583 points
Date : 2025-07-16 08:18 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prm.ua)
(TXT) w3m dump (prm.ua)
| lnsru wrote:
| Working for a company in Germany which is planing production 3
| months in advance using printed Excel sheets. The migration of
| ERP system gone wrong and nobody knows how to fix it. Production
| management tries to hide this fact and does not talk to the
| engineering department. This will go for years, consultants will
| gather their fees for non functional system. Obviously IT
| infrastructure is not needed for manufacturing. It is just nice
| to have.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It depends how resilient they are. People often put all their
| eggs in one basket.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Russia has shown to be plenty resilient across the board. I
| find it hard to assume anything different here.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Russia is also behind in modern technology by over a
| decade. I'm pretty sure if the CIA wanted they could
| destroy a lot of Russian software infrastructure, but it
| suits them to be in and out of Russian systems collecting
| information instead.
| sjw987 wrote:
| This seems a bit of a stretch of a claim to make. In what
| ways would you say that Russia is a decade behind?
|
| I visited Russia a few years ago. Commercially, they have
| all the same technology we have (for me, in the UK). Like
| us, they outsource most of their manufacturing to China,
| but internally they produce software equivalent to (or to
| be honest greater than) what we produce. The difference
| seems to be that a lot of Russian software, websites and
| apps are more local, which gives the illusion that it's
| not as good. Google is multinational, whereas the
| equivalence Yandex sticks to Russian and Slavic language
| countries. I was actually quite surprised to see in some
| areas they are ahead in digitising things (government
| services, payments). I expected the opposite.
|
| Whatever software you can think of originating from the
| US, UK, or wherever, Russia has an equivalent. The major
| difference isn't the technical ability, but the
| commercial and cultural reach of that technology. Most of
| the world is happy to use Facebook, except Russia (and
| some others) who uses VK. We don't use VK, because it's
| Russian and we already use Facebook. Google, Facebook,
| Twitter, Uber (all artificially high value commercial
| products) have Russian equivalents. Sometimes they are
| even combined into one (Yandex has an Uber-like service
| within it). And when it comes to hardware, none of us are
| particularly strong with that. We all designate that to
| China, who sells it to all of us equally.
|
| Whenever we hear about cyberwarfare, cybercrime and
| exploits, we usually pin it on Russian/Chinese speaking
| hackers. Russia seems to have better primary, secondary
| and tertiary education in computing, and, like the rest
| of Eastern Europe, produces many of the better
| programmers (something you can see in open source
| communities). From discussions with Russians, the level
| of maths, science and computing education is higher at a
| younger age than it was for me in the UK. Quite a lot of
| what would be A-level (18) Maths in my country was taught
| at Russian secondary school level (16).
|
| In warfare, Russia has made fools of themselves in
| Ukraine, but on the other hand war is (sadly) the
| greatest contributor to military evolution. We see that
| with the introduction and evolution of drone warfare. Our
| UK Challenger tanks have been disabled and destroyed by
| far lower cost drones. All the technology associated with
| that (comms, jamming, avoiding jamming, self-targeting)
| is being rapidly developed by both Ukraine and Russia on
| the battlefield right now.
|
| Where exactly would a decade back put them,
| technologically speaking?
| ajuc wrote:
| > This seems a bit of a stretch of a claim to make. In
| what ways would you say that Russia is a decade behind?
|
| Every country had it's own facebook. The difference was
| not features but scale.
|
| Russia scales to million of users. Facebook/Google etc.
| scale to billions of users.
|
| Everybody use Office, Chrome, commercial CADs, etc.
| Russia has no alternatives in most of these categories,
| and where it has alternatives - it's usually global (i.e.
| mostly made by programmers paid by western corporations)
| open source project they fork and add a russian skin over
| it.
|
| > And when it comes to hardware, none of us are
| particularly strong with that.
|
| USA and EU design the top-end chips and make crucial
| parts of the machines that produce chips (see ASML).
|
| Russia was left behind in 90s and tries to catch up using
| some open-source alternatives around RISC-V. But they
| have no capability of designing nor producing chips
| anywhere near modern desktop CPUs.
|
| Russian Lancet drones use smuggled Nvidia AI chips for
| example. We do not use smuggled Russian chips :)
| torginus wrote:
| I have no love (or even reason) to support modern Russia,
| but this is just wrong.
|
| Russia has multiple home-grown office suites. Besides MS
| Office, the market leader still is full of bugs that
| harken back decades.
|
| They also have multiple commercial CAD programs (KOMPAS,
| T-FLEX) that scale up to everything including airliners.
|
| As for those 'western' top programmers, especially good
| ones, you'd be surprised how many of them are from post-
| USSR countries, including Russia (and Ukraine, Belarus,
| Kazakhstan etc.).
|
| As for chips they are behind (for reasons beyond the
| scope of my post), but the post mainly extended to
| software, in which, many of the supposed crown jewels of
| the West (aka US) have been replicated quite successfully
| in other parts of the world including Russia.
| Ray20 wrote:
| > I was actually quite surprised to see in some areas
| they are ahead in digitising things (government services,
| payments). I expected the opposite.
|
| Why were you surprised by this? Russia is a totalitarian
| dictatorship, it is quite expected that systems of total
| control will be actively implemented there. And what is
| better for total control than digitalized things?
|
| > Russia seems to have better primary, secondary and
| tertiary education in computing,
|
| I've talked to many Russians and this is complete bs. The
| quality of education is quite low, but due to the
| competition created by remote work, programmers were
| easily paid 5x times more than people with comparable
| qualifications in other fields. So a lot of youth with a
| good work ethic put a lot of efforts into self-education
| in this fields even if they have no access to any
| systemic education in computing at all.
|
| In other words, in Russia, as in other Eastern European
| countries, you either do programming, or you are screwed.
| And the advantage of mathematics is that you don't need a
| teacher for it (for school level), everything is in the
| book, one thing after another. All you need is work ethic
| and motivation.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| What do you mean by modern technology? Surely not the
| software. Russian engineering culture is strong and their
| IT strategy is far ahead of what you can find in Europe.
| I doubt it's easy to hack into their systems - this
| breach illustrates it quite well, actually (it's rare and
| required focused effort).
| joules77 wrote:
| It's not called Resilience if you pick on someone weaker.
|
| Western support to Ukraine has been a real joke -
| https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-
| europe/2025/0...
| praptak wrote:
| You can help instead of waiting for politicians to "do
| something about it". It's not that hard to find a
| reputable organization that helps Ukraine and send it
| some money.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Unless that's Musk or Bezos's alt account, that's like
| fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun.
| walterlw wrote:
| you would be surprised how capable and resilient an army
| of squirt guns can be.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I would be surprised if they could manage to keep
| refilling their squirt guns and deal with all the
| logistics required to keep an army available to use them
| kbelder wrote:
| In 2024, charitable giving in the US was $592 billion.
| $392 billion of that was from individual donations.
|
| The US is a rich and (despite all you may hear) generous
| country. If 1% of our donations went to Ukraine, that's
| not a number to casually dismiss.
|
| Interestingly, $35 billion of that went to 'International
| affairs'. I would assume Ukraine was a significant part
| of that, but I don't know for sure.
|
| https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2025-u-s-charitable-
| giving-...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In 2024, charitable giving in the US was $592 billion.
| $392 billion of that was from individual donations.
|
| That's a single-digit percentage of the US Federal
| budget.
|
| Some of that goes to "family foundation" sinecures. Some
| of it goes to 10% church tithes. Quite a bit of it is
| spent on... raising funds.
| (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-giving-to-charity-ask-
| wher... - "Of the more than $1.3 billion raised by
| charities in the [New York] in 2018, about $369 million
| -- or 27% -- went to pay professional fundraisers' fees")
|
| > If 1% of our donations went to Ukraine, that's not a
| number to casually dismiss.
|
| I think that's wildly optimistic, but that'd be somewhere
| between $3-5B. The US alone has earmarked something like
| $200B thus far. The EU has given a similar amount.
|
| Every bit undoubtedly counts, but a single Patriot
| battery costs $1B.
| Ray20 wrote:
| To be fair, it is quite difficult to support a regime
| where random people are grabbed off the streets and sent
| to their deaths. Where for expressing oppositional
| opinions your male relatives will have their door kicked
| down and will be sent to an assault on enemy position
| with a 90% mortality rate. And if they survive that - to
| another one just like it. To support a regime that has no
| long-term plan and goals for waging a senseless war and
| which openly promises to commit genocide and ethnic
| cleansing in the reclaimed territories.
|
| So the support from Western countries is enormous,
| considering all these aspects.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| I'm a big supporter of Ukraine, but let's be honest
|
| People aren't being dragged off the streets in Russia.
| This was briefly true in mid-late 2022 when they flirted
| with a partial mobilization, but hasn't been true for a
| while.
|
| This is (sadly) actually more true in Ukraine. But
| there's also some nuance there - they can stop and
| question but supposedly they technically can't use
| physical force anymore.
|
| What Russia is doing is increasing the bonuses and salary
| for signing a contract. And they don't have manpower
| problems for the most part - Ukraine is the one having
| that problem.
|
| Now the Russian military is doing alot of shady shit,
| like promising recruits they won't be sent to Ukraine or
| would serve only in rear areas (even the US military
| recruiters were frequently guilty of this tactic).
| Classifying certain infantry units as "disposable"
| (especially foreign recruits and those from less
| politically unimportant regions), basically to be used as
| bait in assaults. And I'm sure the pressure for the
| required conscripts every year to sign a regular contract
| so they can be deployed is quite great, but its nothing
| like what some would have us believe.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I think GP is talking about Ukraine, not Russia. (And
| also I think GP might be astroturfing, but not sure)
| skrebbel wrote:
| Fwiw I actually agree with you. My point is that early in
| the war, it was commonly thought that just the western
| sanctions alone would totally cripple the Russian
| economy. Or that they'd soon run out of arms, or anything
| like that. None of that happened. It's not pro-Russian to
| establish that they were more resilient than what many
| people anticipated/hoped. This doesn't take anything away
| from Ukraine's resilience in the face of years of obscene
| unwarranted aggression which is easily 10x more
| impressive to me.
| biblioteca wrote:
| No, they're right, manufacturing machines like these are
| independent. We're so used to interconnected software systems
| for everything, but even though these things may run old
| versions of Windows in airgapped or isolated networks, that's
| just to run the machines. You give it a thumbdrive, save a
| part file on it, and as long as it's got power, materials,
| and whatever is necessary for basic safety like noble gas for
| sintering safety, you're set.
|
| Even accounting systems are able to usually run fairly
| independently.
|
| It's not that IT and business and manufacturing support
| software engineers don't help, but they aren't necessary,
| especially if they're just making the same thing over and
| over.
| crinkly wrote:
| In the late-90s I worked for a manufacturing company in a
| firmware dev capacity. They did everything on paper still. They
| migrated successfully to an in-house built ERP system sitting
| on top of Oracle. Big celebration, everyone happy. Six months
| later someone drove a forklift through the wall of the machine
| room into the UPS which caught fire and destroyed three racks
| of kit including the Oracle node. Turns out no one really
| trusted the system and was running paper on the side. When I
| left 6 years later they were still doing it on paper and
| reporting on Excel. It works and is considerably more forklift
| proof.
| braggerxyz wrote:
| Forklift-Proof ERP was not on my bingo card. Thanks for the
| laugh :D
| mrweasel wrote:
| In the late 90s, early 2000, the Danish department of defence
| decided that they needed a new procurement system, DeMars,
| built on SAP. I know a sergent that worked in procurement at
| the time, he made insanely large purchases of everything he was
| responsible for in the months leading up to the launch. It came
| to the point where he was pulled in for questioning, on the
| suspicion of fraud. He explained that he had no faith in the
| launch of DeMars and wanted to ensure that stock would not run
| out. Everything was accounted for, if anyone believe that he as
| committing fraud, they where welcome to do a complete
| inventory.
|
| DeMars launched, and procurement basically stopped for a year.
| Only the items my friend was in charge of remained in stock,
| through out the launch/roll-out process.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When HP converted to SAP, I think their production basically
| stopped, for six months, and they lost $400 million.
|
| Switching to a new system; even when it is for the better, is
| a painful, expensive process.
|
| The company that I worked for, did a successful transition to
| SAP, but it took about two years, and a _lot_ of butthurt.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Switching to SAP ERP was already an in-joke level of well-
| known catastrophe in IT consulting circles 20 years ago.
| I'm glad to see nothing has changed in that respect.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Sap adds so much syrup to the gears of business that it
| kills some.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I feel like a ton of SAP transitions only succeed because
| they have to.
| pradn wrote:
| They say its easier to change your company to fit SAP than
| to mold SAP to fit your company.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There's lots of pushes to add software to more of the
| military, but I don't think these kinds of resilience
| questions are really taken seriously. A system intended for
| wartime use will be running in non-optimal conditions while
| under constant attack. But many of these "enterprise" systems
| barely work better than paper to start with.
| perlgeek wrote:
| On the other hand, once you have a well-established IT
| automation around your production, and people aren't trained in
| pre-automation production, it's actually quite hard to go back
| to manual.
|
| Probably also depends on the complexity of the orders and
| workflows.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Excel has the benefit of being understandable and fixable by a
| lot of regular office workers.
|
| It's a bit surprising that we don't have that feature as a
| requirement for most IT infrastructure. It would make it so
| much more usable.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Agree. IT has forgotten that computing _should_ enable more
| people to be producers instead of mere consumers. IT
| management cares about control, audit, permissions and
| expense - no focus on achieving productivity in the workplace
| and in many cases are anti-user.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| If you try running a business where several workers get
| involved with fixing and extending information systems
| (e.g. spreadsheets), you'll soon understand why successful
| IT management cares about controls, audits and permissions.
| jjani wrote:
| Most of those office workers were not capable of fixing
| anything on the first day they used Excel. Many didn't
| understand it at all. The main difference isn't that Excel is
| super accessible and easy to use for non-technical people;
| it's its ubiquity, and especially that of training on its
| usage.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Ubiquity is important but it's not the only important
| factor. An excel sheet can typically be downloaded and
| experimented with. You can't download an ERP system and try
| stuff with it.
| mark-r wrote:
| I know a manufacturing plant that used an Excel spreadsheet
| to do all its production planning. There was only one person
| who understood the spreadsheet and could modify it, a
| consultant who made more than the plant manager.
|
| "Understandable and fixable" depends more on the complexity
| of the application rather than the fact it's in Excel.
| morkalork wrote:
| I would argue that excel being "fixable" by regular office
| workers is half the reason why these projects fail in the
| first place. I've worked on migrating people's reporting to
| BI platforms before and what looks like a simple spreadsheet
| produced monthly is often really 12 different sets of
| formulas, special cases, kluges, hard-coded data and long-
| gone sources etc. etc. Because instead of correcting the
| source of data used for the report, it's all "done in post"
| in the excel sheet itself by a regular office worker.
| Lutger wrote:
| The fact that every office worker understands excel, does not
| mean that every office worker understands every excel sheet.
|
| Most of the projects we did in consultancy dev, was turning
| that one critical excel sheet nobody but 'the excel guy'
| understands into a simple to use web application, so that
| everybody could use it and the business won't explode when
| mr. excel would leave the shop.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Also just the problem of finding the Excel sheets in the
| first place.
|
| Saved to someone's desktop, or some random directory no one
| knows about.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| This is so huge in finance. Lots of smaller shops will hire
| data scientists or even SWEs hoping to up productivity and
| replace slow Excel sheets, and end up disilusioned when the
| team just glues together some Python scripts with no UI and
| no way for stakeholders to tinker without talking to someone
| else first.
| frteger wrote:
| Working for a manufacturing company, you may be making drone
| parts, and you don't really know which side of the war you're
| making them for, because they can buy individual parts through
| different reputable-looking companies.
|
| You could also be making surgical parts that help save lives.
|
| Overall though, I think I'd rather be making nice practical
| furniture that hopefully people would never throw away. While I
| support people that want to protect, war is horrible.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Without software, drones are useless. I suppose they can still
| assemble manually operated quadcopters if they know their
| inventory by heart, but they will be unable to produce more
| parts by 3D printing or drones capable of stable flight,
| autonomous operations, surveillance or any more advanced use
| cases. Even remote control is probably out of the picture.
| greelin wrote:
| They can continue to run the same thing they had before.
|
| As an old software engineer, I can say with certainty that
| software engineering is a very, VERY wasteful practice. We
| could all be running Windows 3 right now, DOS, or some old
| Unix. The overhead involved in making actual advancements
| shows our slow progress as a species, and that we're in a
| thread discussing a drone manufacturing facility being blown
| up in a war and how much that matters.
|
| I think the natives had it right to live off of the land
| peacefully, and if anything to devote full time on science to
| determining what we do to help life survive in the universe.
| ordu wrote:
| Ahh... Philosophy...
|
| I can't agree with you. People have got their human mind as
| a result of ever increasing and self-inflicted costs driven
| by a competition among males. They developed minds to play
| politics and they came to a point when 20% of metabolism of
| human body was devoted to its brain.
|
| The result of such a wasteful way to spend their energy
| resources? Humans colonized all the Earth, drove to the
| extinction almost all big animals, and now there are as
| much humans on the Earth as mosquitos. Looks like a win,
| doesn't it?
|
| These things go off the rails sometimes. Just today I've
| found a new example to it:
|
| _highlanders who had practiced brutal initiation
| ceremonies "in which they were forced to drink only partly
| slaked lime that blistered their mouths and throats, were
| beaten with stinging nettles, were denied water, had barbed
| grass pushed up their urethras to cause bleeding, were
| compelled to swallow bent lengths of cane until vomiting
| was induced, and were required to fellate older men, who
| also had anal intercourse with them" gave them up after
| only minimal contact with outside disapproval. Some later
| told anthropologists they felt "deeply shamed" by their
| treatment of their own sons and were relieved to stop._ [1]
|
| The waste of resources into useless things doesn't lead to
| good outcomes each time, but I believe that software
| engineering will lead to something. I'm not Jesus, I can't
| predict exactly what the beneficial results will be, but at
| least I can point to a growing ability of engineers of
| handling complexity. It lags behind their ability to create
| complexity, but still it grows.
|
| [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-arguments-
| about...
| tantalor wrote:
| > Obviously IT infrastructure is not needed for manufacturing
|
| Is this sarcasm?
| dmix wrote:
| > The migration of ERP system gone wrong and nobody knows how
| to fix it.
|
| I swear this is SAPs main business model
|
| Just endless consulting bills to set it up then fix it when
| it's delivered in a broken state.
| torginus wrote:
| That and 'if you don't use SAP you're not compliant with EU
| regulation XYZ and we won't do business with you'
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Reminds me of the Louvois[1] disaster in the French armed
| forces, they fucked the payment system so bad they had to roll
| back to manual accounting for a moment. Yes, for the whole
| French Army, which was at the time involved in multiple foreign
| operations...
|
| [1]:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logiciel_unique_%C3%A0_vocatio...
| bearjaws wrote:
| I worked for a company that was working on rolling out D365 for
| 2 years :)
|
| I was acquired by a company that was working on Sales Force
| integration for 3 years, I left before it was fully functional.
|
| They had 4 full time devs working on Sales Force, meanwhile we
| had built the entire company in a year with 4 devs.
| v5v3 wrote:
| >Ukrainian cyber activists, in cooperation with military
| intelligence...
|
| So the foreign intelligence services gave them a button push so
| it's not a direct cyber war on Russia.
| gghffguhvc wrote:
| Likely. But also could have been some thugs with a wrench in a
| basement and the sys admin giving up the ssh keys and 2fa etc.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| It's Ukraine. Are you aware of the "banks' debt collectors"?
| They had thugs knocking on your door (and your face) for an
| overdue loan payment; they would _of course_ use
| violence/torture to extract information.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Whoah.. -4..
|
| Fun fact, I was internal auditor in a bank (I will not
| specify the year(s) for safety/privacy). We did the due
| diligence and ended up buying a Ukrainian bank. Part of the
| 'collections' was really to smash people's faces. Believe
| it or not. But sure.. you know best.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Guess whose influence and where it comes from?
| fennecbutt wrote:
| Yup, I feel like Ukraine has been trying to break away
| from the society is a meat grinder culture of Russia for
| a while and the war has made if clear who's on what side
| locally.
|
| My only qualm with them is their not so great support for
| gay people, but then during the war ofc the party line is
| now they love their gay soldiers. Would have been nice to
| see more action around that beforehand but I get it. Even
| other first world countries still have plenty of problems
| as a gay person, especially gay men.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This goes for all of Eastern Europe though.
| consp wrote:
| Tomato, tomato. There is a war according to one side so the
| reasoning is mute, i'd argue the reason is it is easier to
| recruit the correct people if they do not work directly for the
| military than this distinction.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Tomato, tomato.
|
| This is a silly expression for written text, since I always
| read both tomatoes as 'tomato', before realising the
| intention. :)
| oytis wrote:
| It doesn't say anything about _foreign_ intelligence services
| v5v3 wrote:
| It's reasonable to read it as implied
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Why?
| vardump wrote:
| Are you suggesting Ukrainians don't have any agency? It's
| always someone else?
|
| That position sounds very weird.
|
| I think the most likely explanation is it's the Ukrainians
| defending Ukraine against Russia's unjustified invasion.
| entropyneur wrote:
| You are free to believe whatever you chose of course and
| state it here, but the sentence you cited does nothing to
| support your claim.
| pyrale wrote:
| We're talking about Ukraine and Russia, there has been a war
| going on for years now. Nobody needs or wants plausible
| deniability here.
| irjustin wrote:
| There are plenty of reasons to have plausibly deniability
| even this late into the war.
| bilekas wrote:
| Only if you're on the invading offensive side.
| taway1a2b3c wrote:
| I think the point being made is that Western agencies
| (5-eyes) would give Ukranian intelligence the button to push
| (indirect action) and not push it themselves (direct action).
| trhway wrote:
| By going to war with Ukraine Russia (very foolishly in my
| view) exposed itself to a number of possible "indirect
| actions" which weren't possible before as "direct actions".
| Like for example Ukrainian drone hitting one of the Russian
| strategic missile defense radars. Ukraine can potentially
| hit other strategic assets not that involved in the current
| war - say nuclear submarines for example.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Russia and all non-usa allies have been the winner.
|
| China etc have seen the strategies used in sanctions.
| They know how to limit their impact now.
|
| It's also brought Russia/China/Iran/North Korea and wider
| Brics together.
|
| It's been a disaster for the west. The measure of success
| was Russia weakened and ideally Putin weakened or gone.
| And instead Russia have shrugged off the sanctions, and
| Putin is much stronger.
|
| And the Russian military has gained real battle tested
| knowledge.
|
| A disaster for the west, aside from their weapons
| companies/Ukrainian investments. And any NATO spend
| increases.
| timeon wrote:
| Hardly anyone is 'winner' here.
| vardump wrote:
| China has been a big winner, it can now get cheap energy
| and it gets to set Russia whatever conditions it pleases.
| Russia is now utterly dependent on China for many
| imports.
|
| Russia itself has been the biggest loser. Massive budget
| deficits, massive inflation. 1M of its smartest people
| have moved abroad. 1M Russian casualties in the war.
| Demographics and economy are disastrous.
|
| That and Russia is now a pariah state. No one is going to
| invest there for a very long time after what Russia did.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Russians and foreigners travelling to Russia regularly
| blog live.
|
| Everyone there is doing fine.
|
| The world order is changing to a level you won't believe
| - Russia, Venezuela were reported by WSJ or similar to
| even be running journalist schools in Africa to break the
| media control there by western media brands.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Everyone there is doing fine.
|
| As long as they don't say anything critical against the
| regime. Or have the misfortune of flying in/around Russia
| while morons are at the trigger of surface to air
| missiles (cf. MH17 and Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243).
| Or have the misfortune of getting conscripted to die in
| the meat grinder.
|
| > The world order is changing to a level you won't
| believe - Russia, Venezuela were reported by WSJ or
| similar to even be running journalist schools in Africa
| to break the media control there by western media brands.
|
| Yes, Russia, the known beacon of journalistic freedom.
| How many journalists have been murdered by the regime?
|
| The fact that those Wikipedia sections / articles exist
| is very telling:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_
| in_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Gazeta#Deaths_and_at
| tac...
|
| > media control there by western media brands.
|
| Anyone blindly lumping together all "western" media is
| not to be taken seriously. Especially when comparing with
| fucking Russia of all places. You can find plenty of
| disagreements in various "western" media (consider The
| Guardian vs Financial Times vs Le Figaro vs Le Monde vs
| NY Times vs Washington Post). Nobody dares contradict the
| official line in Russia, even calling the war a war, or
| they get tortured and murdered.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| > Or have the misfortune of flying in/around Russia while
| morons are at the trigger of surface to air missiles (cf.
| MH17 and Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243)
|
| Chances for a civilian to die from war causes and gun
| violence combined in Russia are currently significantly
| lower than chances for American to die from gun violence.
|
| > Or have the misfortune of getting conscripted to die in
| the meat grinder.
|
| Russia is currently recruiting contractors among
| conscripts and criminals. It's not impossible to be sent
| to war illegally, but significant majority went there
| willingly (I have no idea why idiots arrested for drug
| possession choose to go to meat grinder, but they do it).
|
| Overall, in most places there it's safe enough to think
| about something else than how not to be killed. People
| are really doing fine (when internet works - it's been
| shitty recently for air defense reasons).
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Everyone there is doing fine
|
| Lmao, food prices skyrocketed, quality plummeted,
| interest rates are at record highs, budget deficit.
| Totally doing fine, comrade.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >Everyone there is doing fine.
|
| And if you say somebody doing badly, you will get 10
| years in gulag.
| sjw987 wrote:
| I mostly agree, except the pariah state part.
|
| Russia is hedging that the "pariah state" label will wear
| off pretty quickly. The current US government has as
| recently as March floated the idea of normalising
| business ties, and constantly flip-flops it's position.
|
| However, the biggest loser has definitely been Europe
| (including Britain). High energy prices have cascaded the
| cost of living crisis, which in turn has led to a
| rightward shift in politics. As a continent, we are
| unprepared for any sort of defence, having used the US as
| a backstop for years and now the US constantly toys with
| the idea of dropping NATO support. Alone, we don't have
| enough manpower, ammunition, and we haven't been keeping
| up with the evolution of modern warfare (drones and
| related technology) taking place in the Russo-Ukrainian
| war.
| libertine wrote:
| If you think Europe is the biggest loser, you need to dig
| a bit deeper on the state of Russia... I might be wrong,
| but there's no recovery from this blunder for many, many
| years - if it manages to stay a Federation, that's yet to
| be seen, but my guess is China will take a chunk out of
| Russia eventually.
|
| Remember Russia in 3 years had: - 1 Military coup;
|
| - Lost 50% of the Black Sea Fleet and it's now unusable;
|
| - 1.000.000+ casualties (dead and severely wounded)
|
| - Mass exodus of qualified young people;
|
| - Lost Military allies from CSTO and rendered the
| alliance into a joke;
|
| - Completely lost presence in the Middle East (I don't
| see how they will recover from it);
|
| - Losing influence in neighboring countries;
|
| The list goes on, like demographic collapse, etc
|
| So, I find it hard to see Europe as the loser here; at
| worst, Europe is doing "ok".
| sjw987 wrote:
| Europe's entire future is on the line right now. Forget
| many years..
|
| Higher energy prices, and increased defence spending
| (from a low starting point) to meet the new US
| governments requirements are exacerbating the cost of
| living crisis continent wide. Europe already wasn't
| innovating, and is now losing the small amount of
| industry it does have, to energy prices, to China's entry
| into EV production, and EU regulation. The demands to
| spend more on our own defence by the US administration
| comes from a US administration which has flirted with the
| idea of not even defending NATO.
|
| The cost of living crisis, coupled with "AI" (LLM) is
| hollowing out an already pretty hollow service economy
| across Europe, and is creating disillusionment which is
| causing Europeans to shift to either extreme side of the
| political spectrum. In my country, the UK, Reform, a
| politically inept and untested party is currently leading
| in the polls for the next election. This party, as well
| as many like it in Europe, is even leading in the polls
| despite well known Russian political influence in them.
|
| On top of this, the demographic crisis, while not made
| worse by tons of dead men sent off to war and exodus, is
| still affecting Europe and the only reason it isn't
| notable to many people is due to immigration filling the
| gaps. Immigration, which is lowering wages and in many
| peoples eyes, changing their cultural landscape for the
| worse, increasing their likelihood in voting for fringe
| political parties.
|
| As much as Russia might lose from this war, they'll
| probably rebuild their army to a higher degree than
| European forces are right now. We hear constantly about
| ammunition and weapons shortages across Europe, failure
| to meet requirements for what Ukraine needs to fight
| back, and a general unwillingness from the population to
| even fight. Russia has oil, gas, and mineral wealth,
| which will always be of importance to Europe whenever
| this war does end. Europe is so reliant, that whatever
| words are spoken, the EU has spent more on Russian energy
| than it has sent in aid to Ukraine.
| libertine wrote:
| > Higher energy prices, and increased defence spending
|
| Energy prices are going down, and have been going down
| consistently (
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil ) and
| the new US Admin wants them even lower, and they're not
| alone. So that's settled. Defense spending will also be
| met with investment, jobs, etc.
|
| But if you think Europe is having it bad in terms of
| using taxpayers money to fund wars... what do you think
| is happening to Russian taxpayers money, with a much
| smaller economy?
|
| > The cost of living crisis, coupled with "AI" (LLM) is
| hollowing out an already pretty hollow service economy
| across Europe, and is creating disillusionment which is
| causing Europeans to shift to either extreme side of the
| political spectrum.
|
| Inflation is affecting everyone. Not Europe in any
| particular way.
|
| Again, if you think that's bad for Europe, you look at
| Russia is being completely destroyed with inflation. I
| don't even think they're reporting the fake numbers of
| how bad things are, every quarter they prohibit more data
| from coming out...
|
| > On top of this, the demographic crisis, while not made
| worse by tons of dead men sent off to war and exodus, is
| still affecting Europe and the only reason it isn't
| notable to many people is due to immigration filling the
| gaps.
|
| Again, if you think that's a problem in Europe... how
| does Russia compare with qualified people leaving,
| 1.000.000 young men casualties, low birth rates, aging
| population? Europe isn't speedrunning its demographic
| collapse like Russia is.
|
| > As much as Russia might lose from this war, they'll
| probably rebuild their army to a higher degree than
| European forces are right now.
|
| So, to sum it up, you highlighted a few points that are
| by many orders of magnitude worse in Russia. Even
| counting energy, since Ukraine has been taking out
| distribution and refining capacity (and my guess is that
| it will get worse) - somehow you still think Europe is in
| a worse shape and position.
|
| And a lot of your claims don't make much logical sense:
| "Europe is in bad shape, they can't even properly help
| Ukraine", in a context of Russia with 1.000.000+
| casualties, max military production capacity, using North
| Korean Army help, and failing to make any meaningful
| gains at heavy costs...
|
| I'm not even stating the fact that Russia will inevitably
| have to surrender that territory back to Ukraine, in the
| future anyway, because no country will ever recognize
| their occupied territory as part of Russia.
|
| So to sum up your "Europe is unable, and Russia is giving
| their max" scope doesn't help your case at all, just
| shows that Russia has massive unrecoverable problems,
| even trying with everything they have...
|
| You ended up supporting what I said. Europe is OK, while
| Russia can collapse at any moment - that's being on the
| line.
|
| Just to bring you back to reality: no European country
| had part of their military going on a straight line to
| its capital to take down the government, and that
| happened to Russia around 2 years ago - that's not a good
| sign.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I think you are exaggerating Russian problems quite a
| bit. It's certainly more stable than in 1990s or early
| 2000s. The peace deal will very likely force Ukraine and
| consequently its allies to recognize acquisitions at
| least de facto (Crimea may get formal recognition). Even
| if they won't, there's no plausible scenario in which
| Russia will lose this territory. Demographics -- yes, but
| immigration may solve it for a while. 1 million people
| ,,brain drain" wasn't the right number anyway and there's
| ongoing correction: many continued to work for Russian
| companies, some are returning back now disillusioned by
| the West,
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The peace deal will very likely force Ukraine and
| consequently its allies to recognize acquisitions at
| least de facto
|
| What peace deal?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There will be one at some point. There is no plausible
| scenario in which it will be favorable for Ukraine: the
| West missed the moment to build up military production to
| match and surpass Russian capacity, so there is zero
| chance that there will be any military wins. And
| sanctions don't work, that should have been pretty clear
| by now to anyone who sees the numbers. It is all about
| damage control and how many Ukrainians will have to die
| before Western politicians will accept inevitable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There will be one at some point.
|
| Even if that's true, the content you assume will be in it
| (even before considering the probability of your
| predicted content being wrong) may have as much bearing
| for Russia (or any othe nation's) near term prospects as
| the eventual content of the peace deals ending the
| Israeli-Palestinian war or the US-North Korea war have on
| any nation's near-term prospects.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Russia can sustain this war for 4 years more politically
| (they probably have to finish by 2029, a year before
| elections), maybe 2-3 years more militarily and
| economically. I won't be so sure that Ukraine can last
| that long, because Ukraine does have people problem and
| Russia does not. Ukraine even with Western supplies gets
| a fraction of what Russia currently produces in ammo,
| missiles, tanks etc. So there is no reason for Russia to
| accept shitty terms. They may pay 200-300B from the
| frozen money in ,,reconstruction support", but that's it.
| libertine wrote:
| > The peace deal will very likely force Ukraine and
| consequently its allies to recognize acquisitions at
| least de facto
|
| Who is forcing it, Russia? lmao
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There's no one else to force anything in that deal.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| On the contrary, Europe (I mean EU, Britain is a
| different story) is probably the biggest and the only
| true winner.
|
| Russia may get what it wants, but Europe already got
| something from it too. 1. Major influx of workforce -
| many Ukrainians do not intend to go home according to
| polls 2. Push to a stronger union less dependent on
| America for defense 3. Push to less dependency on Russian
| oil and gas (yes, gas could have helped with transition
| to cleaner energy, but we may be doing well even without
| it)
|
| Eventually - soon enough - Russian gas will be back. But
| Europe will come from this war stronger both militarily
| and politically and more united.
|
| America is clear loser: what a mess it has become. Not
| being able to do anything with this conflict, it
| demonstrated that nuclear non-proliferation is dead.
| Nobody will give up their nuclear weapons now as Ukraine
| did in 1990s in exchange for empty promises of security
| guarantees.
|
| Ukraine may have won some political independence at a
| very high cost and with some strings attached, but it has
| lost one third of its population and significant part of
| its territory - forever. And it is likely that it's not
| going to get NATO membership. Was all of it worth it?..
|
| Russia is an interesting case here. It's going to win.
| Sanctions don't work. Foreign reserves are all time high.
| The economy is suffering mainly from self-inflicted
| damage, not for external reasons: enormous military
| budget and insufficient workforce (not least because
| Central Asian workers are hesitant to work in Russia now
| and their number was bigger than war casualties). Western
| brands left the country temporarily and many will come
| back. It has acquired new territories and will be
| actively spending there on reconstruction -- that's going
| to add extra points to GDP. It is hard to say, if the
| combined economic outcome will be positive or negative.
| Was it worth it?... It depends who answers. Politically
| it's more stable than ever with national-conservatives in
| power, which is very important, because by 2030s it will
| be busy with the transition of power (and certainly not
| attacking NATO in Baltics as some delusional hotheads
| think). When the war ends it will be able to shift
| spending to social topics, which + the victory will give
| the necessary political capital for the transition.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > No one is going to invest there for a very long time
| after what Russia did.
|
| Many large businesses have returned to Russia. "No one is
| going to invest" is a naive childish thinking. They
| outperformed growth expectations in 2024, unemployment
| rate dropped from 5.8% in 2020 to 2.3% in 2025. GDP is
| surging, insane tech and energy investments from China.
| Plus Russia has a very low public debt. All in all, their
| economy is pretty resilient despite what they say in the
| mainstream media.
| sofixa wrote:
| > unemployment rate dropped from 5.8% in 2020 to 2.3% in
| 2025
|
| Because a massive amount of men were conscripted?
|
| > GDP is surging
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_windo
| w
|
| Spending ~30% of the country's budget on military
| hardware that will get blown up might look good, GDP
| wise, but is utterly unproductive.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > Because a massive amount of men were conscripted?
|
| That's an emotional oversimplification. Unemployment fell
| not because of conscription, but due to massive import
| substitution and rising labor demand in construction,
| logistics and manufacturing.
|
| Despite sanctions, Russia's ruble-adjusted budget deficit
| remains manageable, and the trade balance is strong due
| to record energy exports. Military spending has driven
| industrial revitalization. Factories reopened, supply
| chains revamped and domestic R&D expanded.
|
| Whether you agree with the morality or not, economically
| it's not just money burned. It has multiplier effects:
| jobs, tech development and regional growth. Dismissing
| that is lazy.
| Lio wrote:
| I think before the invasion of Ukraine the chance of
| China regaining Vladivostok would have been almost zero.
|
| Completely unthinkable.
|
| Now Russia is so dependant on China that they could just
| ask nicely for it back and Russia would have to hand it
| over without China firing a shot.
| holoduke wrote:
| Too much propoganda results in reactions like this.
| Reality is that Russia is fine and dealing with
| relatively minor issues. Also this war as big as it looks
| in the west, is nothing compared to ww2 where 10s of
| millions died in massive battles. They survived. Thats
| what we russians have always done. Survive.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Yea, Russia has learned a lesson at a very high cost of
| human lives and materiel.
| barrenko wrote:
| If there was any real will left in EU people, Ukraine
| would wipe Russia off the map (at least the putinesque
| remnants), it will happen anyway, but we'd rather just
| expend vastly more money and vastly more humans and time
| in the process.
|
| Considering the current rate of inflation, switching the
| EU economies to war production would save so much money
| and lives, _and_ bring down prices.
| pjc50 wrote:
| War economies famously known for low inflation and wide
| availability of basic goods.
| wltr wrote:
| Keeping the war longer by a decade by not willing to hold
| your promise is vastly improves things, that's for sure.
| Instead of showing the bully the force, be done with that
| pretty quickly and returning to your non-war economy
| pretty quickly. Ever considered that option, huh?
| Ray20 wrote:
| Russia has nuclear weapons and good means of delivering
| them all over the planet. That is a fact of reality that
| does not allow us to "be done with that pretty quickly".
| immibis wrote:
| There is not much evidence that Russia currently has
| working nuclear weapons, but we'd rather not find out the
| hard way.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Russia has 1 million in casualties and has failed to
| capture Ukraine. You really think you can claim it was a
| "win" because now all their experienced soldiers are dead
| and their strategy has been reduced to "run towards the
| enemy and hopefully some of you won't be killed and thus
| we can capture another field"?
| v5v3 wrote:
| Russia has a population of 144m.
|
| 1m is not a lot
|
| Edit: as per my comment below, casualties are not deaths.
| It's a wider definition.
| trhway wrote:
| >1m is not a lot.
|
| For anybody still questioning why the civilized word must
| stop Russia, i'd suggest to mediate a couple seconds over
| the parent comment (the commenter in the parent and in
| his other comments presents Russian position quite
| correctly)
| v5v3 wrote:
| It's 1m Casualties. Not deaths.
|
| The definition of which is quite wide
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualty_(person)
|
| >"A casualty, as a term in military usage, is a person in
| military service, combatant or non-combatant, who becomes
| unavailable for duty due to any of several circumstances,
| including death, injury, illness, missing, capture or
| desertion."
| Paul_S wrote:
| That includes women, children and elderly. If you count
| fighting age men only, 1M becomes significant. If you
| count men actually available for draft, you're already at
| 10% loss.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Name your number.
| wiseowise wrote:
| It always surprises me when calculation is done on a
| basis of formula that goes something like this. Total
| population - Casualties = Number
|
| 1 million casualties is an absolutely massive number,
| regardless of your total population. How many of your
| fellow citizens would you be willing to throw into the
| meatgrinder until you say "that not ok"?
| Ray20 wrote:
| > How many of your fellow citizens would you be willing
| to throw into the meatgrinder until you say "that not
| ok"?
|
| If you are Putin? All of them. So yes, Putin is winning,
| he hasn't even used up 10% of his army's acceptable
| losses yet.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| When you restrict it to fit men of military age (lets be
| generous here and say 18-55 , even though there is ample
| evidence of Russian men 60+ signing up), 1 million is
| quite alot. The Russian population skews older - median
| age is around 40. There is also a massive gap of of
| people their 20s-early 30s.
|
| 1 million is basically an entire birth year of men ages
| 30-45, or two entire birth years of their male population
| from ages 20-30, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographi
| cs_of_Russia#/media/...
|
| Imagine all the men of your entire high school / college
| graduating class being either killed or seriously wounded
| so Putin can grab a few thousand km of territory.
|
| Now they could allow women in combat roles, but I
| severely doubt it for this conflict. It would be
| extraordinarily unpopular and go against the narrative
| they have been selling their populace for decades.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > their strategy has been reduced to "run towards the
| enemy and hopefully some of you won't be killed and thus
| we can capture another field"?
|
| Is this seriously the depth of your understanding of
| Russian tactics (what you described isn't a _strategy_ to
| begin with...). I recommend watching every tactical
| analysis video on Mark Tacacs YT channel (he 's a NATO
| military officer, not some pro-RU source):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@MarkTakacs-u1w
| bbarnett wrote:
| With more than 1.2M dead or out of service injured,
| Russia is spent. It's why North Korean troops had to be
| deployed.
|
| All they can effectivley do, until they grow new
| soldiers, is defense.
|
| Sure they can bomb from afar. But even of they take the
| Ukraine now, they have no force to hold it with.
| v5v3 wrote:
| They were never going to achieve a full takeover of
| Ukraine though. Large mass size and the people wouldn't
| accept them.
| pjc50 wrote:
| They came _extremely_ close with the decpaitation attack.
| It worked back when the USSR invaded Czechslovakia. What
| they weren 't expecting was effective resistance, so
| _now_ it 's no longer possible.
| sofixa wrote:
| That's why RIA had an article announcing the successful
| taking of Ukraine ready and published it by mistake,
| right: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https:/
| /ria.ru/20...
|
| Right? Right? Putin totally only planned a multi-year
| stalemate where he lost his best troops on a dash to
| capture Kyiv. Totally!
| trhway wrote:
| Such familiar words there - "Putin took upon himself the
| historic responsibility to solve the Ukrainian question"
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| I don't think they anticipated a Nazi/Imperial Japan
| style completely takeover
|
| I believe their plan was to capture Kyiv and install
| puppet government, and have the military collapse into
| factions and unable to coordinate effectively as a
| conventional force. Paramilitary groups would break out
| (such as the Azov units, etc.) Ukraine would then degrade
| into civil war, especially along an east-west line.
|
| But at least, it would be dysfunctional and unable to
| join EU or NATO. And they would be able to control enough
| to extract some value out of the country (e.g. natural
| resources). But they never really care about establishing
| peace and prosperity there.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > With more than 1.2M dead or out of service injured,
| Russia is spent
|
| > All they can effectivley do, until they grow new
| soldiers, is defense.
|
| I'm genuinely curious what your information diet/sources
| looks like that would lead you to make such statements.
|
| According to _Ukrainian sources_ , Russian end strength
| in Ukraine continues to increase and they are maintaining
| a strategic reserve of personnel as well:
|
| https://kyivindependent.com/russia-plans-to-increase-
| groupin... _The Russian military plans to increase its
| grouping in Ukraine by 150,000 soldiers in 2025,
| equivalent to around 15 motorized infantry divisions,
| Presidential Office Deputy Head Pavlo Palisa said on
| April 3, Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne reported.
|
| "Their formation is ongoing. The Russians have no
| problems with recruiting personnel now..."_
|
| https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/syrskyi-warns-russia-
| stockpi... _" Moreover, Russia maintains an additional
| 121,000 troops in its strategic reserve--comprising 13
| divisions, as well as various regiments and brigades--
| that could be deployed to the battlefield if necessary."
|
| "This means their army grows by an average of 8,000 to
| 9,000 soldiers every month," the Commander-in-Chief
| noted._
|
| As for Russia only being able to defend, how do you
| square that with this Finnish analysis group's tracking
| of Russian territorial control rates increasing every
| month this year?
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1l3
| 0kb...
|
| That data roughly matches one of Reddit's most prolific
| meta-analysts, who mostly uses Suriyak data (the most
| reputable Russian mapper):
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1lp
| spn...
| bbarnett wrote:
| They had to withdraw from Syria, due to a loss of ability
| to project power. That's how desperate they are for
| troops. They removed troops, planes, closed bases. Almost
| immediately Syria fell.
|
| Israel and the US's stance with Iran, was something not
| as plausible when Russian strength existed in the region.
| Russia complained and threatened, but naturally nothing
| has come of it. They have no capacity to do anything, or
| project power. There is no Russian strength in the Middle
| East any more. Why? They cannot extend their power beyond
| their borders.
|
| This is doubly unfortunate for Russia, as Iran was, I
| repeat _was_ sending massive amounts of shells, drones,
| and more to Russia. For some odd reason, they 've stopped
| (sarcasm).
|
| Using reserve troops is what Russia could do if their
| back was to the wall. They need troops in country, or
| there will be a revolt within. Remember, Russia is not a
| democracy, but a totalitarian state controlled by a
| dictator with an iron fist. If their 'reserves' are drawn
| down too far, there will be insurgency.
|
| Hiring mercenaries (in the article aka contract soldiers)
| from anywhere including China, isn't the same as getting
| seasoned, loyal troops. And it doesn't discount what I'm
| saying. They have lost their capacity to project power,
| and are now relying upon mercenaries to shore up their
| troop levels. They're spent.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > They removed troops, planes, closed bases. Almost
| immediately Syria fell.
|
| This has more to do with the Syrian military being
| completely starved of resources, particularly money, due
| to the US occupying the most lucrative portions of
| sovereign Syrian territory for years. Not having Russian
| airpower on call absolutely contributed to the collapse
| but not being able to reliably pay/staff formerly-capable
| formations like the Tiger Forces or 4th Armored Division
| (in addition to not being able to afford reconstruction)
| is what really did the regime in. Watch this from 2019:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/MFsFOS5Odno?si=xry8-a2_cKLIR
| KW-...
|
| >This is doubly unfortunate for Russia, as Iran was, I
| repeat was sending massive amounts of shells, drones, and
| more to Russia. For some odd reason, they've stopped
| (sarcasm).
|
| The Russians have been domestically mass producing their
| versions of the Shahed-series drones for a while now.
| Interruptions in arms transfers due to Iran's own
| security problems are unlikely to significantly degrade
| Russia's drone salvos at this point.
|
| https://www.kyivpost.com/post/55948 _The organization
| calculated that Russia produced an average of 60.5 Geran
| drones per day, or roughly 1,850 drones per month,
| between February and April 2025._
|
| https://www.calibredefence.co.uk/shahed-and-geran-the-
| evolut... _Over time, a separate version emerged which is
| known as the Geran-2, which is the name given to Shaheds
| made in Russia. Russia now makes hundreds of these drones
| every week, enabling it to increase its usage to 200 per
| week in September 2024, and then to 1,000 per week by
| March 2025._
|
| > They need troops in country, or there will be a revolt
| within.
|
| Who do you think will stage a revolt, with both Navalny
| and Prigozhin dead? There's not really any charismatic
| opposition leadership left that I can think of.
|
| > They have lost their capacity to project power
|
| Ok, I will compromise and largely agree with this
| statement in broad strokes. Yes, Russia's power
| projection capacity has _diminished_. That 's a very
| different position IMO compared to "Russia can only do
| defense" as you stated earlier....while Russia has
| ~600,000 men busy invading the largest country in Europe
| after Russia itself. Their global power projection
| capacity is degraded because so much of their attention
| is sucked into _fighting the largest land war in Europe
| in 80 years_ , but that's not the same as only being able
| to defend.
|
| > Hiring mercenaries (in the article aka contract
| soldiers) from anywhere including China, isn't the same
| as getting seasoned, loyal troops.
|
| Without going too far off on a tangent, this also applies
| to Ukraine (regarding loyalty...Colombians are definitely
| considered "seasoned" as far as international mercenaries
| go).
|
| https://www.nzz.ch/english/discharged-by-their-own-
| countrys-...
|
| https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2025/06/04/i
| owa...
| sofixa wrote:
| > And the Russian military has gained real battle tested
| knowledge.
|
| Yes, on using human wave attacks, trenches, and cheap
| Iranian drones. Oh, and at the cost of almost all trained
| troops and modern equipment. Not a very good deal.
|
| > It's been a disaster for the west. The measure of
| success was Russia weakened and ideally Putin weakened or
| gone. And instead Russia have shrugged off the sanctions,
| and Putin is much stronger.
|
| Russia started the war, they are the ones who need to win
| it. The fact that they are stalled is a win for Ukraine,
| who are the ones trying to survive. The Russian economy
| is in shambles (cf. the Broken window fallacy), as are
| their army, navy and air force. It will take them decades
| to rearm back to the same level. Putin isn't stronger,
| really. He entered a quagmire of a war he cannot back out
| of (will appear weak) nor can he actually win in any way.
| He's stuck.
|
| > It's also brought Russia/China/Iran/North Korea and
| wider Brics together.
|
| Are you sure you understand what BRICS is? Everyone using
| Russia's predicament to get cheap natural resources
| doesn't mean that e.g. Brazil or India are closer to
| Russia...
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >Yes, on using human wave attacks, trenches, and cheap
| Iranian drones.
|
| This war is the most recorded in human history. Can you
| share some videos of these Russian human wave attacks?
| Can you describe the objective delineating criteria
| between a normal attack by an infantry battalion or
| regiment, and a "human wave" attack? Regarding trenches
| and "cheap" Iranian drones.....should the Russians NOT
| practice basic principles of force protection/use of
| fortifications? Should they NOT leverage novel cost-
| effective munitions to wage war and instead use
| massively-expensive gold-plated equipment? How is that
| working out for the US and allies, who can't produce more
| than ~600 Patriot missiles per year at a cost of ~$4M per
| missile.....meanwhile Russia is throwing 500 drones and
| missiles at Ukraine _every few days_....
|
| BTW, I recommend these vids about "human waves":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBdASPCBHIw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F4akL1AS5w
| simion314 wrote:
| Maybe if Ruzzia where the logic is always reversed
|
| Putin caused
|
| 1 NATO to get 2 new members, gg Putin
|
| 2 NATO to invest more in weapons, gg Putin
|
| 3 killed or wounded 1 million Russians while the
| population was already in decline and I would bet the
| birth rate is decreasing because of the war
|
| 4 economy is fucked, Gazprom reported first time ever no
| proffits, interests rates increased
|
| 5 the idiots managed to hit again a civilian airplane,
| and i read recently Azerbajan and Armenia are cooperating
| to get rid of Ruzzians on their lands
|
| 6 Ruzzian weapon exports are fucked
|
| 7 Ruzzian army is a joke asx strength now, and the people
| are seen as low life orcs, killing, raping, torturing
| creatures
|
| 8 Kremlin is a joke, from 3 day operation to 3+ years,
| people flying from windows, politicians unable to admit a
| drone hit happened and claiming is debbry,
|
| 9 Putin pulled his secret weapons the donkeys after 3
| years of keeping them hidden and failed to ado any
| significant progress
|
| 10 Ruzzia advances in Ukraine slower then a snail, check
| the numbers. and there are more than 1000 Ruz casualties
| for square km
|
| 11 I can see this Zeds complaining about the West
| decadence while using iPHone, driving German cars and
| wearing expensive wtches (even Putin can't stand to put
| his ass on a Ruzzian car)
|
| How is Ruzzia stronger? The only way I could think a Zed
| would claim this is something like "Zed eats excrements
| daily for an year and after barely surviving this he
| claims he is stronger because someone in the West would
| die if he eat so much excrements, the Zed not realizing
| that the solution is to execute the tzar and stop eating
| excrements.
|
| Any Russian (not Ruzzian) can be honest and admit that
| this is not going according to the plan, Putin tried to
| repeat the Crimean invasion, his KGB friends told him
| that Ukrainians will receive the Zeds with flowers , the
| informations were wrong and Putin seems to be incapable
| to stop the disaster and keep his throne so he is willing
| to sacrifice the people and the empire just to keep is
| throne.
| Muromec wrote:
| >5 the idiots managed to hit again a civilian airplane,
| and i read recently Azerbajan and Armenia are cooperating
| to get rid of Ruzzians on their lands
|
| That's one way to get nominated for Nobel peace prize.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > Ruzzia advances in Ukraine slower then a snail, check
| the numbers. and there are more than 1000 Ruz casualties
| for square km
|
| Net Russian gains in June 2025 were 572 km^2.* In order
| for your statement to hold true, Russia would have
| suffered over half a million casualties _in June alone_.
| Where is your evidence to support such an assertion?
|
| * https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/1
| lpspn...
| simion314 wrote:
| >Net Russian gains in June 2025 were 572 km^2.* In order
| for your statement to hold true, Russia would have
| suffered over half a million casualties in June alone.
| Where is your evidence to support such an assertion?
|
| Or my average is not a daily or monthly, do it again for
| the last 1 year. 2 years.
|
| Can you also calculare for us how many years until Ruzzia
| reaches Kyiv and how many casualties ?
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > Or my average is not a daily or monthly, do it again
| for the last 1 year. 2 years.
|
| That would make even less sense. The thread I linked has
| the appropriate data going back to April 2024. We can
| toss that into a spreadsheet or LLM to get the total
| Russian gains in the past year, as you requested.
|
| ChatGPT calculates total Russian territorial control
| change at ~6000km^2. So are you now saying the Russians
| actually have _6 million_ casualties? Again, please
| support assertion. The only number that doesn 't make
| sense here is your "Russians are taking 1000 casualties
| per square kilometer".
|
| > Can you also calculare for us how many years until
| Ruzzia reaches Kyiv and how many casualties ?
|
| It's been on my list of "Things to Do" for a while. I
| want to whip up a Rust library to run TNDM/QJM
| calculations on the Russo-Ukrainian War. For now, I will
| only state that rates of advance in warfare are non-
| linear. Past a certain point of weakness, collapse is
| rapid. I think Operation Bagration is a good case to
| examine in detail, as many of the frontline German
| divisions had REALLY thin manning. The Ukrainian
| frontline is manned at something like ~40% strength, and
| with a large number of old and infirm conscripts. They
| are relying heavily on drones to keep the Russians from
| locally massing combat power. I'm not sure where the
| breakpoint is in Ukrainian manpower past which their
| brigades will shatter.
|
| But just pulling an estimate out of my butt: 2 years and
| an additional 500,000 Russian non-recoverable losses.
| _shrug_
| simion314 wrote:
| The advances are not linear, the Ruzzian advanced a lot
| in first days (there were some traitors in the Ukrainian
| army),. since then they advance at snail speed, my stats
| were from my memory, probably during winter when they
| attacked massively and gained almost nothing. If you have
| good data and can export it as csv then would be nice too
| see some graphs, like gains per month/week ,casualties
| per week and km^2 , distance from Kyiv.
|
| In war a country can give up on some territory and move
| the army and government if needed into a better defended
| region, Ukrainians only need the will to fight and the
| Ruzzians provide them plenty of reasons not to be
| Russified.
|
| So my stats were outdated or wrong, it is 5x, 10 x then ?
| Let me know a better number to use in future.
| fer wrote:
| Russia has been a winner by basically no metric other
| than land and being a shit neighbor.
|
| And even land cost them more in soldiers more than the
| pre-war population that lived there; it's literally a
| special grave digging operation. Soviet stockpiles of
| armor are basically depleted; now it's the buggy and
| moped meta. They've completely failed to support their
| supposed allies (i.e. Assad, Iran, Armenia). A good chunk
| of their strategic aviation fleet is gone. Car bombings
| of generals continue all over Russia and occupied
| territories, which brings the question, will it even stop
| if they "win"? They've finally been demoted from being an
| aircraft carrier operating nation. Their frozen assets
| are literally killing Russian soldiers. National wealth
| fund has ~20-30% of the prewar assets. Something similar
| in gold reserves. Interest rates are beyond effed, and
| recruits are largely joining for the money needed in the
| terrible economy caused by Putin himself. Who annexed 4
| oblasts only to legally deploy the 18 year olds Putin
| promised not to deploy in Ukraine (as it's no longer
| Ukraine in Russian law). Non-military industrial output
| is on a steady decline. Price capping on bread. Fossil
| fuel output at minimums, and with low prices.
|
| So what is Russia winning at?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I think your assessment is only partially correct.
|
| The Europeans are getting their act together and
| increasing their cooperation and defense spending.
|
| Sweden and Finland joined NATO, placed large defense
| orders and started integrating with the British.
|
| France has started talking about expanding its nuclear
| arsenal to cover the defense needs of the entire
| continent.
|
| While the Russian military has gained tremendous military
| experience, they have lost huge amounts of top tier kit.
|
| They are now essentially dependent on China.
|
| No one came to aid Iran during the Israeli air campaign,
| the Russians were too busy and the Chinese didn't care
| enough.
|
| The main winner has clearly been China, but the US and
| the EU have not really lost anything. If anything
| everyone that is not a party to the war is coming of a
| bit stronger.
| pshirshov wrote:
| Sure thing comerade, they even have a submarine missile
| cruiser.
| timeon wrote:
| Sure, it is always omnipotent Western agencies... while
| _some_ Western governments are halting support in critical
| moments - which has bigger impact on the war.
|
| I think Ukrainians (and Russians as well) aren't tech
| illiterate. They are (both) more than capable in this
| matter.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Why would that be the case? Ukraine has a very large IT
| sector and they have a lot of good IT security specialists.
| To be honest, a lot of cybercriminals have been from
| Ukraine.
|
| So I don't see why it would be the case that Ukraine could
| not have done this by themselves. They have done previous
| attacks by themselves. I don't see why that would be the
| case.
|
| It would kind of be like saying, "Oh, if Russia does a
| cyberattack, it can't have been them acting alone. It must
| have been China that gave them the stuff to just press a
| button."
| johnisgood wrote:
| That is not how I read the parent comment. I read it as
| US making Ukraine do what US wanted to do.
| oneshtein wrote:
| It's tough to say that Ukraine and US are allies right
| now. US refuses to hold security assurance, as promised,
| and forbids Ukraine to restore nuclear arsenal, as before
| the promise. Bullies behave is such way, not allies.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It is irrelevant to my interpretation of the
| aforementioned parent comment.
|
| The point is that US made Ukraine do something that the
| US wanted to do but did not do because were it the US,
| then it would have had repercussions on US, so they made
| Ukraine do their dirty work.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Curious use of "made" here when it's something that
| Ukraine would have very much wanted to do, this
| cyberattack.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Both benefit'd, then.
| Muromec wrote:
| It's the usual westerner superiority speaking. When
| Ukraine wins something it's always due to NATO training,
| US weapons and all that. When Ukraine starts losing
| ground it's poor soviet-era training, wrong kind of
| tactics and decision making on Ukraine.
| JSteph22 wrote:
| >Why would that be the case?
|
| It's not speculation that Ukraine is being assisted to a
| huge degree.
|
| One angle of that assistance:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-
| ukraine-...
| libertine wrote:
| Not really, the point being made goes deeper.
|
| The Russian regime (and apparently a lot of Russians) deem
| Ukrainians as an inferior ethnic group - they call them
| "little Russians".
|
| Ukrainian authorship would mean:
|
| - Ukrainians are competent people with agency (which they
| are of course, for lots of reasons) - this plays into
| ethnophobia;
|
| - their government, military, etc, is competent, functional
| with agency - this plays into government legitimacy;
|
| - Overall, in a lot of instances, the Russian government is
| incompetent, even more incompetent than the guys their
| propaganda has been trying to paint as corrupt, incompetent
| people who are being manipulated.
|
| That's why a lot of time Russian propaganda trys to spin
| Ukrainian wins as "NATO/CIA/MI6/external agent did this".
|
| For example, they tried really hard to bend reality to
| remove the credit for the Ukrainian drone operation that
| destroyed a lot of bomber jets, saying it was planned and
| executed by CIA, MI6, Israel, etc [0].
|
| This is what we're dealing with here: massive ethnophobia
| and propaganda.
|
| So in their propaganda, Ukraine can't be competent and
| stand on its merit, because that would mean they're not
| inferior people and that they have agency.
|
| You should always be wary of someone making these claims
| without any evidence.
|
| [0]https://uacrisis.org/en/rospropaganda-zaplutalas-v-
| pavutyni
| cpursley wrote:
| That's not the meaning behind "Little Russia", please
| considering doing a historical deep dive.
| libertine wrote:
| You don't need much of a historical deep dive to see how
| it's currently being used:
|
| > The term Little Russia is now anachronistic when used
| to refer to the country Ukraine and the modern Ukrainian
| nation, its language, culture, etc. Such usage is
| typically perceived as conveying an imperialist view that
| the Ukrainian territory and people ("Little Russians")
| belong to "one, indivisible Russia".Today, many
| Ukrainians consider the term disparaging, indicative of
| Russian suppression of Ukrainian identity and language.
| It has continued to be used in Russian nationalist
| discourse, in which modern Ukrainians are presented as a
| single people in a united Russian nation. This has
| provoked new hostility toward and disapproval of the term
| by many Ukrainians. In July 2021 Vladimir Putin published
| a 7000-word essay, a large part of which was devoted to
| expounding these views. [0]
|
| Ethnical slurs, or any other slurs, change over time. If
| you go back in time 100+ years in any context, and you
| use a modern ethnic or racial slur, it will most likely
| empty of meaning. Just like a lot of slurs from the past
| have lost their meaning over the years. But the
| "historical meaning" is constantly being used by Russian
| propaganda, where they claim one needs to go back to the
| 1200's, and their interpretation of history, to try to
| make sense of the current genocide attempt in Ukraine.
|
| There's no logic behind that approach because current
| actions speak for themselves, including the context of
| recent history, and that's enough. You can get a pretty
| clear picture of this whole event starting in the 1990s.
|
| Unless you still see that slur being used by Russian
| nationalists as an endearing term to address their
| "brotherly nation" which they support being erased from
| the map.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Russia#Modern_usa
| ge
| yurish wrote:
| Please stop spreading this BS. Malorossiia ("little"
| Russia as you say) does not mean what you say.
| libertine wrote:
| What does it mean in the current Russian political
| environment?
|
| > The term Little Russia is now anachronistic when used
| to refer to the country Ukraine and the modern Ukrainian
| nation, its language, culture, etc. Such usage is
| typically perceived as conveying an imperialist view that
| the Ukrainian territory and people ("Little Russians")
| belong to "one, indivisible Russia".Today, many
| Ukrainians consider the term disparaging, indicative of
| Russian suppression of Ukrainian identity and language.
| It has continued to be used in Russian nationalist
| discourse, in which modern Ukrainians are presented as a
| single people in a united Russian nation. This has
| provoked new hostility toward and disapproval of the term
| by many Ukrainians. In July 2021 Vladimir Putin published
| a 7000-word essay, a large part of which was devoted to
| expounding these views. [0]
|
| Just to make sure, according to you, this is completely
| false and detached?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Russia#Modern_usage
|
| But this is a small detail from my reply, why are people
| so focused on this? Even if I was wrong, which I don't
| see that I am, everything else still stands.
| yurish wrote:
| So "The Russian regime (and apparently a lot of Russians)
| deem Ukrainians as an inferior ethnic group - they call
| them "little Russians"." it is? And this follows from the
| link? Have you read it? Really?
|
| The term Malorossiia now days is outdated indeed, as wiki
| says. This term was first introduced not even by Russia
| but by Byzantine Church and word "malo" ("little" as you
| "translate" here) means "original" "primordial" to
| distinct two church branches and then where used to
| denote parts of Rus' under Polish rule.
|
| Note, the linked article does not say that Russians use
| this term to denote someone inferior. It says that some
| Ukrainians consider this word offensive which is not
| surprising taking into account active propaganda and lack
| of historical education in masses.
| libertine wrote:
| You still failed to address the question: "little
| russians", "kholkhols" are ethnic slurs being used by
| Russian nationalists as terms of endearment?
|
| > It says that some Ukrainians consider this word
| offensive which is not surprising taking into account
| active propaganda and lack of historical education in
| masses.
|
| So not because Russians are in their land trying to kill
| as many Ukrainians as possible, terrorizing them, and
| destroying their culture? It's all because of propaganda?
| libertine wrote:
| The point is trying to claim something without any evidence
| that supports it.
| chii wrote:
| > foreign intelligence services gave them a button push so it's
| not a direct cyber war on Russia
|
| meanwhile, russian intelligence services have already directly
| attacked nato countries, with barely any real deniability.
| jajko wrote:
| They have been, in various ways, been attacking NATO
| countries for past 2 decades. Its simply puttin's modus
| operandi. Physical attacks on civilian and military
| infrastructure, murders, meddling with elections, cyber
| attacks, you name it.
| holoduke wrote:
| All countries do this. Only propoganda makes you believe
| its only the enemy doing it. The UK alone had a history of
| 300 years of enslaving, meddling and brutalizing other
| countries. I can name at least 50 events from western
| countries last 2 decades.
| paganel wrote:
| Which NATO countries would those be?
| refset wrote:
| The UK at least https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_o
| f_Sergei_and_Yuli...
| Squarex wrote:
| Or Czechia
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition
| _... https://praguemorning.cz/russian-terrorist-plot-czech-
| republ...
| sofixa wrote:
| Czechia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_a
| mmunition_...
|
| Bulgaria:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/01/arms-
| dealer-10...
|
| Poland:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/12/poland-to-
| clos...
|
| And UK.
|
| Plus a million cyberattacks against all sorts of
| infrastructure.
| paganel wrote:
| So then how come hasn't Article 5 been activated yet?
| Does that mean that said Article 5 is not even worth the
| piece of paper it has been written on?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Article 5 over a couple of munitions depots?
| graeme wrote:
| Your first comments suggests it isn't happening ("which
| nato countries")
|
| Now, predictably upon being told that it happens you
| pivot to NATO is useless.
|
| Which is it: a set of attacks so obscure no reasonable
| person would be aware, or a horrendous onslaught where
| Article 5 should have been invoked and a mass retaliation
| begun?
|
| NATO countries historically didn't invoke Article 5 even
| for terrorist attacks killing their own citizens. It
| takes a certain level before it makes sense to invoke,
| normally something beyond the capacity of that country to
| handle.
| paganel wrote:
| I was trying to follow my respondents' reasoning, as in,
| if Russia had indeed attacked NATO countries, which they
| said it had indeed happen, then how come NATO, being a
| defensive alliance first and foremost, didn't do anything
| about it?
|
| In other words, and following Eastern-European logic
| (which, trust me, helps in cases like this one, I'm from
| Eastern Europe myself), had Russia really attacked any
| NATO countries you and me both wouldn't be in here having
| this conversation over the internet.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Thankfully they don't think it's worth invoking article 5
| over that. It's not an automatism obviously, we're
| talking about WW3 here. Would you rather be "technically"
| right here?
| paganel wrote:
| > Thankfully they don't think it's worth invoking article
| 5 over that
|
| Is there a threshold anywhere in the NATO treaty that I'm
| unaware of?
| barbazoo wrote:
| If there wasn't, wouldn't we had WW3 already?
| jacquesm wrote:
| You're arguing with a Romanian russia sympathizer, it is
| pretty much pointless.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > if Russia had indeed attacked NATO countries, which
| they said it had indeed happen, then how come NATO, being
| a defensive alliance first and foremost, didn't do
| anything about it?
|
| This was already answered but to be clear: "doing
| something" and "invoking article 5" is like the
| difference between saying "asshole" in traffic vs
| rallying your friends to murder the driver's family.
|
| One could argue NATO countries should respond stronger to
| hybrid and clandestine warfare. Right now, we see a lot
| of "angry letters". But, it's not clear eye for an eye is
| a strategically sound response, partly because it
| legitimizes the methods, and partly because it escalates
| tensions towards a war that nobody wants. Israel for
| instance takes an entirely different stance, basically
| retaliating with maximum force to deter the enemy
| (similar to punching the "school bully" so hard, just
| once, that he stops). I don't claim to be a diplomatic
| expert, but it's worth noting that Israel is currently
| engaged in several major wars and conflicts, and tensions
| have grown.
| willvarfar wrote:
| > NATO countries historically didn't invoke Article 5
| even for terrorist attacks killing their own citizens
|
| The only time Article 5 has been invoked was when
| terrorists attacked America in 9/11.
|
| And a lot of non-NATO countries offered support too,
| including Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particip
| ants_in_Operation_Endu...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Because that would still be a disproportionate response
| and make NATO the aggressor, playing right into Russian
| hands.
|
| The Russian military is already being destroyed in
| Ukraine (and even in Russia). The proportionate response
| is to give Ukraine everything they need to destroy Russia
| in a war that Russia chose to start. A war that they
| opened with a surprise invasion, no less. They are
| unambiguously the aggressor in their war in Ukraine and
| they should be defeated there, and we should give Ukraine
| everything they need to do that.
| axus wrote:
| NATO attacking Russia would definitely not be playing
| into Russia's hands. Very bad for Russia, very costly for
| NATO, long war would make the voters unhappy, and India
| and China would feel rightly threatened.
|
| Russian and Ukrainian militaries are being destroyed, but
| it also matters how fast they are being rebuilt. As
| mentioned above, Russia and Ukraine are debugging all
| their outdated military doctrines. The survivors will
| have a lot of hard-won experience.
| chii wrote:
| > The survivors will have a lot of hard-won experience.
|
| the west would not want russia to be that survivor.
| nkrisc wrote:
| What I meant was any direct NATO aggression against
| Russia would validate Russia's current "victimhood"
| narrative, and provide after the fact justification for
| their invasion of Ukraine in the first place.
|
| They are very intentionally doing things that would _not_
| justify a full military retaliation by NATO.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Aside from political reasons stated in other answers:
| Since Article 5 doesn't apply. article 5 states: "The
| Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of
| them in Europe or North America shall be considered an
| attack against them all [...]" Thist deliberately talks
| about "armed" attack. Cyber attacks and related aren't
| covered.
|
| https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_17120.h
| tm
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Article 5 is an option. Not a game mechanic.
| paganel wrote:
| > Article 5 is an option. Not a game mechanic.
|
| Tell that to the very pro-Western political leaders here
| in Eastern Europe, they won't take that well at all.
| torlok wrote:
| There's no need to respond with force. Russia will lose
| in the long-term due to sanctions as long as Republicans
| don't cock everything up even more by making deals with
| Russians and slowing down trade in the global west.
| Russians are wasting money and gear in Ukraine and
| becoming weaker. It's just a matter of time before China
| starts making claims on land they lost to the Soviets.
| Russians will lose this war the same way they lost the
| cold war; by cutting themselves off from the maritime
| economy.
| holoduke wrote:
| China will never allow Russia to lose. They know they are
| next on the list. It seems more that the west in its
| decline will become less and less relevant. The west
| needs to understand that they are no longer the only
| dominant player.
| jannes wrote:
| The German parliament in 2015 (including the chancellor's
| office)
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerangriffe_auf_den_Deutsc
| h...
| amelius wrote:
| I mean Putin will spin everything as "the West did it"
| anyway, so it really does not matter who pushes that button.
| I also seriously wonder why we don't have US/NATO air forces
| over Ukraine for this reason.
| ajross wrote:
| Because footage of a downed F-22 and it's captive pilot
| would be an unspeakable PR disaster relative to the
| comparatively mild military benefit. Wars aren't, and
| really never have been, won by blowing stuff up.
| amelius wrote:
| USAF has unmanned fighter jets, if that's what you are
| worried about.
|
| > Wars aren't, and really never have been, won by blowing
| stuff up.
|
| That's a huge simplification. Blowing stuff up in a
| strategic way can certainly help win a war.
| ajross wrote:
| > That's a huge simplification. Blowing stuff up in a
| strategic way can certainly help win a war.
|
| And losing public support for an effort via an
| embarassing disaster can just as certainly lose it, which
| was my point.
|
| Yes yes yes, blow stuff up. Take territory, shoot people,
| yada yada. At some point that has to happen for a "war"
| to be a "war". But at the end of the day the _winner is
| essentially always predetermined_ by economics and
| politics. Making deployment decisions in the absence of
| those considerations is generally how one loses wars.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't know that the electorate that twice elected the
| man that said "He's a war hero because he was captured. I
| like people that weren't captured, okay?" would actually
| be all that bothered.
| mycall wrote:
| The Shadow Brokers are a great example, very likely Russians.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxqcwK5OMag
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Ukranian military intelligence.
| libertine wrote:
| No, it clearly says Ukraine.
|
| Do you have any evidence that it was foreign intelligence
| services?
| bilekas wrote:
| > So the foreign intelligence services gave them a button push
| so it's not a direct cyber war on Russia.
|
| What foreign intelligence services ? Also if you think there
| isn't a constant barrage of attacks coming from everyone,
| you're not ready for the real world.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| No, Ukrainian cyber activists volunteered to work with the
| intelligence service to help the war effort.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember Steve Gibson saying some years back that the only
| reason USA doesn't (cyber-)'attack' Russia's train infra is the
| inability to 'hide the traces' of the attack, and it would be
| 'easily' attributed/mapped back to the USA causing (political)
| issues. Well, Ukraine doesn't have 'that' challenge.
|
| On the other hand (and I'm not defending a drone company), anyone
| that has a business should know by now that ransomware (with our
| without deletion) is a real thing, and it's not an 'if' question,
| it's a 'when' question.
|
| I have never worked with/for a Russian company, so it would be
| interesting to hear/read from someone who has, how 'well
| organized' are they? GRC-wise. Assuming that someone would run
| the COBIT framework on them (Russian companies), would the
| 'average' be 'ok' or it's a big mess (kinda like working for an
| EU company in early 00's)?
| podgorniy wrote:
| > I remember Steve Gibson saying some years back that the only
| reason USA doesn't (cyber-)'attack' Russia's train infra is the
| inability to 'hide the traces' of the attack
|
| This is not a real reason. This explanation hides the real
| reason: Russia is a valuable geopolitical partner for USA.
| Regarless who are in power in USA - all presidents tried to
| make deals/contacts with Russia.
|
| There is no value for USA in getting Russia loose this war,
| have internal instability or split in 20-ish national states.
|
| USA wins more from russia being as it is today with all it
| blood, suffering and hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by
| the regime thrive for survival.
|
| Actually USA are afraid to push too much to cause internal
| issues in Russia. And russian ruling class knows that.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I guess another reason is that there isn't too much IT
| infrastructure that Russian trains depend on.
|
| There are ticket sales systems for people being transported,
| but much is freight trains, and if there was an easy way to
| disrupt that, you can be sure that Ukraine would've done it by
| now, because the Russian military heavily depends on rail-based
| supplies.
| raverbashing wrote:
| While this is a move that will hinder production for a while I'd
| say maybe they should have been more creative
|
| They should have checked the source codes and added some changes
| to make drones unpredictably unreliable
|
| "Oh this totally innocent code change? Oh look it makes the gps
| act weird if longitude is between a certain range how weird"
| bamboozled wrote:
| How long do you think it would've taken for them to realize
| that happened just and reflashed the drones?
| ptsneves wrote:
| You can reflash however you want for some bugs. The deal
| would be to make it a dormant attack not a destroy all in one
| go and expose the payload. There have been successful hacks
| where a buffer overflow was inserted in in a one off write,
| that was then targeted when needed. If employed carefully in
| special situations, this could be an important weapon. There
| are also deeper levels of compromise: why compromise the
| source code or a the firmware binary when you can permanently
| compromise the production in a subtle way. Working your
| penetration slowly so that the whole plant or even production
| system must be scrapped by the enemy. At the very least
| gather intel.
|
| Look at successful cyber campaigns like stuxnet or an actual
| hardware sabotage from Israel. The attacks were dormant until
| they were ready for maximum effect. Randomly disabling a
| production site, without a strategic context, is going to be
| an isolated win, or an operational victory.
|
| I remember reading some articles about the pentagon being a
| bit upset at some of the strategic decisions of Ukraine's
| armed forces where they often push for morale boosting
| moments at big costs(i think 2 years ago they spent lots of
| resources to get a strategically irrelevant town). And
| honestly this is also what it looks like: You dont see a
| coordinated attack but spurious disconnected events. I think
| when you are gasping for air you hold on to anything you can,
| but still the goal is to win, not just look like winning.
| WJW wrote:
| When there's hundreds of drones raining down on your civilians
| every day, just disabling the production has a a higher
| priority than being cutesy with things that _might_ work
| further away into the future.
| myflash13 wrote:
| In several cases during World War II, the Allies
| intentionally allowed German attacks to happen (or did not
| act to prevent them) to avoid revealing that they had cracked
| German codes, particularly the Enigma cipher.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I don't think that's comparable because the Allies hoped
| cracking Enigma would reveal other secrets in the future.
| Ukraine probably aren't worried that Russia are going to do
| something else more worth interrupting with their drones in
| the future.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Actually, I don't think that's known to have ever happened.
| The Allies protected Ultra intelligence by parallel
| construction--coming up with other means to 'discover' the
| same information (principally, sending a reconnaissance
| flight to the known location of wolf packs).
|
| The main claim for this myth is the sacrifice of Coventry
| during the Battle of Britain, but as far as I'm aware,
| historians are in general agreement that Ultra was unable
| to ascertain that Coventry was the target before the raid
| took place.
| chasil wrote:
| "In his 1974 book The Ultra Secret, Group Captain F. W.
| Winterbotham asserted that the British government had
| advance warning of the attack from Ultra; intercepted
| German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma cipher
| machine and decoded by British cryptanalysts at Bletchley
| Park. He further claimed that Winston Churchill ordered
| that no defensive measures should be taken to protect
| Coventry, lest the Germans suspect that their cipher had
| been broken."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz#Coventry_and
| _Ul...
| jcranmer wrote:
| And the Wikipedia article immediately goes on to detail
| refutations of that claim:
|
| > Winterbotham's claim has been rejected by other Ultra
| participants and by historians. They state that while
| Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid
| would take place, no one knew what the target would be.
|
| [then follows three paragraphs of more detailed
| refutation]
| mpeg wrote:
| Obviously if there was opportunity for a supply chain attack
| like that they would have done it in addition to wrecking the
| IT infrastructure. Regardless, I imagine this will impact day
| to day drone operation as the Russians might re-flash the
| firmware to a known good version whether there is a backdoor or
| not
| praptak wrote:
| Not many companies explicitly prepare for the scenario where
| every single data storage unit in the company is effectively
| wiped and you have to redeploy from zero.
|
| If you never bootstrap from zero (nor simulate this) then your
| systems probably have cycles in their deployment dependencies.
| Your config pusher is deployed from Jenkins/Puppet/Ansible but 2
| years ago someone made Jenkins dependent on the config pusher for
| its own config. Now you cannot just deploy these systems in
| order, you have to replay the history before that change.
| thyristan wrote:
| Almost everything will have cycles in IT. People want and
| security requires some kind of SSO. Now SSO is a dependency for
| almost everything, including the administration of underlying
| systems that run SSO. Same for the network. Same for a lot of
| things.
|
| Bootstrapping from zero will never be easy and will always take
| some time. I don't think you can prepare your way out of this,
| short of preparing a fully redundant, fully separate secondary
| infrastructure.
| pferde wrote:
| This is called "break-glass procedure" in enterprise IT (as
| in "break glass in case of emergency"), and often consists of
| independent, normally unused, admin accounts on key systems,
| access info for which is locked in some safe location, e.g.
| physical safe in a secure location.
|
| Testing this reliably is difficult, though, and often these
| procedures and their documentation is outdated.
| praptak wrote:
| I agree that fully redundant & separate infrastructure is
| unrealistic. I'm also not saying you can be 100% prepared. My
| point is that you can improve your posture.
|
| What you can do is to have a sandbox environment where you
| periodically do a full setup exercise from a prepper disk.
| Conceptually it's not that different from testing backup
| recovery (ok, most companies neglect this too, so maybe you
| have a point :) ).
| thyristan wrote:
| Problem is, the value of proper recovery procedures and
| testing those in all aspects only becomes apparent to the
| bean-counters when things really break. But until they have
| been in that situation where nothing works for a month, it
| will always be too expensive, too cumbersome and too
| resource-hungry to do those preparations.
|
| Which gives me an idea for an "Ask HN"... Edit: submitted
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582994
| ptx wrote:
| So how could a company handle this? Can they bootstrap from
| printed documentation or is that assumed to be wiped as well?
| praptak wrote:
| It's a model of a realistic scenario. Hackers (like in the
| article), long running ransomware that managed to corrupt
| lots of data, maybe a natural disaster. So by "wiping all
| data storage units" I meant the dynamic ones used in
| production. You can assume a static backup exists and
| contains a sensible set of sources and binaries, although
| obviously creating such a backup is part of the recovery
| plan.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| black start is a hard problem. Even facebook apparently had to
| drill datacenter door locks open to get back up one time.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| That happened to company I am familiar with a year ago. The
| main storage cluster,that everything depended on died. They
| recovered by deploying everything again from dev laptops.
| mihaaly wrote:
| This reminds me of troubles in a parallel universe.
|
| Construction industry have products with typical lifetime of
| 50+, in some cases multiple hundreds. Computing and
| digitalization are hot topic now and for the past several
| decades with various buzzwords (probably 'digital twins' is the
| newest one) however when I am unable to open construction
| design files made in the beginning of my career less than 30
| years ago due to obsolescence for various reasons then all
| those efforts seem for nothing eventually beyond immediate
| needs. Good old outdated 2D drawings seen as unfeasible
| practice might save the day in the future (... perhaps,
| assuming that current pdf files could still be opened some
| decades down the line, as that is a common 'digital paper'
| approach nowadays, actual physical world paper are used less
| and less).
| nrvn wrote:
| cybersecurity 101:
|
| - know your threats
|
| - assess your risks based on identified threats
|
| - backup 3-2-1 strategy (3 copies of your data on 2 independent
| storage places with 1 copy offline and offsite)
|
| - "build the world from scratch" plan with the assumption that
| all infra is completely and irreversibly destroyed.
|
| - assume you have already been hacked but you don't yet know
| about it. Build your indicators of compromise based on that
| simple assumption.
|
| Observing how some "groups of people" act in a totally ignorant
| fashion is amusing.
| grishka wrote:
| That's a very odd website. Blocked by the Russian government so
| you get a TLS error, once you get past that, you get the
| Cloudflare "you are blocked" page, and then you use a VPN and...
| get the option to read this article in Russian.
| sofixa wrote:
| Doesn't sound like it's the fault of the website, but of your
| government and maybe CloudFlare (although they could be
| blocking you because of the TLS error's underlying reason, not
| because you're in Russia).
| grishka wrote:
| No, that page is always a sign that the person who configured
| Cloudflare for their website has chosen to deliberately block
| Russian IPs.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| The linked page is in English, but speaking of the option -
| residents of Russian Federation probably were not a target
| audience of Russian version of this website anyway. Contrary to
| some popular beliefs in Russia about language wars, many people
| still do speak Russian in Ukraine and media do publish articles
| in Russian.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> residents of Russian Federation probably were not a target
| audience of Russian version of this website anyway_
|
| Deliberately blocking the supposed enemy from hearing you
| does strike me as irrational, though. The mere fact they're
| doing Russian censors' job should probably make them recheck
| if they got anything wrong in their decision process, just in
| case.
| falcor84 wrote:
| What makes you think that it's the Ukranians that are
| blocking Russian users from accessing it?
| grishka wrote:
| The Cloudflare "you have been blocked" page. Many
| Ukrainian websites do something like this, so in my mind
| it's just _a common thing that happens_.
|
| Some non-Ukrainian do as well, seemingly with no rhyme or
| reason, I run into this so routinely that I have an
| entire thread:
| https://mastodon.social/@grishka/111934602844613193
| herculity275 wrote:
| At this stage in the war keeping your social spaces free of
| malicious users seems like a much higher priority than
| providing the other side's civilians with accurate
| information. Russians can access all the info in the world
| with a simple VPN setup, that clearly doesn't change the
| situation in Russia.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| This likely keeps normal people from seeing this way
| better than it keeps away any hackers or bots, as Russian
| citizens are mostly using DPI circumvention tools. And
| this was a thing since the first days of the war, it's
| not something new.
|
| _> that clearly doesn't change the situation in Russia_
|
| Giving up is the easiest thing to do. Last time some
| people did, it was blamed on stereotypes like their
| "learned helplessness" and "fatalism".
| alephnerd wrote:
| The reality is, civilians cannot change a country's
| domestic foreign policy - especially in a country like
| Russia.
|
| Revolutions don't work without alignment from power
| centers like the police, military, judiciary, and a
| subset of legislators.
|
| Hosni Mubarak wasn't overthrown because of protesters in
| Tahrir Square - he was overthrown because General Sisi
| decided to ignore shoot-on-sight orders.
|
| There's no reason for Ukraine media to create a literal
| attack surface when most Russians already have a decent
| idea of what is happening in Ukraine (and vice versa) -
| most Russians and Ukrainians have blood relatives on both
| sides of the border.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Claiming the exposure doesn't work is probably the most
| ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The reality is that
| awareness is a major factor, that was literally the main
| way of the power takeover in Russia (see e.g. Suponev,
| Ernst, Gusinsky, and Listyev). Russian government is
| really careful about doing things slowly and getting away
| with everything people let them get away with, and
| stopping dehumanization and letting people hearing voices
| is really important. Even if people right now disagree or
| think of it as propaganda (which it usually is, I hope
| nobody has any illusions about that), just existence of
| something in the background is enough to set up something
| else in the future. The time for the change will
| inevitably come like it always does, and the question
| then will become "what Ukrainian media did all this time,
| and where the hell they were". Turns out they may have
| not existed at all as well - out of sight, out of mind.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I agree with you, it's irrational. It's also something to
| be expected, because this war was irrational from the very
| beginning with both sides often driven by emotional
| triggers rather than cold-minded calculations or facts.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Always try archive.today and the internet archive
| (archive.org), just in case.
|
| https://archive.ph/jg9Mg
|
| Somebody saved it four hours ago.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I run a small home lab, about 30 services
|
| One day I decided to change my main disk and used the opportunity
| to rebuild everything from scratch and from backups. I was up in
| about an hour.
|
| And then I spent a week fixing this and that, ah yes I changed
| that too and, crap, I cannot remember why this thingie is set up
| this way. And some more.
|
| This is a one-man lab, with simple services, all on docker. I
| also work in IT.
|
| Recovering from scratch a whole infrastructure managed by many
| people over the years is a titanic task.
|
| I helped to recover my nearby hospital as a volunteer when it was
| ransomwared. The poor two IT guys over there has no idea how to
| recover and the official help was pityful.
|
| I also helped with a ransomware attack on a large company. The
| effort people had to do to remember why something was that way,
| or just remember whatever was colossal. Sure a lot of things were
| "documented" and "tested" but reality hit hard.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Modern IT practices don't really contemplate disaster recovery.
| Even organisations with strict backup procedures seldom test
| recovery (most never at all).
|
| Everything is quickly strapped together due to teams being
| understaffed. Preparing infrastructure in a way such that it
| can easily be recreated is easily twice the effort as "just"
| setting it up the usual way.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Just the other day one of my clients had a production
| critical server failing and we started restoring it from
| backups.
|
| Turns out some of the software running on it had some weird
| licensing checks tied to the hardware so it refused to start
| on the new server.
|
| It turns out that the company that made this important piece
| of software doesn't even exist anymore.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Virtualization really helps. We have a _lot_ of weird
| software which requires hardware dongles, but they 're all
| USB dongles and they're all virtualized, one of the DC
| racks has a few U worth of just USB socket -> dongle wired
| up so that if we spin up a VM it can say "Hey, give me a
| USB socket with a FooCorp OmniBloat dongle on it" and get
| one unless they're all used.
| 2YwaZHXV wrote:
| would certainly be interested to learn more about this
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This is a nightmare kind of discovery. I had a similar one,
| but fortunately, it wasn't as impactful.
|
| This is why I like docker, if you keep the sources, you
| recover no matter what (at least until the "no matter what"
| holds water)
| znpy wrote:
| > This is why I like docker,
|
| my understanding is that docker would not have helped in
| that scenario
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| it really depends on the scenario but if the application
| was dockerized and they had an image, it would be just
| starting it again, somewhere else.
|
| Possibly with the same network settings if the licensing
| check was based on that.
|
| But of course it can easily go south, though testing the
| recovery of a container based off an image and mounted
| volume is simple and quickly shows you if it works or
| not.
|
| But of course it may work today but not tomorrow because
| the software was not ready for Y2K and according to it we
| are in the XX century or something and the license is 156
| years ... young. Cannot allow this nonsense to proceed,
| call us at <defunct number>
|
| IT is full of joy and happiness
| znpy wrote:
| > it really depends on the scenario
|
| yeah and that scenario was clear:
|
| > Turns out some of the software running on it had some
| weird licensing checks tied to the hardware so it refused
| to start on the new server.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| "hardware" does not mean "bare metal". It could be a MAC,
| a serial number or similar things that may be linked to a
| generic or clonable value in virtualization.
| 15155 wrote:
| > Turns out some of the software running on it had some
| weird licensing checks tied to the hardware so it refused
| to start on the new server.
|
| This is around the time when you call that one guy on your
| team that can reverse engineer and patch out the license
| check.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Interoperability exception might allow this in exigent
| circumstances _when you do have a valid license_ , but I
| wouldn't do this without running it by the software
| vendor whose license you are using. In a recovery
| situation, you'll probably need to be on the phone a lot,
| so I can see how you might think it's quicker to bypass
| the license check, but that is one person giving some or
| all of their attention just to that. Disaster recovery
| isn't a one person job unless that one person was the
| whole team anyway, so I think this idea needs to be
| calibrated somewhat to expectations.
| benterix wrote:
| > Modern IT practices don't really contemplate disaster
| recovery. Even organisations with strict backup procedures
| seldom test recovery (most never at all).
|
| I think this is an outdated view. In modern enterprises DR is
| often one of the most crucial (and difficult) steps in
| building the whole infra. You select what is crucial for you,
| you allocate the budget, you test it, and you plan the date
| of the next test.
|
| However, I'd say it's very rare to do DR of everything. It's
| terribly expensive and problematic. You need to choose what's
| really important to you based on defined budgets.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| Budgets - and lowering them - win every time. I do
| budgeting and forecasting for SaaS companies and this kind
| of work is always the first cut
| edoceo wrote:
| Is there a recurring theme for why? There is huge risk
| exposure.
| supertrope wrote:
| People round down small risk to zero risk. Meanwhile the
| cost to run a full DR drill is a certain and immediate
| cost to their budget.
| 9dev wrote:
| Actually I think this is hard to properly implement. If
| you're a small shop, really setting up backups with
| redundancies, writing the documentation, and testing disaster
| recovery, that's _so much more_ work than people anticipate,
| and it has implications on all areas of the business, not
| just IT. So usually it 's hard to justify to management why
| you would put in all that work and slow down operations--
| which leads to everyone postponing it.
|
| Either that bites you sooner or later, or you're lucky and
| grow; suddenly, you're a larger organisation, and there are
| way too many moving parts to start from scratch. So you do a
| half-hearted attempt of creating a backup strategy held
| together by duct-tape and hope, that kinda-sorta should work
| in the worst case, write some LLM-assisted documentation that
| nobody ever reads, and carry on. You're understaffed and
| overworked anyway, people are engaging in shadow IT, your
| actual responsibilities demand attention, so that's the best
| you can do.
|
| And then you've grown even bigger, you're a reputable company
| now, and then the consultants and auditors and customers with
| certification requirements come in. So that's when you
| actually have to put in the work, and it's going to be a
| long, gruesome, exhausting, and expensive project. Given, of
| course, that nobody fucks up in the mean time.
| prmph wrote:
| Indeed. Setting up infrastructure properly and documenting
| it properly is even more complex than coding, to me.
|
| I can go back to code I wrote months or years ago, and
| assuming I architectured and documented it idiomatically, I
| takes me only a bit of time to start being able to reason
| about it effectively.
|
| With infrastructure is it a whole different story. Within
| weeks of not touching it (which happens if it just works) I
| start to have trouble retaining a good mental model of it.
| if I have to dig into it, I'll have to spend a lot of time
| getting re-acquainted with how it all fits together again.
| macintux wrote:
| As much as Cloudformation and Terraform annoy me
| (thankfully I've never been burdened with k8s) there is
| something magical about having your infrastructure
| captured in code.
| jon-wood wrote:
| That's a choice that companies make. I've certainly worked at
| places which don't test DR, while at my current job we do
| annual DR runs, where we'll bring up a complete production
| ready environment from scratch to prove that the backups
| work, and the runbook for doing a restore actually works.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm retired now, but the last place I worked estimated it
| would take months to do a full restore from off site
| backups, assuming that the data center and hardware were
| intact. If the data center was destroyed... Longer.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| If you're doing it right, the DR process is basically the
| deployment process, and gets tested every time you do a
| deployment. We used chef, docker, stored snapshot images, and
| every deploy basically spun up a new infrastructure from
| scratch, and once it had passed the automated tests, the load
| balancers would switch to the new instance. DBs were created
| from binary snapshots which would then slave off the live DB
| to catch up (never more than an hour of diff), which also
| ensured we had a continuously tested DB backup process. The
| previous instance would get torn down after 8 hours, which
| was long enough to allow any straggling processes to finish
| and to have somewhere to roll back to if needed.
|
| This all got stored in the cloud, but also locally in our
| office, and also written onto a DVD-R, all automatically, all
| verified each time.
|
| Our absolute worst case scenario would be less than an hour
| of downtime, less than an hour of data loss.
|
| Similarly our dev environments were a watered down version of
| the live environment, and so if they were somehow lost, they
| could be restored in the same manner - and again, frequently
| tested, as any merge into the preprod branch would trigger a
| new dev environment to automatically spin up with that
| codebase.
|
| It takes up-front engineering effort to get in place, but it
| ended up saving our bacon twice, and made our entire pipeline
| much easier and faster to manage.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I used to find it amusing how many people thought Backup was
| a requirement.
|
| "No, Restore is" I would say to stunned faces...
| hu3 wrote:
| This is why documenting is so crucial. Even on a software
| architecture level.
|
| A few months from now, I'd love to have written down decisions
| for my current project:
|
| - Why did I decided to use Kysely over Drizzle, Knex, Prisma,
| TypeORM or other ORM/SQL tool?
|
| - How am I going to do migrations?
|
| - Why am I using one of Deno/Bun over sticking to nodejs?
|
| - Why did I structure the project as a directory per feature
| over controllers/models/services directories?
|
| - Why did I fork this library and what are the steps to keep
| this thing updated? Do I plan to upstream my changes? Is there
| a GitHub issue or PR about it?
|
| - Why am I hosting in one of AWS/GCP/Azure? Why not lambda
| functions? Why docker?
|
| - Why did I pick this specific distribution of kubernetes over
| the other also lightweight alternatives?
|
| - Why did I even start this project and what do I aim to
| accomplish with it?
|
| So I created a # Decisions section in README.md
|
| This way I don't keep doubting my own decisions and wasting
| time opening 20 documentation tabs to compare solutions yet
| again.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Every project I work on has a technical-decisions.org file.
| Also a daily-notes.org file with every failed experiment,
| test, install command, etc. The top level headings are dates.
|
| Technical decisions used to be in the daily-notes.org file,
| but keeping in a separate file makes it more accessible to
| LLMs. I actually started that practice before LLMs were in
| common use, I struggle to remember why.
| sjs382 wrote:
| > I struggle to remember why.
|
| Should that "why" be in technical-decisions.org or daily-
| notes.org?
| dotancohen wrote:
| It should have been the first entry in some project's
| technical-decisions.org file!
| qntmfred wrote:
| this is why in 2023 i started livestreaming whenever I work
| at my PC. I also take these kinds of daily and project
| notes, but it's a bit tedious and can take you out of the
| flow. so I just let youtube capture everything I'm doing
| and if I need to go back and remind myself of something (or
| ask an LLM a question about my livestream history, in the
| not too distant future) it's all right there.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| We just recently started using ADRs (Architectural Decision
| Records). They are deliberately stored (in markdown) in the
| same repository as the source code for our SaaS business
| lives. If we can recover the source, chances are high that we
| can also recover the "why's". If we cannot do that, we are
| screwed anyways.
| goopthink wrote:
| This. I encouraged my team to use a templated
| (standardized) ADR for any big decisions that don't have an
| obvious answer or complete consensus and it had reduced the
| second guessing and relitigation of decisions to nearly
| zero. It also gave is a good snapshot of where we were when
| we made that call so historic decisions weren't disparaged.
| Mossy9 wrote:
| Could you share the template you're using?
| unixhero wrote:
| There is an open community proposed standard template for
| ADRs, but I don't have the link
| simonw wrote:
| I use GitHub Issues for this. It works _so well_ - any time I
| make a decision I drop a comment on the relevant issue (often
| formatted as "Decision: ..."). Now they are archived,
| searchable, accessible via API and easy to navigate to from
| my source code because my commits all reference the issue
| number that relates to the change.
| sitkack wrote:
| What do you use for archiving github issues?
| tough wrote:
| you could just call the github API
| simonw wrote:
| I've tried a couple of things. I wrote a tool for
| exporting them to SQLite:
| https://github.com/dogsheep/github-to-sqlite
|
| I've also tried a mechanism where I have GitHub Actions
| write them out as JSON files in the repo itself, then I
| can git clone them in one go: https://gist.github.com/sim
| onw/0f906759afd17af7ba39a0979027a... and
| https://github.com/simonw/fetch-github-issues
| nchmy wrote:
| Til Github deletes your account randomly! Happened to a
| friend of mine recently, and he didn't get any explanation
| or recourse.
|
| Of course, you have a relatively high profile, so could
| probably avoid it/get it reversed.
| forinti wrote:
| You also have to document alternative worlflows for your
| business while you don't get everything back to normal.
|
| Lots of things can keep going with pen and paper or some
| cloud software.
|
| At the very least, you have to communicate with your clients.
| v3ss0n wrote:
| Thats why Infra as Code is very very important.
| bilekas wrote:
| Not really, the OP was already using docker, but even with
| IAC on a small home lab like this you're going to modify one
| or two small things manually here and there over the years.
|
| Sure it can help, but it's just not a one fix solution people
| thing. If you want a good test of your IAC, just provisioning
| a brand new environment first time using only your iac.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| > you're going to modify one or two small things manually
| here and there over the years.
|
| Huh? This is a strange assumption to make. Is your premise
| that IAC can't ever be truly reproducible?
|
| If you are modifying things manually then you're not doing
| IAC.
| v3ss0n wrote:
| Yeah as soon as you start hand tweaking the system it
| breaks IAC.
| v3ss0n wrote:
| If you hand modify the already IAC system , you are not
| doing IAC. IAC with CI/CD is what we do. We don't even use
| AWS Console , we do everything in terraform/opentofu code.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Yeah, I had similar experiences, but now I use nix, which
| solves these problems.
| bilekas wrote:
| > but now I use nix, which solves these problems
|
| Um, sorry but what do you mean ?
| eptcyka wrote:
| Everything is configured via nix, I can swap out the
| hardware and redeploy everything from 0 with a single
| command invocation.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| What if something happens to where you keep your
| configuration?
| eptcyka wrote:
| It is in git, I have backups. The secrets are not backed
| up, but those I can recycle if need be.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I don't really know nix, but have used Ansible to try to have
| all configuration version-controlled and automated. But if
| there's _any_ possibility of making changes outside of that,
| you have to be very disciplined. As soon as someone makes a
| one-off manual change to a crontab or a systemd unit, you 're
| screwed.
| eptcyka wrote:
| NixOS just doesn't let you do that in the nominal case,
| most of /etc consists of symlinks to a read only partition
| that is managed by nix - it is actually more difficult to
| do one-off scripts or config changes via files than it is
| to do so via nix, at least nominally - there are of course
| software that has it's own special config format or that
| keeps its config in a database - but those get
| snapshot(ed?) and backed up anyway.
|
| Imo, nix is more finnicky but more of a complete solution
| than ansible.
| jl6 wrote:
| On the other hand, I've worked in places where the total
| destruction of IT (so as to start again from a clean slate) was
| within the Overton window of options for how to transform the
| business.
| feynmanalgo wrote:
| > I helped to recover my nearby hospital as a volunteer when it
| was ransomwared.
|
| How did they prevent threat actors presenting themselves as
| volunteers, were you vetted?
| zulban wrote:
| A real person showing up is a huge cost and risk. No threat
| actor will continue an attack on just a hospital like that.
| The economics make no sense and any money is already
| extracted. Ransomware shops are very happy to just shotgun
| the internet from afar.
|
| A far bigger risk is accepting incompetent volunteers if
| anything.
| feynmanalgo wrote:
| I didn't say anything about original attacker continuing
| the attack.
| stavros wrote:
| The same answer still applies: That attack vector doesn't
| have a positive ROI.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| The nature of my work helped to quickly sort that out
| slightwinder wrote:
| > Recovering from scratch a whole infrastructure managed by
| many people over the years is a titanic task.
|
| Half of the work is to know what you need, the other half is to
| know how you do it, while the third half is to cope with all
| the undocumented tinkering which happened along the way. So in
| that regard, starting from scratch can be acceptable, as long
| you are not starting from zero, and can build up on the
| knowledge and experience of the previous run(s). I mean, there
| is a whole gaming-genre about this, which is quite popular. And
| usually you have the benefit that you might be able to fix some
| fundamental failures which you had to ignore because nobody
| wanted to take the risk.
| fragmede wrote:
| wait, what games are in that genre?
| ac29 wrote:
| I think they are talking about roguelikes/roguelites
| froh wrote:
| side remark: I like the ambiguity of titanic (giant) task and
| Titanic (1912) task :-)
| kayge wrote:
| Don't forget Titanic (1997)! :D
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I had to rebuild a significant percentage of my homelab after
| my house was raided by the police and they took about
| $10k-worth of my gear; desktop, laptop, NAS, hard drives.
|
| However, because in a previous life I'd been responsible for
| backups and involved in disaster recovery planning I was
| already kind of prepared with:
|
| - a mirrored on site copy of backups (that they either didn't
| find or chose to leave behind)
|
| - older hardware that had once been performing the duties of
| the existing seized gear (I'm a bit of a hoarder, I like
| repurposing or keeping for just such an occasion)
|
| - multiple off site backups
|
| - pretty good documentation of my setup
|
| I was back up and running within a day or two and had lost
| maybe a couple of days of data. And it's a home lab, so nothing
| super important anyway, but a (not really) nice resilience
| test.
|
| It also gave me the experience to work out a few structural
| changes to further limit the impact of an event that takes out
| a bunch of processing and storage.
|
| (After 8 months they told me to pick up all my gear, they found
| nothing, but thanks for traumatising my kids)
| bapak wrote:
| Why did they raid you?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Short version:
|
| Possibly the worst thing to be raided for: distribution of
| CSAM.
|
| Apparently based purely on the 'evidence' of my IP address
| being on some list - that's the only explanation I ever
| got.
|
| Funny thing is, they did so little background research they
| didn't even know to expect kids in the house when they
| raided at 6:30am.
|
| It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote
| pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and
| it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons.
|
| The long version I haven't written yet and probably never
| will. I don't want to dwell on it, I want to get on with my
| life and have an even worse drama to deal with at the
| moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44533637
|
| I know I'm alive, that's for sure. I'm trying to make
| lemonade by the goddamn bucket load.
|
| P.S. I have written prior HN comments referring to the raid
| if you care enough to go back that far.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Where you actually charged and prosecuted for anything or
| did they just steal your gear without due process?
| goda90 wrote:
| The latter wouldn't be unheard of: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| They had a warrant for the raid. Or at least they showed
| me a piece of paper, but my mind was so thrown that I
| literally couldn't read it (I've never experienced such a
| thing before or since - I literally couldn't make out
| letters on the page, such was my state of shock at the
| time).
|
| I wasn't arrested or charged, they found nothing of what
| they were looking for on the multi terabytes of disks
| they seized. No further action other than the raid.
| FpUser wrote:
| Did they eventually return your gear?
| npongratz wrote:
| > (After 8 months they told me to pick up all my gear,
| they found nothing, but thanks for traumatising my kids)
| unixhero wrote:
| Don't forget yourself, the breadwinner of the household!
| 725686 wrote:
| In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on
| your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt?
| Muromec wrote:
| Why would you be able to sue the government for
| conducting a search authorized by a judge? It's expected
| that result of some searches is "Oopsie doopsie nothing
| found".
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| It's even worse than that, in the US police have broad
| latitude to destroy property, kill pets, seize any cash
| or assets (theoretically related to the crime, but very
| easy to abuse) and etc. while executing a search, with
| little to no recourse.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not just kill pets, but kill people. Even if they raided
| the wrong home.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Yeah, it's true.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You could sue if they made some major mistakes or were
| fabricating evidence or some other significant
| malpractice. It's a pretty high bar.
| behringer wrote:
| You can but chances are you'll still lose.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I think it's fair to expect that the authorities must
| have a very good probable cause to perform a search of
| your home, and that any search that turned out to be
| unwarranted results in a big compensation and a public
| announcement stating that the specific police department
| and judge violated the right to privacy.
| whycome wrote:
| I'm guessing search should still happen in a way to limit
| damage (physical, psychological) to other parties (in
| this case, the kids present).
| toast0 wrote:
| You _can_ sue the government, but the grounds for winning
| are much narrower.
|
| Meerly suffering harm from government action is not
| sufficient. Having property impounded as part of an
| investigation, pursuant to a warrant, is likely not
| actionable, unless there was malice involved. Using slim
| evidence isn't really actionable.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| > In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on
| your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt?
|
| Sure you can sue anybody for anything. Whether your case
| actually gets heard or not is another consideration. And
| even if it gets heard, the judge can simply dismiss it
| for a variety of reasons before proceeding to trial.
|
| Also, state and the federal governments have sovereign
| immunity and qualified immunity. Basically the government
| has to allow itself to be sued.
|
| True this doesn't apply to counties or cities, however
| there is still a much higher bar for tort even for local
| police. Generally if they are operatikng within the law,
| like executing a valid search warrant, the standard is
| much higher than it would be for an average citizen.
| sleepyguy wrote:
| The government has endless resources; you would go
| bankrupt unless a law firm saw a huge payout in taking
| your case. The system is rigged in favor of the
| government. They could have burned down his house and the
| neighbor's house, and not been responsible. Land of the
| free, God Bless America......
| DFHippie wrote:
| Also, there is almost no deterrent effect. The people who
| authorized or perpetrated the abuse are not punished if
| you sue and win a settlement. They don't even have to
| hire and pay the lawyers. The payment comes out
| everyone's taxes, perhaps with interest if the government
| has to pay by issuing debt.
|
| When the police abuse their power, it's the community
| that pays their salaries that feels the pain.
| mulmen wrote:
| This was in Australia but your point stands.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Australia.
|
| We looked into anything that could be done to minimise
| the chances of such a thing happening to innocent
| parties, but the only option was to make a complaint
| about an individual officer. There's no (easy, obvious)
| way to question the system they use to determine
| "validity" of raids or due diligence prior to requesting
| a warrant, or evidence required to justify a warrant.
|
| The whole thing just felt to me like it was blindly
| rubber stamped all the way through because "protect the
| children". Pity my daughter was a child and absorbs such
| experiences... My son was also a child, but he's less
| affected by such things.
| behringer wrote:
| It's good for children in the US to learn early that they
| can't trust the police.
| codr7 wrote:
| Same goes for almost any other country I've been to. But
| the US does seem to be one of the worst places from what
| I see online.
| rdtsc wrote:
| In which country can the children trust the police?
| slaw wrote:
| China?
| more_corn wrote:
| Japan, England
| giantg2 wrote:
| Can they? I've heard of police in Japan pinning murder
| cases on people they don't like. I believe there has been
| some reporting on this related to why thy have such high
| clearance rates. Don't the police in the UK still have a
| lot of sexual misconduct scandals?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| In England the police arrests you for a tweet under hate
| speech laws and they threw the post office workers under
| the bus to protect the politicians and buggy SW of
| Fujitsu. Not the place where I'd trust the law
| enforcement at all.
|
| And Japan, while being clean, safe and Kawai, its legal
| system has like a 90%+ conviction rate, so make of this
| what you will.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| In general, the most civilized part of the world, western
| & north europe.
|
| So, Norway, Dennmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Belgium,
| Netherlands, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland
| grokgrok wrote:
| If your downspout is draining onto the sidewalk and
| turning it into an invisible ice rink...
| biofox wrote:
| That's absolutely horrifying! Glad to hear you've managed
| to move past it, as it would have absolutely broken me.
|
| My home was searched by the police for something much
| less serious (buying lab equipment, completely legally),
| and the experience left me having panic attacks every
| time there was a knock at the door.
| mrandish wrote:
| It makes me crazy that police in the U.S. nowadays can
| get a search warrant permitting seizure of large amounts
| of valuable computer and networking gear along with
| digital devices certain to massively disrupt anyone's
| life - only from buying things which are completely legal
| to buy and possess. Apparently all it takes is "a
| suspicious pattern of behaviors" to get a judge to issue
| an expansive warrant. The "suspicious pattern" is often
| defined ad hoc by police under no objective standard and
| never detailed in the warrant request. Judges are really
| failing in their duties because there are too many cases
| like this happening.
|
| Depriving people of their valuable property for 8 months
| or more is also abusively punitive. In warrants that
| grant seizures of all or most digital devices, judges
| should require police to return the items within 30 days
| if they don't either file charges or go back to the judge
| with good cause for an extension. If police can't get
| around to actually looking at the evidence they claimed
| was so crucial in 30 days maybe it's not a high-priority
| crime. And if having a reasonable time limit makes it too
| hard to look through so much stuff, they're free to more
| narrowly tailor their seizure requests so they don't have
| so much to troll through.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| > It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote
| pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and
| it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons.
|
| As someone who was arrested in his PJs at 4am due to a
| false accusation that the police did not investigate and
| for which they did not have probable cause, I feel this
| in my bones.
|
| $15k in legal fees, a day in jail, and three months
| later, the charges were dropped because, as per the DA,
| "we cannot in good conscience pursue this case".
|
| No consequences for the person who made the false
| accusation, or the officer that enacted an arrest without
| probable cause.
|
| My heart still skips a beat whenever I think I hear a
| knock at the door or noises in the middle of the night.
| I'll wake up from a dead sleep in a panic. In theory I
| could pursue a lawsuit against both the accuser and
| officer, but that feels overwhelming -- I've just tried
| to move on.
|
| It completely changed the way I see the police and the
| criminal justice system. The process is, in of itself,
| punishment.
|
| I was fortunate enough to be able to afford good legal
| representation, and I now have a great deal of empathy
| for those who are railroaded by the system because they
| cannot.
| sans_souse wrote:
| I woulda just left it at "screen name checks out"
| QuiCasseRien wrote:
| - i'm scripting at best the full setup of my servers (mostly
| Nixos and some debian).
|
| - daily backup locale + remote (blackbaze with 60 readonly
| retention strategy, separated bucket by service)
|
| - monthly offline backup
|
| - a preprod server where my users can restore entiere
| environment for testing purpose (CI)
|
| in case of full house fire, i can be back online in an working
| day.
|
| PS: i have only some TBs of data so quite easy to do.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the 1990s mainframes got so stable and redundant that some
| were not rebooted in over a decade - they could even upgrade
| the kernel without rebooting. Then one company had a power
| failure andthe backup generators failed. When the power came
| back it was months before they figured out everything it was
| doing and then how to start that service where the guy who
| started it originally quit years ago.
|
| most companies started rebooting the mainframe every six months
| to ensure they could restart it.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I was very supportive of the infrastructure IT team when they
| moved their datacenter. I also had popcorn when watching the
| switch being figuratively flipped on.
|
| It went surprisingly well despite having stayed 15 years in
| the old DC without rebooting. They were super scared of
| exactly the case you described but except for some minor
| issues (and a lot of cussing) it was OK.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The data center where I work self-tests this stuff
| unintentionally a couple of times a year. The typical case:
| UPS maintenance, room is put on bypass, load drops when
| switching back.
| stavros wrote:
| That's why I delete all my company's data stores every
| quarter too!
| freddealmeida wrote:
| Chamath's new company 80/90 is targeting this pain. Large firms
| often have no idea what their software is trying to do.
| Rebuilding it is cheaper and leads to better software.
| tmiku wrote:
| > I helped to recover my nearby hospital as a volunteer when it
| was ransomwared.
|
| I'm curious about how you got in the door here. Very cool, but
| isn't healthcare IT notoriously cagey about access? I've had to
| do PHI training and background checks before getting into the
| system at my (admittedly only 2) PHI-centered jobs.
|
| Granted, if it was such an emergency, I could see them rushing
| you through a lite version of the HR onboarding process. Did
| you have a connection in the hospital through whom you offered
| your services?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| The nature and place of my work helped to quickly clear this.
|
| I volunteered to help because I knew that even broadly
| planning the recovery, evidence preservation etc. would be
| completely beyond the capabilities of the two IT folks (they
| were extremely nice and helpful, and glad that there was
| someone to help).
|
| I was there to draw things on the board and ask the questions
| that will help to recover. I would not have (nor want, not
| have the need) to access patient information. This is
| something I warned them about early in the process, as the
| chaos was growing.
|
| You need to imagine a large hospital completely blocked, with
| patients during an operation being stabilized and driven
| away.
|
| I am used to crisis situations and having someone who will
| anticipate things you do not think about (how to communicate,
| how to reach prople having planned procedures, who does what
| and who talks with whom) is a useful person to have before
| the authorities kick in.
|
| My wife had a planned operation that morning and I was on
| site when the ransomware hit, it is just this. Nothing James
| Bond like, just sheer luck to have been around.
|
| The hospital made a recovery but it took about a year IIRC
| frou_dh wrote:
| I wonder to what extent either side is worried about the firmware
| on the drones. Somehow getting tampered-with firmware onto the
| drones that your enemy is using seems like it would be valuable.
| benterix wrote:
| Very interesting but risky (easy to discover and renders the
| whole operation ineffective). So I believe what they did was
| heavy-handed but the most reasonable.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Yeh, it would seem in some ways more useful than shutting down
| the factory; if you gently made all the drones do something,
| like let them be remote controlled, or bomb the place they were
| launched from.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| But once that happened a handful of times it would be
| corrected.
|
| I suppose it could be used sparingly but Ukraine would have
| no way of knowing when to use it. Perhaps a Bluetooth or
| whatever else the drone has on board "keep away" beacon for
| vips.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You say that, but Israel booby trapped the Hezbollah comm
| devices _twice_ with physical explosives.
| Faark wrote:
| There are tones of non-obvious options. Eg make it appear
| like being shoot-downs. With a bunch of RNG / logic to make
| it non-obvious... random percentage, only when getting
| close to target, so many ways...
|
| The real enemy is QA. Don't want it misbehaving during a
| virtual test flight.
| morkalork wrote:
| One funny tick that's supposedly appeared is installing viruses
| on the SD cards used in drones so if/when a drone is downed
| intact and picked up by a curious enemy, their computer is
| infected.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Drones are typically flashed minutes before the mission.
| helge9210 wrote:
| AI translation (to English) is off in places. "Ukrainian
| cybercriminals" is not in the original and was picked as the
| translation of the closest sounding full word.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > The attack destroyed over 47 TB of critical data,
|
| I'm very dubious that there would be such an amount of "critical"
| data pretty much anywhere, besides the banking and insurance
| sector. And particularly not at a drone manufacturer.
| zulban wrote:
| Training data like audio, pictures, and video perhaps.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Probably added all raw disk sizes together. Or all the data,
| including duplicates.
| dogleash wrote:
| Depends on how you slice it.
|
| If you focus only on data with high-uptime requirements, no
| probably not 50 TB.
|
| If you include low-uptime requirement but low-replaceability
| stuff like all the products' mechanical, electrical and
| software designs, documentation and artifacts? Easily 50 TB.
| cyber1 wrote:
| Glory to Ukraine! Slava Ukraini!
| drweevil wrote:
| And we believe this why? A Ukrainian web site, no independent
| corroboration. All righty then.
| giingyui wrote:
| Why not? It paints Ukrainians as ingenious, and makes it look
| like they will win the war with their suave cleverness, so this
| is a great candidate for an upvote.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| are the raw files available online?
| alexandrutocar wrote:
| i would not think so as it involves technology with a military
| application.
| roody15 wrote:
| Ukrainian hackers ....? Hmm
| 93po wrote:
| The source of this news is the Ukrainian military which seems to
| exaggerate and spread propaganda (as does every other country of
| course). I don't know why we accept this information as reliable.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am genuinely curious, what are the known examples of them
| exaggerating and spreading propaganda, regarding operations
| like this?
| 93po wrote:
| Ghost of Kyiv was recognized by Ukraine itself as a myth.
| Snake Island "go fuck yourself" was misrepresented (they were
| killed vs captured), plenty of others:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_.
| ..
|
| There's also just endless small stuff (shorts/tiktoks/cam
| footage) on social media (reddit) that really does not pass
| the sniff test.
|
| I think what Russia is doing is terrible, I am not defending
| them at all. I am just allergic to bullshit, and there is
| plenty of smelly things happening on the Ukrainian side,
| though of course I recognize the Russians are especially bad
| in this regard.
| consumer451 wrote:
| The ghost of Kyiv was recognized as a myth at the time of
| it's spread. The Snake Island story is understandable.
| Every country makes mistakes about KIA vs. MIA.
|
| I was not very clear, but I meant Ukrainian intelligence
| services claiming operational success where there was none.
| It's also interesting that this Wikipedia entry appears
| devoid of UA false propaganda after 2022. I wonder if they
| realized that this was not a good Wiki entry on which to
| appear.
| 93po wrote:
| it is worth something if it's recognized as a myth by
| official sources at the time, but it doesn't change that
| social media (reddit) was absolutely jammed full of stuff
| about it, presenting it as factual, and has led probably
| millions of people to believe it was real. and even
| beyond the posts that were explicitly about it, comment
| sections continued to refer to it in serious ways. my
| whole point is there is a concerted effort to spread it
| as an "us vs them" narrative, with ukraine being the "us"
| part (as an american).
|
| what i ultimately care about is manipulation, because
| manipulation and disinformation erode democracy, and it's
| overwhelmingly done by the rich and powerful and at the
| expense of the working class. there are endless billions
| of dollars getting funneled into the military industrial
| complex around ukraine, and the more americans align with
| ukraine, and the more americans can feel invested and
| interested in the war in happy-feel-good-ways (like
| having heroes and "fuck russia" moments) the more
| americans are okay with their tax dollars getting spent
| this way. whatever machinery is at play here has very
| successfully captured the support of a massive part of
| the American left, and the same people you see protesting
| about the environment are the same people you see waiving
| ukraine flags and being manipulated into suddenly being
| pro-war despite being against things like the war in
| iraq.
|
| billionaires continue to make their billions, people
| continue to believe what they read on reddit and watch on
| corporate news, and the narrative is always things that
| aren't class consciousness.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| You don't have to. In fact, your best bet is to wait for
| Gaskar's response and/or the UA publishing trophies. But the
| lack of immediate corroboration for a clandestine cyber op
| doesn't somehow mean it probably didn't happen.
| dmix wrote:
| Here is a translated version of the telegram message posted by
| the hacking team:
|
| > LLC "Gaskar Integration" (Gaskar Group)--one of the largest UAV
| manufacturers in Russia--has just been penetrated right down to
| the tonsils in the course of demilitarization and denazification.
|
| > VO Team, together with the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance
| (https://t.me/UCAgroup) and another very well-known organization
| whose mere mention makes the vatniks' bottle-openings burst
| (https://gur.gov.ua/), carried out large-scale operations: we
| seized all of Gaskar Group's network and server infrastructure,
| gathered valuable data on their current and prospective UAVs,
| destroyed that data, and knocked the entire infrastructure
| offline.
|
| > By the way, from the information we obtained, the PRC is
| helping Gaskar Group with production and staff training. China
| transferred technology for the newest UAVs--technology that is
| now in our hands .
|
| > VO Team focused on wiping out the production complex's
| infrastructure. On-site we erased more than 250 hosts (4 ESXi
| servers, 46 virtual servers, 200+ workstations) and bricked about
| 20 MikroTik devices. In total we destroyed 47 TB of valuable data
| at Gaskar Group--including 10 TB of backups--and disabled all
| production and auxiliary systems.
|
| > The scum at Gaskar Group have the blood of hundreds of
| Ukrainian children, women, and elderly on their hands. That's why
| we went after this target with special zeal. We now possess the
| lists of ALL employees, their home addresses, information about
| their family members, and much more... We're in your home
| computers and phones--we're everywhere . Not a single bastard
| from Gaskar Group will escape responsibility!
|
| > The sword of Damocles already hangs by a thin thread over your
| heads. It's too late to spew excuses like "we're apolitical" or
| "we were just making money"....
|
| > The whole world can see that the so-called Russian Federation
| has strategically lost everything. Defeat and collapse of that
| unwashed entity are only a matter of time. VO Team is collecting
| data on everyone involved in Putin's criminal war--the deaths of
| our children, mothers, and all Ukrainians. Retribution is
| inevitable and is drawing near!
| consumer451 wrote:
| > China transferred technology for the newest UAVs--technology
| that is now in our hands
|
| Well, this is quite the interesting tidbit. Thanks for posting
| the translation.
| Kapura wrote:
| Cyber warfare is really reaching a new peak in Ukraine, and not
| just the more-traditional cyberattacks like this. The target is
| of note; the drones themselves are the thing that's setting this
| war apart from all of the primarily human powered wars of the
| past centuries.
|
| Drones have revolutionized reconnaissance, sabotage, and
| munitions interception. Relative to their material cost, they can
| be terrifically destructive, and with the advances in image
| recognition in the past decade some are able to operate even when
| affected by electronic signal jamming. This is some very
| cyberpunk shit going on right now.
|
| This was obviously a very high-value target, and Ukraine has
| shown themselves again to be masters of asymmetric warfare:
| taking out a sizable chunk of Russia's long range bombers using
| drones smuggled across Russia, and now impacting one of the
| centers of Russia's drone manufacturing. It is difficult to see
| how the war will end, but it is clear that Ukraine is not about
| to stop fighting.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Remains to be seen if the lessons of this war extend to other
| possible wars though.
|
| It is possible that FPV drones are showing up as so important
| because Russia is committed to a disgusting meat sluice of
| fodder to achieve its marginal territory gains.
|
| Most countries don't have the appetite for those kind of
| losses. Most countries, frankly, don't have the audacity to set
| these kinds of war aims.
|
| I predict they won't matter too much to the war meta. At least
| not so much as cheap long range jet drones which are also
| becoming significant here.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Seems like drone warfare is just democratizing what e.g the
| US has in capabilities with their precision munitions
| already, in a perhaps less capable but far cheaper manner.
| Put it in other words if this was the US directy engaging
| russia, it would probably be tomahawk missiles or something
| along those lines just like we've seen last few decades, vs a
| sort of Air Hogs with a bomb.
| Theodores wrote:
| Some assumptions here. First off, we only have one side of the
| story to go on. Often this can be embroidered, particularly if
| there is propaganda value from doing so.
|
| They could be using version control for their software with
| every developer having all of the software they have developed
| for their products git-cloned to their development machines.
| Assuming a modest development team working with version control
| (who doesn't), then you do have to wonder if they have lost the
| crown jewels. I suspect not.
|
| It is going to be a similar situation with everything else such
| as CAD files. People will have local copies because it is
| quicker to work that way.
|
| As for the company emails and general office files, sure they
| might have lost lots of that, but that isn't going to be the
| end of the world.
|
| The website is also part of the company and you would expect
| the elite hackers to have taken that down but no they have not,
| that works just fine.
|
| Then there is the product itself. If you have been following
| the war closely then you will know what drones are in use at a
| given time. We might not get to know all of the drones as well
| as the heavy hitters, however, the name of this company is not
| something that the keenest watcher of the SMO will be familiar
| with. It is not as if they have shut down Geranium 2
| production, is it?
|
| As for yourself, and how you write, is that ChatGPT speaking?
|
| The reason I ask is that we all know about things such as
| version control so I wonder if there is common sense or ChatGPT
| going on with your comment.
| pegasus wrote:
| You're right about this being a one-sided story, but not to
| suspect ChatGPT - it has none of the hallmarks of AI slop,
| plus it brings up a couple of reasonable and relevant points.
| You're only addressing a tiny part of the comment, but the
| rest stands, in my opinion.
| Theodores wrote:
| The whole Ukraine situation is an intelligence test. In
| wartime you never have complete information so it is not
| like a game of chess where you know what the board is, what
| the pieces are and the play so far. Some fog of war is
| expected.
|
| With the hacks that Snowden, Assange and their ilk
| participated in, we had stuff uploaded somewhere for the
| world to see. In this way it was self evident that stuff
| had been exfiltrated.
|
| In this instance we can assume the drone company are going
| to deny everything. However, if we had some of their trade
| secrets uploaded somewhere then a data breach could be
| considered plausible. Or a recorded screen cast of the
| hack.
|
| However, the intended audience for this story doesn't care
| about hard evidence, they just need a morale boost, and
| belief trumps reason on these situations.
|
| My school history teacher taught me how to look at evidence
| and it is not rocket science. Hence why Ukraine is like an
| intelligence test nobody thought they needed. If people
| can't do critical thinking about some war that has been on
| the news for more than three years, how are they supposed
| to do science or anything else that needs critical
| thinking?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| In the book Ministry of the Future, a near-future look at a
| world dealing with devastating climate change, wars become
| somewhat obsolete because drones get so good it's always
| possible to kill someone anywhere in the world. The smallest
| faction can easily kill the leader of any country. It's an
| interesting thought. I don't recommend the book, one of those
| thought experiments with lots of interesting ideas with not
| enough story.
| Kapura wrote:
| It's fallacious to assume that defenses stop evolving after
| new weapons come to the fore. Some drones are deployed in
| anti-drone capacities; the war economics becomes balancing
| how advanced to make the attack drones vs. how cheap the
| countermeasures are. In Ukraine we've already seen small
| drones that are able to damage the wings of much larger and
| more "technically advanced" platforms.
|
| War didn't end the first time man invented the longer spear;
| defenses adapt.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| The book isn't real. I was just sharing an interesting
| thought from it. Lighten up.
| panstromek wrote:
| > some are able to operate even when affected by electronic
| signal jamming
|
| Not even that. The new hotness are the fiber optic cable ones
| that don't even use radio signals, that's some scary stuff.
| rclkrtrzckr wrote:
| I am working for a medium sized Swiss company. We're coding our
| own ERP, based on a nightmare of a stack. We call it "security by
| confusion". An attacker would maybe find its way in, but he'll
| never find the way out. If he destroys 90% of our code, we'll
| still be up and running, because 95% of the codebase is obsolete.
| akudha wrote:
| lol, I don't know if this is scary or impressive :)
| barbazoo wrote:
| This sounds like the kind of resiliency that a process like
| evolution would create :)
| m4rtink wrote:
| Real world ICE barier! :D
| boznz wrote:
| Have coded a couple of full MRP systems for various large
| companies based on my own model and I would be intrigued to see
| how this will work. I usually include the default recommended
| security and DR practices and then add my own OTP-hash based
| layer for key authorisations. I thought I was paranoid, but
| your system sounds more like an end-of-the-world scenario
| rather than just keep the production-line going in the factory.
| geoffbp wrote:
| How many drones would they have destroyed? Couldn't find that on
| the article
| mattxxx wrote:
| Weird thing: the timestamp on the upper right part of the camera
| is "01-02-1970" :thinking_face:
| mycall wrote:
| One day or one month past UNIX Epoch
| jug wrote:
| Day 1 after the start of the Unix epoch. Looks like a clock
| with unset/reset date that has had one day pass.
| hosh wrote:
| The headline of the article called these people cyber activists,
| and in the text of the article, they were called cybercriminals.
| Which is it? It reminds me a bit with the situation with
| privateers during the age of sail. These were often people
| operating at the edge of the law, or even outright outlaws, given
| a letter of marque, a license to raid warships and commerce
| against a specific adversary. I'm sure out on the high seas,
| abuses happen.
|
| The people who put together the doctrine on 4th Generation
| Warfare talked about the blurring of civilian and military. Rules
| of engagement gets fuzzier.
| torlok wrote:
| Russians are kiling civilians with drones each day. I don't
| think this is some gray area hybrid warfare, it's just regular
| people not wanting drones to kill their neighbours.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Kind of a Robin Hood situation: Hero for some, criminal to the
| others.
|
| The article might be a collage of several other articles, and
| they didn't check for consistency.
|
| I would love some other term for the aligned side people in
| cyberwarfare, sort of "cybersoldier" or "networkmilitia", not
| already somehow cliched in some film. "Cyberactivists" sounds
| like online protesters (in facebook and such)
| hosh wrote:
| Wikipedia has an entry for "hacktivism".
|
| The people who illegally obtained classified information to
| leak to WikiLeaks have made a political impact: https://www.w
| ashingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/26/wikilea... as well as
| reprisals in the form of arrests and prosecutions.
|
| We also call Greenpeace "activists", but they also employed
| violent direct-action in their efforts against whaling.
|
| Carl Icahn calls himself a shareholder activist, and many
| people still consider him a vulture capitalist.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| It seems like it might be a translation issue. The site seems
| pretty overtly pro Ukraine, so they probably don't want to cast
| these hackers in a negative light. They might have just thought
| "cyber criminal" was a straight synonym for "hacker".
| e40 wrote:
| Most likely they are being organized by the UKR military. So,
| not criminals, for sure.
| baby wrote:
| What's interesting is that this whole challenge is making Russia
| stronger. Russia has increased its military industry and its now
| running full steam. Every attack is giving them an opportunity to
| harden. All of that is meaningless if it makes Russia stronger
| and more resilient to embargos and cyber/physical attacks in the
| long run.
|
| For all of this to have meaning it has to have a fall of USSR
| kind of impact at some point, otherwise we just strengthened one
| of the world's most dangerous state.
| immibis wrote:
| Are they? They're running at full stream and yet they're still
| in a years-long stalemate in Ukraine?
|
| Authoritarian governments always fail, because they get used to
| achieving everything by simply ordering it to be achieved,
| while the laws of physics don't obey orders.
|
| Meanwhile they're murdering how many of their own soldiers per
| day?
| brentm wrote:
| Of course but also Ukraine doesn't have the privilege to care
| about the long term right now. You can't lose the battle today
| to win the war that you may never live to fight.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Russia recently announced that they want to import millions of
| immigrants now, likely because they massacred a big chunk of
| their young workforce. Their economy and production capacity is
| slowly crumbling, political dissent is rising. I don't think
| they're getting stronger.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's just a feature of long running wars that both sides boost
| their military. Russia is stronger in some ways but weaker in
| others.
| tartoran wrote:
| I think Russia would be able to project far much more power had
| they not attacked Ukraine and entered this long war. At this
| point the russian bear appears to be made of cardboard, low
| grade cheap cardboard. Not sure how long they'll be able to
| sustain this but the more they do the weaker they'll become.
| They've been losing a lot of ground in the Middle East and Asia
| as well.
| nicholast wrote:
| The only tech that scales cheaper than drones are digital
| interventions. This is a better way to intercept.
| madebywelch wrote:
| I'm curious if they ever practiced any sort of disaster recovery
| scenarios.
| dopa42365 wrote:
| >GASKAR INTEGRATION
|
| Definitely one of the companies that everyone has heard of
| before. No need to mention any of their brand or product names,
| they're that famous.
|
| $3 million revenue in 2024.
|
| I'm sure we'll hear more about the epic defeat of this major
| military supplier in the future.
| datameta wrote:
| Cynical sarcasm so thick, one could spread it with a spoon.
| What do you get from trying to devalue the successful outcome?
| hdb385 wrote:
| Ukraine winning again! lol
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