Those Latvian APTs are something else. Get hacked by a literal potato.
Finally I hear something about this, funnily enough about a meme based on Sputnik whining, which makes it even better. I really was wondering when we would start taking more aggressive cyber security measures, but then I also hoped they were just keeping it silent, as that’s what I would do.
Nothing better than hearing the vatniks screech: it means it works. Cope and seethe.
2016
US expels Russian diplomats over cyber attack allegations https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38463025
Now Russia is complaining?
Is there any possible benefit to having such “labs” in neighboring countries? Like, could they be directly intercepting data coming out of Russia or something?
Probably just an excuse to invade. Call it a “War on Cyberterrorism” or smth.
Purely speculating here:
The patriot act made it so that the US government had ownership of any data that passed through US land. Is this just a way for the US to monitor all traffic going through into and out of Russia?
It’s actually a big deal inside any privacy space outside of the US. For instance, any healthcare data in Canada can’t go through the US. Same thing for EU countries. Bigger corporations like MS know this and have data centers available for those countries to access within their own borders.
how dare they defend themselves against the legions of russian script kiddies sponsored by the FSS/FSB, the fucking nerve
Considering that Russia is regularly commiting cyberattacks at it’s neighboring countries, what the fuck do they expect? That we’re going to let Putin’s forces hack away at our critical infrastructure with abandon? What a bunch of clowns🤡
The ludicrous thing is that they say they are surrounding them with labs in neighboring countries. There’s absolutely no reason to do that.
It’s the Internet, all you need is to use the connections that are there, from wherever the fuck you want in the world.
I assume this is about the physical connections.
It could be for monitoring (even with unbroken encryption, the routing information and time/server correlation can shed light on social media influence campaigns or where VPN beachheads are located). This information could probably be gathered with ISP cooperation, too, but private business and Russian money can be a problematic mix.
It could also be preparations to isolate Russia from the internet when/if their war expands into Europe. Russia has done the reverse already in 2019, BBC: Russia ‘successfully tests’ its unplugged internet, probably either to stop Russian people from getting news outside of government-controlled media if the tide turns against Putin or to fend off the possibility of Western countries turning the tables and running disinformation campaigns inside Russia.
Incomplete map of internet crossover points to Russia (sorry, couldn’t find a better one, it had low resolution and I upscaled it):
Even inside the motherland! Aieeee!
I think there’s a decent possibility that the US is sending teams of people to all these countries to investigate what Russia may be doing to them, and teach them about how to detect and prevent Russian cyber activity against their infrastructure / journalism / military targets.
It could also be purely made of, of course, but it seems a little on the specific side, and that up there is an obvious reality-possibility which actually would make sense, which you could if you wanted to mischaracterize as the nonsense activity which RT is describing.
Fuck Russia? That’s enough of a reason for me! Plus if the Russians respond with kinetic weapons then there’s suddenly justification to do ‘more stuff.’
Because fuck Russia and (most of) it’s people.