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Facebook Cut Off By Russia

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 4, 2022 by itnerd

It’s rare that I will come to the defence of Facebook. But this situation makes me actually come to the defence of Facebook:

Russia’s communications agency Roskomnadzor announced Friday that it is blocking access to Facebook in Russia. It cited 26 cases of “discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook” since October 2020, in addition to the more-recent restrictions Facebook has placed on Russian state media outlets.

So in other words, Facebook is being cut off because Russia doesn’t like what is on their platform. And they don’t like the fact that Facebook cut off Russian state media outlets. So Russia is retaliating.

Boo… Hoo… Hoo.

I’m guessing that people in Russia aren’t too thrilled with Vladimir Putin starting this war and his cronies are trying to alter the narrative by cutting off the outside world. In effect, they’re trying to party like it’s 1969 and they’re in the Soviet Union. And if you don’t go along with the narrative, expect to get 15 years in jail.

Facebook isn’t the problem here. Russia is. But of course, you knew that.

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Microsoft Is Halting New Sales To Russia

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 4, 2022 by itnerd

Microsoft gets part marks from me on this. The good part of this is that Microsoft is halting “many aspects” of its business in the country to honor US, UK and EU sanctions. Here’s why they don’t get a perfect grade from me:

We are announcing today that we will suspend all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia.

In addition, we are coordinating closely and working in lockstep with the governments of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, and we are stopping many aspects of our business in Russia in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions.

We believe we are most effective in aiding Ukraine when we take concrete steps in coordination with the decisions being made by these governments and we will take additional steps as this situation continues to evolve.

Now the cynic in me says that this doesn’t go as far as Blackberry’s exit from Russia where they’ve totally cut Russia off. As in no sales, no support, nothing. To be fair, that’s not 100% clear from the blog post. But Microsoft needs to make that clear. Like now. And by they way, what does “stopping many aspects of our business in Russia” mean? They need to clarify that too. Like now.

Also in that blog post was this:

Our single most impactful area of work almost certainly is the protection of Ukraine’s cybersecurity. We continue to work proactively to help cybersecurity officials in Ukraine defend against Russian attacks, including most recently a cyberattack against a major Ukrainian broadcaster.

Since the war began, we have acted against Russian positioning, destructive or disruptive measures against more than 20 Ukrainian government, IT and financial sector organizations. We have also acted against cyberattacks targeting several additional civilian sites. We have publicly raised our concerns that these attacks against civilians violate the Geneva Convention.

Okay. I can be down with that. It would take away a major offensive weapon that the Russians love to use.

Who’s going to be the next company to pull out of Russia? I’m taking bets.

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Spotify Won’t Remove Joe Rogan…. But They Will Remove Russian News Outlets Over Disinformation Concerns

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 3, 2022 by itnerd

Normally, I would applaud Spotify for this:

Spotify has taken several steps in response to Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, including closing its offices in Russia “indefinitely.”

The company is not disabling access to its service within Russia. “We think it’s critically important to try to keep our service operational in Russia to allow for the global flow of information,” a Spotify representative said in a statement provided to Variety.

Like other internet platforms, Spotify has restricted the discoverability of Russian state-affiliated content on the streaming audio service. In addition, the company has removed all content from Kremlin-backed outlets RT and Sputnik from Spotify’s platform.

“We are deeply shocked and saddened by the unprovoked attack on Ukraine,” the Spotify rep said. “Our first priority over the past week has been the safety of our employees and to ensure that Spotify continues to serve as an important source of global and regional news at a time when access to information is more important than ever.”

And while I will admit that Spotify doing all of the above is good as stopping disinformation is important. Why aren’t they taking the same view with Joe Rogan and everything he does?

Oh. Right. They paid him at least $200 million to attract new subscribers.

Call me a cynic, but I find the stance that they have taken on Russia incompatible with the stance on Joe Rogan if you look at it from a certain point of view. Sure we should see these as separate issues. But I’m human and I don’t. And I am going to go out on a limb and say that others will see this the same way.

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Reddit “Quarantines” r/Russia & r/RussiaPolitics For Spreading Disinformation

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 2, 2022 by itnerd

When I did the round up of companies that are taking action against Russia for invading Ukraine, I missed Reddit and I should not have because they have decided to “quarantine” two subreddits related to Russia called r/Russia and r/RussiaPolitics for spreading disinformation.

First, let me explain what a “quarantine” is. It’s basically a shadow ban as per this document:

“the purpose of quarantining a community is to prevent its content from being accidentally viewed by those who do not knowingly wish to do so, or viewed without appropriate context.”

And if you try to go to the community in question, you get this:

Frankly an outright nuking of the subreddits in question would be better as the potential for disinformation to spread still exists due to the fact that the subreddits in question still exist. But I guess this option is better than doing nothing.

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Apple FINALLY Joins Tech Companies In Taking Action Against Russia

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

It took pretty much all day, and Apple was the last to join tech companies in taking action against Russia in regards to their invasion of Ukraine. But this finally happened:

So in some ways this kind of sort of matches things that companies like Google and Facebook have done. Not to mention Twitter. But in other ways they’ve gone a bit further. As in stopping sales in the company as I reported earlier today. Apple really was late to the party here. And it doesn’t reflect well on them. But at least they showed up and did something. And I hope Apple and everyone else who have taken action against Russia are prepared to do more if required.

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Apple Appears To Have Stopped Selling Online In Russia…. And Perhaps More

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Earlier today I said this in an article about various companies fighting Russian disinformation:

Who’s missing from this list? Apple. One has to wonder why a company who preaches that it has such high ideals isn’t rushing to join this? As I type this, apps from RT and Sputnik which are two of the biggest mouthpieces for the Russians are still available on the App Store. Why isn’t Apple taking action? That’s a very interesting question that Apple will need to answer ASAP as they really stand out for not having taken action unlike all the companies above. And I should also say, it looks really bad on them.

I guess they are taking a tentative step in terms of doing something by stopping online sales in the country. Not that I want to link to a Russian newspaper, but The Moscow Times broke the story:

And this was verified by Kevin Rothrock who is an editor at Russia-focused, Latvia-based newspaper Meduza.

This is likely to be only temporary. But it may be the start of something for Apple. Here’s another sign that this may be the start of something:

You have to think that this is related to the sanctions. Assuming that’s the case, it suggests that things are starting to bite for the Russians.

Oh by the way, as I type this RT and Sputnik are still on the App Store. That really reflects poorly on Apple.

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Twitter To Call Out Links In Tweets That Lead To Russia State Media

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Twitter it seems is going to try and fight any sort of disinformation campaign that the Russians may try to execute. It will now apparently call out links in Tweets that are connected to Russia state media:

Twitter’s head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, wrote that the platform has been seeing more than 45,000 tweets per day that are sharing links to state-affiliated media outlets. 

“Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are,” he added.

In addition to adding labels that identify the sources of links, Roth said the platform is also “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” 

I think that this is a good move as I’d rather them apply labels like this rather than outright banning media outlets on their platform. Because it basically calls out what they are up to. My question is will this be effective. Let’s watch and find out because it will be interesting to see.

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The Conti Ransomware Group Slides Into Disorder

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 28, 2022 by itnerd

From the “I did not have this on my apocalypse BINGO card” comes the news that Conti Ransomware Group which has Russian ties has fractured because of the Russian/Ukraine war. Here’s the details:

As Reuters reported on Friday, the gang known as the Conti group, announced its full support for the Russian government and Putin’s actions in a blog post last week. The post also carried a warning, “If anybody will decide to organize a cyberattack or any war activities against Russia, we are going to use our all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures of an enemy.”

As The Record reports, clearly not everyone in the gang is happy with the pro-Russian stance and one member decided to retaliate by leaking 339 files containing internal chats the gang had between Jan. 29, 2021 and Feb 27, 2022. In the email containing the files, the leaker commented, “We promise it is very interesting.” The identity of the person leaking the chats is unknown, but is obviously thought to be of Ukranian origin. 

Such a large amount of information is going to take some time to process, but the authenticity of the files has already been confirmed by Dmitry Smilyanets, a cyber threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future. 

This is intelligence gold if you are part of the fight against them. Conti is one of the most prolific ransomware groups around. And if this creates an environment where these threat actors can be hunted down and brought to justice, or their attacks are made to be far less effective, then it’s a good day for all of us.

UPDATE: Chris Olson, CEO, The Media Trust had this to say:

“The Conti gang threat is credible, and confirms an operational assumption already adopted by U.S intelligence officials: the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will have many cyber casualties in both the public and private sector.”

“Thanks to the number of digital channels in use by modern organizations, compromising critical infrastructure is a task within reach of even low-skill cyber actors. For instance, attackers can exploit the digital advertising ecosystem to target specific organizations and executives with a malicious campaign that installs a backdoor for future attacks.”

“The stakes are high, and there’s no place for complacency. Organizations should act quickly to secure any channels that could compromise their data or business functions, including Web and mobile surfaces.”

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Hackers Target Russia In Epic Fashion

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 27, 2022 by itnerd

Reuters is reporting that the official website of the Kremlin has appears to have been pwned by hackers:

The official website of the Kremlin, the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin, kremlin.ru, was down on Saturday, following reports of denial of service (DDoS) attacks on various other Russian government and state media websites.

But it actually could be worse than that:

Ukraine’s state telecommunications agency announced on Saturday that six Russian government websites, inclduing the Kremlin’s, were down, according to The Kyiv Independent.

The agency also stated that the Russian media regulator’s website had gone down, and that hackers had got Russian TV channels to play the Ukrainian music.

This comes after calls for Ukraine based hackers to attack Russian IT infrastructure. And joining the fight is the hacker collective Anonymous who have called for attacks on Russia:

It seems that the war in cyberspace is on.

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74% Of Ransomware Revenue Ends Up In The Hands Of Russian Hackers

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 16, 2022 by itnerd

A new analysis suggests that Russia is by far driving ransomware attacks and the overwhelming revenue ends up in the country. BBC News has a report on this:

Researchers say more than $400 million worth of crypto-currency payments went to groups “highly likely to be affiliated with Russia.” Russia has denied accusations that it is harboring cyber-criminals. Researchers also claim “a huge amount of crypto-currency-based money laundering” goes through Russian crypto-companies. Chainalysis, which carried out the research, said it was able to follow the flow of money to and from the digital wallets of known hacking groups using public blockchain transaction records. 

In the Chainalysis report, it’s highlighted that 9.9% of all known ransomware revenue is going to Evil Corp – an alleged cyber-crime group which the US has issued sanctions and indictments against, but who are operating in Russia with apparent impunity. A BBC investigation in November found that Igor Turashev, one of the accused leaders of Evil Corp, is operating several businesses out of Moscow City’s Federation Tower. The tower is one of Russia’s most prestigious addresses, home to prominent businesses and with apartments going for millions of dollars. Chainalysis claims several crypto-currency companies based in the tower were used by hackers to launder illicit funds, turning crypto-currency from digital wallet addresses to mainstream money. “In any given quarter, the illicit and risky addresses account for between 29% and 48% of all funds received by Moscow City crypto-currency businesses,” researchers allege.

Now Russia has always denied that it harbours cybercriminals. But this report makes it pretty clear that they do at least tolerate cybercriminals as it’s clearly an economic driver. Perhaps besides following the money, what needs to be done is to seize the money, or at least make it so expensive that it’s not worth their while to harbour cybercriminals.

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