Global Collapse

Tensions continue to escalate around the globe as the world watches Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion. Several events have unfolded since the initial invasion on February 24th, and Binary Defense analysts have observed dark web forums and media outlets reacting to the situation. Leading up to the invasion, Ukrainian government networks suffered DDoS attacks that would be attributed to Russia. The day of the invasion, Ukrainian government sites went offline.

During the initial invasion, Russian Criminal forums were very quiet. Typically, when there is a major global event taking place, forum members weigh in and offer opinions on the subject. There was no discussion of the invasion and little activity on these forums. This could have been due to outages in the region caused by the invasion. Raid Forums, an English-speaking hacker forum, condemned the invasion almost immediately.  A moderator of the forum said they would ban any user  that is connecting from Russia and stated the forum does not support the Kremlin. On February 25th, news stories about the war began showing up on the dark web forums. The notorious hacking group, Anonymous, announced they were launching a cyber war against Russia. Then a news story broke that President Biden was evaluating options on how to launch a large-scale cyberattack on Russia to disrupt critical infrastructure. This story caused widespread discussion across multiple Russian dark web forums.

Immediately, Russian telegram channels began posting the story as well as other updates surrounding the conflict. Users stated that the threat from Anonymous was an empty one and labeled them amateurs as they tried to discredit the group.

Russian telegram channels began launching misinformation campaigns. A new user on Raid Forums stated that the Western news outlets are posting propaganda videos to make Russia look evil. Later in the evening it was reported that Raid Forums had been seized and one of the administrators warned users to change their passwords.
Conti Ransomware Group Makes Pro-Russia Statements

Conti Ransomware was the first group to show support for Russia.  Initially they posted the following statement:

    “The Conti Team is officially announcing a full support of Russian government. If anybody will decide to organize a cyberattack or any war activities against Russia, we are going to use all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructure of an enemy.”

After the announcement, social media outlets and forums began to question if the group was working for the Russian government. The group responded by changing their warning:

    “As a response to Western warmongering and American threats to use cyber warfare against the citizens of the Russian Federation, The Conti Team is officially announcing that we will use our full capacity to deliver retaliatory measures in case the Western warmongers attempt to target critical infrastructure in Russa, or any Russian-speaking region of the world. We do not ally with any government, and we condemn the ongoing war. However, since the West is known to wage its wars primarily by targeting civilian, we will use our resources to strike back if the well-being and safety of peaceful citizens will be at stake due to American cyber aggression.”

As a result of this announcement from Conti, a Ukrainian citizen who had access to private files and chat messages from the Conti group leaked the files and chats via AnonFiles and linked to the files on Twitter. Subsequent reporting by cybersecurity reporters alleged that the person who leaked the files is a Ukrainian security researcher, not a threat actor. The fact that many threat groups comprise both Russian and Ukrainian members will likely lead to divisions and possibly additional leaks of threat intelligence information.
Anonymous Strikes Back

At the same time of this announcement, Anonymous claimed to have taken down several Russian sites and to have leaked a database to the Russian Ministry of Defense website. Users on Russian criminal forums claimed that the data was not from a recent breach and further discredited Anonymous. Following the Conti announcement, other groups posted their support for Russia. Most notably, the LockBit ransomware group posted a warning on Sunday threatening retaliation to anyone that launches a cyberattack at Russia.
Ransomware groups supporting Russian attack efforts

It is no surprise that ransomware groups are choosing to support Russia. Recently, Russian authorities began to crack down on cybercriminals residing in Russia. It was believed that these arrests that had previously gone unreported, were an act of good faith to improve Russia’s reputation globally prior to the invasion. Cybercriminals are likely hoping thattheir ability to operate with impunity will be restored due to the invasion in Ukraine. Although Conti has denied working directly with the Russian government and condemned their actions, it is certainly feasible that they are lying. Russian President Vladimir Putin could very well enlist the help of a hacker gang to carry out a cyberattack on the west. In doing so, he has plausible deniability that the attack was carried out by the Russian government and can publicly condemn the group in retaliatory actions.

Users on dark web forums are becoming increasingly more vocal of their support of Russia. With every action the west takes, it is believed that support will grow. Should the United States choose to conduct a cyberattack on Russian infrastructure, it will undoubtedly provoke Russia to retaliate. The bottom line comes down to three factors: how involved President Biden is willing to get, how long can President Putin maintain a kinetic war with Ukraine if outside countries are disrupting Russian infrastructure, and how long can Ukraine continue to stave off the Russian invaders.

Binary Defense analysts will continue to monitor forums for any updates on the situation.

https://binarydefense.com/dark-web-reactions-to-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/

Ignored Warnings: How NATO Expansion Led to the Current Ukraine Tragedy

History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions.



NATO Expansion — The Trigger for Russia’s Attack on Ukraine? – Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine is an act of aggression that will make already worrisome tensions between NATO and Moscow even more dangerous. The West’s new cold war with Russia has turned hot. Vladimir Putin bears primary responsibility for this latest development, but NATO’s arrogant, tone‐​deaf policy toward Russia over the past quarter‐​century deserves a large share as well. Analysts committed to a U.S. foreign policy of realism and restraint have warned for more than a quarter‐​century that continuing to expand the most powerful military alliance in history toward another major power would not end well. The war in Ukraine provides definitive confirmation that it did not.

Thinking Through the Ukraine Crisis — the Causes

“It would be extraordinarily difficult to expand NATO eastward without that action’s being viewed by Russia as unfriendly. Even the most modest schemes would bring the alliance to the borders of the old Soviet Union. Some of the more ambitious versions would have the alliance virtually surround the Russian Federation itself.” Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe’s Wars (p. 45). I wrote those words in 1994, at a time when expansion proposals merely constituted occasional speculation in foreign policy seminars in New York City and Washington, D.C. I added that expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia.”

What was not publicly known at the time was that Bill Clinton’s administration had already made the fateful decision the previous year to push for including some former Warsaw Pact countries in NATO. The administration would soon propose inviting Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to become members, and the U.S. Senate approved adding those countries to the North Atlantic Treaty in 1998. It would be the first of several waves of membership expansion.



Even that first stage provoked Russian opposition and anger. In her memoir, Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, concedes that “[Russian President Boris] Yeltsin and his countrymen were strongly opposed to enlargement, seeing it as a strategy for exploiting their vulnerability and moving Europe’s dividing line to the east, leaving them isolated.” Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott similarly described the Russian attitude. “Many Russians see NATO as a vestige of the cold war, inherently directed against their country. They point out that they have disbanded the Warsaw Pact, their military alliance, and ask why the West should not do the same.” It was an excellent question, and neither the Clinton administration nor its successors provided even a remotely convincing answer.

George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 2, 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion. ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

He was right, but U.S. and NATO leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had NATO perched on the border of the Russian Federation.

Moscow’s patience with NATO’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich Security Conference. “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. NATO expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

In his memoir, Duty, Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, stated his belief that “the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George H.W.] Bush left office in 1993.”Among other missteps, “U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”

The following year, the Kremlin demonstrated that its discontent with NATO’s continuing incursions into Russia’s security zone had moved beyond verbal objections. Moscow exploited a foolish provocation by Georgia’s pro‐​Western government to launch a military offensive that brought Russian troops to the outskirts of the capital. Thereafter, Russia permanently detached two secessionist‐​minded Georgian regions and put them under effective Russian control.

Western (especially U.S.) leaders continued to blow through red warning light after a red warning light, however. The Obama administration’s shockingly arrogant meddling in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s elected, pro‐​Russia president was the single most brazen provocation, and it caused tensions to spike. Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war was underway with a vengeance.

Could the Ukraine Crisis Have Been Avoided?

Events during the past few months constituted the last chance to avoid a hot war in Eastern Europe. Putin demanded that NATO provide guarantees on several security issues. Specifically, the Kremlin wanted binding assurances that the alliance would reduce the scope of its growing military presence in Eastern Europe and would never offer membership to Ukraine. He backed up those demands with a massive military buildup on Ukraine’s borders. The Biden administration’s response to Russia’s quest for meaningful Western concessions and security guarantees was tepid and evasive. Putin then clearly decided to escalate matters. Washington’s attempt to make Ukraine a NATO political and military pawn (even absent the country’s formal membership in the alliance) may end up costing the Ukrainian people dearly.

The Ukraine Tragedy

History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s myopia and arrogance.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/ignored-warnings-how-nato-expansion-led-current-ukraine-tragedy#

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Quote from: Blade of Grass on May 04, 2021, 08:15:21 am

LOL !!! I love stereo types.   No mono types for me, no....no.

But you just did

puzzle..."stereo types" not = to  "steriotypes"

I used to say only 90% were idiots, but I revised upwards over the last decade as 9/10 of the people I thought were not idiots in fact turned out to be so.

RE

Doesn't that make you one of those 1%'ers?

5/1/2021

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