As Part Of Its War On Encryption, Russia Briefly Blocks All Of Wikipedia Over One Weed Reference

from the just-say-no dept

Did you know you can occasionally find people discussing narcotics on the Internet? Russian Internet regulator Roskomnadzor (the Kremlin's "Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom Information Technologies and Mass Communications") is pretending to have only recently figured this out, and is working tirelessly to purge this naughty behavior from the Internet. Of course, they're ingeniously doing so in a way that breaks the Internet for everybody else, often taking entire websites offline simply because of one yahoo's heady pontifications on dope.

The country recently thought it would be a great idea to ban all of Reddit because of one thread on growing hallucinogenic mushrooms. Reddit complied and was unbanned after deleting the content, since complying with country-by-country censorship requests (sometimes reasonable, sometimes not) is something Reddit's ok with these days. This week, Russia briefly banned all of Wikipedia as well because of one entry on charas (an Indian version of hashish). Instead of censoring the entry in question (like Reddit), Wikipedia refused and only changed the URL of the entry so it technically adhered to Russian law:

"Wikipedia refused to comply with the request and instead made a small change to the URL of the charas hashish article, technically putting it in compliance with Russian law. The old page now features a list of seven different Wikipedia entries on the various meanings of the word “charas,” while the original text about charas hashish is completely intact, but is now accessible at a new URL on the encyclopedia's website."

As of yesterday, Roscomnadzor wasn't satisfied, saying it would (re-)ban all of Wikipedia. Unless, of course, the site was willing to make one notable change:

"Roscomnadzor's press-office also said they didn't intend to block the whole website, and would be able to only block the offending content and pages, provided Wikipedia's management “cooperated” and removed the HTTPS encryption protocol that puts the whole website in danger of being blocked."

So yeah, this isn't just another government being stupid and filter happy. Russia is filtering these websites under the authority embedded in a 2012 censorship law, whose purpose was purportedly to protect the children from the Internet's naughty bits. The bill's real purpose, of course, was to create an intentional, obfuscated slippery slope, designed specifically to aid in expanding control over the Internet. So Russia's sudden interest in playing pointless drug content Whac-a-mole is actually an attempt to reduce the overall use of encryption and make snooping easier:

"This is an important case because it’s part of the general offensive against https. Roskomnadzor and the FSB [security services] don’t know what to do with it,” said Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and author of Red Web, a book about the Russian internet. Soldatov said SORM, the system Russia uses for internet surveillance, does not work with the more secure https protocol, also used by sites such as Facebook and Gmail...

Soldatov speculated that the move against Wikipedia could be part of a test of another strategy: by threatening the site with bans over single pages, the site could be forced off https to ensure that the whole site is not affected when only one page is banned. Soldatov said: “There are two options for https: the first is to have access to the data before encryption, which explains the demand to store servers in Russia. The second is to try to force services to give up on https, which is what is happening with Wikipedia.”"

So basically, the Russian government is assaulting encryption, expanding Internet surveillance power and cracking down on critics -- under the pretense of protecting the children from bonghits. Remember, though, killing journalists, encouraging violent homophobia and pumping the Internet full of propaganda twenty-four hours a day are still on the recommended hobbies list in Putin's Russia.

Filed Under: censorship, drugs, encryption, free speech, russia
Companies: reddit, wikipedia

Ex-Kremlin Hired 'Troll' Wins One Ruble In Damages From Putin's Internet Propaganda Factory

from the propagandist-whac-a-mole dept

As we've been exploring, whistleblowers have been exposing Putin and the Kremlin's use of "troll factories" to fill the internet with propaganda. The efforts run amazingly deep, with employees paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation 24 hours a day. One of these employees, Lyudmila Savchuk, spent two months employed by the operation and was so disgusted that she quit, launched an anti-propaganda social activist campaign, and decided to sue the Russian government.

Amazingly enough Lyudmila Savchuk is not only still alive, but she has won her case. A Russian court has awarded Savchuk symbolic damages of one ruble, her requested damage amount after suing the disinformation barn for non-payment of wages and for failing to give workers proper contracts:

"I am very happy with this victory. I achieved my aim, which was to bring the internet trolls out of the shade," said Savchuk, 34. The Kremlin has claimed that it has no links to the operations of the Agency for Internet Studies. Authorities in Russia have intensified a propaganda campaign as the crisis over Ukraine has sent tensions with the west soaring to their highest level since the cold war.

So yes, Savchuk managed to bring a small portion of one of Putin's companies involved in propaganda (Agency for Internet Studies, or Internet Research) out of the shadows briefly. But the Russian government continues to deny they've any connection to the operation, and the company itself continues to operate unfettered, as do the myriad other similar companies the Kremlin employs to pollute the global discourse mud puddle.

Case in point: as Russia waits for the report on what caused the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the Ukraine last year (investigators believe the downing missile was Russian made, and the report is expected to show it was fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels), a rather ham-fisted attempt to blame the CIA for the crash has been circulating online ahead of the report's release:

"A Russian newspaper posted an audiotape on its website that purports to reveal two US spies plotting to bring down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine last year. One hitch: The conversations are so stilted and oddly worded that they have been widely dismissed by native English speakers as obviously fake. "If you wanted to believe the CIA is responsible for downing MH17, now you've got the 'proof,'" the self-exiled Russian online newspaper Meduza headlined its report pointing out the awkward language used by the purported spies.

The recording itself certainly sounds as if two sad actors are simply reading from a poorly-translated English script:Of course any Russian internet propagandist worth their salt will probably conclude that this ham-fisted attempt to frame the CIA was cleverly devised by the CIA itself as a sort of reverse head fake (and since the CIA has done numerous stranger things, many might even believe it). Either way, the point stands: while Savchuk may have bravely succeeded in winning one small battle against Putin's propaganda army, it's only the tiniest of dents in what's now a well-established Russian internet disinformation apparatus.

Filed Under: internet trolls, lyudmila savchuk, propaganda, russia, russian trolls

Russia Threatens To Ban All Of Reddit Because Of A Single, Unspecified Drug-Related Thread

from the slippery-slope-into-the-pond-of-stupidity dept

Russian regulators in charge of the company's absurdly aggressive Internet filters have threatened to ban Reddit if the website doesn't remove a single, unspecified thread from the website. In an announcement posted to Russian social networking website VKontakte, Russian regulator Roskomnadzor (the Kremlin's "Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom Information Technologies and Mass Communications") proclaims that they've tried to reach Reddit administrators about the thread, but found them unresponsive to complaints during the "relaxed" summer months.

This sort of behavior isn't new for Russia, which passed a new law back in 2012 to "protect children" from the menace of a healthy, uncensored Internet. The law has since been used to block Live Journal, censor Wikipedia entries on "smoking cannabis," quash criticism of the Putin Administration, censor journalists, and most recently block all access to the Wayback Machine.

In this latest scuff up, Roskomnadzor proclaims that because a single thread discussing the "cultivation of narcotic plants" caught the eye of the Russia's Federal Drug Control Service, the entire site will simply have to be blocked (Google translate):

"Notifications to the requirement to remove the information sent to multiple addresses resource, but no response is still not forthcoming, although earlier treatment from us in the administration treated full. We assume that during the August holidays someone is too relaxed, but this should not be a reason to venture readership. Those who have contacts with the administration - ask them to check their mail for letters from Roskomnadzor otherwise due the technical features of a number of operators may block the entire site."

The post is also accompanied by this graphic in the apparent hopes of making censorship quirky and fun!Just so it's clear, the Russian government can staff warehouses full of professional disinformation and propaganda employees who'll fill the Internet with bullshit twenty four hours a day, but talking about marijuana is just taking things too damn far!

Filed Under: censorship, filter, free speech, russia
Companies: reddit

Yeah, Russia Probably Forged A Weapons Cache Supposedly From The US Using A Video Game To Model The Weapons

from the fake-it-til-you-make-it dept

Video games are starting to get realistic. Like, crazy realistic. Between what graphics look like on the latest hardware to the unbelievable committment to authenticity many of the latest games have, it's starting to get hard to tell game footage apart from video footage. So hard, in fact, that it appears the pro-Russian groups had an "oopsie!" moment while trying to accuse America of arming Ukrainian rebels with Stinger missiles.

A video from Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists...shows the rebels storming an underground compound and dusting off a wooden case with a "US army" inscription, where a the MANPADS Stinger 92 surface-to-air missile is stored.

Here's a screenshot from the video, showing the Stinger missile in question.
Notice anything strange? Unless you're familiar with American military equipment, you might have missed the lettering at the bottom of the device that reads "TRACKING RAINER." You probably also aren't aware that the actual American Stinger missiles have that same lettering, except that it's supposed to read "TRACKING TRAINER" instead. Between that and several other translation errors in the video, the general consensus is that the whole thing was cooked up by pro-Russians trying to make it look like America is sending weapons to the Ukraine (which we still might be) by creating mockups of the weapons and passing them off as the real thing. The next obvious question is what caused the pro-Russian groups to make the translation mistake on the Stinger missile in their video and what they used as a basis to model their mockup after? The answer is, of course, video games.

The most significant mistake is found in the inscription on the Stinger weapon itself, which reads "tracking rainer" instead of "tracking trainer". Video games blogger Anton Logvinov noted on his website that the same typo occurs in the EA first-person shooter game Battlefield 3, leading him to believe that the Stinger 'discovered' in Lugansk is likely fake.

Russian propaganda: so good it very nearly fooled a video game blogger! We will, as always, welcome our friends from the Putin internet propaganda brigade in our comments section.

Filed Under: battlefield 3, propaganda, russia, stinger missiles, ukraine, video games, weapons cache

Putin Aide, Apparently Non-Ironically, Gives Facebook A Lecture On Free Speech

from the pots,-kettles,-and-more-pots dept

As everybody knows, Vladimir Putin simply adores free speech. That's made perfectly clear every time a political challenger winds up mysteriously murdered on a Moscow street, or any time his massive, manufactured troll army shouts down those critical of Russian policies on the Internet. It's made repeatedly clear in percussive fashion each and every time an outspoken journalist winds up mysteriously murdered for simply asking questions, and it's abundantly clear from the 10,000 or so websites the Russian government aggressively filters.

Like so many of his international mega-nation contemporaries, free speech is kind of Putin's thing.

So without the slightest whiff of hypocrisy it should be unsurprising for many people to learn that Putin and friends think Facebook's a little heavy handed on the free speech front. Putin aide Igor Shchegolev is urging Russians to abandon Facebook after the social media website deleted a number of posts containing the word "khokhol" -- which in certain context can be used insultingly to suggest Ukranians are backward peasants. This is, says an administration that thinks assassination an acceptable conversation and debate tactic, wholly unacceptable:

"Senior officials are urging their countrymen to abandon Facebook in favor of domestic social media, saying that the latter offer greater freedom of speech, after Mark Zuckerberg’s firm deleted a string of posts containing a slang Russian term for Ukrainians...The news agency ITAR-TASS reported Igor Shchegolev, an aide to President Vladimir Putin as saying that switching to rivals like Vkontakte would help users avoid having their content blocked."

Russia's relationship with Facebook was already strained after the website temporarily suspended the accounts of Kremlin media watchdog Maxim Ksenzov, and pro-Putin writer Eduard Bagirov. Of course that's not to say Facebook isn't equally awful when it comes to free speech. While Facebook says it deletes the word because it can be used as an ethnic slang, "Khokhol" can also be used to describe a specific haircut and isn't always used as an insult. According to the Russian Times, Russians have been having a very good time highlighting the stupidity of Facebook's inconsistent policies:

"Intrigued by the phenomenon, Russian journalists and bloggers began to experiment with testing Facebook's limits, deliberately using the word khokhly in their posts. Last week Facebook issued a one-week block of journalist Maxim Kononenko's page for posting a poem by Alexander Pushkin, a man widely considered to be Russia's greatest poet, containing the word khokhly."

Meanwhile, Russian Facebook equivalent Vkontakte was quick to welcome annoyed users into the fold:

Готовы принять всех заблокированных на Фейсбуке пользователей — добро пожаловать! Снова :)

— George Lobushkin (@lobushkin) July 7, 2015

"We're ready to accept all the blocked Facebook users. Welcome! Again :)"

Perhaps Putin's government and Facebook can somehow make up and join forces to create a global super-storm of censorship and incompetence? Imagine the possibilities of somehow combining Facebook's love of overly-curated and blandly-unoffensive walled gardens, with Putin's utterly brutal love of censorship and murder. Surely there's an amazing new business model buried somewhere therein.

Filed Under: free speech, khokhol, russia, surveillance, ukraine, vladimir putin
Companies: facebook, vk, vkontakte

Russian PSA: Quit It With The Selfies If You Want To Live

from the in-mother-russia-selfie-takes-you dept

The global war on selfies continues on. The first salvo was launched here in America, with many institutions banning selfie sticks for any number of reasons (mostly safety). But our inoculation has failed and the scourge of the selfie has spread to Mother Russia, infecting the youth there at what is apparently insane levels, considering some of the suggestions in this Russian pamphlet detailing how not to die for a sweet selfie.

Now, I don't speak Russian, so I'm relying on the pictures and some translation work done by Gawker here, but the lesson I'm learning from this message from the Russian government is that the Russian people are awesome. Are there, for instance, Russians popping wheelies on their boats while taking selfies? Are they regularly reaching out to pet Siberian tigers with a camera phone in their other hand? Are they train dodging while selfie-ing?!? If so, the Russian youth are exactly my kind of awesome.

The Russian government, of course, disagrees.

That warning comes after a string of recent selfie-related accidents. In May, a 21-year-old woman accidentally shot herself in the head in Moscow while taking a selfie holding a pistol. She suffered injuries but survived. In January, two young men died in the Urals while taking a selfie holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. The mobile phone with the selfie survived as a record. In May, a teenager in the Ryazan region died while attempting to photograph himself as he climbed on a railway bridge and accidentally came into contact with live electrical wires.

“Unfortunately we have noted recently that the number of accidents caused by lovers of self-photography is constantly increasing,” said Yelena Alexeyeva, an aide to the interior minister. “Since the beginning of the year we are talking about some hundred cases of injuries for sure.”

And apparently the cure for the Russian selfie scourge is bland government pamphlets that include such memorably punchy lines as, "A selfie in the street? You may catch more than clicks", and, "Selfie on the roof -- it'll be a high fall." If these are the best tools we have in the war on the selfie, it's probably just better that we all admit defeat and embrace the sweet death that will come upon us soon. The only question now is how to get a sweet selfie of myself dying from getting a sweet selfie?

Filed Under: psa, russia, selfies

Russia Blocks The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine Over A Single Page

from the keep-history-buried dept

Over the last few years, Russia has really been ramping up its efforts to censor the internet to hide content it doesn't like. As is often the case when the government gets the power to censor, that censorship starts spreading farther and farther.

The latest? Apparently in the effort to hide a single archive of a site that the Russian government doesn't like, the entire "Wayback Machine" from the Internet Archive has been blocked:

The Russian government has blocked the Internet Archive, the San-Francisco-based website that provides the popular Wayback Machine, which allows users to view archived webpages. The decision to ban the Internet Archive appears to be the work of Russia's Attorney General, meaning that police determined that the website contains extremist content.

Rublacklist.net says police targeted the Internet Archive because of a saved webpage called “Solitary Jihad in Russia,” a short text that claims to offer information about the “theory and practice of partisan resistance.” At one point, the text states that Islamic sharia law “must be instituted all across the world.”

According to the website Rublacklist.net (a censorship-monitoring project operated by the Russian Pirate Party), the page in question* on the Internet Archive was added to Russia's official registry of banned websites on June 23, 2015. Because the Internet Archive uses https, some Russian ISPs will have to block the entire website in order to comply with the blacklisting, since encrypted traffic won't allow them to differentiate between different pages of the same site. According to TJournal, users of mobile Internet provider Yota were unable to access the page, the Wayback Machine, or the Internet Archive on June 25.

As you hopefully already know, the Wayback Machine is a tremendously useful tool for looking up archived versions of websites. It is a kind of library of our internet history. Of course, as the article at Global Voices notes, part of the reason the entire site is getting blocked is due to the use of HTTPS. While some might argue that this is a reason why sites shouldn't go to default HTTPS, I'd argued the opposite: it shows the value in HTTPS in that it makes censorship much more difficult such that when it occurs, the results are so ridiculous that it hopefully leads to greater pushback on the ridiculous attempts to censor.

Filed Under: censorship, extremism, filters, https, internet, russia, wayback machine
Companies: internet archive

Russia's Internet Propaganda Farm Is Being Dragged To Court For Labor Violations

from the these-are-not-the-droids-you're-looking-for dept

While propaganda is everywhere, we've been exploring lately how Putin's Russia has been taking Internet disinformation to an entirely new level. Numerous whistleblowers and media reports have spent the last year or so unearthing Russian Internet propaganda factories, where armies of sockpuppets get paid 40,000 to 50,000 rubles ($800 to $1,000) a month to create proxied, viable, fake personas -- specifically tasked with pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation twenty-four hours a day.

Unlike some similar campaigns by the U.S. Russia originally didn't try very hard to hide these operations' existence, but that's already changing. As numerous writers have discovered (myself included), even pointing out that these operations exist will grab you a heaping helping of anonymous troll scorn. If you still haven't perused it, this recent New York Times Magazine breakdown of Russia's troll armies is essential reading.

In light of Putin's not-so-gentle treatment of critics, the bravery some of the program's whistleblowers continues to be impressive. Lyudmila Savchuk worked at the Russian Internet bile factory for two months, ultimately leaving after finding the work morally repugnant. She's since been leaking a treasure trove of information about the program, including clandestine videos showing some of the program employees at work. She's also spearheading a lawsuit against The Agency for Internet Studies, which was finally dragged into court this week after missing the first court hearing.

The company's specifically being sued for underpayment and a number of labor violations, since it unsurprisingly wasn't keen on providing employees with traditionally-necessary paperwork. Amusingly, a representative for "The Agency" hoped to settle with Savchuk, but she's apparently having none of it:

"The agency is now seeking to avoid public scrutiny by offering to compensate her. Yekaterina Nazarova, defending, told the Petrogradsky district court judge the agency was ready to settle with Savchuk, who had asked for a symbolic sum of 10,000 roubles (£118). Nazarova offered to wire the sum to Savchuk’s account, then quickly left the court without speaking to the press.

Savchuk said: “I am very pleased, they pretended they don’t exist at all and now they have come out of the shadows for the first time – we saw their representative. But I will feel that I won only after the troll factory closes completely."

The problem is that the operation Savchuk's trying to shut down operates under a spiderweb of various companies with an endless variety of names across numerous different industries (including construction) -- all of which are protected by the Russian government. As such, it's going to be a Sisyphean and dangerous game of legal whac-a-mole; one you'd hope Savchuk survives.

Filed Under: internet, internet trolls, labor violations, lyudmila savchuk, propaganda, russia, trolls, vladimir putin

Will Corporate Sovereignty Disputes Lead To Wars One Day?

from the even-if-they-don't,-they-hardly-promote-peace dept

Last August, we wrote about the most egregious corporate sovereignty award (so far): $50 billion against Russia, under a treaty that it never even ratified, in favor of the major shareholders of the Yukos oil company. Of course, as everyone pointed out, being awarded $50 billion was one thing, collecting it, quite another. Most people probably assumed that it would be practically impossible to squeeze that money out of a recalcitrant Russia, but we now learn that some serious steps towards that goal have recently been taken, as reported by Der Spiegel (original in German). In Belgium, the bank accounts of the Russian embassy were frozen, as were those of Russia's EU and NATO missions, while in France, something similar happened, with Russian accounts blocked at 40 banks.

Understandably, this did not go down well with the Russian government. The country's deputy foreign minister warned, "whoever dares to do that must understand that it will lead to reprisals," something his boss, Sergei Lavrov echoed. Meanwhile, Lavrov's own boss, Vladimir Putin, was also well aware of the situation, and was quoted as saying: "we will defend our interests using legal means."

A story on France 24 reports that Russia has already threatened to retaliate against state-linked foreign firms operating in the country, so that's one way that things could escalate. But more seriously, the relations between Russia and EU nations are extremely strained over the conflict in eastern Ukraine; the last thing the situation needs is additional tension caused by arguments over a massive fine. Even if corporate sovereignty doesn't actually cause a war -- well, let's hope not -- the Yukos award may turn into a hindrance to resolving an existing conflict. That's yet another reason to get rid of the whole deeply-flawed system before it causes more serious damage.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: belgium, corporate sovereignty, france, frozen assets, isds, russia, trade wars, vladimir putin, war
Companies: yukos

Bruce Schneier: Sure, Russia & China Probably Have The Snowden Docs... But Not Because Of Snowden

from the because-espionage dept

Given all the fuss over the ridiculous article this past weekend -- which has since been confirmed as government stenography rather than actual reporting -- security maven Bruce Schneier has written up an article making a key point. It's quite likely that the underlying point in the article -- that Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have access to the documents that Snowden originally handed over to reporters -- is absolutely true. But, much more importantly, he argues, the reason likely has almost nothing to do with Snowden.

First, he notes, it's quite likely that Snowden -- as he has said -- no longer has access to the documents. But other people do. And they're not as knowledgeable about encryption and spycraft as Snowden is.

First, the journalists working with the documents. I’ve handled some of the Snowden documents myself, and even though I’m a paranoid cryptographer, I know how difficult it is to maintain perfect security. It’s been open season on the computers of the journalists Snowden shared documents with since this story broke in July 2013. And while they have been taking extraordinary pains to secure those computers, it’s almost certainly not enough to keep out the world’s intelligence services.

There is a lot of evidence for this belief. We know from other top-secret NSA documents that as far back as 2008, the agency’s Tailored Access Operations group has extraordinary capabilities to hack into and “exfiltrate” data from specific computers, even if those computers are highly secured and not connected to the Internet.

These NSA capabilities are not unique, and it’s reasonable to assume both that other countries had similar capabilities in 2008 and that everyone has improved their attack techniques in the seven years since then.

But, the second point is an even bigger one, which is that it's highly likely that Russian and Chinese intelligence got these documents long before Snowden gave them to the press, because that's what spies do.

Which brings me to the second potential source of these documents to foreign intelligence agencies: the US and UK governments themselves. I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they’ve penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside. After all, the NSA has been a prime target for decades.

Those government hacking examples above were against unclassified networks, but the nation-state techniques we’re seeing work against classified and unconnected networks as well. In general, it’s far easier to attack a network than it is to defend the same network. This isn’t a statement about willpower or budget; it’s how computer and network security work today. A former NSA deputy director recently said that if we were to score cyber the way we score soccer, the tally would be 462–456 twenty minutes into the game. In other words, it’s all offense and no defense.

In this kind of environment, we simply have to assume that even our classified networks have been penetrated. Remember that Snowden was able to wander through the NSA’s networks with impunity, and that the agency had so few controls in place that the only way they can guess what has been taken is to extrapolate based on what has been published. Does anyone believe that Snowden was the first to take advantage of that lax security? I don’t.

Remember, this is the same government that's now reeling from the Chinese hacking of OPM getting all the secrets of government employees, including those with security clearances. It was a hack so impressive that even Michael Hayden -- former CIA and NSA boss -- can't hide his appreciation of the work that was done. Hayden called it "honorable espionage work" by the Chinese and further notes that he "would not have thought twice" if he had the ability to get the same info from the Chinese.

These are the games that intelligence agencies play all the time. Schneier's piece has a lot more in it, but the idea that the Russians and Chinese learned anything particularly new or useful from the Snowden documents -- or that they even got them from Snowden's document dump -- seems quite dubious.

Filed Under: bruce schneier, china, encryption, espionage, michael hayden, russia, snowden documents