UK Ready To Launch Retaliatory Cyber-attacks on Russia, Defence Secretary Says (yahoo.com) 144
The UK is ready to launch cyber attacks on Russia if Moscow targets Britain's computer networks after a Ukraine invasion, the defence secretary has threatened. The Independent: In a Commons statement, Ben Wallace pointed to the "offensive cyber capability" the UK is already developing from a base in the north west of England. "I'm a soldier -- I was always taught the best part of defence is offence," he told an MP who urged him to "give as good as we get back to Russia" if necessary. Mr Wallace also stepped up UK threats by saying sanctions will be imposed for aggression that stops short of crossing the Ukraine border -- amid criticism they have not yet been used.
Russian companies with links to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin's regime will be targeted if, for example, a no-fly zone is imposed in Ukraine, or ports blockaded "Many of these aggressive moves -- like a no-fly zone, a blockade to free trade -- would absolutely warrant a response ranging from sanctions and others," the defence secretary said. "Russia should be under no illusion that threatening the integrity of a sovereign nation, whether that is in the air or on the sea, is exactly the same as threatening it on the land." Sanctions have not yet been imposed in order to coordinate with the European Union, which has yet to announce what its package will be, Mr Wallace suggested.
Russian companies with links to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin's regime will be targeted if, for example, a no-fly zone is imposed in Ukraine, or ports blockaded "Many of these aggressive moves -- like a no-fly zone, a blockade to free trade -- would absolutely warrant a response ranging from sanctions and others," the defence secretary said. "Russia should be under no illusion that threatening the integrity of a sovereign nation, whether that is in the air or on the sea, is exactly the same as threatening it on the land." Sanctions have not yet been imposed in order to coordinate with the European Union, which has yet to announce what its package will be, Mr Wallace suggested.
How does this work anyway? (Score:1)
I kind of don't get how this works, insofar as there are edge routers where you can black-hole all packets from Russia at virtually no cost, ie, the router shouldn't even break a sweat. Of course I'm predicating this on the notion that we don't really need to route packets from Russia, except perhaps for a select few that are white-listed such as the connection from your embassy, businesses that have paid to maintain VPNs, etc.
In other words, why does anybody in the UK need to allow arbitrary access from
Re: How does this work anyway? (Score:1)
Boris is just pissed off he wasn't invited to some easter party at the russian embassy
Re: How does this work anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
Boris is just pissed off he wasn't invited to some easter party at the russian embassy
That's not the problem, they invited him, but just said he had to follow some rules and that means he couldn't go.
Re: How does this work anyway? (Score:2)
Yes, rules.
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Was he overseeing peace-keeping forces in the breakaway Republic of Northern Ireland at the time?
Don't be silly. Doing something like that would involve work, effort and possibly even thinking. Anyway, he hasn't yet driven then to break-away (from the UK). You have to give him some time.
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"In other words, why does anybody in the UK need to allow arbitrary access from random Russian IPs?"
The Russians want to send an email that the UK is late on their £5 billion gas bill.
Re:How does this work anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
there are edge routers where you can black-hole all packets from Russia at virtually no cost, ie, the router shouldn't even break a sweat.
Serious answer to your question - most attacks that are directed by Russia will not appear to come from Russian IP addresses. Generally you attack from servers and routers you have compromised in other countries - this is an advantage because, apart from making it more difficult to block it also makes it more difficult to work out who's attacking you ("attribution").
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Do you think they have an appropriately well scripted "dead man switch" already setup? /8 IP blackholing to send commands out?
Or there are enough ways around a mass
There are plenty of countries which are "friendly" to both Russsia and the USA - e.g. China, Kyrgistan or India, which the USA used to reject in favour of Pakistan - which give them a huge hole to drop through, even if they don't launch any attacks from there. The USA has too many trade connections with e.g. China or India to consider cutting them off anywhere near the beginning of any conflict.
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They'd use zombies, machines they have sysadmin access to that they can run arbitrary code on. Of course, the defence secretary is now now stating that Britain has ALSO compromised perfectly innocent machines to form their own State-run zombie network. There's no other way they could do it, since Russia could also shut down all packets from the UK.
And since the UK government is in the UK, this places the UK government in contravention of the Computer Misuse Act by their own admission. Even if we knew they p
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and just unplug critical infrastructure from the internet - it shouldn't be in the first place. 'telecommuting' is not a valid reason for the risk.
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What makes you think russian hackers would originate from russian address space?
There are MANY ways in which hackers working for the russian government could originate from other places, and plenty of reasons why they would do exactly that.
How about sanctions now? (Score:5, Insightful)
sanctions will be imposed for aggression that stops short of crossing the Ukraine border
Vlad just said he would recognize the terrorist-held regions of Eastern Ukraine [marketwatch.com], the ones his army forcibly took from Ukraine. Considering Russia has already crossed Ukraine's border, is effectively blockading its ports, has mounted cyber attacks against the country, does that mean sactions will be imposed for these aggressions?
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We have drawn a line in the sand. Cross it and we shall draw another.
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The irony is that Russia, especially its leaders, spend so much damn time accusing everyone else of being fascist. And yet here is Putin essentially asking for "lebensraum" and invading/controlling regions where may residents speak native Russian; it's is Hitler's playbook being repeated. Either he's too stupid to see the parallels or he doesn't care.
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Those rebels were backed by Russian soldiers, on orders from the Kremlin, which the Kremlin denies. Just like they denied having soldiers in Crimea. Russia is a dictatorship, clearly and plainly, and Ukraine is a democracy who has voted against being a puppet state of Russia. Just because some citizens in eastern Ukraine speak Russian does not mean that they are Russian citizens or that Russia can move it's troops in. Those rebels lobbed plenty of shells of their own, they have driven out residents from
Re:How about sanctions now? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Terrorist-held"? The area has always considered itself part of Russia, Russia has even had a naval base there for like 400 years. How long have you been studying Crimea? How do you know what's better for these people than they do?
No, the area has not "always" considered itself part of Russia. There might be people who still speak Russian in the region, but they are not part of Russia.
As for the naval base, so what about history? Ukraine is a sovereign nation. It's their naval base since it's in their country.
And what people are you talking about? You mean the little green men (i.e. Russian soldiers) who invaded Ukraine and put out a fake "election"? The people in the terrorist-held territories are miserable. They aren't allowed to speak openly, can't vote for whom they want, electricity only works a few hours each day, medical services are effectively non-existent, and the people have to rely on handouts because the terrorists are so ineptly running the place.
And this is why Russia will invade Ukraine. They see how the rest of Ukraine is prospering, how it's open to democratic principles, how the people want to embrace the West. And that can't happen because it will show what a shitshow the Russian people live under compared to their "brothers" in Ukraine.
Re: How about sanctions now? (Score:3)
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Re: "It's their naval base since it's in their country." - Maybe you could try that argument with the Pentagon, which has at least 600 military bases in 80 countries. See how far you get.
Funny how the U.S. has either asked those countries if there could be military bases there or those countries invited the U.S. to have military bases there.
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Like Cuba's Guantanamo Bay?
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Yes, actually. The US still pays rent for Guantanamo Bay, too.
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Hmm. As of this timestamp it looks like the little green men are doing their thing again. As predicted by many.
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Hmm. As of this timestamp it looks like the little green men are doing their thing again. As predicted by many.
Yup. The graveyard shift in St. Petersburg is alive and well after their daily payment of vodka from uncle Vlad. They're working fast and furious to spread their lies.
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Ukraine prospering? Their GDP is shit. Their GDP/capita is one of the lowest in East Europe. It's lower than Russia. It's lower than Belarus even. LOL where have you been getting your news and info from?
I do remember when I was visiting relatives in Belarus back in 2002 (Lukashenko was in power for 8 years and all), and when asking about the relatives living in Ukraine (from the ones who travelled there).. The comments I heard always included something like "ohh, situation is difficult in Ukraine".
Economical situation Belarus was far, way far, from great. But it made me wonder how a country with so many natural resources like Ukraine could be worse than Belarus, which has almost nothing (peat? sand?).
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russia since 1300's held it and it was only world war 2s end that saw them for beaucracies sake include it into ukraine
you want ukraine to not be part of russia DONT PUT MISSLES THERE AS PART A NATO
simple a buffer zone
Ukraine is a sovereign country and can do what they want. If they want NATO to put missiles on their territory, that is their right to do so. Just like Russia keeps claiming they can mobilize 150,000 of its troops and put them in a combat ready state on their lands.
What's good for one is good for another.
Re:oh shove off about crimea (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as the USA had no objections to the USSR placing missiles in Cuba in 1962.
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Just as the USA had no objections to the USSR placing missiles in Cuba in 1962.
Remember how Ukraine had Nukes and gave them up in exchange for assurances that Russia would never invade them?
It didn't even take Russia 20 years to stab them in the back.
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Remember how the US and the West promised that NATO would not go one inch east?
Nope. There was maybe some informal assurances between diplomats at the time but even that seems vague and in dispute.
But it's clear that no formal promise was made.
The memorandum was just that, non-binding, just as the US and the West promises are said to be non-binding.
It sounds binding enough [wikipedia.org], and Putin reaffirmed it just 5 years prior to the invasion. Putin's defence for violating it seemed to rely on the idea that the 2014 Ukraine was somehow a different country they didn't have any memorandum with, and the Russian Foreign Minister simply lied about the contents of the memorandum.
But neither claimed it was
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So America was wrong to threaten WWIII over the missiles in sovereign Cuba.
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Apparently, Putin does not even think Ukraine has the right to elect a leader who is not a Russian puppet. The thing that Putin seems to hate more than anything in the world are the colored revolutions; ie, the orange revolution that kicked out the puppet who stole so much of Ukraine's money (and leaving behind an absurdly lavish presidential "palace" that would have made Lois XIV jealous).
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Israel, with the USA's full approval and encouragement, has been bombing Syria and Lebanon for years "to destroy Iranian forces and weapons that might be used against Israel".
So obviously Russia would be fully within its rights to use any and all weapons to destroy hostile forces in Ukraine.
Re:oh shove off about crimea (Score:4, Insightful)
So obviously Russia would be fully within its rights to use any and all weapons to destroy hostile forces in Ukraine.
What hostile forces? Has Ukraine ever attacked Russia? Has Ukraine ever prepared to attack Russia? Has Ukraine funded anyone else to attack Russia?
At least make effort to have some kind of coherent excuse for Russia attacking its neighbor. It's like you're not even trying.
And P.S., I don't approve of Israel attacking its neighbors, either. It's why I boycott them.
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Not really seeing how having a defense system installed = physical attack...not doubted. If that was the case then it would seem that any country with any sort of defenses could be attacked for simply having them. History has shown us that this doesn't happen.
Yes, this checks out against Putin's plan (Score:3)
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Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)
The west sanctioned Russia after Putin invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, annexing one and setting the other up as a proxy Republic.
Now, by all appearances, Putin has already decided to invade Ukraine again. Why? Because Putin has decided the prize of Crimea and the puppet states was worth the cost of sanctions last time, so logically whatever he gets this time will be worth the cost of sanctions again.
The policy implications to this should be obvious. Don't threaten to sanction Putin after he invades Ukraine again, instead, start sanctioning Putin before he starts the invasion and keep adding more sanctions until he backs down.
If he thinks the prize is worth the cost then increase the cost until he changes his mind.
Obviously there's big diplomatic obstacles to this (Germany seems sadly indifferent) but there should be consequences for holding a gun to another nation's head even before you pull the trigger.
Re:Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't threaten to sanction Putin after he invades Ukraine again, instead, start sanctioning Putin before he starts the invasion and keep adding more sanctions until he backs down.
Germany ceasing to buy oil and natural gas from Russia would be a good start.
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Very realistic. Of course it assume the maintenance of nuclear reactors, rather than shutting them down to appease ideologues.
Nevertheless, US can provide LNG and Saudis the oil. Yes, at higher price. Such is the cost of self determination.
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Germany ceasing to buy oil and natural gas from Russia would be a good start.
That would take some serious political will. While the impact on the Russian economy would be pretty bad, ceasing to buy Russian gas would do serious damage to the German economy, as well--"devastating" might not be overstating things. Depending on whatever source you want to use, Germany gets between 35-75% of it's natural gas from Russia, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious replacement supplier. I don't know that the Germans feel strongly enough about Ukraine to actually take that hit.
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The effect on the Russian economy would be nil - or perhaps a slight boost in the longer term. Try it and see.
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That will probably happen; it will harm only Germany. Russia can sell all the oil and gas it can produce to Asian countries, especially China. Moreover they pay well and don't cause trouble.
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That will probably happen; it will harm only Germany. Russia can sell all the oil and gas it can produce to Asian countries, especially China. Moreover they pay well and don't cause trouble.
In the future sure, but not now, I don't think they have the pipeline capacity to get it there.
Moreover, the biggest benefit of Russia selling gas to the EU is leverage, but actually shutting off the supply forces them to find alternatives and destroys your leverage.
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Russia can sell all the oil and gas it can produce to Asian countries, especially China. Moreover they pay well and don't cause trouble.
China maybe. The rest can probably be threatened with sanctions themselves not to.
How many places still took Iranian oil when America said no?
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Like, where do you get the idea that sanctions accomplish anything? Did Obama not sanction Russia as much as he could? And did Trump not do 46 rounds of sanctions on Russia during his 48 months of presidency? Did that change anything? Can you find one example of sanctions actually accomplishing a policy change hoped for?
Sanctions are nothing but virtue signalling. We have to do something! This is something! Something has been done! The most important effects of sanctions with regard to the sanctee are that
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The US and the UK would have said "oh no, not WMD's! Those things are really scary. Remember when Iraq had some? We had no choice but to invade".
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It's about NATO. Ukraine joining NATO would be very bad for Russia.
When the USSR fell the Warsaw Pact was disbanded too. NATO wasn't. There are three ways this could be resolved.
1. Disbanded NATO.
2. Promise that Ukraine will never join NATO.
3. Let Russia join NATO.
Since those things aren't going to happen, we have this situation that is basically impossible to resolve. All we can hope is that Putin isn't willing to start a war, and keep reminding him how bad it will be for Russia. Problem is that Putin can'
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Ukraine has never asked to join NATO, and NATO members have never asked Ukraine to join. Why Putin is worrying about this mythical bogeyman is confusing; if anything he's the one applying pressure on Ukraine to find allies to the west as he's proving that their enemies are on the border to the east.
Putin's speech about Ukraine never being a real county is just absurd nonsense. How many of the Russian citizens are going to believe this nonsense? It's just as stupidly idiotic as China claiming the South Chin
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Ukraine has never asked to join NATO, and NATO members have never asked Ukraine to join. Why Putin is worrying about this mythical bogeyman is confusing; if anything he's the one applying pressure on Ukraine to find allies to the west as he's proving that their enemies are on the border to the east.
Putin's speech about Ukraine never being a real county is just absurd nonsense. How many of the Russian citizens are going to believe this nonsense? It's just as stupidly idiotic as China claiming the South China seas as their own or saying Tibet has "always" been a part of China.
Ukraine wants to join NATO [wikipedia.org] and though NATO members have said favourable things they've never started the process (nor is there any indication they're about to).
Of course, Ukraine being part of NATO is zero threat to Russia, but it does make it a lot harder for Russia to run it as a puppet state.
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Ukraine joining NATO would be very bad for Russia.
Very bad only in as much as it would be very bad for Russia if they can't easily invade their neighbours.
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And if he calls our bluff?
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The policy implications to this should be obvious. Don't threaten to sanction Putin after he invades Ukraine again, instead, start sanctioning Putin before he starts the invasion and keep adding more sanctions until he backs down.
If you're already suffering from the sanctions. Why not just do the thing that's causing the sanctions anyway? Are you going to get extra extra sanctioned with a cherry on top?
Putin is just going to claim Ukraine is the aggressor, the whole world is ganging up with sanctions. And he's the only one who can defend Mother Russia. Wave the flag a little. Russian hero. Not his fault. He was backed into a corner and had no choice.
Sometimes costs are unimposable (Score:2)
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It is of course important to note that Putin may not in fact be planning to invade Ukraine. That it might all be a big bluff with the goal of extracting some concessions and avoiding sanctions when he recognized the puppet states he set up in East Ukraine. There's a number of reasons to think this is true:
1) Western leaders are motivated to overplay the probability of invasion since the lack of invasion becomes a political win.
2) Ukrainians seem to think Putin is bluffing, they'd pay the highest price for b
Re: Too Late (Score:2)
You said it. I'd also add - maybe stop financing factories in china and the moan about it.
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we've financed the buildup of China, at the expense of domestic business. We let people in horrible conditions compete with our workplaces that have to meet standards.
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It's amazing how many /. readers have become experts in X overnight
Open Fox News /.
Search X
Copy
Open
Paste
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"Reliable US intelligence sources" is an oxymoron. The US government's "intelligence" has been based on its predetermined policies for decades.
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An invasion of Russia from Alaska would be difficult and would cost a lot of lives. Then what? The invading force would have thousands of kilometres of extremely harsh terrain to cross before reaching anywhere significant. With the Russian armed forces controlling the air.
Carrier battle groups! That is a joke. If a war starts, they will be parked on the seabed within minutes.
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Carrier battle groups! That is a joke. If a war starts, they will be parked on the seabed within minutes.
With what? The only aircraft carrier Russia has is on the other side of the continent and needs a tugboat to get around.
Sure, there might be Russian subs to contend with, but counter measures are already in place. If you want to see ships go to the bottom, just wait until you see what happens in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
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Both Russia and China have "carrier killer" missiles - lots of them. The Russian Kinzhal can be launched from a MiG-31 at altitude, and travels at hypersonic speed. There is no defence against it.
Aircraft carriers have been obsolete for years. They are less safe or useful than HMS Hood was in 1939.
Edward Snowden and julian assange will somehow (Score:2)
Edward Snowden and julian assange will somehow become part of this
Seems the distraction is succeeding... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Seems the distraction is succeeding... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Seems the distraction is succeeding... (Score:4, Insightful)
China surprise attacks Taiwan and takes it.
China cannot quickly take Taiwan without leveling it... which would negate the reason China would want to invade in the first place.
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I'm very sorry - it won't happen again!
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China surprise attacks Taiwan and takes it.
China cannot quickly take Taiwan without leveling it... which would negate the reason China would want to invade in the first place.
This. Dealing with China is different to dealing with Russia though.
Tough sanctions on Russian oligarchs is how to deal with Russia, lock them out of SWIFT, punish any western bank doing business with them. Seize their assets because Putin's boss is ultimately the people who keep him in power, the other oligarchs, thus he only fears them. The Russian people don't count, they're happy to live with a boot on their necks as long as it's a Russian boot.
China is the opposite, their entire government and
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Russia announced they will send in peacekeepers to the separatist regions. That is, he has said troops will cross the border. It's Crimea all over again, pretend that you're not interested until suddenly you've taken control and say "hah, you were stupid to believe me!"
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a) This is massively conspiratorial. Writing out a scenario is hardly evidence.
b) An effective distraction would be one that sucked in US troops, a Russian invasion of Ukraine wouldn't do this.
c) The west is already starting to take a harder line with China, a China is already worried about political instability due to slow economic growth. Invading Taiwan risks major sanctions and a recession that turns into revolution. Maybe they try it at some point but I can't see it now.
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This is such a naive world view, it's too simplistic, it's just not a viable long term prospect.
There's this view that because Russia and China both disagree with the US, that they agree with each other. But that's only so far as they further each other's interests in the US. China and Russia were at war only a few short decades ago, during the cold war they were constantly opposing each other, having fought proxy wars against each other in the Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia region after the US left, which is partly
well (Score:4, Interesting)
as someone who runs a honeypot in the UK Russia has been abusing their Internet using brute force attacks for months (RDP mainly ie. the same vector as the colonial pipeline), doesn't stop Hurricane Electric/Vodaphone and hundreds of EU/US companies from peering with them (check out the BGP tables), sometimes as the sole peer for some RU networks (HE), though the biggest brute forcers by a mile come from USA, Microsoft/Google Fiber, RDP/MYSQL/SSH basically any accessible service will be hammered, abuse@ seems to be a waste of time, here is what Microsoft said when i reported a block of their IPs (complete with packet captures) that were hammering a clients IP.
"The activity reported is associated with a customer account within the Microsoft Azure service. Microsoft Azure provides a cloud computing platform in which customers can deploy their own software applications. Customers, not Microsoft, control what applications are deployed on their account. "
so if Microsoft wont do anything about it what chance does a SME have when faced with gigabits of traffic from IP ranges that cant be blocked (or lose a big chunk of the web).
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I've been battoning down the hatches for a while now, in anticipation of this. Retaliation just means it's open season on anyone and anything in the UK. Even better, use a false flag op to get the UK to attack your enemy.
We already got p0wned by Russia during the brexit referendum, and nothing has really changed. The government didn't want to acknowledge it for fear of upsetting people who voted for it.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. (Score:2)
Second, I'm pretty sure both the UK and Russia have a pretty good idea of what the other side is capable of (although either side could be very wrong - we in the US never saw Solarwinds coming, after all).
Third, does this official (I'll keep my wording polite) really think anything he says about cyber attack/retaliation is going to do anything beyon
Paper and pencil (Score:3)
I don't know that cyber-attacks will have much effect in a place like Russia.
They can probably fall back to paper and pencil without too much difficulty.
Yeah, right... (Score:3)
There's this old cybersecurity joke that when one day Russian hackers broke into NASA, they were really disappointed when they noticed that Polish hackers had already set up an irc server there before them. In this joke, the server was probably hosted by Brits, because they honestly wouldn't have a clue when they are under a cyber attack.
Why would you announce something like this? (Score:2)
Re:Why would you announce something like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems like the kind of stuff you just do and don't warn the adversary that you're going to.
By broadcasting your overall intentions, it gives your opponent something to think about, something else to try and counter, something else to distract them.
It's the same reason we keep releasing information about Russia's plan to invade. By us saying the plans have been delivered to the staging areas, by showing satellite images of the build up troops only a few kilometers from Ukraine's borders, troops who are now in a combat ready state, by putting out the concerns Russian generals have about the cost in men and material which will occur during an invasion we're letting Putin know we can peer inside his inner workings. That's not something you want to hear and starts the wheels of paranoia turning. If your adversary knows this semi-granular information, what else do they know?
The only person who knows Putins plan... (Score:2)
... is Putin. And I'm not sure he even knows 100%. Hes no long game genius, hes very much tactics, not strategy and seems to make decisions at the last minute by flipping a mental coin. IMO YMMV.
The City of London... (Score:2)
Re: The City of London... (Score:2)
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...must be working frantically behind the scenes to make sure that all that dirty Russian oligarch money keeps flowing through possibly the world's biggest money laundrette. My bet is that if the UK does actually impose sanctions, Boris, his cabinet & their sponsors will make sure it's leakier than a teabag.
They just announced their "toughest ever" legal powers target Russian money [theguardian.com]. But one immediately obvious loophole is that the new powers do not cover the Russian funds buying up high-end properties in London and the south-east.
What the US can do right now (Score:2)
Have our intelligence agencies stomp on the cryptocurrency markets, using the tools they have undoubtedly been developing, cutting off the flow of ransomware revenue into Putin's economy. All over the world, money launderers find themselves holding useless ones and zeroes.
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just ban trading / bank access to the exchanges
Too little too late (Score:2, Insightful)
The West is playing catch up and losing badly. They still think that Putin, as in "collective Putin", operates based on pure financial interest. He hasn't been since early 2000s. It's all about preserving power in Russia, without which there are no riches. Putin has made his intent clear back in 2007 Munich speech. The world ignored. He then invaded Georgia in 2008. The world ignored. He invaded Ukraine in 2014. The world has made a symbolic gesture.
I guess better later than never. But at what cost?
Did they boot up their ZX Spectrums again? (Score:2)
Connecting a ZX Spectrum to the internet takes down the entire internet in northern hemisphere.
That should just about cover Moscow.
EU is a eunuch, and Russia that made it that way (Score:2)
The EU has not announced a package of measures because there isn't going to be one.
The EU has decided to pretend that none of this is happening, and that anyway Russia can do what it wants.
Please note - this is the EU that has been saying for decades that it is the reason why there has been no war in Europe since WWII (bollocks). The EU never
9/11 (Score:2)
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They're handling this all wrong. (Score:2)