So they bought the cameras and some people pointed out they look exactly the same as Russian cameras. The government denied this but after they figured out the serial numbers matched the Russian cameras they started this investigation.
Good they investigated this before using them, but this sounds like a big fu...
> multiple reports in Slovak media that linked the purchase to a Cyprus shell company with fake certifications.
We're talking about this as if it's some precursor to a James Bond plot, but it really fizzles after learning Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork. James Bond doesn't need to leave the bed!
Trojan exploits aside, I just assume that it'd be easier for someone in SVR/GRU to bribe an admin.
Current government is extremely pro-russian to the point of treason, and people involved in this case double so.
This wasn't some oversight of the proverbial Nina in any way. They just did sloppy job from both sides covering tracks, not uncommon with current government. They are loud (and racist, xenophobic, and often dumb), not competent smart people.
> Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork.
Well the interior ministry didn't really demand one (yes really) but the opposition people have read the documentation for the cameras and the hash of the supplied software was exactly the same as the hash for the russian simicon camera.
> We're talking about this as if it's some precursor to a James Bond plot, but it really fizzles after learning Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork.
That's exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would do.
You've got a point, a fuck-up and a fuck-you are somewhat different in this context, though I was assuming both had malice in my original interpretation.
Over 100 comments, zero mentions that government funds should be spent on devices with auditable open-source firmware. Anyone here? No? Then I'm the first one to say this.
SecureBoot is a funny one. It should be signed with the deployer's keys (Slovak), not the manufacturer's. Trusted boot probably wasn't a consideration here, really.
Ironically, a custom firmware can now be used thanks to the lack of a digital lock... if you still trust the hardware.
Maybe you trust the hardware and software and firmware to not be malicious or negligent (currently such assurances are extremely rare [1], so it's hard to overstate what a step up in security just this bare minimum would be), but what if it simply gets hacked by a nation-state level opponent? And there are so many ways to hack it - hardware and software supply chains, interdiction and replacement with compromised parts, attacking the software systems connected to it (maybe the camera is secure, but what about the computers it sends its signals to?), or the human systems, blackmailing an employee to insert a backdoored USB key somewhere...
Are traffic cameras worth the risk of giving away the movement of your key personnel, military and political, in the age of drone warfare and targeted strikes?
There is a small number of cameras which broadcast the video publicly. For example, Moscow: [1] (Taganskaya square), [2] and Saint-Petersburg: [3] (Nevsky prospect and Gostiniy Dvor). Sadly the quality is not great and in reality those places look much better. For example, many of the small 2-floor buildings on Taganskaya square are over 100 years and have a nie classical architecture but one cannot see any fine details in the camera view.
but it still doesnt imply that slovakia is therefore politically pro-russian.
they might care about pro-slovak advantages it brings. or they might think that sanction dont work as intendet. or they might think that sanction paradoxically cause too many problems in EU. or that it is not the right approach to resolve the conflict.
When populations resist wars of conquest from imperial powers, and request aid, it's not "sacrificing" them to send them aid as they requested.
That is a pro Russian narrative you have just deployed though.
lets say you have a digital privacy activist, and someone says their actions are literally "pro CP".
well technically, existence of some private messaging network can help predators. i dont know if there is a way around that.
but saying that the actions of the activist are "pro CP" is not fair IMO. its often a manipulative labeling. it might be what it motivates the activist or it might not be. they might have completely different reasons to advocate for digital privacy.
I find it amusing that the biggest supporters or Russia in its current war of aggression against Ukraine are/were Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia -- precisely the countries that should know better, since they were the principal recipients the "love and friendship" from Russia:
Geopolitical decisions aren't made by countries, they are made by individual people.
Sometimes those people are a plurality that organically endorses that decision and votes some representative in. Sometimes those people are a plurality that has been brainwashed by compromised media to do it. Sometimes those people are just a small ruling elite that get voted in by people who didn't think very hard about those particular geopolitical decisions and just want, I don't know, their political and cultural enemies brutalized and $1.99 gas.
>precisely the countries that should know better, since they were the principal recipients the "love and friendship" from Russia
Goes to show that 1984-style conditioning really does work, decades later.
Remarkably, it can even be passed through generations, as it gets ingrained into the mentality of how parents raise children: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Don't rock the boat."
Which was a survival trait in those times.
The current incarnation of Russian propaganda is different, but is even more virally poisonous:
> I'm not political. Politics is dirty. There's nothing you can change anyway. "Two sides" is an illusion. Everybody is lying and has an ulterior motive. Only naive fools believe otherwise, only naive fools ever trust. You can't know anything for sure. What you think is true is actually a lie. The only thing that's real is who you're with. That's the only truth. That's the only thing to look for in anything anyone says, that's the only thing one really says. That's what makes something true or false. The words uttered don't matter at all.
You might have seen this kind of mentality spouted by your friends on either side of the political spectrum.
Remarkably, whatever the political persuasion of people who have it is, the end result is the likes of Orban/Fico coming to power.
Sadly, this thing not only spreads, it also sticks.
If you know of an antidote, please tell me what it is.
Older people in these countries have good memories of that time, employment and housing were basically a given, healthcare and public transportation were solved, etc. They're very easy to manipulate, promise them a 13th month of pension and they'll vote for you.
I don't think you understand how bad globalization fucked up these countries, people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.
No, globalization gave them as a nation a chance and they mostly didn't do any serious effort to use that. Its 1000 little decisions here and that that led to some post-soviet-sphere countries to thrive, while others stumble and generally gain prosperity mostly from being dragged into it via EU membership. Ie specifically Slovakia is / used to be a big car factory for whole EU due to low salaries. Not really something to build long term success on, ie if Ukraine would join EU all of those foreign factories would move even further east.
Sure, we can blame politicians which were mostly bad to worse and stole everything that was previously state-owned (meaning everything). But folks kept voting for them in similar fashion you describe so this is the result, its trivial to 'buy' votes with relatively low budget. I mean current PM has very tight and visible connections to Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia, he or people around him did a contract murder of reporter looking into that. He didn't ever faced jail and is back being PM like there is no tomorrow. There is only so much blame one can point outwards, you can't be dumb / do dumb shit and expect long term marvels of prosperity on Switzerland's level.
Lived in both of those countries, and they look exactly as they should given overall population efforts towards hard work, honesty, rule of law and so on. If US would be a nation of slackers and thieves it would also look very differently to how it is.
> and they mostly didn't do any serious effort to use that.
Those countries who were fresh from behind the iron curtain were really dealt a bad hand. They had lived in a "protective bubble", albeit a very unsustainable one and suddenly were thrown in the ocean surrounded by sharks looking for an easy meal. Almost every one of those people found themselves desperate but "inexperienced" and unprepared for the new world, every politician was absolutely blown away by the fortune they could make, and every other country jumped on the opportunity to make money. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
For every politician who took a bribe, someone who already had money paid it. That money didn't come from inside those poor countries. This leveraging of poorer countries never stopped. That's how some countries get a better deal than others when the EU adopted the Euro, for example. But it's never been so bad as back then because it's incredibly rare that entire countries find themselves exiting a time capsule, just ready to be exploited by people who already know how the game is played.
This reminds me of two things. The people who always think others are poor because they're lazy, and the people with perfect hindsight and no pressure judging that Captain Sully could have landed the plane back on the runway instead of the Hudson.
The Slovaks ultimately got federalization of Czechoslovakia from the crisis (1969), which both distracted them and made their memories less negative.
As far as Hungary goes, I asked my friend who studied Hungarian history. He explained to me that while the Soviet invasion was very traumatic, the subsequent Kádár "goulash socialism" was a lot more lenient on the people than all the other Soviet Bloc regimes, and that the Hungarians made an incorrectly confident conclusion that losing a small war to the Russians is not catastrophic.
Of course, this is NOT the experience of basically anyone else who happened to be in a similar situation. A potential puppet regime of Russia in Ukraine wouldn't look like Kádárs by any means, it would rather look like the Kadyrovian microstate in Chechnya, minus the Islam of course.
My brother visited some of these countries. He said most people there are oblivious to what happened to their countries. They simply don't care. It also didn't help that everyone he met (agricultural sector) was a day-drinker.
That's why they're doomed to repeat it. Again and again.
exactly. they need a foreigner that visits for a weekend to tell them what is happening in their own country. those stupid day-drinking eastern europeans... the arrogance of you and your brother is incredible
It's almost like people who are simply trying to survive don't have the time, energy, or space to worry about international, or even national affairs. Weird.
A lot of Eastern European countries have oligarchs who largely made their fortunes with help from the Russians. In Czechia one such example is the prime minister Andrej Babiš, who was a bureaucrat in a state owned business who then sold it to himself in the 90s (with the help of some "Swiss" money) and became a billionaire. He's consistently been as pro-Russia as he thinks he can get away with (the positive is that Czechs hate Russians a lot).
Also in these countries there's a lot of old people who have never been able to adapt to living in a free, capitalist society, so for them, there's some nostalgia for communism.
And maybe they mistake current Russia for a communist country? It has every single ingredient of Stalin's Russia except the pretense of socialism or communism.
oh no, they see very clearly, to the West it's a (more or less) rule-based order and to the East it's a might-makes-right one, so they having acquired their power and money in a not entirely legal way, naturally are drawn to the east.
edit: ah you mean the old people? not really, no, it's just pure propaganda, it doesn't have to make sense.
It doesn't matter what Russia actually is. They play both sides with their propaganda. Old people who thought positively about communism still support Russia.
Fico and Babiš for example were both communist party members and both pro-Russia politicians today.
Are there any other wars that are not of aggression? What do you gain by parroting the legalese speak? Implying that it is extra bad and extra illegal war? Not your run of the mill PG-13 war? This one is X-rated kids.
Everyone knows who the attacker is - just some people root for Russia for their own reasons. Usually tied to the internal politics of their countries - like hating for unrelated reasons the political actors from their states that happen to support Ukraine.
Slovakia is heavily influenced by Russian propaganda, which started way before Corona times.
It's mainly the older people that are influenced by this, and a lot of young people either left the country already, or have concrete plans to leave.
It's really sad, how these old people are ruining the future of their children and grandchildren, really crazy.
You can say a lot about Russia, but they are very good with misinformation, it's a real threat for Europe.
My wife is from Slovakia, so I have front row seats on the whole situation. The kinds of misinformation these older people are willing to believe is really nuts.
The majority of school teachers grew up under the Soviet side of cold war propaganda.
And in history education in particular, we are told that "we" have always looked towards Russia as a role model, to fight Hungarian nationalism (since the country was just part of Hungary for most of its history).
That is possible, but I also see people who used to be very anti-Soviet, now to be anti-EU and anti-Ukraine. It's kind of like they hated Russia in the past, but now are convinced that EU and Ukraine are worse.
When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end. That is of course because of all the horrible things that are happening in EU, like gay and trans people, and vaccinations. Terrible! Let's bring those good old Soviet days back!
Well - people can dislike Russia, Ukraine and the EU all at the same time as well.
The world is not simple black/white.
> When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end.
We are here talking about different things. You refer to these people praising the Soviet Union for e. g. healthcare and what not. This has absolutely nothing to do with Putin's genocide against Ukrainians though. Putin represents the aggressive russian empire that wants to conquer more land. It is really simple to see. It has nothing to do with healthcare.
That's wrong. Even the pro-Russia politicians did not support the genocide Russia commits against Ukraine. And they are not even in the majority right now anyway; people are not going to elect bribed russian tools anymore. You could see this in Hungary. The rest will follow - everyone sees the daily genocide Putin commits here. No amount of bribe money will convince regular people from what they can see with their own eyes here.
That's a pretty harsh and uninformed take. Russia operates by capturing foreign governments and making their leaders beholden to Russia's interests. When it succeeds, it happens regardless of what the populace actually wants. They've been grooming Trump (along with a dozen or so other potential up-and-comers) since the 80s (Trump was considered a long shot and too unpredictable, but fortune favors the prepared - better weak support of their enemies than full belligerence).
The Belarusians aren't too thrilled that Russian troops are operating in their country either, but Lukashenko needs Russian support to stay in power, so he walks a tightrope. Notice how noncommittal he is about pretty much everything...
In the case of Slovakia, it's purely Russian misinformation that was able to capture a large part of the population, mainly older people. First anti-EU, then anti-vax, and now anti-Ukraine and anti-EU.
> Russian misinformation that was able to capture a large part of the population, mainly older people.
'Capturing' the population is worthless. Anti-immigration sentiment has 'captured' the UK, to the point that in every election since 1964, the public voted against immigration [1]. Yet every time they got increased immigration instead.
It would be extremely stupid of Russia not to spy on Slovakia. If they had properly spied on Ukraine, they could have turned around 2014 and all of Nuland's "regime change" machinations. They have learned their lesson well now - do as the Americans do and spy on everyone - and most especially the "friendly" nations - by any and all means.
"learned their lesson well now" - I don't think Russia has learned any lessons at all since Ukraine. Russia's sheer incompetence keeps getting worse and worse, as Prigozhin exposed on the inside. The war went from total failure to achieve any objectives for 5 years, to now 4 hour lines in Moscow to fill up your car at the gas station - i.e. Russia went from "failing to capture Kyiv in 3 days" to now "getting hit in the center of Moscow regularly".
Given the level of incompetence that Russia has demonstrated on both the political and military front, I highly doubt it could've turned anything around in Ukraine even if knew everything about 2014.
That does not make much sense. In 2014 Yanukovic was in power, who had been bought off by Russia. Lets not forget that Yanukovic ran on a pro EU platform and then reversed a day or so before signing the EU association agreement. Naturally the people went to the streets and eventually Yanukovic fled. Not sure what you would have wanted to spy on.
> Lets not forget that Yanukovic ran on a pro EU platform and then reversed a day or so before signing the EU association agreement.
During his 2010 presidential campaign, Yanukovic promoted a "multi-vector" foreign policy that sought to balance relations with both Russia and the European Union. He explicitly campaigned on maintaining economic and diplomatic ties with Russia. Also, do note that he was elected by the Russian-ethnic regions that subsequently rebelled after their duly-elected and EU-observer vetted President was overthrown in a coup.
Nuland didn't want to wait for formal elections or even a formal impeachment under the Ukrainian constitution. Because she had already planned the replacement govt and even the people for specific roles. She actively glued the political transition together quickly before Russian backstage maneuvering could undermine the anti-Yanukovych movement.
It was the crowning glory of her state department career. Only the US can get away with this sort of shameless regime change and Americans pat themselves on the back for being the "good guys".
Most cameras are insecure by default. Check out: http://www.insecam.org/en/ or https://www.shodan.io/ The first isn't even using default access creds, which I suspect is what was 'discovered' in this case, but cameras that immediately hook up to the internet with 0 restrictions to access.
For the goal of recording a cat scratching their car or catching an imaginary thief neighbour (a magpie or fox stole that thing that one time, you dullard) people will plug into Chinese, Russian, and American video surveillance networks in no time and pay for it.
What's the purpose of this? Opening a way to make the cameras going rogue and starting to fine everybody in a particular period of time to create massive discontent, administration chaos, and unrest? maybe just before an election? Aren't this cameras connected with some government computers?
Perhaps. What actually happened is that we have a demented interior minister in a unbelievably corrupt but also pro-russian government. So it's really anybodys guess if it's just pure corruption (the interior ministry wanting to buy some traffic cameras and someone bribing to get the contract while buying the cheapest they could find which were these russian ones) or indeed some covert russian operation (the responsible minister wouldn't know about it, he's too dumb for that, but there might be other government people who did know). In any case in a functioning state this would end up with the minister leaving his post at least. Not in Slovakia.
It seems like a silly mess. But its easier than it sounds to end up in such a situation. We're are a lot of HN Kagi users that just have to trust that the Yandex collaboration is fully watertight.
The comments here seem to presuppose that somehow Slovakia is the only ones who would need to worry about this, and not, say, any town with Flock in it
The problem I see is that Putin fully committed to the war. It is not only clear that he has no interest in ending the war, despite the lip service, but will continue to create problems and cause issues. This backdoor here is not an isolated problem - it is a systemic, concerted problem. All retaliatory moves are handicapped by orange Agent Krasnov being an asset for Russia. The EU needs to stop outsourcing its security. That includes having a nuclear arsenal available for all member states.
I think synchronized operations could really disrupt the grid — think thousands of inverters switching backfeeding to the grid on/off, causing waves and disruption. Or thousands of inverters having their grid sync disabled, simultaneously operating to shift the frequency of the grid (very bad).
I'd be worried about the inverters in large commercial solar plants. On a sunny day you could easily cause a blackout by turning enough solar capacity off at once. Maybe shut down the entire grid when the sudden power imbalances trip the self- protection in half the grid. That's a pain to recover from. Spain went through that not too long ago
But maybe rapidly switching residential solar on and off in a coordinated way can also do funny things to grid equipment
Not much if a couple of thousand homes in US switches off. There are way more sensitive targets than ”they could randomly hike the electricity usage with 0,0000000000000000001%”
There are always some “stable” power sources kept on standby that can be activated within minutes, for example gas turbines. In European electricity markets, generators can actually be paid simply for keeping this reserve capacity available, even if they are not producing much electricity most of the time.
The problem is that a few minutes is still too slow when a large power source suddenly drops out. The grid needs an immediate response, which can come from fast reserves such as batteries, hydro, pumped storage and other generators that can react automatically.
Pumped storage is basically gravitational energy storage: you pump water uphill when electricity is plentiful, then release it through turbines when power is needed.
If you had enough systems under control in an area, you could probably create a brown out or some other type of scenario by turning off 1000 houses on the right day.
DDoS, anonymizer proxy, and turn off power in large commercial installations. They kinda deserve it for investing in solar. US holds all the power in social media, can't blame China if they want to utilize their lead in solar for something too.
Hopefully mutually assured annoyance keeps everyone at bay.
To piss away decades of hard-earned trust in its products for some short-term one-time political 'pwn' of the enemy.
If that goal sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. I would expect some countries that are not China to act with such a capricious lack of foresight.
The detail that gets me is the Ministry saying the cameras were safe because they'd be on a closed network, while the backdoor can apparently be triggered via SMS from hardcoded phone numbers.
That's a pretty good demonstration of why "it's not exposed to the internet" isn't a security boundary if the device itself has an out-of-band communications path.
Add Secure Boot being disabled and unauthenticated live streams and this seems less like one unfortunate backdoor and more like nobody established what the trust boundary was supposed to be in the first place.
"Not exposed to the internet" means exfiltration is hard in this case. If I were to dream about defense in depth, these SIM cards should be monitored for traffic anyway or have filtering rules at carrier level. Because at the end of the day, Russian numbers or not, mobile networks are insecure.
Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. You may not owe nation states better, but you owe this community better if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Most people talking about Slovakia wouldn't even be able to put it on a map or know what currency they use, but they become instant geo political expert.
They don't even know how to pronounce Fico properly... Give me a break lmao
So they bought the cameras and some people pointed out they look exactly the same as Russian cameras. The government denied this but after they figured out the serial numbers matched the Russian cameras they started this investigation.
Good they investigated this before using them, but this sounds like a big fu...
This would be far more impressive if not for:
> multiple reports in Slovak media that linked the purchase to a Cyprus shell company with fake certifications.
We're talking about this as if it's some precursor to a James Bond plot, but it really fizzles after learning Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork. James Bond doesn't need to leave the bed!
Trojan exploits aside, I just assume that it'd be easier for someone in SVR/GRU to bribe an admin.
Current government is extremely pro-russian to the point of treason, and people involved in this case double so.
This wasn't some oversight of the proverbial Nina in any way. They just did sloppy job from both sides covering tracks, not uncommon with current government. They are loud (and racist, xenophobic, and often dumb), not competent smart people.
If they're so pro-Russian, then they're not xenophobic enough.
> Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork.
Well the interior ministry didn't really demand one (yes really) but the opposition people have read the documentation for the cameras and the hash of the supplied software was exactly the same as the hash for the russian simicon camera.
> We're talking about this as if it's some precursor to a James Bond plot, but it really fizzles after learning Nina in the sourcing department skipped the compliance paperwork.
That's exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would do.
With high probablity they are actually made in China. I don't think Russia makes their own chips for cameras.
A big what?
A big fuck-up, but some people prefer (nobly even if I don't abide by the same rule) to keep some words out of their mouths.
spelled like that the "u" could mean "you".
You've got a point, a fuck-up and a fuck-you are somewhat different in this context, though I was assuming both had malice in my original interpretation.
fuck up
Over 100 comments, zero mentions that government funds should be spent on devices with auditable open-source firmware. Anyone here? No? Then I'm the first one to say this.
SecureBoot is a funny one. It should be signed with the deployer's keys (Slovak), not the manufacturer's. Trusted boot probably wasn't a consideration here, really.
Ironically, a custom firmware can now be used thanks to the lack of a digital lock... if you still trust the hardware.
PS: Props to NBU for doing their job.
Would you be able to get those devices at all, especially at similar price as those with closed source firmware? R
Maybe you trust the hardware and software and firmware to not be malicious or negligent (currently such assurances are extremely rare [1], so it's hard to overstate what a step up in security just this bare minimum would be), but what if it simply gets hacked by a nation-state level opponent? And there are so many ways to hack it - hardware and software supply chains, interdiction and replacement with compromised parts, attacking the software systems connected to it (maybe the camera is secure, but what about the computers it sends its signals to?), or the human systems, blackmailing an employee to insert a backdoored USB key somewhere...
Are traffic cameras worth the risk of giving away the movement of your key personnel, military and political, in the age of drone warfare and targeted strikes?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49248678
> the cameras expose live streams to anyone without a password and who knows their broadcasting IP.
Are these cameras in use in Russia? Can people outside of Russia look in at Russian traffic in this way?
There is a small number of cameras which broadcast the video publicly. For example, Moscow: [1] (Taganskaya square), [2] and Saint-Petersburg: [3] (Nevsky prospect and Gostiniy Dvor). Sadly the quality is not great and in reality those places look much better. For example, many of the small 2-floor buildings on Taganskaya square are over 100 years and have a nie classical architecture but one cannot see any fine details in the camera view.
[1] https://gidcam.ru/camera/moskva-panorama-centra-stolicy-s-ma...
[2] https://gidcam.ru/camera/moskva-volgogradskij-prospekt-i-plo...
[3] https://camguide.net/ru/europe/russia/saint-petersburg/nevsk...
Slovakia has had a longstanding pro-Russia political stance and supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and opposes the EU sanctions).
You reap what you sow, MFs!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_opposition_to_sanctions...
How does sanctions affect Russian government in war progress exactly? How does it affect regular Russian people in everyday life?
Same questions to opposite side.
opposition to sanctions does not imply pro-Russia stance.
slovakia also doesnt support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. you made that up.
its crazy that such a lie is a top comment.
It is literally a pro Russian action, to be against sanctioning Russia for their war against Ukraine.
Tell me how it’s not advantageous for Russia to enable trade with them.
it may be advantageous for Russia. thats true.
but it still doesnt imply that slovakia is therefore politically pro-russian.
they might care about pro-slovak advantages it brings. or they might think that sanction dont work as intendet. or they might think that sanction paradoxically cause too many problems in EU. or that it is not the right approach to resolve the conflict.
Or not be as willing (as the British state is for example) to sacrifice the entire male population of Ukraine to fight a war for them.
That makes you "pro Russian" apparently
When populations resist wars of conquest from imperial powers, and request aid, it's not "sacrificing" them to send them aid as they requested. That is a pro Russian narrative you have just deployed though.
lets say you have a digital privacy activist, and someone says their actions are literally "pro CP".
well technically, existence of some private messaging network can help predators. i dont know if there is a way around that.
but saying that the actions of the activist are "pro CP" is not fair IMO. its often a manipulative labeling. it might be what it motivates the activist or it might not be. they might have completely different reasons to advocate for digital privacy.
I find it amusing that the biggest supporters or Russia in its current war of aggression against Ukraine are/were Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia -- precisely the countries that should know better, since they were the principal recipients the "love and friendship" from Russia:
- Hungary: November of 1956
- Slovakia: "spring" of 1968
- Serbia: the Stalin's betrayal at the end of WW2
Hungary and Slovakia are largest importers of Russian natural gas in Europe. France is third as I remember.
Yet somehow "preemptive nuclear strike is a valid defense" France is a bit different from Hungary and Slovakia in their stance on Russia.
So maybe natural gas imports aren't the thing that determine the outcome.
Geopolitical decisions aren't made by countries, they are made by individual people.
Sometimes those people are a plurality that organically endorses that decision and votes some representative in. Sometimes those people are a plurality that has been brainwashed by compromised media to do it. Sometimes those people are just a small ruling elite that get voted in by people who didn't think very hard about those particular geopolitical decisions and just want, I don't know, their political and cultural enemies brutalized and $1.99 gas.
>precisely the countries that should know better, since they were the principal recipients the "love and friendship" from Russia
Goes to show that 1984-style conditioning really does work, decades later.
Remarkably, it can even be passed through generations, as it gets ingrained into the mentality of how parents raise children: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Don't rock the boat."
Which was a survival trait in those times.
The current incarnation of Russian propaganda is different, but is even more virally poisonous:
> I'm not political. Politics is dirty. There's nothing you can change anyway. "Two sides" is an illusion. Everybody is lying and has an ulterior motive. Only naive fools believe otherwise, only naive fools ever trust. You can't know anything for sure. What you think is true is actually a lie. The only thing that's real is who you're with. That's the only truth. That's the only thing to look for in anything anyone says, that's the only thing one really says. That's what makes something true or false. The words uttered don't matter at all.
You might have seen this kind of mentality spouted by your friends on either side of the political spectrum.
Remarkably, whatever the political persuasion of people who have it is, the end result is the likes of Orban/Fico coming to power.
Sadly, this thing not only spreads, it also sticks.
If you know of an antidote, please tell me what it is.
Older people in these countries have good memories of that time, employment and housing were basically a given, healthcare and public transportation were solved, etc. They're very easy to manipulate, promise them a 13th month of pension and they'll vote for you.
I don't think you understand how bad globalization fucked up these countries, people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.
South Korea took themselves out of military dictatorships and authoritarians. What’s the problem.
No, globalization gave them as a nation a chance and they mostly didn't do any serious effort to use that. Its 1000 little decisions here and that that led to some post-soviet-sphere countries to thrive, while others stumble and generally gain prosperity mostly from being dragged into it via EU membership. Ie specifically Slovakia is / used to be a big car factory for whole EU due to low salaries. Not really something to build long term success on, ie if Ukraine would join EU all of those foreign factories would move even further east.
Sure, we can blame politicians which were mostly bad to worse and stole everything that was previously state-owned (meaning everything). But folks kept voting for them in similar fashion you describe so this is the result, its trivial to 'buy' votes with relatively low budget. I mean current PM has very tight and visible connections to Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia, he or people around him did a contract murder of reporter looking into that. He didn't ever faced jail and is back being PM like there is no tomorrow. There is only so much blame one can point outwards, you can't be dumb / do dumb shit and expect long term marvels of prosperity on Switzerland's level.
Lived in both of those countries, and they look exactly as they should given overall population efforts towards hard work, honesty, rule of law and so on. If US would be a nation of slackers and thieves it would also look very differently to how it is.
> and they mostly didn't do any serious effort to use that.
Those countries who were fresh from behind the iron curtain were really dealt a bad hand. They had lived in a "protective bubble", albeit a very unsustainable one and suddenly were thrown in the ocean surrounded by sharks looking for an easy meal. Almost every one of those people found themselves desperate but "inexperienced" and unprepared for the new world, every politician was absolutely blown away by the fortune they could make, and every other country jumped on the opportunity to make money. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
For every politician who took a bribe, someone who already had money paid it. That money didn't come from inside those poor countries. This leveraging of poorer countries never stopped. That's how some countries get a better deal than others when the EU adopted the Euro, for example. But it's never been so bad as back then because it's incredibly rare that entire countries find themselves exiting a time capsule, just ready to be exploited by people who already know how the game is played.
This reminds me of two things. The people who always think others are poor because they're lazy, and the people with perfect hindsight and no pressure judging that Captain Sully could have landed the plane back on the runway instead of the Hudson.
> people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.
A lot of people in the US feel the same way right now.
The Slovaks ultimately got federalization of Czechoslovakia from the crisis (1969), which both distracted them and made their memories less negative.
As far as Hungary goes, I asked my friend who studied Hungarian history. He explained to me that while the Soviet invasion was very traumatic, the subsequent Kádár "goulash socialism" was a lot more lenient on the people than all the other Soviet Bloc regimes, and that the Hungarians made an incorrectly confident conclusion that losing a small war to the Russians is not catastrophic.
Of course, this is NOT the experience of basically anyone else who happened to be in a similar situation. A potential puppet regime of Russia in Ukraine wouldn't look like Kádárs by any means, it would rather look like the Kadyrovian microstate in Chechnya, minus the Islam of course.
My brother visited some of these countries. He said most people there are oblivious to what happened to their countries. They simply don't care. It also didn't help that everyone he met (agricultural sector) was a day-drinker.
That's why they're doomed to repeat it. Again and again.
exactly. they need a foreigner that visits for a weekend to tell them what is happening in their own country. those stupid day-drinking eastern europeans... the arrogance of you and your brother is incredible
It's almost like people who are simply trying to survive don't have the time, energy, or space to worry about international, or even national affairs. Weird.
They’re not simply trying to survive. They’re not that poor.
A lot of Eastern European countries have oligarchs who largely made their fortunes with help from the Russians. In Czechia one such example is the prime minister Andrej Babiš, who was a bureaucrat in a state owned business who then sold it to himself in the 90s (with the help of some "Swiss" money) and became a billionaire. He's consistently been as pro-Russia as he thinks he can get away with (the positive is that Czechs hate Russians a lot).
Also in these countries there's a lot of old people who have never been able to adapt to living in a free, capitalist society, so for them, there's some nostalgia for communism.
And maybe they mistake current Russia for a communist country? It has every single ingredient of Stalin's Russia except the pretense of socialism or communism.
oh no, they see very clearly, to the West it's a (more or less) rule-based order and to the East it's a might-makes-right one, so they having acquired their power and money in a not entirely legal way, naturally are drawn to the east.
edit: ah you mean the old people? not really, no, it's just pure propaganda, it doesn't have to make sense.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-communism-comes-bible-co...
It doesn't matter what Russia actually is. They play both sides with their propaganda. Old people who thought positively about communism still support Russia.
Fico and Babiš for example were both communist party members and both pro-Russia politicians today.
Are there any other wars that are not of aggression? What do you gain by parroting the legalese speak? Implying that it is extra bad and extra illegal war? Not your run of the mill PG-13 war? This one is X-rated kids.
Everyone knows who the attacker is - just some people root for Russia for their own reasons. Usually tied to the internal politics of their countries - like hating for unrelated reasons the political actors from their states that happen to support Ukraine.
> Are there any other wars that are not of aggression?
There are concepts like wars of necessity or just wars (e.g. of liberation), but that depends on how cynical you're feeling.
> wars of necessity
Propaganda always tries to convince people that the current war is the just war and everyone else is wrong.
No, it just means their governments are controlled by pro-russian people, or are simply Russian puppets installed years ago.
One could say that Fico himself is a Russian backdoor...
Slovakia is heavily influenced by Russian propaganda, which started way before Corona times.
It's mainly the older people that are influenced by this, and a lot of young people either left the country already, or have concrete plans to leave.
It's really sad, how these old people are ruining the future of their children and grandchildren, really crazy.
You can say a lot about Russia, but they are very good with misinformation, it's a real threat for Europe.
My wife is from Slovakia, so I have front row seats on the whole situation. The kinds of misinformation these older people are willing to believe is really nuts.
Old people are ruining their grandchildren’s lives everywhere, not just in Slovakia.
It's rooted in the education system to this day.
The majority of school teachers grew up under the Soviet side of cold war propaganda.
And in history education in particular, we are told that "we" have always looked towards Russia as a role model, to fight Hungarian nationalism (since the country was just part of Hungary for most of its history).
That is possible, but I also see people who used to be very anti-Soviet, now to be anti-EU and anti-Ukraine. It's kind of like they hated Russia in the past, but now are convinced that EU and Ukraine are worse.
When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end. That is of course because of all the horrible things that are happening in EU, like gay and trans people, and vaccinations. Terrible! Let's bring those good old Soviet days back!
Well - people can dislike Russia, Ukraine and the EU all at the same time as well.
The world is not simple black/white.
> When in the past they would claim that the Soviet times were bad, now they would claim that it wasn't that bad in the end.
We are here talking about different things. You refer to these people praising the Soviet Union for e. g. healthcare and what not. This has absolutely nothing to do with Putin's genocide against Ukrainians though. Putin represents the aggressive russian empire that wants to conquer more land. It is really simple to see. It has nothing to do with healthcare.
Sounds like boomers everywhere.
That's wrong. Even the pro-Russia politicians did not support the genocide Russia commits against Ukraine. And they are not even in the majority right now anyway; people are not going to elect bribed russian tools anymore. You could see this in Hungary. The rest will follow - everyone sees the daily genocide Putin commits here. No amount of bribe money will convince regular people from what they can see with their own eyes here.
That's a pretty harsh and uninformed take. Russia operates by capturing foreign governments and making their leaders beholden to Russia's interests. When it succeeds, it happens regardless of what the populace actually wants. They've been grooming Trump (along with a dozen or so other potential up-and-comers) since the 80s (Trump was considered a long shot and too unpredictable, but fortune favors the prepared - better weak support of their enemies than full belligerence).
The Belarusians aren't too thrilled that Russian troops are operating in their country either, but Lukashenko needs Russian support to stay in power, so he walks a tightrope. Notice how noncommittal he is about pretty much everything...
In the case of Slovakia, it's purely Russian misinformation that was able to capture a large part of the population, mainly older people. First anti-EU, then anti-vax, and now anti-Ukraine and anti-EU.
> Russian misinformation that was able to capture a large part of the population, mainly older people.
'Capturing' the population is worthless. Anti-immigration sentiment has 'captured' the UK, to the point that in every election since 1964, the public voted against immigration [1]. Yet every time they got increased immigration instead.
[1] https://www.woes.blog/p/tgr-democracy
You must be new to state sponsored malware. Recent false flags are a thing: 2018 Olympic Destroyer, Marble Framework, Silver Fox, MuddyWater Chaos
Silver Fox is a very vaguely defined Chinese cybercrime group of malware and actors...or are you referring to something else?
> Recent false flags are a thing: 2018 Olympic Destroyer, Marble Framework, Silver Fox, MuddyWater Chaos
How are any of those false flag? They're state sponsored, by different state actors.
It would be extremely stupid of Russia not to spy on Slovakia. If they had properly spied on Ukraine, they could have turned around 2014 and all of Nuland's "regime change" machinations. They have learned their lesson well now - do as the Americans do and spy on everyone - and most especially the "friendly" nations - by any and all means.
"learned their lesson well now" - I don't think Russia has learned any lessons at all since Ukraine. Russia's sheer incompetence keeps getting worse and worse, as Prigozhin exposed on the inside. The war went from total failure to achieve any objectives for 5 years, to now 4 hour lines in Moscow to fill up your car at the gas station - i.e. Russia went from "failing to capture Kyiv in 3 days" to now "getting hit in the center of Moscow regularly".
Given the level of incompetence that Russia has demonstrated on both the political and military front, I highly doubt it could've turned anything around in Ukraine even if knew everything about 2014.
That does not make much sense. In 2014 Yanukovic was in power, who had been bought off by Russia. Lets not forget that Yanukovic ran on a pro EU platform and then reversed a day or so before signing the EU association agreement. Naturally the people went to the streets and eventually Yanukovic fled. Not sure what you would have wanted to spy on.
> Lets not forget that Yanukovic ran on a pro EU platform and then reversed a day or so before signing the EU association agreement.
During his 2010 presidential campaign, Yanukovic promoted a "multi-vector" foreign policy that sought to balance relations with both Russia and the European Union. He explicitly campaigned on maintaining economic and diplomatic ties with Russia. Also, do note that he was elected by the Russian-ethnic regions that subsequently rebelled after their duly-elected and EU-observer vetted President was overthrown in a coup.
Nuland didn't want to wait for formal elections or even a formal impeachment under the Ukrainian constitution. Because she had already planned the replacement govt and even the people for specific roles. She actively glued the political transition together quickly before Russian backstage maneuvering could undermine the anti-Yanukovych movement.
It was the crowning glory of her state department career. Only the US can get away with this sort of shameless regime change and Americans pat themselves on the back for being the "good guys".
"Кордон.Про" product page on the simicon site
https://simicon.ru/rus/product/gun/cordon_pro.html
Imagine somebody being able to track almost anyone using road side cameras. Good thing such things happen only in eastern Europe wink wink
Most cameras are insecure by default. Check out: http://www.insecam.org/en/ or https://www.shodan.io/ The first isn't even using default access creds, which I suspect is what was 'discovered' in this case, but cameras that immediately hook up to the internet with 0 restrictions to access.
For the goal of recording a cat scratching their car or catching an imaginary thief neighbour (a magpie or fox stole that thing that one time, you dullard) people will plug into Chinese, Russian, and American video surveillance networks in no time and pay for it.
What's the purpose of this? Opening a way to make the cameras going rogue and starting to fine everybody in a particular period of time to create massive discontent, administration chaos, and unrest? maybe just before an election? Aren't this cameras connected with some government computers?
Perhaps. What actually happened is that we have a demented interior minister in a unbelievably corrupt but also pro-russian government. So it's really anybodys guess if it's just pure corruption (the interior ministry wanting to buy some traffic cameras and someone bribing to get the contract while buying the cheapest they could find which were these russian ones) or indeed some covert russian operation (the responsible minister wouldn't know about it, he's too dumb for that, but there might be other government people who did know). In any case in a functioning state this would end up with the minister leaving his post at least. Not in Slovakia.
It's almost as if electing a pro-Russia politician has consequences...
It seems like a silly mess. But its easier than it sounds to end up in such a situation. We're are a lot of HN Kagi users that just have to trust that the Yandex collaboration is fully watertight.
The comments here seem to presuppose that somehow Slovakia is the only ones who would need to worry about this, and not, say, any town with Flock in it
The problem I see is that Putin fully committed to the war. It is not only clear that he has no interest in ending the war, despite the lip service, but will continue to create problems and cause issues. This backdoor here is not an isolated problem - it is a systemic, concerted problem. All retaliatory moves are handicapped by orange Agent Krasnov being an asset for Russia. The EU needs to stop outsourcing its security. That includes having a nuclear arsenal available for all member states.
Next up, chinese solar inverter firmware.
Do they even need that since, when most of the converters are attached to the Chinese cloud?
I made the logical leap that the firmware enables this. I don’t have the code in front of me, so that may have been an incorrect leap.
To do what? Turn off the power in random individual houses?
I think synchronized operations could really disrupt the grid — think thousands of inverters switching backfeeding to the grid on/off, causing waves and disruption. Or thousands of inverters having their grid sync disabled, simultaneously operating to shift the frequency of the grid (very bad).
I'd be worried about the inverters in large commercial solar plants. On a sunny day you could easily cause a blackout by turning enough solar capacity off at once. Maybe shut down the entire grid when the sudden power imbalances trip the self- protection in half the grid. That's a pain to recover from. Spain went through that not too long ago
But maybe rapidly switching residential solar on and off in a coordinated way can also do funny things to grid equipment
Any idea what happens to the grid when a significant chunk of solar power suddenly disconnects?
Not much if a couple of thousand homes in US switches off. There are way more sensitive targets than ”they could randomly hike the electricity usage with 0,0000000000000000001%”
There are always some “stable” power sources kept on standby that can be activated within minutes, for example gas turbines. In European electricity markets, generators can actually be paid simply for keeping this reserve capacity available, even if they are not producing much electricity most of the time.
The problem is that a few minutes is still too slow when a large power source suddenly drops out. The grid needs an immediate response, which can come from fast reserves such as batteries, hydro, pumped storage and other generators that can react automatically.
Pumped storage is basically gravitational energy storage: you pump water uphill when electricity is plentiful, then release it through turbines when power is needed.
I quite fancy electrical grid.
If you had enough systems under control in an area, you could probably create a brown out or some other type of scenario by turning off 1000 houses on the right day.
DDoS, anonymizer proxy, and turn off power in large commercial installations. They kinda deserve it for investing in solar. US holds all the power in social media, can't blame China if they want to utilize their lead in solar for something too.
Hopefully mutually assured annoyance keeps everyone at bay.
nah, the ones connected to the grid... you turn them all off during peak sun hours at the exact same time
same issue with large loads like boilers, this stuff should never be connected to the internet, but it is
if you can control enough load on the grid you can do real damage
To set roofs on fire?
In the end it's all about trust. Right now I don't see why China would like to burn down their market.
guys, do we need to reinvent the same Hanlon razor but for capitalism: Dont attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by capitalism?
If we're reinventing sayings, I suggest Clarke's third law first: Any sufficiently advanced capitalism is indistinguishable from malice.
To piss away decades of hard-earned trust in its products for some short-term one-time political 'pwn' of the enemy.
If that goal sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. I would expect some countries that are not China to act with such a capricious lack of foresight.
The US pulled a 1-time trigger on Japan… twice. Looks like it worked out. You should be careful tossing around words like stupid.
Track usage patterns to know when people are at home and then rob them.
Some of those are networked I think?
Most of them are. Including the biggest ones.
The HN version of "I have nothing to hide."
The nothing to hide thing isnt even an HN only thing unfortunately.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Russian misinformation inside Slovakia is able to spin this into an anti-EU, anti-Ukraine story.
Slovakian prime minister is doing proud photos with Putin despite the ongoing war so the backdoor looks like a desired feature not a bug or fuck up.
The detail that gets me is the Ministry saying the cameras were safe because they'd be on a closed network, while the backdoor can apparently be triggered via SMS from hardcoded phone numbers.
That's a pretty good demonstration of why "it's not exposed to the internet" isn't a security boundary if the device itself has an out-of-band communications path.
Add Secure Boot being disabled and unauthenticated live streams and this seems less like one unfortunate backdoor and more like nobody established what the trust boundary was supposed to be in the first place.
"Not exposed to the internet" means exfiltration is hard in this case. If I were to dream about defense in depth, these SIM cards should be monitored for traffic anyway or have filtering rules at carrier level. Because at the end of the day, Russian numbers or not, mobile networks are insecure.
Zero chance of vulns in flock, so we're good in the US /s
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Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. You may not owe nation states better, but you owe this community better if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Russia to Slovakia is Israel to USA. Puppet state.
Most people talking about Slovakia wouldn't even be able to put it on a map or know what currency they use, but they become instant geo political expert.
They don't even know how to pronounce Fico properly... Give me a break lmao
That is your argument? Omg, the level of it...