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Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

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Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#441

Post by rdtsc »

stoperaticless wrote: post #395
rdtsc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good question. The problem is what's next if they acknowledge that. Say it is acknowledged as an attack on a NATO member, but nothing is done. That immediately turns NATO's worth from whatever its is worth now, to less than the paper it was printed on in 1999 when the Check Republic joined the organization. That's the achilles heel of NATO, and the Russian government knows it. Same goes for Baltic count…

One way to alleviate patch up that achiles heel is a bit shady: proportional indirect responses. (E.g. Wagner forces in north Africa are not officially part of Russian army…)

Yes, exactly! And it should be escalated a bit more so Russians would be dissuaded from doing this again. "Oh look, that Crimean bridge fell, how unfortunate!" or "another munitions warehouse blew up in Siberia: oh that's too bad". Sadly, I don't think current Western leadership [1] is up to it. It requires playing dirty and getting on Putin's level. Sadly, I think that's the only language he understands. Any appeasement is seen by him as weakness to be taken advantage of.

[1] Macron recently showed some surprising boldness, probably noticing Americans dragging their feet with the aid package and Germans being terribly indecisive as well. Not a bad political play.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#442

Post by Georgelemental »

epistasis wrote: post #77
Georgelemental wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because NATO is not raring for nuclear armadeggon?

If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Rolling over beacuse somebody is a nuclear power only seems to come up when Russia is in the chat. If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war." What is it about Russia that makes Russia so irresponsible? And if it is, isn't it time to completel…

> If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war."

Actually, I (and most of the world) don't want to start a nuclear conflict with China or Israel either.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#443

Post by valval »

mikrl wrote: post #437
jojobas wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much safer now that a bunch of disposable Russians have been exposed. Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.

>We won't know who of them are "businessmen" AFAIK there isn’t a clean answer to that question. The lines between businessperson, gangster, intelligence agent are very fluid. If you gain some success at one of those in Russia you need to start ingratiating yourself with the others because they will come and find you. It’s like a more brutal version of businessperson / lobbyist in the US. If you want to excel in one y…

Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re saying.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#444

Post by valval »

anovikov wrote: post #400
jojobas wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much safer now that a bunch of disposable Russians have been exposed. Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.

Well it's a lot better than not letting them leave. Staying in and paying taxes there supports Putin; plus if they knew they are stuck in and can't move to the civilised world, they'd have to develop some sense of belonging with Russia. EU is making everything possible to suck out everyone with half the brain from Russia and this is a good thing. A lot of new immigration programs that appear to be specifically tailor…

Oh yes, it’s not like research says that children of immigrants integrate even worse than their parents.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#445

Post by mikrl »

valval wrote: post #443
mikrl wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We won't know who of them are "businessmen" AFAIK there isn’t a clean answer to that question. The lines between businessperson, gangster, intelligence agent are very fluid. If you gain some success at one of those in Russia you need to start ingratiating yourself with the others because they will come and find you. It’s like a more brutal version of businessperson / lobbyist in the US. If you want to excel in one y…

Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re saying.

I’m not up to date on Russian business culture I admit. Outside of hearing about how you can pay off the police to avoid other protection schemes.

Can you give me an example of a prominent Russia based businessperson who is regularly at odds with the Kremlin?

The US has a few examples of billionaires who decide to take on the White House, sometimes even capturing it for themselves.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#446

Post by sentfromrevolut »

mikrl wrote: post #445
valval wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re saying.

I’m not up to date on Russian business culture I admit. Outside of hearing about how you can pay off the police to avoid other protection schemes. Can you give me an example of a prominent Russia based businessperson who is regularly at odds with the Kremlin? The US has a few examples of billionaires who decide to take on the White House, sometimes even capturing it for themselves.

[dead]

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#447

Post by rehevkor5 »

lobochrome wrote: post #338
cryptonector wrote: post #203

> Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 6…

While I agree with your general point, thinking about the passport numbers for a bit makes it plausible: - You would have to reserve some numbers that can't be assigned to regular citizens. - If you make those "random" - you need to store them in a database that can be checked against when issuing numbers to regular citizens. - You wouldn't want such a database to exist. - If you remove a whole "block," it's much sim…

If you want to keep the information secret, you need a way to store it. Assuming number generation must be coordinated centrally (to prevent collisions), that does not seem like an impossible task. A system that involves a cryptographic hash could divide the id space up into different segments without being dectpherable from the outside world unless the cryptography is broken. A periodic key rotation system could reduce the impact of a compromise.

To me, the real question is why embed that information in the passport number at all? Even if driven by cryptography, it seems to represent a risk for which i don't understand the benefit.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#448

Post by cess11 »

b112 wrote: post #432
foobarqux wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I shouldn't have used the word episodic. The problem with your third solution is that it seems to be difficult to do with the current way TV series are financed and produced: You can't commit to multiple seasons at the outset and you also want to have an arbitrary number of episodes depending on how well the show is doing (milk more episodes if the show is doing well). There is also incentive to create cliffhange…

I have to mention Babylon 5 here, I don't think anything is as complete in terms of a 5 year, 110 episode plot. Note; don't read up on the plot, it's actually self-destructive.

It's great, strong recommendation.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#449

Post by cryptonector »

lobochrome wrote: post #338
cryptonector wrote: post #203

> Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 6…

While I agree with your general point, thinking about the passport numbers for a bit makes it plausible: - You would have to reserve some numbers that can't be assigned to regular citizens. - If you make those "random" - you need to store them in a database that can be checked against when issuing numbers to regular citizens. - You wouldn't want such a database to exist. - If you remove a whole "block," it's much sim…

> - You would have to reserve some numbers that can't be assigned to regular citizens.

Because why?

> - If you make those "random" - you need to store them in a database that can be checked against when issuing numbers to regular citizens.

You have to store passport numbers assignments in a database anyways.

> - You wouldn't want such a database to exist.

Because it could leak? But number block schemes leak.

> [...]

> Fake passports that pass muster (regular patterns of a country's passport are known to foreign border guards, like checknums, typical issuance ranges, etc.) are not simple.

If you want a fake/second passport to look like a real/first passport then you need to make sure that there's nothing fake-y about it, like none of this reserved number block thing. If the country in question assigns passport numbers sequentially, then that's going to be a problem because the passport numbers will indicate when the passport was issued -- you wouldn't want that. So instead you'll need to either randomize passport number generation, pseudo-randomize it, or leave lots of gaps in sequential number assignments so there are always a few from each relevant time period available.

Also, if you use the same number for national ID and passport, then you'll need to issue a second national ID to match the second passport.

These things are not hard to figure out. The U.S. would never get this wrong because the State department has enough clue and could always reach out to NSA/CIA for clue if they needed it. Apparently the Russians are total amateurs at this stuff.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#450

Post by cryptonector »

refurb wrote: post #426
ivan_gammel wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot draw any conclusions from this similarity alone. The scheme is common and sequential numbers were likely used in many other legitimate cases. You think this is a flop only because The Insider has found very close numbers of passports for people in the same military unit. But there are just 4 numbers of 100 in the same range. Is there any evidence that the remaining people belong to the same unit, are spies…

Sure, but that's no different back then than now? You catch 3 spies in 1950. Someone shuffling through their paper files notices the numbers are close in range. You have a suspected 4th, and interestingly the passport number is clustered with the prior 3. You use a super computer to analyze passport numbers and compare them to 3 known spies. The computer spits out a pattern. [...] You have a suspected 4th, and intere…

In WWII serial number analysis was used to estimate Nazi tank production rates. That sort of analysis was old had long ago now. Somehow no one in Russia seems to remember.
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