1/ Russian warbloggers say that Ukrainian drone developers appear to have found a new way to exploit Russian mobile Internet access to guide drones, despite blocks, enabling operators to control them directly as far as 1,700 km into Russia. ⬇️ bsky.app
A Ukrainian AN-196 Lyutyi deep-strike drone flying low over Yekaterinburg, Russia, this morning, around 1,700 km from the frontline.
2/ A recent Ukrainian deep-strike attack on Yekaterinburg indicated that operators were guiding the drones directly rather than relying on pre-programmed routes, according to Russian warbloggers. This raises the question of how it could have been done. 3/ Andrey Medvedev comments: "Eyewitnesses report that during the attack, the UAV was actively maneuvering, evading fire from mobile groups." 4/ "What does this mean? That the drone operator was in online contact with it. How? I only know one way. Starlink. So, it's now operating on specific terminals over Russian territory." 'Southern Front' doesn't think Elon Musk would dare allow this: 5/ "They say the drone was maneuvering above the city, or, in other words, was controlled by an operator. Everyone immediately suspected the presence of a Starlink terminal on the drone. 6/ "They say Musk, the faggot (actually a faggot), finally allowed the pigs to use his communications over the territory of Greater Russia... [But] I don't think the Yankees will escalate to such an extent as turning on Starlinks deep in Our Country." 7/ 'RIA KATYUSHA' notes that there are operational difficulties with using Starlink terminals on long-range drones; specifically, they are heavy: "Even on Hornets, which operate within the Starlink coverage area, Starlink is installed quite rarely." 8/ "The reason is simple: even the Starlink Mini terminal weighs about 1.1 kg, which is quite a lot for a UAV." 'UAV Developer' points out a more likely alternative – that Ukraine is exploiting holes in Russia's system of Internet blocks. 9/ For some time now, Russia has been operating a 'whitelist' to ensure that only state-approved websites can be accessed via mobile Internet. This has been highly unpopular and has caused widespread public discontent. 10/ Ostensibly, this is meant to ensure that Ukrainian drones equipped with SIM cards can't simply use mobile Internet access to connect to command and control servers for remote control by Ukrainian operators. However, virtually everyone in Russia is now using VPNs as a bypass: 11/ "This isn't Starlink. It's whitelisted mobile internet. Right now, I have a module that's pulling Avito's video streaming configuration from the server. It handles both video and control. I've had it for about three months now. 12/ "Literally everyone understands that whitelisted services can be used to bypass internet blocking. VPN services are disguised as whitelisted traffic (one of the methods), and even the Ukrainians use them. 13/ "Do the government specialists understand this? Of course they do! But their orders are: fellow party members must profit from the scam and the redistribution of the information market, and the army and national security [i.e. FSB] don't care. 14/ "I'm sure you all understand which party these people belong to. We see halfhearted efforts to combat this phenomenon ... and they explain these efforts by specifically combating VPNs, not by the fact that the infrastructure they created is being exploited by the enemy.😏 15/ "I don't blame you: I'd also be afraid to admit that I created a security hole in the country with my own hands and public money. 16/ "However, trying won't help: there's no way to distinguish legal from illegal traffic. When catching cybercriminals and drug dealers, they use statistics and indirect indicators—a suspect is on a website, and then traffic starts flowing between suspicious nodes. 17/ "Okay, so we're looking for the node's origin. VPN nodes can also sometimes be identified. But in all cases, it takes time for statistics to accumulate. 18/ "In the case of drones, the entire chain is one-time and very short-lived. Attempts to quickly identify and ban such connections will completely bring down the entire internet, since a mass of legal users will be filtered. 19/ "The only way to combat this phenomenon is to pinpoint the drone's exact flight path using acoustic and radar stations and turn off ALL mobile internet in the flight zone. 20/ "Because the drone flies pretty fast, and at each point the outage will last for ten minutes, which is quite survivable... There's a second option: local access points placed near the target by saboteurs. But I'm not allowed to post that yet.😔" 21/ 'Southern Front' also thinks local access points were involved as a means of providing terminal guidance for the attacking drones: 22/ "I see a node installed in the city itself. So, architecturally, it looks like this: operator → via VPN, extends over the internet to the node → the reticule node via radio to the drone and back. This is a very simplified statement, but it's a very realistic scheme." 23/ Pavel Kukhmirov points out that the virtually universal use of VPNs in Russia is a problem created by the government itself, due to the FSB's efforts to impose ever tighter restrictions on the Internet: 24/ "Just a year and a half ago, VPNs were a relatively rare commodity in Russia, used mainly by those who couldn't live without the banned YouTube, Instagram, and the like. 25/ "However, this year, with the onset of widespread bans on everything, starting with Telegram, demand for VPNs has skyrocketed. 26/ "And demand creates supply, and when the Russian authorities began cracking down on VPNs, a ton of clever people emerged, coming up with ever more innovative ways to bypass the blocking. 27/ "And this situation is precisely why they took advantage of this in Ukraine, using the fruits of Russian ingenuity's labour for their own nefarious purposes. 28/ "And again, the VPN developers themselves had nothing of the sort in mind: they were simply developing a system for their fellow citizens to bypass idiotic blocking (while also wanting to make money, of course—what's wrong with that?). 29/ "And the Ukrainians simply took advantage of a ready-made system, which was constantly being developed and improved to meet the demands of domestic Russian consumers." /end Sources: 🔹 t.me 🔹 t.me 🔹 t.me 🔹 t.me