Ukraine: Hack wiped 2 petabytes of data from Russian research center
https:// www.bleepingcomputer.com /news/security/ukraine-hack-wiped-2-petabytes-of-data-from-russian-research-center/ Ukraine: Hack wiped 2 petabytes of data from Russian research center
The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense claims that pro-Ukrainian hacktivists breached the Russian Center for Space Hydrometeorology, aka "planeta" (планета), and wiped 2 petabytes of data.
One side of me wants to cheer the Ukrainians, but the other laments that they… “hurt science”. I wish they could have stolen the data before they wiped it so it wasn’t lost, but that’s a lot of data to swipe.
I get it, it’s just I’m sad all of that knowledge was lost. Space Hydrometeorology isn’t really relevant to war-waging. It wasn’t a strategic target.
I will drink two toasts tonight: one for Ukraine’s victory, and one to lament lost knowledge.
128I agree with you completely. Any time knowledge like this is destroyed, it illicits the same feeling for me as thinking about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
Fuck russia, but also fuck destroying knowledge in the name of war...
49but also fuck destroying knowledge in the name of war…
That's why War sucks, and Humanity should never fight them.
6
Weather forecasting is actually really important for military operations. Consider weather advisories for aircraft, for example. Or planning an offensive on a clear day.
That said I don't know if this place was doing climate science or weather forecasting (or both).
32I wish they could have stolen the data before they wiped it so it wasn’t lost, but that’s a lot of data to swipe.
Ukrainian hackers could cryptolocker it and exchange the keys for Ukrainian POWs.
18I am sure they have offline backups. Also sometimes most of the data is garbage in the sense we collect anything in case we need it.
16I will also eat two toasts tonight one because i am hungry and the other because i am also hungry.
8Maybe they've downloaded the data to their 2 petabyte pen drive first
1The lost knowledge was political. Nothing like "science progresses us" more like "this data hurts people"
-2striking a vulnerable Russian target was political.
Nothing like “science progresses us” more like “this data hurts people”
these are not the same. and, these Ukrainian hackers probably were more badass techies than trains on discriminate strategic targeting, so they hit whatever had the weakest security. like, I get it, but if someone sat them aside for five minutes and explained that this data is valuable to humanity, and should, at least, be preserved, they would have thought twice before deleting it without preserving it— or, at least making sure the Russians had backups. (maybe they do?)
also, as I mentioned, this action is only sorta embarrassing, not statically useful. it’s not military or strategic/spy data they deleted. this cyberattack doesn’t damage any infrastructure or anything related to war-making. it was an indiscriminate attack based, certainly, on opportunity, not static planning.
given Ukraines recent… budget issues, I think that their innovation in drone attacks in one front they should continue to invest in both because its cheap, but also minimizes casualties. the other they should now explore is cyberwarfare. And cyberattacks should be strategic in nature. They should disable, immobilize, and/or destroy a target. Destroying priceless knowledge is just wrong and benefits nobody.
10
I see all the comments saying Ukraine targeted non-military entity. But IMO, Russia can get fucked. I am not sure if they shared the data with anyone, or kept it to themselves, but no loss.
40For sure they use it for war purposes.
They sure as fuck aren't using it for climate research. They dgaf about climate.
Ed: hack was maybe part of a bigger defense strike: https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/01/27/ukrainian-cyberattacks-cripple-russian-defense-contractor-weather-center/
22The Russian Federation actually does give a fuck about climate... They want to make global warming worse. They get to sell more gas, they get more arable land up north, and they open up shipping routes in the Arctic. Putin is Captain Planet levels of evil, fr.
1
This has "they deserved it" energy.
10Yes, they did
2
I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of collective punishment.
It's very easy to turn collective punishment into discrimination and genocide. This solves nothing and only creates more problems.
-8I agree but this seems to be an attack on a military contractor, similar to if Russia attacked Lockheed martin. Sure Lockheed does civilian stuff but they actively help the military. I am not sure what the UN says about it, and it certainly isn't the same as Israel collectively punishing Gaza.
I suppose everything has nuance
7I'm sorry, are you saying that genocide (which is what Russia literally is doing in Ukraine)is bad? Because again, that is literally what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
This is a target because it's information can be (fuck that, IS) important and be used in the Russian invasion efforts. It's a legit target
3This has got to be the most peculiar downvoted comment I've seen on lemmy so far. A principled disagreement with collective punishment? Weird.
0
They’d be morons if they didn’t back up important data off site.
38Have you ever seen any academic IT systems? They are all underfunded ans run by grad students.
43Even worse, they are often a case of accretion by generations of grad students and undergrads.
E.g. a university was redoing how it hosted student club websites. When it eventually killed the old hosting, 1 site stayed working. It was eventually tracked down to a little mini pc mounted above the false ceiling. It had been plodding away for 20 odd years, most of that without any maintenance at all.
17and here we have underfunded science with lots of russian corruption on top
real chance of backup system money disappearing in pockets...
5You’re insulting grad students. ;) But yea, I imagine it is very underfunded!
2
Soviets are morons, so they didnt.
1Someone’s gonna fall off a balcony for this then.
2
The only reasonable excuse for attacking this data was that it helped the Russian war effort. Eg. flying in supplies, planning offensives, missile and UAV flight planning, etc.
21Planeta is a state research center using space satellite data and ground sources like radars and stations to provide information and accurate predictions about weather, climate, natural disasters, extreme phenomena, and volcanic monitoring.
That’s just fucking stupid of them.
This massive volume of information would be difficult and costly to store in backups, so if Ukraine's claims are true, this is a catastrophic attack on Planeta.
A 45tb tape would cost me a consumer $98, 45 of them would be 2pb and cost a whopping $4,320, it would surely be even cheaper for a bulk order at non-consumer costs. Hardly difficult or costly.
20A 45tb tape would cost me a consumer $98, 45 of them would be 2pb and cost a whopping $4,320, it would surely be even cheaper for a bulk order at non-consumer costs. Hardly difficult or costly.
it’s not just the cost of the tape (or whatever storage medium). it’s the cost of maintaining a secure off-site backup system. surely, you understand this, and how one is much more expensive than the other, especially at scale.
18I can pretty much guarantee that the cost of creating an offsite backup is trivial compared to the budget used to collect and analyze those data. I can’t read Russian anymore and it’s probably not published in a discoverable way, but I’m going to offer up the possibility that the sat network, research scientist teams, sys admins, and everything else that goes into the portion of the Russian government’s budget for this work wouldn’t have even seen that as a rounding error. I’ve worked with US government budgets and I know how tight fisted committees can be, and while the USG isn’t Google in terms of writing checks for tech, and while the Russians are probably an order of magnitude or two poorer than our budgets, it’s still be a no brainer in terms of costs. Either they just didn’t think of it (which I’ve seen far more times than I can tell you about) or it got eliminated as a line item by some bureaucrats who don’t understand cost/benefit analysis (which we’ve all also seen), it wasn’t truly a cost thing. Compared to the price associated with sat launches and data analysis, $10-$20k/ month for data retention is nothing.
Also, I sort of suspect that these were dual use systems. When you’re talking about the sensing tech they’re using, there are the very obvious and direct intel applications.
3Would they maintain their own private off-site backup or would they be in a cluster with other government agencies or renting out from a commercial operation?
The cost would be massive for you or I to utilise such services, less so for an agency, and it certainly isn't difficult.
I understand science is generally always under funded and there's probably some oligarch skimming off of their budget, but I still don't see this being the win they think it is in any form. I can only hope the climate data is not lost to all time.
0
Technically with 45tb they mean "45tb of highly compressible text", actually is 18tb.
And raw images aren't compressible
With a catch like this the genius marketing could call them "100 petabyte tapes" (only if you store zero-filled files)
So it needs more tapes and the drive itself is also very expensive, around $10k, and it's not something that a Russian government entity can access easily today, but needs to be bought from grey market resellers with higher markup.
Then needs a dedicated server for that, a person (or a robotic arm) that changes the tapes every few hours, temperature controlled off-site storage...
16Yes, but that makes the propaganda sound bad.
(you also need the tape read/write machine and a storage system, but those aren't that expensive either).
-1
1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
81000 Terabytes (TB) = 1 Petabyte (PB).
Or: 1024 Tebibytes (TiB) = 1 Pebibyte (PiB)
Or: 1024 Terabytes (TB) = 1.024 Petabytes (PB)
Or: 1024 Terabytes (TB) = 1 Petabyte (TB), 24 Terabytes (TB)
But: 1024 Terabytes (TB) != 1 Petabyte (PB)
22
Hell yeah, score another point for the anti-science team!
-3Should have old it for randsome
-5Crime: 😡
Crime, Ukraine: 🤩-10Erasing data that is used for military reconnaissance in a hostile country is not a crime.
11Let me guess, would you approve ukraine burning libraries in russia? It is a hostile country where every single russian is hostile, after all. Libraries are a source of knowledge and knowledge can be used for war. Even educational institutions need to be shut down as they aid in research for war related purposes.
-5
Manslaughter is a crime. How would you defend your country when the enemy is killing your people?
3
That was a non-military target.
That also harmed science.
That kind of targetting is what I expect of Russia, but if Ukranians are doing it to, then it means they're losing their ability to discern who the proper targets are, vs who the not proper targets are, and are assaulting more indiscriminately.
Not wise, Ukraina, sorry.
_ /\ _
-18They're authoritarian war mongers using chemical warfare to assassinate people on foreign soil. They are illegally occupying a country, and this target was supplying the war effort with information. Fuck anything Russia at this point.
16being "science" doesn't make make it harmless.
good meteorology supports military operations.
if it hurts russia's accuracy in predicting weather, it helps Ukraine's chance for surviving this war.
nobody says this particular action was a top priority, but every little resistance against the russian genocide helps.
13It was actually military R&D that helped develop meteorology to the point it is today since predicting the weather even inaccurately can be a decent boon in warfare.
4
The heavy water plant the Germans set up in WW2 was also "science" and it's still a good thing that it was sabotaged.
12Oh no not SCIENCE
THEY HURT SCIENCE YOU GUYS 😭
0The civilian script kiddies did that or the Ukrainian government? In both cases...yeah, they are being kinda moronic and harmful by destroying research.
-5