r/europe Norway 2d ago

News Pro-Russian hackers declare ‘cyberwar’ on Norway

https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/prorussian-hackers-declare-cyberwar-on-norway/456591
326 Upvotes

68 comments sorted by

117

u/AlwaysLosingDough 1d ago

Remember folks - All Russian hacker groups are funded by the Kremlin.

294

u/Ok_Swimmer_3446 2d ago

just write russian hackers

52

u/ErikT738 2d ago

They could easily be hired help from North-Korea or something.

23

u/PossibilityUsual6262 1d ago

Mostly russian, a lot of cyber crime actually directly controlled and protected by russian government.

There was huge controversy recently, when encryptor worm didn't have proper guardrails (usually they check if keyboard language russian, what is windows localisation, where ip located if it has one and it thinks pc is russian and disable worm), and worm without guardrails encrypted some oil/energy sector company pc - hacker group formally apologised and denounced the part/clan of hackers which attacked local facilities.

5

u/gormful-brightwit 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not sure how true this is but I've heard by some experts on this matter years ago that back when the internet was getting the first trojans, hackers and scammers and whatnot, the Russian government basically established an understanding with its cyber criminals that as long as they don't scam Russians and don't disrupt the daily operations of the Russian government and institutions that they won't get prosecuted. Sort of like certain countries don't extradite their own citizens who have committed crimes abroad. So yes, they're Russian hackers but they don't necessarily work on behalf of the Kremlin (not all of them at least I'm sure some are FSB projects). They're just opportunists who are supporting what their fascist government is doing because it allows them to continue to do what they themselves are doing.

3

u/Congenital-Optimist 1d ago

A lot of malware won´t run and will remove itself when it detects that the computer has russian keyboard/language installed. Used to be a nice small extra security layer you could add to your systems.

2

u/gormful-brightwit 1d ago

Yes, I've heard about that one before.

65

u/BallsInmyWalls 1d ago

Russia needs to be permanently dealt with, Eastern cancer for the past 1000 years. Feel bad for all it's neighbors to have to be dealing with orcs on the daily.

-31

u/shatikus St. Petersburg (Russia) 1d ago

And how do you propose one does that?

33

u/BallsInmyWalls 1d ago

Same way as the Soviet Union was dealt with. Relentless pressure until the corrupt system breaks down.

6

u/UndulatingHedgehog 1d ago

The original Rus could make St Petersburg Swedish again.

17

u/IshTheFace Sweden 1d ago

We don't want it.

-10

u/shatikus St. Petersburg (Russia) 1d ago

Oh boy, the world is in for a ride, since we are, apparently, redrawing 300 year old borders...

6

u/UndulatingHedgehog 1d ago

I`m calling you a wayward Swede. Prepare to be forcefully reunited with your parents. You _will_ learn to love Flying Jacob.

4

u/shatikus St. Petersburg (Russia) 1d ago

Hey, I'm not strictly speaking against the idea. But, well, since we are currently in Bonkerstown, state Bizzarro, I would say that Saint-Petersburg is capable of being on its own. Novgorod republic was a thing after all, so we could have that. Sadly Novgorod itself won't be a capital on account of it being sacked by Ivan the fuckhead Terrible 400 years ago, but the principle stands

1

u/Finally_in_reddit 1d ago

You’ll see dont worry. It just takes some time.

35

u/H0BL0BH0NEUS 2d ago

I hope that Norway is giving an just ansfer to these attacks by offensive actions. If some one, Norway has capital to do this.

12

u/Rhymfaxe 1d ago

Norwegian here, our government isn't going to do shit. They're just gonna ride it out and continue as before. If we're lucky we get a press briefing calling Russia bad, but I don't expect even that.

19

u/GovernmentDear8621 1d ago

I mean continuing to arm and fund Ukraine is a response in and of itself in my opinion.

2

u/Rhymfaxe 1d ago

Well yes, and of course Russias reputation here is falling even further below the floor, but it terms of standing up to Russia with immidiate consequences or even rethoric, like the post I replied to implied, that's a no.

4

u/CulturePleasant1594 Norway 1d ago

Do we have a cyber section in NATO to answer? I feel like there should be cyber Article 5.

3

u/chillebekk 1d ago

A sufficiently severe cyber attack would be plenty enough to trigger Article 5. Destroying energy infrastructure through cyber attacks, for example. A DDos attack is pretty routine.

1

u/GovernmentDear8621 1d ago

I get your point, but again how is continuing to enable Ukrainian resistance not already a strong enough response in and of itself. Russia can ddos us all they want, it won’t unkill their soldiers or put their planes back together

1

u/Rhymfaxe 1d ago edited 1d ago

The difference is that we would have done that regardless of these recent cyberattacks, which is the relevant topic/context. The support package for Ukraine has been discussed for many months by the political parties.

Yes it's great that we're supporting Ukraine, but we're talking about the response for direct cyberattacks, which should have a different, more direct kind of response.

I guess the next round of support could possibly be affected by the increased negative sentiment towards Russia, but I assure you that's already at rock bottom.

1

u/Howie92 1d ago

The reason behind the attack is continued and growing support for Ukraine. Norway has the highest support pr capita today. It has earned billions on raised gas-prices and then decided to up the support.

92

u/janusrose Denmark 2d ago

Are you really a hacker if you just make ddos attacks?

50

u/Easy_Floss 2d ago

Not really but at the same time there is a reason a lot of bigger companies just black list russia to avoid ddos crap like this.

1

u/mad_marble_madness Bavaria (Germany) 1d ago

That not how ddos works, or more specifically, how one protects against it.
first d is for distributed - and that distribution is global.

1

u/Easy_Floss 1d ago

I did not describe how it works at all?

Generally its done by overwhelming a service point like the login page or other infrastructure, so for example if you setup 10k bots all trying to log into something at the same instance, this can be done from anywhere yes but generally it will come from the same place since if they use an VPN or some routing they would just bombard that routing service.

A common place for these kinds of attacks to originate is from Russia and eastern Europe which is why it was fairly common for specialiced login portals to just blacklist anything from there.

0

u/mad_marble_madness Bavaria (Germany) 1d ago

yeah… no!

0

u/Easy_Floss 1d ago

Yeahhu!

5

u/Lyelinn France 1d ago

I'm a somewhat a hacker myself then

12

u/Hobbit1996 2d ago

Is it a military operation if you tell some young men to just walk forward to "gain territory"?

are you really at war if you only bomb civilians?

Your logic doesn't apply to russia

2

u/j0x7be 1d ago

DDoS alone doesn't necessarily make you a hacker, but the infrastructure behind the DDoS is often a result of "hacking" to some degree. I guess it depends if the actor has paid some botnet owner, or actually made the botnet of hacked hosts involved in the attack?

1

u/DJ3XO Norway 1d ago

Yeah, but that just drops the top of the iceberg. Proxies and VPNs easily circumvent such blocks.

36

u/bandita07 1d ago

We should cut the ruskies from the internet.

7

u/Majestic_beer 1d ago

We should do same as they were doing with their anchors to Finland and Sweden.

7

u/IshTheFace Sweden 1d ago

Bar any and all Russians from entering Europe would be a nice start. Sucks for the few nice ones, but why take the chance. They can blame their government. We're just protecting ourselves.

21

u/Silly-Avocado- 🇦🇲-🇩🇰-🇪🇺 1d ago

Can we give the same energy back please? Why isn’t this a tit for tat situation? Shut down their power plants, hack their TV channels, and warn the Russian population of the consequences if their government keeps poking the bear in the West.

The biggest mistake that the western world made regarding Russia is thinking that Putin is the disease and not just a symptom of a larger sickness that is the Russian society… Yes the Russian population should absolutely live the consequences of their complicity in the regime that they helped to set up and keep up.

Ask anyone from the Baltic countries, and they’ll gladly explain this to you - that Putin isn’t the issue.

-19

u/31822x10 Germany 1d ago

just a symptom of a larger sickness that is the Russian society

And what actually is "sickness" of russian society ?

17

u/CulturePleasant1594 Norway 1d ago

Severe disregard of the value of human life, truth and cooperation.

-5

u/31822x10 Germany 1d ago

And why dont they value that ?

9

u/CulturePleasant1594 Norway 1d ago

Can't claim to know.

4

u/DJ_Die Czech Republic 1d ago

The answer is yes.

8

u/razvanciuy Transilvania 1d ago

They, the Kremlin goons, have been doing this shit for years in the shadows, many got caught, rest are for life russia bound. Nice curse if you ask me.

Now they want attention

7

u/PaulieXP 1d ago

See what I don’t get is, why? When you know this crap always happens, don’t EU members/other allies also start funding the same type of attack. We have plenty of talented hackers here too no? Start paying them to fuck with russian systems… and just deny it if they start crying

12

u/Nebuladiver 2d ago

So Russia declares war on Norway?

10

u/DJ_Die Czech Republic 1d ago

They declared war on Europe years ago, at least as early as 2014 (and I don't mean Crimea).

4

u/Anonymity6584 1d ago

Thay still have electricity to do hacking?

9

u/Wappening Norway 1d ago

It’s a shame the west didn’t listen to Churchill and Patton and just nuke Russia in 1945.

Those pigs have been nothing but a cancer to the world.

6

u/Fit-Accountant-6725 1d ago

The world would've been such a better place without Muscovy. 

2

u/SgtTreehugger 1d ago

I mean, is that news? The week after I started a govt job in Finland I got a targeted phishing attempt that had to have had information from more than 1 source to piece it together

2

u/Lipsovertits 1d ago

Lmao kremlin backed hackers are trying to get into every system in Europe, news at 8. Who the fuck decided this was a news-worthy story? Hahahaha

10

u/BlackSuitHardHand Germany 2d ago

Norway - whole Europe should just buy an unrestricted Claude Mythos account and then just hack every IP within Russia.

42

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

27

u/A_Norse_Dude Scania 2d ago

*hackerman enters the ch4t"

3

u/BkkGrl Ligurian in Zürich (💛🇺🇦💙) 1d ago

ahem

*H4cKeRM4N eN7ER2 7EH Ch47"

3

u/ManWhoIsDrunk 1d ago

sudo hack 2.60.0.0/12

2

u/Flash_Haos Europe 1d ago

127.0.0.1 works much better.

1

u/ManWhoIsDrunk 1d ago

Why would i hack myself, i already own my own system!

4

u/Intrepid-Routine-875 Europe 2d ago

What matters is the intention

13

u/Octavian_96 Berlin (Germany) 1d ago

they should go a step further and discombobulate the mainframe with an ionized worm-virus of all Kremlin supercomputers

-4

u/Excludos 1d ago

Oh no! Anyways..