My favourite was from the start of the war when the guys who were supposed to plant incriminating evidence on the scene were they arrested some "terrorists" put the Sims 3 game on the scene instead of 3 sim cards and literally signed the fake documents they planted with "Signature Unclear". (Yes, real story, just search for Sims 3 and Signature Unclear.)
As I understand it I understand this was FSB (or someone elses) way of "getting even" after their boss had been publicly humiliated for proposing to not invade Ukraine. (But that - except for the public humiliation which is well documented - is just speculation on my part although I might have heard it from someone else thinking loud.)
Although sometimes I wonder if it was a genuine misunderstanding. I feel I have unusually many Russian friends and ex-colleagues, people who live outside of russia for good reasons and do not support it. Z-russians on the other hand does not strike me as the brightest bulbs in the box.
I did, but got lots of vague rumor stories, but nothing solid.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-agents-the-sims-vide...
This article in turn links to russian state sponsored RIA Novosti, and while I generally don't trust russian state sponsored media, I make exceptions for when they admit embarrassing things, because they have little incentives to lie to get people to ridicule them.
"Signature Unclear" is actually a real pseudonym of a pro-Nazi author. So this particular part was at least believable.
The "Sims 3" disks (3 of them) and Bandera's books were far less so.
That was interesting, thanks!
Do you know if he is an actual Jew-hating nazi or just someone who opposes russia?
(I've learned over the last 3 years that for most russians when they think of nazism they don't think of genocide of minorities, mega-projects, Lebensborn and all that bit rather only about "war against russia")
This is exactly what happens on a contract I work on. Any software that is authenticated through our OKTA SSO very frequently signs users out and redirects to a logout page. This is especially annoying when using the project management software, where you typically have many tabs open to see various requirements, epics, stories, tasks, etc. Any inactivity more than 15 minutes, and all the tabs are logged out. Just like that, everything is gone. It forces us to use strategies such as saving redundant copies of things in notes and spreadsheets. I don’t think it’s necessarily sabotage but it feels extremely negligent. Moreover it’s completely unnecessary since everything is behind a VPN anyway.
Another similar thing that does feel as if it’s somewhat malicious is the very aggressive logout and shutdown policy of our virtual desktops - these are the desktops we do everyday active development on and where we set up IDEs, database clients, web servers, testing tools, API references - anything you can think of. We use this in combination with our regular desktops where we attend meetings or do other non-development tasks such as using the above-mentioned requirements software. It takes a lot of time to set all of this up! If you’re inactive for more than 2 hours, your session is not only closed, it’s completely destroyed so that it can be reclaimed for another user. I don’t need to explain to experienced developers how incredibly frustrating and counterproductive this is, but leadership has been extremely dismissive of any complaints, and tell us that we should use our time more wisely or that we shouldn’t be inactive for so long (which is complete BS, there are a thousand valid reasons foe this). Apparently this is done for cost-cutting reasons, but something feels more nefarious here, because this very obviously leads to reduced productivity and demotivation. This has actually lead to me purposefully overestimating complexity and demanding a user story for every single little trivial action I take, whereas before I used to just go in and make quick fixes or knock out certain operational things in my spare time. It’s a waste of time for us and ends up being worse for our customers.
"BeyondCorp comes from a realization that VPN perimeter network security is obsolete. As soon as an attacker breaches the perimeter, they have unrestricted access to the resources."
https://goteleport.com/blog/how-teleport-extends-beyondcorp-...
no idea if that's a good resource, it's just the first hit for "beyondcorp"
After all ‘Teams’ is fine.
That's not the real worry today. Today we have to worry about remote sabotage of key systems - water, power, comms. It's quite possible that we will see major blackouts in the US, Russia, Europe, or China as side effects of the various wars in progress.
[1] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...
2 million USD gets you a smartphone zero-day*, according to rumours, something like a single ATACMS missile.
* geometric mean of 200k and 20M: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/russian-zero-day-seller-of...
That's a strategic capability that very likely requires multiple attack chains, not a single exploit. For Western countries, cost is probably the least significant factor in deciding to use it.
One would want to be certain that option is available, but only when absolutely necessary. Using it on a random Tuesday would take that particular option off the table forever. Best case scenario, Russia discovers the means by which the attack was carried out. Worst case, they retaliate with nuclear weapons.
Globally, I believe there are only a few countries capable of executing such a plan.
Alternatively, maybe it is possible, but the US doesn't want to escalate? You saw how reluctant Biden was to authorize missile strikes inside Russia.
> Create overly-ambitious timelines and set impossible-to-keep deadlines
> Send unnecessary meeting invites then cancel them last-minute
> Don't use collaborative software, just email things back and forth
> Introduce burdensome software license approval processes
> Leave off the phone or video call information from a calendar invite
Forget government, this is a summary of standard operating procedure at my last (large, private sector) employer. Maybe they weren't all idiots, they were just fighting the man.
Just like the original Simple Sabotage Manual, this is worth reading just to reflect a painfully clear image of your own organization's dysfunction (and possibly your own role in it).
Smash equipment, waste thousands and get caught. Delay a big project, waste millions and nobody notices.
1 - How? I have no idea. They are more expert than the author.
Click on "Exit".
> Require wet signatures (ink on paper) for documents instead of digital
Jesus Christ.
*not the expensive kind either, I've tried pens that were $50+; fav is still a $2.75 Uniball Jetstream 1.0mm. Smooth pens make pen&paper writing/signing fun
Will supergluing things in place actually help the oppressed? Are you the Harriet Tubman of adhesives? Or will someone who makes minimum wage get yelled at and then forced to clean it?
This is Tik Tok level pranks applied to serious political issues and frankly, oppressed people deserve better than this.
It bears a strong resemblance to a handbook that went around during WW2 for workers within Nazi occupied territories.
https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
