Whoopsie: Russian hackers post same document twice, but with glaring differences
Often, in war, mistakes are made. Sometimes, in Russia’s information war against the West, mistakes are made and then published for all the world to see.
That seems to be what happened when two supposedly independent hacking groups, believed by security experts to have ties to the Kremlin, posted the same documents stolen from a philanthropy run by George Soros. But the hack included a twist: Some of the documents taken by one group were altered in a bid to try and link Soros to Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, revealing how hackers likely working for Moscow are editing documents to smear their victims.
After hackers broke into a system for sharing documents at Soros’ Open Society Foundations, material describing the organization’s work in Russia appeared on two different sites: in November on the web platform of CyberBerkut, a pro-Russian hacking group that opposes Ukraine’s current government, and in June on DCLeaks.com, a website that hosts purloined documents and is believed by security researchers to be a Russian project.
Among the documents posted, at least three appear on both sites. The documents posted by CyberBerkut have been edited to try and show that Open Society provides significant financial support to Navalny.
CyberBerkut edited one budget document to include a line describing a grant to Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption to the tune of either $240,000 or $122,000 — CyberBerkut’s editors managed to put two different amounts on the same budget line. In another document titled, “Russia Project Strategy, 2014-2017,” Berkut added the name of Navalny’s foundation to a paragraph describing the lack in Russia of “institutions that focus analytically on issues of policy relevance.” By adding the Foundation for Fighting Corruption to that paragraph, Berkut falsely implied that Navalny’s group received financial support from Open Society. And Berkut edited a third document, which describes how Russian NGOs are complying with the country’s harsh laws governing civil society groups, to claim that Navalny receives support from Yandex, a Russian Internet services firm that competes with Google.
.........
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/News/12147705/story.html
http://www.peacock-panache.com/2016/07/russian-hackers-emails-wikileaks-23928.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/25/1563684/-Russian-Hackers-Accidentally-Post-Different-Versions-of-Stolen-Docs-Post-Steal-Editing
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last edited Thu Aug 25, 2016, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)
Naming yourselves after Manafort's client (and Putin's tool) disgraced former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych's murderous band of thugs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkut_(special_police_force)
The "Berkut" (Ukrainian: Бе́ркут, eagle in English, specifically the Golden eagle, was the system of special police of the Ukrainian militsiya within the Ministry of Internal Affairs.[4][5] Since late March 2014 its Crimean unit in the Republic of Crimea defected to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs preserving its old name.[1][2][3][6] Following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, when Berkut was held responsible by the new government for most of the nearly 100 civilian deaths,[7] acting Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signed a decree that dissolved the agency.[8][9] As a result of the 2014 Crimean crisis and the referendum in Crimea the Russian Federation granted accession to the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of Russia on 21 March 2014.[10]A Three days later Russia announced that the Crimean Berkut unit would preserve its name as part of its defection from the Ukrainian authority to the Russian Interior Ministry.[3]
Berkut was Ukraine's successor to the Soviet OMON. It operated semi-autonomously and was governed at the local or regional level (oblast, raion, city). Initially used to fight organized crime, it became used as the Police (Militsiya) for Public Security. Its full name was "Berkut" Separate Special Assignment Unit(s) of Militsiya. There was a "Berkut" unit in every region (oblast) and every big city of the country. Among the several special police units in Ukraine, "Berkut" became a catchall name for all the others.
The main stated purpose (in Ukraine) of the national special force was crowd control; however, the Berkut have also been accused of taking part in racketeering, and of terrorizing, attacking, and torturing Ukrainian citizens,[11] including in recent years voters who would elect non-Yanukovych candidates to local governments.[12] and had a well-documented history of kidnapping, attack, and torture of protesters including during Euromaidan and to a lesser extent the Orange Revolution.
