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Ukraine: Hack wiped 2 petabytes of data from Russian research center (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 6 months ago by robocall@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 132 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[-] GONADS125@feddit.de 50 points 6 months ago

I 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...

[-] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago

but also fuck destroying knowledge in the name of war…

That's why War sucks, and Humanity should never fight them.

[-] Teanut@lemmy.world 32 points 6 months ago

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).

[-] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

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.

Ukrainian hackers could cryptolocker it and exchange the keys for Ukrainian POWs.

[-] h4lf8yte@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 months ago

I am sure somebody would get suspicious if the servers are on 100% CPU + IO to encrypt 2 petabytes especially if you encrypt the data in place.

[-] USSEthernet@startrek.website 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yup, we have certain monitors in place for if a server is maxed out above ~90% CPU/memory utilization for a certain period of time. Wouldn't take that long for someone to realize if they were properly monitoring their systems.

[-] Sprokes@lemmy.world 16 points 6 months ago

I 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.

[-] THEDAEMON@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I will also eat two toasts tonight one because i am hungry and the other because i am also hungry.

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[-] derpgon@programming.dev 41 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] Pretzilla@lemmy.world 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For 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/

[-] cheesebag@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The 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.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 11 points 6 months ago

This has "they deserved it" energy.

[-] shasta@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

Yes, they did

[-] hark@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

Following that logic, civilians should be fair game because "Russia can get fucked".

[-] amorpheus@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

Ukrainian civilians are fair game to the Russian military, so...

[-] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 months ago

Israel 2 electric boogaloo

[-] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 months ago

Yeah Russian citizens supporting Putler can eat dick and die, but it's not Ukraine's right to go after them

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago

I love how we're equating loss of data to loss of human life.

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[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 40 points 6 months ago

They’d be morons if they didn’t back up important data off site.

[-] Nomad@infosec.pub 43 points 6 months ago

Have you ever seen any academic IT systems? They are all underfunded ans run by grad students.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

Even 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.

[-] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

Are we sure universities arent run by the cult Mechanicus?

[-] 50gp@kbin.social 6 points 6 months ago

and here we have underfunded science with lots of russian corruption on top

real chance of backup system money disappearing in pockets...

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

You’re insulting grad students. ;) But yea, I imagine it is very underfunded!

[-] disconnectikacio@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Soviets are morons, so they didnt.

[-] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 3 points 6 months ago

Someone’s gonna fall off a balcony for this then.

[-] dlpkl@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] Marsupial@quokk.au 20 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Planeta 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.

[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 19 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

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.

[-] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 6 months ago

2pb is nothing if we're talking about a small datacenter backed up by the government. That said, Russia has a history of special kind of dumbassery

[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 3 points 6 months ago

I think the main problem is that if, for example, they got 1 million allocated in the budget for maintaining the server farm, after corruption and shit only 250k would be actually available

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[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

I 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.

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[-] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 16 points 6 months ago

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...

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[-] robocall@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte

[-] helmet91@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

1000 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)

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this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024

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