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Russian Troops Traced To Ukrainian Battlefields Through Social Media

Posted by Soulskill on from the caught-red-tweeted dept.

New submitter wienerschnizzel writes: Vice News has released a report on how they were able to trace a member of the regular Russian army from his base near the Ukrainian border toward the battlefields in the contested territory in eastern Ukraine, then back to his home in Siberia using the pictures he uploaded on his social media profile.

The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.

12 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a friggin minute... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Informative

    Okay, opinions and feelings inside, the veteran in me demands to know: "WTF, have you idiots never heard of COMSEC/OPSEC?"

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by idontgno · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm a veteran too. I'm coming to the conclusion that OPSEC is dead, because social media guarantees the loosest lips in history.

      The only way to "fix" this is either submitting social media participation of military personnel to military censorship, or a strongly enforced ban on military member participation in social media.

      Which, I suspect, wouldn't work.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      US forces have had problems with this too, and not just the Geraldo Rivera incident. If I remember right there was a soldier or airman that took a selfie with some cool helicopters or something that had landed at his Iraqi base, and insurgents started shelling when they realized what was there. Admittedly these aircraft were out in the open exposed so it's still possible that they'd have been seen and targeted anyway, but the particular method through which their presence was initially identified was the photo.

      Mind you, I don't think that the US has very many instances of this happening, but it's not without precedent. I'd argue it's just another form of, "loose lips sink ships."

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by almitydave · · Score: 5, Funny

      Loose tweets sink fleets?

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
    4. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by oneiron · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why should they lose convenience from and waste time/money on OPSEC/COMSEC when there are no broadly imposed consequences as long as they simply lie about it?

    5. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Informative

      Honestly though ...

      It's not your problem to deal with Russia's opsec. And if you're going to have a bunch of conscripts doing mandatory service ... well, don't expect them to give a damn.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      See also: ISIS man posts selfie (or some other vapidity) to Twitter. Guy at US CentCom sees it, within 20 hours they match the background to where it was taken from, verify it, and drop a bomb on an ISIS command center.

      There's always going to be SOME idiot who just can't resist posting a selfie of him in his T-72 cupola with something that's verifiably Ukraine in the background. Who remembers Ric Romero's brilliant "Draw a plot of where we're coming from in the sand on international TV" incident from 2003? Not that it mattered since we were converging on Baghdad from literally every direction - but suppose Ric's dad had been embedded with the 101 and radioed out "Now Wolf, here we are at Saint Marie-du-mont..." in the clear.

      This is basically a human version of why the IoT terrifies me. Now when every stupid device that has no reason to contain so much as a transistor contains a processor, a writeable memory, and a wifi stack, there's always going to be SOME dee-dee-dee device that compromises the network and you'll (a) never figure out which one until it happens and (b) haha, the manufacturer wrote the 'blow jtag fuses' bits so good luck applying a patch

    7. Re:Wait a friggin minute... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is not an entirely new problem. During the Falklands war, the BBC reported that several British ships had been hit by bombs, but luckily casualties were minimal because the fuses on the bombs were defective and they didn't explode. The next day, Argentina swapped out the bad fuses, and had much better results.

  2. So? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.

    It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    1. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.

      It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.

      I'd also like to point out the Americal military "advisors" helping the Ukrainian army. This conflict has long passed the threshold of regional proxy war.

  3. Absence of OPSEC is compensated by disinformation by Trachman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Absence of OPSEC is counter-weighted with several hundred paid internet workers who do nothing else but work day and night to sway internet opinion.

    As such, if there will be a report that there were dozens of Russians captured and hundreds of Russians killed, for each and every of the report there will be dozens of comment explaining that such findings are incorrect and fake. And that graves of the Russians are fake. And that Ukrainians are fascists and Nazis, from the failed state. Just read some of the comments for this article.

    Regular reader of any news will be flooded with contradicting information and will choose to believe what he wanted to believe.

  4. Re:Volunteers? by halivar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do Russian soldiers often take their tanks on vacation with them? How stupid do you have to be to believe this?