this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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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 110 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

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 37 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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 3 points 2 years 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 27 points 2 years 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 16 points 2 years 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.

[–] Sprokes@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years 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.

[–] Exosus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Maybe they've downloaded the data to their 2 petabyte pen drive first

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[–] derpgon@programming.dev 42 points 2 years ago (8 children)

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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This has "they deserved it" energy.

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Yes, they did

[–] hark@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

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

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] hark@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Taking a "this is justified because fuck Russia" line of logic to its logical conclusion is not the same as equating data loss to loss of human life.

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[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 33 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 35 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years 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.

[–] 50gp@kbin.social 6 points 2 years 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 2 years ago

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

[–] disconnectikacio@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Soviets are morons, so they didnt.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

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

[–] dlpkl@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years 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 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

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 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeah that's the start of dumbassery. Next comes cutting corners

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Would they maintain their own private off-site backup or would they be in a cluster with other government agencies or renting out from a commercial operation?

The cost would be massive for you or I to utilise such services, less so for an agency, and it certainly isn't difficult.

I understand science is generally always under funded and there's probably some oligarch skimming off of their budget, but I still don't see this being the win they think it is in any form. I can only hope the climate data is not lost to all time.

[–] gregorum@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Would they maintain their own private off-site backup or would they be in a cluster with other government agencies or renting out from a commercial operation?

nobody said they would. I’m just pointing out that the difficulty of backing up 45TB+ of computational meteorological data is a greater consideration than a bulk purchase of magnetic tape.

and, really, the carelessness with which you regard research and knowledge is pretty disgusting. don’t think you’re some hero for that. that’s hundreds of millions - possibly billions - of dollars of research and work let and hundreds of thousands of man-hours just gone. and, again, the data, the analysis, and the knowledge. just gone.

[–] Marsupial@quokk.au -1 points 2 years ago

What are you on about?

Like 95% of what you’ve just ranted about doesn’t even relate to my posts.

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 11 points 2 years 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...

[–] Hooverx@lemm.ee -1 points 2 years ago

Yes, but that makes the propaganda sound bad.

(you also need the tape read/write machine and a storage system, but those aren't that expensive either).

[–] robocall@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte

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