Hacktivists vs The Dictator: How Belarus cyber army is taking on Alexander Lukashenko and his goons

 

If it boiled right down to a battle of hard power – guns, bullets, and harsh repression – there would surely be no contest.

In the eight weeks since Alexander Lukashenko claimed an unlikely landslide electoral win, his bloody regime has traversed every violent line imaginable.

It has arrested thousands; tortured hundreds; killed a minimum of five; abducted, threatened, and imprisoned political rivals; organized a secret inauguration, and even bared its teeth to a 73-year-old great grandparent.

Protesters, following a more peaceful script, have required ingenuity to stay parity. When the regime launched its terror, they organized mass direct action and strikes. When male protesters began to be arrested en bloc, Belarusian women progressed to go to the protest. When the ladies began to be arrested, they took to tearing the masks off the arresting officers to get rid of their anonymity. 

Now, with the confrontation entering a flash of stalemate on the streets, the fight seems to be switching to a replacement front – cyberspace. And it’s here that the opposition is enjoying some clearcut victories.

Since the beginning of September, a gaggle of anonymous cyberwarriors describing themselves because the “Cyber Partisans of Belarus” have successfully compromised dozens of state IT systems.

For the foremost part, the hacks are embarrassing instead of critical. So, for instance, the presidential site, for instance, was covered by the red and white national flags preferred by the opposition. President Lukashenko and his interior minister found their profiles included on official Belarusian police wanted lists. Online state news broadcasts were interrupted with footage of police violence.

But the hacktivists have scored serious systemic success too. They paralyzed computing systems at the prosecutor general’s office, stock exchange, Minsk department of local government, and tax office. They blanked government sites for hours at a time. They took the state lottery offline. which caused the payments system at the Belarusian full-service bank to crash.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a representative of the Cyber Partisans said cyberattacks against the regime would only escalate. Describing the regime’s IT security as “derisory,” the representative claimed the group already held the capacity to affect the state budget. “We could access bank accounts immediately if we wanted, but we all know it might bring more harm than good – so we are holding back,” he said.

The Partisans’ biggest success so far has been the hacking of interior ministry databases, including the names, addresses, and phone numbers of serving officers. it's become a robust weapon during a little country. Officers got to sleep in an equivalent apartment and shop within the same stores due to the overall population. Removing their ability to perform abuses anonymously increases the prospect of defections significantly. Crucially, it maintains psychological pressure on the system.

In a parallel development, a gaggle of engineers led by US-based ex-pat Andrew Maximov claims to possess developed software that will identify officers even while they're wearing masks.

The 30-year old Maximov first demonstrated the potential of his system during a clip analyzing infamous footage of police abuse from early August. The YouTube demonstration, which has already been watched by 1,000,000 viewers, shows the footage of masked officers standing over an unarmed 15-year-old boy with a live grenade. It then purports to point out the software matching the person against a database of known officers.

Maximov, whose day job is running a multimillion-dollar AI company in l. a. , said the software was straightforward enough. “A 15-year-old with a laptop could do what we do," he claimed. The system uses pre-existing computer vision models to extract countenance, then check it with other metadata like location and time. Only then does it search for probable matches against the databases.

But Maximov’s sci-fi project has attracted its share of doubters. Even some opposition hacker groups have dismissed the software as “fake”.

The ex-pat engineer stands by his claims. People mistakenly believed AI was a particular science, he says. “All it reflects are probabilities supported trained data, and that I admit the photographic data remains incomplete, but we are performing on it.”

On their part, the Cyber Partisans of Belarus also admit that IT sabotage is additionally how from securing a revolution. But they assert they're playing an “important role” during a “historic movement” and are “sure” of their ability to inflict serious damage on Lukashenko’s 26-year regime.

“We don’t want to reveal our cards just yet,” the Cyber Partisans’ representative said. “Let’s just say we are very confident in what we do .”