Belarusian hackers are changing the country’s surveillance state

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BYPOL can also access materials from Cyber ​​Partisans. investigations then he entered the regime, which was broadcast on BYPOL’s own Telegram channel. Those investigations were made popular and successfuland one of its documentaries was quoted during an American congressional session in Belarus. Shortly before the US imposed sanctions on Lukashenko and its allies.

Hackers say the latest series of attacks has gained access to drone footage from protest prints, the Home Office’s cell phone surveillance database, and databases for passports, motor vehicles and more. They also say they have accessed audio recordings from emergency services and video feeds from road speed and security cameras, as well as isolation cells where detainees are held.

The partisans say their intention is to undermine the regime at all levels. “We have a strategic plan that includes cyberattacks to paralyze the regime’s security forces as much as possible, sabotage the regime’s weak points in infrastructure, and provide protection to protesters,” the spokesperson said.

“This hack is important because it shows that the regime is not as unstoppable and invincible as one might expect,” said Artyom Shraibman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “It shows the weakness of their system. It encourages protesters. Many people in protest greeted these leaks with a sense of joy and triumph.”

The attacks were previously reported by: Now and Bloomberg.

“We don’t have professional hackers”

Cyber ​​Partisans say they are not criminal hackers but tech industry workers who can’t stand it any longer. A spokesperson for the group says four people did “real ethical hacking” while others provided support, analysis and data processing.

“We don’t have professional hackers,” they told MIT Technology Review. “We’re all IT professionals and some cybersecurity experts who learn on the go.”

Pavel Slunkin, who until last year was a Belarusian diplomat and now works with the European Council on Foreign Relations, says the Partisans reflect the importance of the technology industry to the country.

“Belarusian people working in technology are not just economic influence, they also want to turn it into political influence.”

“The Belarusian people working in technology not only want economic impact, they also want to turn it into political influence,” he says. “Except that such people have a house, a car and everything, they cannot choose their own future. But they decided that now they can participate in political life. They played a very important, if not the most important role in what happened in Belarus in 2020.”

In last year’s election campaign, opposition candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky recruited a number of technologists. Two days after he made his candidacy public, he was arrested, and his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, took her place as Lukashenko’s main rival.

“When Tikhanovsky was imprisoned, he felt that the protest movement had collapsed,” Slunkin says. “It was a starting point where people trying to oppose the regime felt stronger and safer from the government, not on the street,” he said.

“As comprehensive a hack as you can imagine”

Lukashenko’s iron dominance of media and information in Belarus has forced political dissidents to switch to apps like Telegram, which are more difficult to block or regulate. The hackers’ Telegram channel has more than 77,000 subscribers.

Their most recent post includes a recording of a conversation between two senior Belarusian police officers on August 8, 2020, the day before the presidential election. In the recording, the deputy head of the Minsk police and his deputy discuss the “preventive” arrests of protesters and prominent political opponents. Among its targets are personnel working for Tsikhanouskaya.

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