#kiri talks cyber stuff

[wandering-wolf23]

Fuck it. I’m going to detail Anonymous Sudan. This is going to be a long one, folks. If you’re curious, peak under the cut.

First off. Anonymous Sudan is not Sudanese. They are Russian. I’m going to referencing this report quite a bit, mostly because it’s very thorough and details it in a way the average person can understand. You’re also going to need to understand who Killmilk/Killnet is. I’ve seen chatter that “milk” is a Russian slur towards Ukrainians (which fits, given the war), but I can’t confirm or deny it.

Why is this Russian hacker group targeting a fanfic site and why are they trying to pretend to be Sudanese hackers?

They want money. A Bitcoin wallet filled with $30,000 USD, to be exact. Per my converter, that would be roughly 0.98 Bitcoin. American dollars go very far in Russian, especially if they are converted into something that is very hard to trace. Why are they using language of religious extremists? Because Russia is wildly homophobic as a nation and they want to make your life harder/ruin your day. Also, Ao3 is a soft target because it owns its own servers. In short, they are trolls who want money.

I’m pretty sure that Killmilk doesn’t care that Ao3 hosts gay fanfic. If he did, he wouldn’t be fucking around with Google translate like that. He just wants to make you angry and make you say stupid things on the internet that is going to make your life harder. Seriously, guys. Don’t fall into the trap, please? Don’t feed the trolls.

Yes, the English in the first screenshot came from Google translate. How do I know?

Well, a long time ago (2016-ish), it was a thing in the Warrior Cats fandom to take quotes from the book, feed it into several languages via Google Translate, and laugh at the results. Google Translate is not a 1:1 translation service. It guesses. A lot.

My gut feeling? The text went from Russian, to Arabic, to English, with Google Translate guessing each time (based on a previous guess) the words are translated. That’s how what I’m guessing was “porn” turned into “smut” and what was probably a slur turned into “LGBTQ+”. Google Translate does not like translating slurs and has been known to substituting what it thinks are less offensive words.

So how do we know they are Russian?

They hang out on Telegram, an app known to be used by Russian interests. They also posted purely in Russian until they fucked with Microsoft. Then, they switched to Arabic.

Here’s the kicker, though. Anonymous Sudan isn’t using Sudanese Arabic, English, or Nobiin. They’re using Modern Standard Arabic. Google Translate does not give you the option for Sudanese Arabic. It gives you the option for Nobiin (labeled as “Sudanese”), but not Sudanese Arabic.

In short, these guys are using the first likely language that pops up on Google Translate and hitting “enter”. Google Translate is free, easy, and looks right.

They also have ties to Killmilk/Killnet. Killmilk/Killnet has ties to the Wagner Group and the Kremlin. They are very bad people, doing very bad things.

So why did they do it?

They needed money. 30k USD in Russia buys you a lot of arms and ammunition. They went for a site that a lot of people use, that has flaws allowing for a DDOS attack, and waited to see if people would pay the ransom.

No, this is not a false flag by Ao3. Anonymous Sudan is a known entity with a known MO and a known habit of attacking Western sites. I know y’all hate Ao3, but please do some digging. Critical thinking is not the enemy.

[caribouwritings]

Sub-Zero

           I was only three when my older brother Eddie died. He had a brain tumor; he died a couple weeks after my birthday and a couple weeks before his.

          He did just as he told our mom when he said, “I stay four.”

          On June 27th, my big brother was gone at age four.

***

           My parents tried to give me a happy life. They gave me privileges that some kids are not as lucky enough to have (such as a vacation almost every year). Despite what the therapist had said when the event happened, I was damaged and it was only a matter of time before it would all show in forms that got glossed over repeatedly.

I didn’t just lose my brother, I lost my best friend, my protector, my guide… I lost my Eddie.

           Although I can now say it and not think much of it, I still cry at the thought I was cheated out of a big brother to teach me the ropes and take my hand when I was scared.

           Senior year of high school was the hardest. I was graduating (on that day fifteen years later) and my brother did not even make it to kindergarten, which he was so excited for because he’d get to ride a bus; His favorite thing in life besides me, our family, Scooby-Doo, and Donald Duck was anything with an engine.

           I outlived my brother who knew what he wanted (it could’ve changed in time, but it would still involve cars and trucks), and I had panicked. I believed people when they told me I would be a great English teacher. I wanted to be a writer, but everyone kept saying I am a teacher at heart. There was just a couple teeny tiny (major) problems:  I hate school (and still do), I am very selective with what I choose to read, and I don’t talk unless I want to or need to.

            Kudos to those who teach, but I’d rather not go back. School for me was where I had my individuality constantly beaten out of me, I was bullied by other students for who I was, have been accused and associated with things I am not, and my mental health got worse.

           However, being non-confrontational, I just nodded my head and let myself be pushed to a major I did not want and watched as I slowly went downhill, and crossed paths with someone a little bit before graduation who is just like me… sort of.

           I was looking for some new games to play that are like Street Fighter II. While watching a Top Ten Best Fighting Games of All Time video on YouTube, the channel (Watchmojo) ranked a video game called Mortal Kombat (2011) at number two, right next to Street Fighter II which placed number one. When I saw the game on clearance at Walmart, I put it in the cart with the plan to take over the unused Xbox 360 in the living room bought by my parents’ for the Kinect feature. My mom did not care anymore, she was just grateful that the expensive gaming system collecting dust under the TV stand was finally being used.

           I played through several kombatants (yes, with a ‘K’, most ‘C’ starting words are replaced with a ‘K’) in the Ladder Fights and Test Your Luck challenges for hours enjoying the blood and gruesome moves.

            I oddly kept finding myself drawn to Sub-Zero, the blue ice assassin (don’t call them ninjas, they find it highly insulting). I didn’t know why though; I couldn’t figure out why I thought the man with ice powers was intriguing. Curious by nature, I did what I do with everything else I found fascinating, I dug for all the information I could find. It didn’t matter how useless and random, I wanted to know everything about the world of Mortal Kombat, and I now know a huge chunk of it.

           Sub-Zero’s real name is Kuai Liang, and he was originally called Tundra. He is the younger brother of Bi-Han, the first Sub-Zero in the series, and Kuai Liang took the name Sub-Zero after his brother’s death to honor him. That was the only similarity I thought we had, but I was so wrong… I was so wrong.

           Mortal Kombat is super violent. The two ice powered brothers are best known for a fatality where they rip the head and spine out of their enemy opponent, both parts still attached together like a twisted party trick (and this is also the main origin to the ERSP rating system in video games). I am not even strong enough to lift a twenty pound puppy without nearly dropping the stubborn Shepard Labrador mix back on the ground with a thump. Plus there’s the other stuff on the surface:  blonde Caucasian female with an olive shade of green eyes, a bubbly persona and pink girly appearance, versus a dark haired Chinese American male with icy blue eyes, a cold persona and super violent history.

           “He is just a video game character, he is not real. You don’t need to care this much for this fictional character.”

           I know that. Kuai Liang is not real, but his story is real to me.

           Kuai Liang went through hell. Everything bad that could have happened, did happen to him. He lost his brother when Scorpion—the wraith of the NetherRealm (and the franchise’s fan favorite character)—killed him in retaliation for killing the whole Shirai Ryu clan, his kind-hearted wife, and innocent baby boy (spoiler alert, it wasn’t Bi-Han at all! Scorpion was tricked into killing an innocent man!). Wanting to avenge his brother’s death, and avoid the Lin Kuei’s new cyber-initiative their Grandmaster was keen on, Kuai Liang and his best friend, Smoke, ran away to find the answers to what happened to Bi-Han. Right when our new Sub-Zero nearly has his revenge and is to kill Scorpion, he is stopped and surrounded by members of his former clan who have been converted from human to cyborg; despite the robotic outsides and still human insides, they are brainwashed to obey like full-fledged robots. He is taken back to the clan and suffers the same fate of being turned into a cyborg and is renamed LK-520, then sent after Smoke who managed to get away. Lucky for both of them, cyber-Sub-Zero is knocked unconscious and Smoke gets help from his new allies to reset Kuai Liang, but although he gets his control back, he is now stuck as a mashup of man and machine. Until (in a rushed scene of the game) he is killed and his soul is sent to the Netherrealm where he is rebuilt from what is left of his remaining bits of human organs and bone inside his robotic shell. Although human again, he is now under the mind control of the sorcerer, Quan Chi (spoiler alert! He’s the real person behind Scorpion’s suffering!), and is now working alongside both the man who framed his brother and the man who murdered his brother, along with several of his new allies that died as well. In the tenth game, he is freed from Quan Chi’s control by being in the right place at the right time (and by also being a fan favorite character too).

           That should be the end of it, but it’s not. This is right before I realized how perfectly Kuai Liang’s life parallels mine. This is before I read the comics.  

           Like I said, I get invested in stories to the point I want to find out everything I can. When I found all three volumes of the comic series on Amazon, I couldn’t resist and I bought all three.

           When UPS came to deliver the package, I brought it straight to my room plopping the brown cardboard box on my bed, and cut the tape open with a pink mechanical pencil. I didn’t care for the other two books I bought (except enough to hide the one I bought for my little sister’s birthday in the closet) because there they were. Volumes one, two, and three were at the bottom of the box under giant green bags of air that are satisfying to stomp on and give unsuspecting siblings heart attacks, but that was unimportant in this moment. I took the three volume books out and spread them on my bed, and dived right into the unknown; into the rebuild of the Shirai Ryu, the second generation of klassic characters, and what happened to those who lived or were brought back like Sub-Zero.

           Sub-Zero, at this point, was my favorite character. In volume two, however, there was a shift in my view of him. In that shift, he became my number one favorite character ever and sealed his place into that spot permanently.

           Kuai Liang had become possessed by a cursed dagger in the previous volume, and it continued into volume two. Scorpion (he is a good guy now… sort of) and his apprentice, Takeda, go after him and get the dangerous dagger back, but the curse makes it hard for Scorpion to reason with Kuai Liang. Scorpion becomes frustrated and the two fight to what they believe to be the death, until Takeda manages to get the dagger away. Kuai Liang exhausts out all the remaining evil within him, and then is left standing there perplexed by why he is there and what is going on. It doesn’t matter to Scorpion though, he still beats the bewildered young Sub-Zero to a bloody pulp and leaves him to die.

           Kuai Liang rethinks his life as he lays their bleeding out, so when Bo’ Rai Cho (ew, trust me on this one, just ew) comes to him to help him get back on his feet, he asks him, “you haven’t figured out what all these events mean? Why I’m here?”

           Kuai Liang’s answer is, “I must commit hara kiri…”

           There. There it is. Right there. That is the line that made me see I am more like Sub-Zero than I thought I was.

           We lost our older brothers, we lost our individuality, we were beaten, we were bullied, we were brainwashed, we took orders, we went down wrong paths, we battled the world, we battled ourselves, and we took so much of a beaten that we laid in our own blood, sweat, and tears thinking “I must commit hara kiri…”

           What is hara kiri? To simplify, it is suicide.

           I remember putting the comic down on my stuff animal infested bed and staring at the lavender colored walls, looking at the big picture. Sub-Zero is a strong warrior with ice powers, and he hit rock bottom. He may be physically stronger than me, but he is just as broken and weak as me on the inside. He put up a shield, hiding behind his anger just like I hid behind my smile.

           I picked up the comic again, and skipped frantically through the pages of volume three just to get to Kuai Liang and find the answers. What did he do and how did he survive to be in the next game?

           It is complicated and complex, but the answer is different based on how you interpret his story. I obviously interpreted it well, because I am here. I am okay.

[wandering-wolf23]

Given the state of LGBT rights in Russia, I can actually see state sponsored trolls/hackers doing this. It’s not because they hate fanfic or Ao3, it’s probably because they wanted money or because they wanted to cause LGBT people a little heartburn. Anonymous Sudan isn’t Sudanese, either. They are Russian and they have ties to a Russian hacker group called Killmilk/Killnet.

I’ve heard some folks say that “milk” can be used as a slur towards Ukrainians, but I can’t confirm that and I honestly don’t feel like digging around for information on Russian slurs.

Anonymous Sudan likes attacking Western websites. This isn’t their first rodeo, either. As CyberCX puts it (and they are reputable, as far as I understand), “Anonymous Sudan is publicly aligned with other pro-Russia threat actors that are likely affiliated with the Russian state” and “ On 25 and 31 March 2023, CyberCX observed high-traffic Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Australian organisations”. It fits their MO: attack something with a “soft” underbelly (like an organization that owns their own servers) and post a demand for an absurd ransom. In this case, 30,000 Bitcoin.

Telegram is also known to be affiliated with the Kremlin (IE: Russian powers that be). The text itself reads like it was written in Russian, then fed into Google translate for Arabic, then fed into English. This actually makes sense, because Anonymous Sudan posted in Russian first, only later changing to Arabic to add extra fuel to the troll fire. Not every language translates cleanly into another, especially languages where there are only a few loan words/base words. EX: I’ve had Google Translate turn “cleanly” into “scrubbing” because the service is guessing at the meaning of the word used. This also happens a bit more often if the words needed in Language Number 2 are a bit closer than what you realize. Google translate doesn’t always give you a 1:1 translation, but it’s super easy to use.

It’s not xenophobia to draw conclusions based on known entities. Russian trolls are a known factor. Telegram is known to be a Russian troll hot spot. Anonymous Sudan is known to be a Russian entity (seriously, read the links). They’ve done this before. Hell, they even hacked Microsoft.

TL;DR: Anonymous Sudan is known to be Russian, LGBT+ rights in Russia suck, and they probably did this to get $$$ and give people heartburn. In other words, typical trolls.

I've heard that the supposed ao3 hacking group is actually Russian in origin. It fits their MO - Russia is *wildly* anti-LGBTQ. I've heard from Russian folks that ao3 is banned there because of "moral degeneracy". Aka putin doesn't like it

youve just got the dictionary definition of this going on