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Ways of opening Russian web sites over-and-over in order to slow them down

Web pages to open in a browser if you have free internet top

  • Stopwarnow.GitHub.io 
    Open the page, press "Launch" and you're done. There's a button to pause, and slider to turn-down the intensity if you want.

    GitHub open web pages only host open source software: you can open the source code and try to understand it, or just click the "what is this?" link and look at the Attacklist.CSV file. The F12 key sometimes shows a live report of what sites are visited.
     
  • Stop-russian-propaganda-com
    is a lightweight web page with odd formatting that seems to work. Press a button for it to show you what it's doing.
     
  • If you have a way of opening this page as though from a pro-Russia country, all the better. Opera browser lets you open is as though from Singapore.


Problem

This is more of a proof-of-concept than anything else because traffic from these pages must be easy to filter.

  • remembering to pause or turn-down Stopwarnow if it slows down your computer.
  • teaching your computer to stay up all night and remembering to leave the page open.
  • a similar page got a big red google warning screen about malware imposed on it, with a vague explanation about a "malicious site". This Github page is malicious in a way, so maybe it will get a bit red warning screen sooner or later.
  • I am in the UK. Running these pages from the UK is fine, because Russians want to do business in the UK their government wants to look menacing to people here. If I want to run the web page as though from another country, like a Russian ally, I haven't done the homework to work-out how.
  • if this is just a morale-booster, like a Ukrainian flag in the window, then you could change screen-savers in an organisation to one of these web sites. If you have a shop window, you could display a computer running one of these pages.

Browser extension. TOP

  • Chrome.google.com/webstore : Search for "UKRAINE CHROME WEB STORE" in any browser that might take Chrome extensions including (?) Opera, Edge, and Chrome. When installed, the program runs in the background and turns on whenever you open the browser. An extensions icon sometimes shows like a Ukraine flag, or else it shows when you click the extensions icon which looks like part of a jigsaw puzzle. When you get to the icon and click, after a pause, it opens a neat box listing targets and how often they have been contacted. This works when the system is running reasonably fast. There's an option to delete certain targets, to turn-down the rate of attack, or to pause it altogether.

Problems:

  • if your usual browser has this installed and slows down, you won't be able to click on an icon and pause the program because the browser will have slowed down. The icon might not show either. So it's best t keep this for another browser, or adjust the intensity of the one on your usual browser right down from 1000 to something less. Microsoft Edge browser now blocks this plugin but Opera runs it.
  • remembering to turn it off or turn it down if you're trying to do something else.
  • teaching your computer to stay up all night and remembering to leave this running. I don't know if computer screens wear out if left on all night.
  • if internet companies in Russia want to filter-out unwanted traffic, and their government forces them to do it for this kind of traffic, it looks likely that they will find a way. They have been filtering spam email for years and this is similar, although it might not have been done by protesters all over the world before; it tends to be done on the sly. So this is probably as much a morale booster as a help, but it might be a help as well.
  • I'd like to know more about this. If anyone has an opinion please let me know.

 

Installed program that changes the Russia hit list TOP

https://www.uahelp.me/help/#help-fight-propaganda is a general list of ways to help Ukraine. Somewhere near the bottom it recommends a program from GitHub called db1000n, best found by searching with a few double-checks rather than a link that could be hijacked and point anywhere. The explanation page is on https://arriven.github.io/db1000n/faq/ 

db100n can be used on on a spare computer that has no private information on it - maybe just the operating system - and there are versions for Windows Mac and Linux or whatever.

  • Download.
  • Unzip. Your computer will come-up with a message like "are you sure" because it's a program from an unknown publisher, so you probably have to
  • confirm.
  • Done, but you still have to teach your computer to stay up all night.

On Windows it installs a working version to C:/User/Username/Appdata/Local/Temp/ and opens an icon on the task bar that looks like a microwave.

  • Click to see what it's doing, at least at first; it opens a text box with today's list of urls and then shows that the list is being updated and used again, over and over.
  • Right-click and "pin to taskbar", if you want a shortcut to open the program again, or
  • Right-click and "close window" if you want to close the program. The version at C:/User/Username/Appdata/Local/Temp/ then proves hard to track-down but the zip file is still there to open again when you want.
  • As you tire of this, it becomes a chore to find the program from a search box and re-open. There's a way of remembering the name to type with is "death by a thousand needles" or db1000n

The lists of targets vary day to day, so it can launch surprise attacks. The software updates itself. You can google the list on the IT army of Ukraine's Telegram page preview. They might do different ministries on different days, or private sector targets doing banking or transport.

There are files and instructions for using this as though from other IP addresses, maybe in other countries like Belarus, for those who know how to do things like that.


Problems

  • The program updates itself, which seems bad if used on the same computer as anything else, or not without a close watch.
  • You have to be careful to download a well-linked version from Github, and not a link posted by pirates somewhere. For example I could post a link here and someone could find a way to change it, so I haven't posted a link.
  • If you use any malware scanners or virus scanners, it's good to do a full scan before installing the program and after installing the program, so you can see if there's any difference. For me "Safesearch" came-up before and after. 

 

Limits to all of them TOP


Anyone with a web site can use the free version of Cloudflare for protection. Cloudflare still does business in Russia. It even has a button for "I am under a denial of service attack". If that happens it probably asks all customers to wait a second and then try to view the web site again. They can limit that to visitors from particular countries or IP addresses.

The IT Army of Ukraine Telegram page, which has a preview that can translate on most browsers, gives some idea of success rates for the downloaded program that updates itself to their targets. I have not looked recently but results are attrition with small successes. Anyone in Russian government can also gage public opinion in other countries by the number of attempted denial of service attacks by individuals using free software running on their spare computer.