Russia's reliance on its insecure systems proves how hard it is to keep communications private. The German foreign intelligence claimed that they had intercepted messages from Russian troops discussing the notorious killings in the Ukrainian town Bucha and the Wagner mercenary's role in atrocities. Due to these, two German ex-ministers sought a probe into Russia's war crimes.
More so, VICE reports that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) claims to have captured a hacker that is helping Russian troops to communicate with one another inside Ukrainian territory.
Germany Intercepts Russian Troop's Messages
German foreign intelligence services BND have intercepted radio communications of Russian soldiers discussing the civilian killings in the Ukrainian town Bucha that links Moscow troops to the murders, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Thursday, per The Times of Israel.
Local officials claimed that over 300 individuals were killed by Russian forces in Bucha and 50 were executed, DW reported. The BND findings believed to include radio transmission allegedly matched the locations of bodies found on the main road.
According to Der Spiegel, in one intercept, a soldier was heard talking to his troop about allegedly shooting someone off their bicycle and a body was photographed lying next to a bicycle. Additional sound recordings were obtained but the location was not identified suggesting similar events had taken place in other cities within Ukraine.
Aside from the intercepted messages, Germany allegedly has satellite images that show Russian's involvement in the killing of civilians in Bucha.
"It's true that the federal government has indications of Russian perpetration in Bucha," the source said, Reuters reported. "However, these findings on Bucha refer to satellite images. The radio transmissions cannot be clearly assigned to Bucha."
The source did not go into details and added that there was no indication of an order from the Russian armed forces' general staff regarding Bucha.
Furthermore, the German government added that satellite images from last month show strong counterevidence against denials of Russia of the notorious killings in Ukraine.
However, Russia denied all allegations of mass killings and claimed that those images in Bucha were fabricated or occurred after Russian soldiers withdrew.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit addressed the Bucha killing on Wednesday following an analysis of noncommercial satellite images that showed the victims lying on the road since at least March 10. According to him, "credible evidence" shows that Russian forces were deployed in the area from March 7 up to March 30. Based on their findings, the Russian soldiers allegedly interrogated and executed prisoners.
"The statements made by the Russian side that these were staged scenes and that they were not responsible for the killings, are thus not tenable in our view," Hebetreit added, per DW.
BND has presented its findings in parliament Wednesday without giving out their source of information.
Russia's Communication Woes
The Washington Post reported that Russian troops were using "unsecured communication devices" to send messages and calls to others. More so, the report cited phone calls between Russian soldiers that were easily intercepted for using such devices instead of military-grade ones.
These unsecured communications are proving to be costly for the Russian troops. American soldiers told The New York Times that Ukraine forces were able to intercept communications from Russian generals because they had been using unsecured phones and radios. They intercepted the calls, geolocated, and attacked the location, killing the general and his staff.
In the call, you hear the Ukraine-based FSB officer ask his boss if he can talk via the secure Era system. The boss says Era is not working.
Era is a super expensive cryptophone system that @mod_russia introduced in 2021 with great fanfare. It guaranteed work "in all conditions" pic.twitter.com/MlIt8NNwLE— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) March 7, 2022
Why Are Russian Troops Using Unsecured Communication Devices?
SBU shared in a tweet that they have captured a hacker helping Russian troops to communicate inside Ukraine territory. According to SBU's announcement, the hacker routed calls from within Russia to the mobile phones of Russian troops in Ukraine.
The images SBU shared showed the hardware and software being used for voice and SMS communications. Cathal Mc Daid, CTO at Adaptive Mobile Security, explained in a tweet thread that the system comprised of a SIM box server that could switch among 128 SIM cards and paired with GSM gateways for connecting both voice and text messages to a local mobile network.
She pointed out that such systems are unreliable and civilian-grade that should not be used for military communications. The use of these communication systems could be attributed to the reduced ability to use encrypted phone handsets when Russian troops destroyed local 3G and 4G masts early on in the invasion that knocked out mobile data networks that phones rely on, The Verge reports.
Images also revealed that Russian troops are using unencrypted handheld radios for battlefield communications. On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense previously implied that these claims are untrue. But the British defense security believed that the delivery of these supposed radios was hampered by corruption.
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