[SR-Users] Russian meddling in Kamailio project

[Yuriy Gorlichenko]

Товарищ подполковник! Алексей Балашов нас выдал!!!!


2018-04-01 7:53 GMT+03:00 Eric Viel <eric at viel-fr.com>:

> Good one!!!! Made me really laugh
>
> Le dim. 1 avr. 2018 00:44, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> a
> écrit :
>
>> (Filed by the Geostrategic Open Source Alliance.)
>>
>> ATLANTA, GA (1 April 2018)--In a twist of events that has shocked the
>> global
>> technical community, the well-known open-source VoIP professional Alex
>> Balashov
>> has revealed himself to be a deep cover intelligence operative of the GRU
>> (Main Intelligence Directorate of the military of the Russian Federation)
>> and
>> the FSB (the Federal Security Bureau, the successor agency to the
>> Soviet-era
>> KGB).
>>
>> Balashov was reported to be seeking US political asylum and immunity from
>> prosecution in return for an exposé of the ways in which the Russian
>> foreign
>> intelligence apparatus has sought to influence the direction of the
>> open-source
>> communications project "Kamailio", widely used in telecommunications
>> carrier,
>> service provider and enterprise environments to deliver high-scalability
>> routing services and other SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) platform
>> building
>> blocks.
>>
>> In connection with these sensitive ongoing negotiations, Balashov was
>> debriefed
>> on behalf of the US Government by Fred Posner of The Palner Group, a
>> counterintelligence think tank and security consulting firm based in
>> Gainesville, Florida. This debriefing was coordinated with the German BND
>> (Bundesnachrichtendienst) agency and other agencies representing security
>> cooperation partners of the European Union and NATO.
>>
>> GOSA have been able to obtain exclusive excerpts from the portions of this
>> interview not deemed top secret:
>>
>>
>> POSNER: Please state your full name, age, place of birth, physical
>> characteristics, serial number and any other relevant professional asset
>> identification markers.
>>
>> BALASHOV: [redacted]
>>
>> POSNER: You have made the claim that Kamailio has been infiltrated by
>> Russian
>> spy agencies. Given that it's an open-source project, that's a bold and
>> provocative claim. Where's the evidence?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Infiltration is perhaps strong word from spy novels. Reality is
>> less
>> thrilling. As you are knowing from controversy about election of our
>> Donald,
>> covert global influence today is mainly question of soft power.
>>
>> POSNER: Is there an obvious way in which this applies to the Kamailio
>> project
>> you can show us? I remind you that you have staked your personal freedom
>> on
>> this issue.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Influence is delicate matter. Da, of course there are some
>> superficial indications...
>>
>> POSNER: Such as?
>>
>> BALASHOV: For example module to support language Squirrel. What is
>> Squirrel?
>> Who uses it? If you take a look at code is a bit complicated, da? What
>> does it
>> do?
>>
>> POSNER: It is a bit complicated, But I'm not convinced. Sell me.
>>
>> BALASHOV: It was in fact committed to GitHub by former Eastern Bloc
>> personality, yes? Very complicated code for unknown mystery language
>> support
>> from Eastern Europe...
>>
>> POSNER: Yes, from the main developer and leader of the project.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Hmm.
>>
>> POSNER: What else?
>>
>> BALASHOV: There is a Ukranian [redacted] who is in charge of many SIP
>> captures
>> with system which diverts them to central database, yes? Something with
>> name
>> from ancient Greek troubadour or myths maybe?
>>
>> POSNER: We'll have to look into that.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Kamailio World is held every year in East Berlin. Every year
>> back to
>> Berlin.
>>
>> POSNER: So what?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Where do most guests of it spend their night?
>>
>> POSNER: [audible crack of pistol whip] This is not a quiz show! I ask the
>> questions here.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Yes, yes, okay, they are at the Park Inn at Alexanderplatz.
>>
>> POSNER: And?
>>
>> BALASHOV: The history of this hotel in East German times and Stasi
>> presence
>> there...
>>
>> POSNER: That aspect of history is well-known.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Da... then is clear.
>>
>> POSNER: What are the strategic goals of Russia with regard to open source
>> communication infrastructure?
>>
>> BALASHOV: From news lately can be seen that is soft power leveraging and
>> economic sabotage.
>>
>> POSNER: Economic sabotage? How will they achieve that with open source?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Again is question of delicate influence in small ways. This is
>> not
>> time of Arab dignitaries visiting KGB hotels in Moscow in 1970s or this
>> kind of
>> naked and obvious trick.
>>
>> POSNER: [raises pistol] You are here to provide specifics.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Yes yes, okay. Well, I am not policy architect at Khoroshovskoe
>> Shosse, but general point of view with colleagues is that best approach to
>> Western countries is to encourage kind of "boondoggles" [air quotes] which
>> consume large economic resources with very little benefit.
>>
>> POSNER: Does Russia create boondoggles in America?
>>
>> BALASHOV: No no. We don't have this level of direct influence to create
>> per se.
>> You can see from recent activities of Internet Research Agency for
>> example that
>> the successful approach is the one which will amplify or grow existing
>> boondoggles which lead to kind of systemic dysfunction, through for
>> example
>> injection of kind of "memes" [air quote gesture] and "trolls" [air quote
>> gesture].
>>
>> POSNER: Where has Russia been successful at this specifically as it
>> relates to
>> the Kamailio, the VoIP industry, and real-time communications?
>>
>> BALASHOV: The GRU are very successful at disinformation campaign to
>> convince
>> business executives about cloud things. They are always listening to our
>> "thought leadership" [air quote gesture] to move to cloud, mostly Amazon
>> Web
>> Services, which is great for us since is worst possible approach. At
>> industry
>> events our people are always pushing very much cloud cloud cloud, you
>> know,
>> like a stampede of rhinoceroses to cloud, don't miss out on cloud! Don't
>> be
>> left on the ground, fly away to cloud! We have great podcas--
>>
>> POSNER: --stop. But there is a legitimate value proposition for service
>> providers in moving to the cloud, isn't there?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Yes, for some maybe, but for example AWS is platform not
>> designed at
>> all for telecom, is kind of Node.js and Ruby on Rails hosting service.
>>
>> POSNER: Where is the economic sabotage?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Well they are spending one month $30,000 to Amazon, next month
>> $35,000, next month $40,000, always bigger instances, bigger, bigger, to
>> handle
>> even very basic work. Official sexy seduction mythology is you can fire
>> all the
>> system admins and no longer replace hard drives at 3 AM and forget all
>> this
>> messing with hardware.
>>
>> Is very hard to resist for big business leaders who follow classical
>> Western
>> management consulting sermon from 90s about "divest yourself of non-core
>> competencies" [air quote gesture]. You know, it is same advice they come
>> to
>> give to us in Gaidar and Yeltsin days. From my memory was not working out
>> well
>> until First Marshal Putin took different approach...
>>
>> POSNER: Let's stay focused. Surely companies can run the numbers for
>> themselves
>> and see if it makes sense for them?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Maybe, but where we have the success is in the exploit of the
>> fear of
>> missing out, I think is called "FOMO" [air quote gesture] nowadays.
>> Everyone is
>> moving to cloud, don't get left behind, even if unit economics of it are
>> disaster for your product and your company. Have you heard about the
>> cloud?
>> It's future!
>>
>> POSNER: And this has been successful?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Hard to measure but for example there is major increase in
>> mailing
>> list posts about putting Kamailio in Amazon EC2, EC2, endless EC2 from
>> people
>> for whom it is obviously wrong thing. Lots of wheels spinnink, spinnik,
>> making
>> fire and sparks, light and heat going into cold, empty outer space, to
>> keep warm
>> our GLONASS satellites. But where is result?  All cost increase. And
>> still the
>> $3000/mo instance does not process small amount of packets that is
>> nothing for
>> bare metal server.
>>
>> Meanwhile spendink, spendink, solvink big amounts of kind of fake
>> problems... I
>> heard this expression once in Atlanta, "keep up with Jones" [air quote
>> gesture]. I don't know who is Jones but everyone agrees is very important
>> to
>> keep up with h--
>>
>> POSNER: --back up. Fake problems?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Maybe is better word: unnecessary problems that come from way
>> AWS
>> inside workings. Stupid network constraints, stupid puzzles for
>> puzzle-solvers.
>> What is American term, "eager beaver" [air quote gesture]?
>>
>> POSNER: Apart from tying up resources, how does this enthusiasm for AWS
>> help
>> Russia?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Well it should be obvious that having whole industry pay huge
>> premium
>> price to centralise their infrastructure at one entity is both
>> economically
>> wasteful and precarious. Fragile and expensive setup is like our Soviet
>> economy
>> at end of eighties. Also havink resemblance to old-times mainframe
>> computing is
>> top secret irony nobody sees.
>>
>> POSNER: Where else is Russia seeding economically harmful memes?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Other big initiative is encourage huge overinvestment in WebRTC
>> because is supposedly future of real-time communications.
>>
>> POSNER: But WebRTC is real.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Da, of course, sometimes workink fine, but eats up big
>> engineering
>> capital and talent fighting always browser bugs and incompatible
>> implementations and always changink changink changink. Meanwhile who is
>> caring
>> for fundamental SIP services?
>>
>> POSNER: And this is a form of economic sabotage?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Of course is sabotage. If you can make much of a sector of
>> economy to
>> obsess always about some toy and create kind of echo chamber of
>> "visionary"
>> [air quote gesture] commentary about it it is negative for GDP and
>> innovation.
>>
>> "Vision" has shown the big success for us; is perfect concept in hand of
>> intelligence agency because nobody is knowing what it is but everyone so
>> desperate to show they have it.
>>
>> POSNER: So a large-scale movement of VoIP service providers to the cloud
>> and
>> big development around WebRTC represent Russian attempts at sabotage of
>> the
>> Western real-time communications industry?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Well again, these tendencies are existing before. It is more
>> question
>> of amplifying and boosting and promoting them so many actors are
>> distracted
>> from important things. American business guys are very vulnerable to it;
>> every
>> time they are asking, "this does not seem to be worth it for us?", always
>> they
>> hear from friends at country club, "you need more bold vision and company
>> culture of innovation, my friend".
>>
>> We have learned after some years and applying KGB psychology training to
>> exploit their big personal insecurities about many things. For example
>> they see
>> competitor have Cloud Business Analytics, they too must have now Cloud
>> Business
>> Analytics, not for any reason, just fear, insecurity, the angst about not
>> having enough "Big Data" [air quote gesture].
>>
>> POSNER: What else?
>>
>> BALASHOV: In recent years can be found thought leadership to remove direct
>> sales because is inefficient, too high customer acquisition cost and so
>> forth.
>> Always now resellers, channel partners this and master agents that. Common
>> sense shows industry cannot support chain with big depth of reseller of
>> reseller of reseller with everyone wanting to be reseller and nobody
>> selling
>> actual products to the real people.
>>
>> POSNER: That's not new to telecom.
>>
>> BALASHOV: No, no, but now new twist! They are now having everything "as a
>> service" [air quote gesture], platform-aaS, infrastructure-aaS...
>>
>> POSNER: Okay?
>>
>> BALASHOV: But also now infrastructure management-as-a-service and kind of
>> meta
>> approach, management-of-management-of-platform-aaS. Resellers of resale
>> platforms of platforms of platforms.
>>
>> Maybe not quite clear, but this is special recursive sense of humour
>> tradition
>> in Russia. Put endless things inside things inside things like matryoshka
>> doll. Again--
>>
>> POSNER: --matryoshka? Like the Russian nesting doll?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Yes yes, nesting doll.
>>
>> As I was saying key point is lots of "activity and buzz" [air quote
>> gesture]
>> which is parasitism by another name. Lots of energy and enthusiasm, big
>> banners, hype from UC press, LinkedIn Pulse CTO insights, cheerleadink,
>> but
>> where is result?
>>
>> POSNER: How is this all tied to Kamailio?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Some of it is not directly tied. It is more idea that Kamailio
>> is
>> tool for executing "big ideas" [air quote gesture] and "platform plays"
>> [air
>> quote gesture].
>>
>> When you are reading mailing list post like, "how to scale up with
>> Kamailio to
>> deliver cloud WebRTC solutions for the enterprise?" and wonder with
>> yourself
>> "from where this small guy got such 'big ideas'?" is often result of
>> Russian-sponsored so-called thought leadership. Who is he? He does not
>> have
>> enterprise!
>>
>> POSNER: What's wrong with that question?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Well from our point of view nothing; great question, bold and
>> inspiring! We are encouraging them always to go build grandiose
>> megalomania
>> ideas, telling to them, yes, "boil the ocean", "be disruptor 2.0", etc.
>> Have
>> you seen ITEXPO? Ideally also raising some venture capital to erase value
>> from
>> fund limited partners portfolio, like pension funds, university
>> endowments.
>>
>> Although sometimes we feel sorry, knowink they will not meet the success,
>> and
>> almost have heart to tell them is just trollink, but our government is
>> clear
>> about goal: work hard every day to suck money out of American economy.
>>
>> POSNER: So it is in Russia's interest to see big ideas funded in America?
>>
>> BALASHOV: Oh yes yes! Bigger is better! First mover advantage and network
>> effect, go big or go home trailblazink! On every time someone gets the
>> Series A
>> for "completely transforming the way you do the business with UCaaS" [air
>> quote
>> gesture] or like "a new kind of next-gen VoIP peering" [air quote
>> gesture] we
>> are having another champagne bottle at the headquarters.
>>
>> POSNER: This does not really sound like traditional intelligence work.
>>
>> BALASHOV: Is not. We are livink in Internet cultural moment, is about
>> memes,
>> engineering perceptions and mass behaviour, new kind of value creation.
>> Likewise destruction.
>>
>> POSNER: We will consider your asylum application in detail. In the
>> meantime,
>> you will be detained at [redacted] as before.
>>
>> BALASHOV: This is famous American tradition of "customer service"?
>>
>> POSNER: We call it "customer success" nowadays.
>>
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