[SR-Users] Russian meddling in Kamailio project

[Yuriy Gorlichenko]

ups... wrong list....

2018-04-01 13:39 GMT+03:00 Yuriy Gorlichenko <ovoshlook at gmail.com>:

> 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.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Kamailio (SER) - Users Mailing List
>>> sr-users at lists.kamailio.org
>>> https://lists.kamailio.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sr-users
>>>
>>
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