[SR-Users] Russian meddling in Kamailio project
Daniel-Constantin Mierla
miconda at gmail.com
Sun Apr 1 14:37:56 CEST 2018
OK guys, one by one, one step forward! :-)
On 01.04.18 12:39, Yuriy Gorlichenko wrote:
> Товарищ подполковник! Алексей Балашов нас выдал!!!!
>
>
> 2018-04-01 7:53 GMT+03:00 Eric Viel <eric at viel-fr.com
> <mailto:eric at viel-fr.com>>:
>
> Good one!!!! Made me really laugh
>
> Le dim. 1 avr. 2018 00:44, Alex Balashov
> <abalashov at evaristesys.com <mailto: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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--
Daniel-Constantin Mierla
www.twitter.com/miconda -- www.linkedin.com/in/miconda
Kamailio Advanced Training - April 16-18, 2018, Berlin - www.asipto.com
Kamailio World Conference - May 14-16, 2018 - www.kamailioworld.com
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