Russian forces are using Starlink terminals on the front line in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military, which said the adoption of Elon Musk’s satellite internet service by Moscow’s troops was becoming “systemic”.

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence unit said on Telegram on Sunday that radio intercepts confirmed the use of Starlink terminals by Russian units operating in the occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

“Yes, there have been recorded cases of the Russian occupiers using these devices,” Andriy Yusov, a GUR officer, told RBC-Ukraine. “This is starting to take on a systemic nature.”

GUR made its claim following multiple reports in recent days that Russian forces are using Starlink devices, including a sighting reported by news outlet Defense One of the company’s distinctive square-shaped receivers close to Russian positions.

One Russian volunteer group flaunted on social media the devices it said it had purchased for Russian forces.

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, has denied reports it has sold equipment to the Russian government or military. In a post on X on Sunday Musk, the company’s chief executive, said: “A number of false news reports claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia. This is categorically false. To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Monday that Starlink “is not certified [in Russia], therefore it cannot and is not officially supplied here. It cannot be used in any way,” according to Russian newswire Interfax.

“We should probably not wade into the discussion between the Kyiv regime and the businessman Musk,” Peskov said.

Musk provided thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine to help it fend off Russian troops soon after their full-scale invasion in February 2022, giving Kyiv’s forces a valuable technological advantage in the form of high-speed internet for communications, targeting and battlefield management software. However, Kyiv’s praise for the businessman turned to fury when Musk started to limit the operation of Starlink in areas of Ukraine that Russian forces have occupied since 2014, including Crimea.

That was because Ukraine wanted its forces to be able to use the system for operations in Russian-controlled areas of their territory, though Kyiv is now complaining because Russians, as well as Ukrainians, are using it in contested areas. But introducing or reintroducing so-called “geofencing” to stop Starlink use by Russia on the front line could also affect the Ukrainian military’s devices given the proximity of the two sides’ positions.

The apparent use of the technology by Russian forces to help their invasion is another example of Moscow’s forces adapting their tactics in response to Ukraine’s innovations as they have done with the mass use of cheap, commercially available racing drones.

Ukrainian media reported that Russian forces may have obtained the terminals via intermediaries in Dubai.

In response, SpaceX said on X: “Starlink also does not operate in Dubai. Starlink cannot be purchased in Dubai nor does SpaceX ship there.”

“Additionally, Starlink has not authorized any third-party intermediaries, resellers or distributors of any kind to sell Starlink in Dubai. If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed.”

A biography of Musk by Walter Isaacson published last autumn detailed how the tycoon refused to allow Starlink to be used by Ukrainian forces for a naval drone strike on Russian ships in Sevastopol. Musk said he feared this could trigger a nuclear response from Moscow.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002644

Russian gamers were not introduced to piracy by the backlash to their country’s invasion of Ukraine—far from it. But piracy is ramping up, and it likely won’t back down any time soon.

That’s the takeaway from a survey by Russian game development training platform School XYZ, covering the whole country and all game formats. Sixty-nine percent of gamers surveyed said they’d played at least one pirated game copy in 2022, while 51 percent said they’re pirating more games now than they did in 2021.

Piracy as a whole may be up, but enthusiasm and motivations differ somewhat. Roughly 20 percent of those surveyed said they had pirated more than 10 games, and 27 percent had grabbed at least three in 2022. But 31 percent said they had pirated nothing, and nearly the same responded that they were opposed to piracy. And only 7 percent said they had not purchased anything through official channels, suggesting that 93 percent of surveyed Russian gamers, even admitted pirates, had bought at least something last year.

The survey (spotted by TorrentFreak) points to a widening of Russian game piracy, not necessarily a deepening. The Office of the US Trade Representative said back in 2013 that Russia was “dominating the field as the far-and-away leader in peer-to-peer piracy” of games. A 2019 survey by security firm ESET found that among 2,000 Russians, 91 percent preferred pirated content across mediums, that cracked games were the most popular pirated content, and that just 9 percent of respondents bought content exclusively from official sources. The survey did not cover those who both purchased and pirated content. [Update, 7:30pm 7/21: An ESET spokesperson tells Ars that the 2019 survey was conducted by ISET Softvea LLC, a Russian distributor with which ESET terminated its relationship after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.]

One reason Russian enthusiasm for piracy may be increasing is that there aren’t many avenues left for legitimate content. After Ukraine called on all game companies to block Russian and Belorussian accounts in early March 2022, a large number followed through. CD Projekt Red was early to respond, followed soon after by Microsoft, then Ubisoft, Take-Two, EA, Activision, and Epic. Sony and Nintendo joined Microsoft soon after. This was compounded by MasterCard and Visa suspending services, then PayPal, while Google and Nintendo have also since shut off payments in their app stores.

Pushback and exits from Russia have hit game developers, too. Russian publication Kommersant (translated) suggests that, based on data from a Russian jobs site, vacancies at game developers in Russia decreased by almost 40 percent in the first half of 2022. A good number of those likely come from non-Russian-based studios departing after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1955674

Anyone who has ever attempted to squeeze a little more performance out of a graphics card is probably familiar with MSI Afterburner, software used for GPU overclocking and undervolting and performance monitoring. Despite the MSI branding, it’s actually widely compatible with Nvidia and AMD GPUs from all vendors, and for years it has been a simple-but-effective tool for people trying to get the most out of their hardware.

The app’s stable version was updated earlier this week for the first time since late 2021, adding official support for Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series cards and AMD’s RX 7000 series cards, partial Intel Arc support, and a few other additions and fixes.

The long gap between the release of version 4.6.4 and 4.6.5 results from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The software is maintained primarily by Alexey Nicolaychuk, a Russian national who has been developing it continually since it was introduced in 1997 as RivaTuner.

Nicolaychuk declared the Afterburner project “probably dead” in a forum post earlier this year, claiming that MSI had “semi-abandoned” the software and that the company had stopped paying him. MSI confirmed to PC Gamer that it had not been able to pay Nicolaychuk due to “economic regulations” caused by other countries’ sanctioning of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, not because it had plans to abandon the software entirely.

“We fully intend to continue with MSI Afterburner,” an MSI representative told PC Gamer. “MSI have been working on a solution and expect it to be resolved soon.”

Although none of the parties involved have issued a follow-up statement, a new version suggests that the solution worked and that the problem has been resolved. (For his part, Nicolaychuk has “decided to stop commenting [on] the future of the project publicly.”)

If you’re downloading a new version of Afterburner, make sure you’re doing it from either MSI’s website or Guru3D (the Guru3D site currently appears to be more up to date). MSI’s network was breached in a cyberattack earlier this month, and the company has warned users to only download drivers, BIOS updates, and other software from official sources to avoid malware.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933407

The first gas leaks on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea were detected in the early hours of September 26, pouring up to 400,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere. Officials immediately suspected sabotage of the international pipeline. New analysis seen by WIRED shows that two large ships, with their trackers off, appeared around the leak sites in the days immediately before they were detected.

According to the analysis by satellite data monitoring firm SpaceKnow, the two “dark ships,” each measuring around 95 to 130 meters long, passed within several miles of the Nord Stream 2 leak sites. “We have detected some dark ships, meaning vessels that were of a significant size, that were passing through that area of interest,” says Jerry Javornicky, the CEO and cofounder of SpaceKnow. “They had their beacons off, meaning there was no information about their movement, and they were trying to keep their location information and general information hidden from the world,” Javornicky adds.

The discovery, which was made by analyzing images from multiple satellites, is likely to further increase speculation about the cause of the blasts. Multiple countries investigating the incident believe the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were rocked by a series of explosions, with many suspicions directed at Russia as its full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues. (Russia has denied its involvement.) Once SpaceKnow identified the ships, it reported its findings to officials at NATO, who are investigating the Nord Stream incidents. Javornicky says NATO officials asked the company to provide more information.

NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu says it does not comment on the “details of our support or the sources used” but confirmed that NATO believes the incident was a “deliberate and irresponsible act of sabotage” and it has increased its presence in the Baltic and North Seas. However, a NATO official, who did not have permission to speak publicly, confirmed to WIRED that NATO had received SpaceKnow’s data and said satellite imagery can prove useful for its investigations.

To detect the ships, Javornicky says, the company scoured 90 days of archived satellite images for the area. The company analyzes images from multiple satellite systems—including paid and free services—and uses machine learning to detect objects within them. This includes the ability to monitor roads, buildings, and changes in landscapes. “We have 38 specific algorithms that can detect military equipment,” Javornicky says, adding that SpaceKnow’s system can detect specific models of aircraft on landing strips.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1897100

As Russian troops have flooded into Ukraine’s borders for the past eight months—and with an ongoing mobilization of hundreds of thousands more underway—the Western world has taken drastic measures to cut the economic ties that fuel Russia’s invasion and occupation. But even as those global sanctions have carefully excised Russia from global commerce, millions of dollars have continued to flow directly to Russian military and paramilitary groups in a form that’s proven harder to control: cryptocurrency.

Since Russia launched its full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February, at least $4 million worth of cryptocurrency has been collected by groups supporting Russia’s military in Ukraine, researchers have found. According to analyses by cryptocurrency-tracing firms Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs, as well as investigators at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, recipients include paramilitary groups offering ammunition and equipment, military contractors, and weapons manufacturers. That flow of funds, often to officially sanctioned groups, shows no sign of abating and may even be accelerating: Chainalysis traced roughly $1.8 million in funding to the Russian military groups in just the past two months, nearly matching the $2.2 million it found the groups received in the five months prior. And despite the ability to trace those funds, freezing or blocking them has proven difficult, due largely to unregulated or sanctioned cryptocurrency exchanges—most of them based in Russia—cashing out millions in donations earmarked for invaders.

“Our aim is to identify all the crypto wallets being used by Russian military groups and the people helping them; to find, seize and block all this activity that is helping to buy the bullets, the ammunition of this occupation,” says Serhii Kropyva, who until recently served as deputy of Ukraine’s Cyber Police and advisor to the country’s prosecutor general. “With the close cooperation of companies like Chainalysis and Binance, we can see all the wallets involved in this criminal activity, these money flows of millions of dollars. But we can, unfortunately, see that the transfer is continuing all the time.”

In separate reports, the cryptocurrency-tracing firms and Binance’s investigations team each tracked donations to the Russian war effort that very often began with public posts on the messaging app Telegram soliciting crowdfunded donations. Chainalysis, for instance, found Telegram posts from organizations including the pro-Russian media sites Rybar and Southfront, as well as the paramilitary group Rusich—which has ties to the notorious Wagner mercenary group—all posting cryptocurrency donation addresses to Telegram. These posts told followers that the money raised there would be used for everything from weaponized drones to radios, rifle accessories, and body armor. In another instance, Chainalysis points to a fundraiser by a group called Project Terricon that attempted to auction NFTs to support pro-Russian militia groups in Eastern Ukraine, though the NFTs were removed from the marketplace they were hosted on before any bids were placed.

Binance’s investigations team, in its own report, found that a total of $4.2 million in crypto had been funneled to Russian military groups since February. The groups named in its research didn’t entirely overlap with those named in Chainalysis’ report, suggesting that the overall funding could be far greater than either Binance’s or Chainalysis’ total. Binance, for instance, points to a pro-Russian “cultural heritage” group known as MOO Veche that has carried out fundraisers for military equipment similar to the kinds funded by the groups Chainalysis flagged. While Binance, TRM Labs, and Elliptic all name MOO Veche as a major fundraiser, Elliptic traced $1.7 million in crypto donations to the group, far more than the other researchers.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1888260