The invasion of Ukraine has seen hacktivists from around the world come to the aid of the country in its war against Russia, with groups like Anonymous carrying out DDoS attacks against Kremlin-affiliated websites. But as far as we know, Russian government officials haven’t had to contend with a flood of spam calls. That changed on Wednesday with the launch of a website called WasteRussianTime.today.

Created by a hacktivist collective known as Obfuscated Dreams of Scheherazade (a reference to Arabic folklore), the website connects two random Russian officials in a three-way call so you can listen to the confusion (and annoyance) that ensues. The group claims its database contains more than 5,000 Russian government phone numbers, including ones linked to the country’s FSB intelligence agency. The group describes its actions as a “civil intervention,” noting “if you are hanging on the phone, you canʼt drop bombs, you canʼt coordinate soldiers, you canʼt make invasion plans.”

Outside of listening, you can’t participate in the call. That’s a deliberate decision the group told Wired it made to protect the identity of anyone who ends up using the website. If you can’t speak to the people on the other end, you won’t have the opportunity to give up identifying information.

How Russia might respond to the robocalls is unclear. When Engadget tried to place a call, an error message came up. “Sorry, we’re currently experiencing some issues with our phones,” it said. “Give us a few moments.” Gizmodo had better luck than us. For them, the system successfully connected a dozen Russian officials with one another, though those calls ended in static.

At the onset of the war, it was expected the Kremlin would go on a digital offensive, using its hacking expertise to weaken western infrastructure. But outside of a few incidents, it’s mostly been Russia on the defensive. In recent weeks, hackers have targeted everything from smart TVs to the country’s largest video platform in protest of the war in Ukraine.

Drones are apparently turning into assassination tools. According to CBS News and Reuters, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi says he survived a drone-based assassination attempt today (November 7th) at his home in Baghdad's highly secure Green Zone. The country's Interior Ministry said the attack involved three drones, including at least one bomb-laden vehicle. Six bodyguards were injured during the incident, and an official speaking talking to Reuters claimed security forces obtained the remnants of a small drone at the scene.

While the Iraqi government publicly said it was "premature" to identify culprits, CBS sources suspected the perpetrators belonged to pro-Iranian militias that have used similar tactics against Erbil International Airport and the US Embassy. The militias directly blamed al-Kadhimi for casualties in a fight between Iraqi security forces and pro-militia protesters who objected to their side's losses in an October 10th parliamentary vote.

Iraq, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran have publicly condemned the attack. Militia leaders, however, suggested the drone attack might have been faked to distract from protesters' reported deaths.

Drone-based terrorism isn't a completely novel concept. ISIS, for instance, modified off-the-shelf drones to drop explosives. Attacks against political leaders are still very rare, though. If accurate, the reported Iraqi plot suggests drone terrorism is entering a new phase — extremists are using robotic fliers to hit major targets too dangerous to strike using conventional methods.

A group of activist-hackers in Belarus has infiltrated almost every part of the the country's authoritarian government in a bid to overthrow the Lukashenko regime, according to MIT's Technology Review and Bloomberg. The hackers, known as Belarus Cyber Partisans, have been leaking information they found on sensitive police and government networks. They first started defacing government websites as an act of protest in September 2020 following the country's disputed election, in which Alexander Lukashenko's win was widely considered as fraudulent. But they also publish the information they get on Telegram, where they have 77,000 subscribers.

The group told the publications that it's made up of 15 IT and cybersecurity experts working in the country's tech sector. None of them are "professional hackers," a spokesperson told Tech Review, with only four out of 15 doing the actual "ethical hacking." 

The Partisans' most recent attacks gave them access to drone footage from the government's crackdowns on protests last year and the Ministry of Interior Affairs' mobile phone surveillance database. They also apparently got access to emergency services' audio recordings, as well as video feeds from road speed and isolation cell surveillance cameras. The data the group released over the past weeks include lists of alleged police informants, personal information about top government officials and spies, police drone and detention center footage and secret recordings captured by the government's wiretapping system.

If the Cyber Partisans have been effective in their efforts to infiltrate the government's networks, it's thanks to the help they get from another group called BYPOL. They reportedly reached out to BYPOL in December 2020 for guidance — after all, the group is made up of former Lukashenko officials who defected from the government and current ones working to topple the regime from the inside. 

BYPOL provides them information on how to infiltrate government organizations and on the structure of the administration's databases. In return, the Cyber Partisans provide the group with information it can use to investigate the regime's crimes. BYPOL publishes information on its own Telegram channel and creates documentaries, one of which was cited at a congressional hearing that led to the US imposing sanctions against the Lukashenko regime.

The Cyber Partisan spokesperson told Tech Review that they're using cyberattacks to "paralyze as much as possible of the regime's security forces, to sabotage the regime's weak points in the infrastructure and to provide protection for protesters." Their ultimate goal is "to stop the violence and repression from the terroristic regime in Belarus and to bring the country back to democratic principles and rule of law."