Due to the younger audience that less and less goes to the theater or reads books, I have to clarify that the title is an allusion to the legendary drama Balkan spy, by Dusan Kovačević. "Cia, snajka, Cia" is a simple definition of all the evils with which the heroes and patriots, the Čvorović brothers, explain the misfortunes of communist Yugoslavia. Cia, sister-in-law, Cia, they ruined half the world - answers one of the Čvorovićs to his daughter-in-law Danica when asked who pays for the lunches and dinners for the suspicious tenant, the tailor Petar from Paris, where he gathers suspicious anti-state elements.
Just last Friday, Prime Minister Abazović and Minister of Defense Konjević looked like Ilija Čvorović to me. It was as if they were competing to see who would turn out to be the prettier and older Čvorović. Although the situation is different from that in Balkan spy was extremely serious. Dramatic, not satirical. Because there was a serious cyber attack on the state administration. And Dritan and Rasko kept repeating - cyber, sister-in-law, cyber. In which Dritan was referring to the same forces that overthrew the government, or that were against it from the beginning, while Rasko was targeting, who else, the Russian brothers.
But the fact that they still read Kovačević shows the fact that, unlike Ilija Čvorović, they gave up the next day. Ilija, as we know, chased the non-existent spy for months and in the end, in the Fellini ending and the pursuit of the innocent tailor, he fell on the bumper of his homeland, cut down by a heart attack. Unlike Ilija Čvorović, Dritan and Raško stopped in time, before the stroke, the heart attack and not the one associated with ex-minister of the military Bošković. Whom the prime minister, I guess based on verified information, designates as one of the champions of the political wing of the Bemax clan. After withdrawing the hand, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense said that they have no evidence for any claims and that our cybercrime services in cooperation with our partners will try to uncover the background.
Until that happens, here is a completely personal or business experience with cyber attacks. Perhaps some of you remember that in early 2019, a few days after businessman Duško Knežević published the famous video An envelope, the Vijesti portal was exposed to cyber attacks for an extended period of time. That he worked with difficulty for days, and that he was out of order for several hours, or as it is defined in the layman's cyber world - the site was taken down.
Unlike Ditan and Rasko, we did not bid. We reported the attack to the authorities, and as three and a half years have passed since then, it is time to recall some facts and details from a historical distance. So, the director of the police at that time was DPS Veselin Veljović, and the cyber administration was led by the same man who still explains to us the characteristics of this attack on the government and its institutions. Even though Vijesti for the DPS junta, Bemax and their authors figured as a pro-Russian media even then, spit on Sputnik, even Veljović never thought of accusing the Russians of the cyber attack on Vijesti. Because simple logic, the VV commander thought somewhere in the trenches, imposes a conclusion - why would Ruje shoot down Vijesti, its propaganda, which is stronger and more effective than Sputnik and Gradska combined. So the matter smelled of domestic evil. And then there was nervousness. From all levels, UP told us as if on command that cyber attacks are very sophisticated and our country is young and untrained, so we can take pictures. In other words, there is little chance of revealing the background, was the official explanation. And lo and behold, they were right. To this day, three and a half years after those attacks, we do not have any official investigation findings to show anything. Are there any well-founded or at least remote suspicions?!
As we knew in advance what we could expect from the DPS police and the VV commander, we tried to get some information ourselves through IT teams and developers from the region and Europe who were concerned about the security of our portal. And so, one day, the head of the IT team from Slavonia, Republic of Croatia, who had never been to Montenegro, including Podgoirca, did not know any politician, let alone Peđa Bošković, called. Also, never heard of Bemax, much less their authors. And that brave or well-trained Slavonian told us what it was like in those days when there were the strongest cyber attacks on the Vijesti portal. unusual activity observed with two IP addresses located in the facility at such and such a location. In the IT world, the term "unusual activity" is the counterpart to what is described in conventional wars and attacks as troop movements. So, a brave or trained Slavonian, who has never been to Montenegro, almost never even heard of Podgorica, learned about Vijesti when we became his clients, informs us that it has been with two IP addresses for the last two days even 20 times increased frequency of visits to our portal. The location of those servers matched the address of the Ministry of Defense.
For laymen, the so-called DDoS attacks to which the Vijesti website was exposed are organized by the orderer of the action on the black market around the world buying thousands of fake accounts and then using them to "overrun" the capacity of the targeted site, which crashes due to enormous "traffic congestion". Sometimes it also happens that the owner of a computer or an IP address is not aware that someone is abusing his IP address and attacking someone's site with DDoS orders?! Which in the specific case would mean that those two Russians, Šišmakov and Popov, instead of Lake Gazivode, actually misused the IP addresses of our Ministry of Defense!
What could we do except to discreetly report this tip from Slavonia, Republic of Croatia to our institutions and Western partners. Without any accusations because it is not ours but the authorities to reveal the organizers of the criminal act and announce the names and evidence.
However, we never received information from the authorities as to whether they investigated anything regarding the aforementioned, whether they entered the building of the Ministry of Defense, searched their servers, checked IP addresses, interviewed employees and the like. Chief Veljović probably told them that there was nothing to it, that he personally knew Peđa Bošković and that such a dangerous and controversial activity would never have occurred to him. To organize cyber attacks on a site or to launch a portal with a similar name! Do you remember the late Udar, for which even to this day the domestic and partner services have not announced who was behind that operation? We have been silent all this time, believing that a hunch or looking at Veselin Veljović's ball unmistakably established the truth, that Bošković is innocent, and only Bemax, and that our brave, that is, trained Slavonian, made a terrible mistake! And that he is in fact the spitting Ilija Čvorović. A lover of conspiracy theories, who, without any basis, connected the innocent building of the Ministry of Defense with illegal activities. Like Ilija Čvorović the tailor Peter.
Well, I had to share this with you after three and a half years of silence. And waiting for the institutions to inform us of the results of the investigation. For which we still don't know how it was conducted and whether there were any, even if there were any indications. I had to take this burden off my shoulders so that I wouldn't follow in the footsteps of Ilija Čvorović and start developing conspiracy theories about how, for example, the investigative authorities tracked down the cyber attackers at Vijesta, but when they saw the "big fish" they decided to cover up. It wouldn't be their first time after all, Ilija Čvorović whispers to me. Remember, he continues, the investigation into the murderers of Duško Jovanović, the organizer of the attack on your little one, then a whole series of mafia attacks, on Softić, the first and second time, on Olja Lakić, the first and second time, remember, Čvorović continues, the investigation of the bomb attack on the Vijesti building and the window of the editor-in-chief Mihail, but also remember the author of false diagnoses for Mugoša's driver from UP, VDT and KBC... Or the investigation of the killers of the companion Jevrem Brković - Comrade Ilija ends as if in a trance.
So, so that I don't sink like Čvorović, I return to the point - in such serious situations when the state, institutions or private companies come under the attack of well-designed cyber attacks, Ilija Čvorović should not be played. And conspiracy theories to explain who is behind everything. A serious state needs strong institutions that are the only ones competent to expose or at least investigate the background of such attacks. But when there are no institutions, even when there is no DPS to hide or falsify everything, then we have the leading politicians. Older and more beautiful than Ilija Čvorović and Veselin Veljović. Which then opens up space for conspiracy theories to be easily accepted by the citizens themselves. So, following the example of Dritan and Raško, you immediately had a part of the electorate that was sure that behind everything was domestic evil, that is, those who overthrew this government and could not see it with their eyes from the start, or the other sex, who was still more certain that the Russians are behind everything. With assistance Churches of Serbia.
Cyber, sister-in-law, cyber, the incomparable Čvorovići would say.
Bonus video:
