Presented at
DEF CON 31 (2023),
Aug. 12, 2023, 1:30 p.m.
(45 minutes)
Meduza is an independent international Russian- and English-language publication that still reaches millions of people inside Russia. The newsroom is operating from exile for 8 years now with headquarters in Latvia. Despite being completely outlawed and banned by the Kremlin, Meduza continues to work even under such enormously tough circumstances and still delivers the truths about the war in Ukraine along with an unbiased reporting on the situation inside Russia.
But at DEF CON Meduza will not be presented as a media. The team tries to resist the total state control of the Internet in Russia and fight not only for the freedom of speech, but for the freedom of information for millions of people.
Meduza CTO will explain how one of the most free internet has become one of the most regulated and censored ones within just a couple of years. Alex will share the practical experience of resisting censorship along with his (pessimistic) forecast for the future of the Internet in Russia (a new "Iron Curtain')'. He will describe how the authorities were once again able to “deceive the people'' (before all that happened, there were no abrupt blockings in Russia and the habit of using VPN was not formed among internet users). This is important to not to let this scenario be repeated in whatever part of the world.
Tech Dept has always been an important part of Meduza newsroom, but in 2022 the tech guys became an even more crucial part of it. It is thanks to their work that the newsroom is able to successfully bypass blocking and retain the audience in Russia. And to protect the journalists and to repel various DDoS attacks on the infrastructure and products.
REFERENCES:
We don’t have many references that will be used in the presentation. And according to our Code of Conduct in our ordinary life we try to write about the news, and not to be the newsmakers ourselves. Here are a couple links that might be helpful to understand more about our work and values.
Meduza
https://meduza.io/
Meduza English-language edition
https://meduza.io/en
The awards:
https://frittord.no/en/news/speeches-at-the-awarding-of-the-fritt-ord-foundation-prize-2022
https://cpj.org/2022/03/calling-the-war-war-meduzas-galina-timchenko-bucks-russias-censorship-on-ukraine/
https://fgpj.eu/portfolio-items/preistraeger-2022/?portfolioCats=98
More about us:
https://rsf.org/en/rsf-creates-mirror-leading-russian-exile-news-site-blocked-kremlin
https://www.cloudflare.com/innovator-spotlights/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-10/putin-s-crackdown-pushes-independent-russian-media-into-crypto?leadSource=uverify%20wall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/03/17/meduza-russia-sanctions/
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22955885/donate-ukraine
Several examples of the most important articles:
Fact сhecking piece with a video that proved the massacre in Bucha. Meduza’s source provided us with a video that was filmed during the “entrance” to Bucha. We gave the video to two independent experts (an astronomer and a mathematician) in order to verify when the videos were shot, using chronolocation techniques. Their findings allowed us to confirm that the times in the metadata matches the actual times when the footage was recorded, and that the first video of the bodies couldn’t have been filmed after March 26, 2022, which proved that the horrific civilian killings in Bucha took place before Russian troops retreated from the town
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/04/09/verified-video-appears-to-show-ukrainian-troops-killing-russian-captives-here-s-what-we-know-about-it
An investigation of war crimes in Bogdanovka
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/04/18/i-can-do-whatever-i-want-to-you
How Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine split the company Yandex
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/05/06/toxic-assets
An investigation on Elvira Nabiullina, the chairwoman of Russia’s Central Bank
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/07/07/the-banker-s-dilemma
Meduza tells the story of the first openly transgender woman in the Russian army. She is going to be sent to war with Ukraine (and that's not the whole story
https://meduza.io/feature/2022/11/09/pust-luchshe-ona-tam-gde-nibud-umret
Presenters:
-
Alex / DeMiNe0
- CTO at Meduza
as Alex
Alex is CTO at Meduza. He joined the team in 2019. It was a rather crazy and brave decision to give up the job in a stable global corporation and join an independent media company in the times when it was already obvious that independent journalism is not welcome in Russia any more.
Alex’s main topics of expertise:
Media company digital security. Protection of both employees and infrastructure against cyber threats, government run attacks, surveillance. Circumvention tools and technologies. Practical experience of reaching the audience in state-controlled countries. Government methods and approaches against media organizations. How they discover and block “forbidden” content, legal and physical pressure, surveillance. Risk analysis and research-based forecast for the further elaboration of censorship, i.e. sovereignization, criminalization of content etc.
Links:
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