Booby-trapped Alpine Quest Android app geolocates Russian soldiers Russian soldiers are being targeted with an Android app specially altered to pinpoint their location and scan their phones for files, with the ability to exfiltrate sensitive documents if instructed. The software in question is Alpine Quest, a legit topographic mapping tool popular among hikers, hunters, and more to the point …
Still, when their army contains a large number of conscripts who may not be particularly tech savvy, or particularly military savvy, probably the less prominence given to 'don't load random apps or update them from random sources, they might be compromised' stories, the better.
On the other hand, if they're not tech savvy, they're probably not reading El Reg anyway!
The Russian phishing campaign against Ukrainian officials is offering them boring meetings with diplomats and politicians.
The Russian phishing campaign against those same European diplomats and politicians is sending them poisoned calendar invites to cheese and wine parties. Much more fun.
All too easy: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/a-former-adviser-to-donald-trump-says-he-is-being-played-by-vladimir-putin_uk_6809dc2ae4b09e23ad054d52
"A former top adviser to Donald Trump has said the US president is being “played” by Vladimir Putin as he tries to stop the war in Ukraine.
Fiona Hill, who was senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council during Trump’s first term in office, also accused the president of “lies” for suggesting Ukraine is losing.
Asked by presenter Nick Robinson if Putin “knows how to play Trump”, Hill replied: “Absolutely he does, but I think unfortunately a lot of people know how to play Trump because people can play to his vanity.
“They can exploit his desires for success in business and politics, exploit the fact that he always needs to have a deal, he needs to have some foreign policy triumph. And also that he’s just incredibly susceptible to flattery.
“Putin said he had been praying for Trump. Trump wants to be the centre of attention at all points.” "
Seriously, who but a complete narcissist could possibly want a portrait of himself like this?
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/22/world/video/trump-portrait-russia-putin-ldn-digvid
Talking of portraits, see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/army-suspends-commander-trump-hegseth-portraits
"The US army has suspended a Wisconsin training base’s first female commander after discovering portraits of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth had been flipped around to face a wall."
Like WOW!
The outlook for the US across the next three and half years is bleak. Regrettably the bumbling fuckwits of the Democratic Party show no signs of credible opposition, nor of establishing a de-Trumpification list, so that as and when (and if) they win a presidential election, their new president can on day one exile all of Tumputin's agents to permanent purgatory through a single EO.
Then again, the majority of US voters knowingly voted for a remarkably stupid, bullying, fat, misogynistic, lying creep. You guys got what you wanted, hope you're happy.
And to our commentariat who didn't vote for idiocy, all I can say is that I empathise, as a Brit having endured the UK's misgovernance between (at least) 2007 and 2022.
The outrage on Fox News if a photo of Biden had been flipped to face the wall by an Army commander and they were dismissed? They would run nothing but that 24x7 for a couple weeks and need an army of interns with lens cleaners on spittle patrol because their hosts would be frothing at the mouth so badly!
If Hegseth doing this is even being reported by Fox News they are probably cheering it on.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I cannot help feeling that this was a 'put up job'. Nobody using that room could have failed to notice the photographs were facing the wall. No camp commander would do that, or allow it to last for very long. My guess is that someone went there, turned the portraits round, took a photo and did a runner, sending their image to the press to discredit the first female camp commander.
But that is probably irrelevant as teh damage has been done to her reputation and career. Although I suspect that a lot of camp commander are making sure that the portraits of Trump, Hegseth et al are firmly attached to the walls the correct way round, and would require considerable effort to turn around.
Owned is more like.
I read some interesting speculation recently. People have been trying to guess exactly what sort of dirt Putin has on Trump that has made Trump so subservient to him for a long time. The "pee tape" thing obviously isn't it, Trump's supporters wouldn't care if such a thing was released.
The speculation was that what Putin got hold of was something relating Trump to Epstein. It is well known that Trump was a lot closer to him than he admits today, and while people somehow tried to blame Hillary for his "mysterious" death in prison Trump was president when he died not Hillary or Biden or Obama. If Putin has tape of Trump actually on Epstein's island, or with some underage girl, that's one of the few things that could cause his support to abandon him in droves, and he knows it. It is telling that despite promises to release all the Epstein evidence immediately after he takes office it didn't happen - some stuff was released in February but was once again pretty heavily redacted. Which might be excusable except for the fact that the JFK evidence that was also released was completely unredacted, causing some still living people mentioned some issues because their full SSNs were listed.
That may not be it but it has to be something on that scale. The Access Hollywood thing and Jan 6th shows that his supporters are willing to forgive him for almost everything. Putin has to have some seriously terrible dirt on him that would destroy him on a personal level.
"Fiona Hill, who was senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council during Trump’s first term in office..."
All credibility lost then.
"...also accused the president of “lies” for suggesting Ukraine is losing" she said with a straight face, as she played the BBC listeners.
The BBC will be reporting that Ukraine is winning, according to whoever is saying those words, right up until Ukraine surrenders. Technically not lying as they're not claiming the statement is true, just that someone else claimed it. They just conveniently forgot to run it past BBC Verify before going to air (they "forget" to do that a lot). All whilst telling everyone "why you can trust the BBC".
Unfortunately, the BBC is not being played - they are doing exactly what they're told by the people who pay their bills.
Nobody is claiming that Ukraine is winning.
But there are plenty of idiots, and even some people with some credibility, who say that Russia is winning. However that doesn't appear to be the case.
The war has devolved into something not too dissimilar from World War I. The defensive technology available is currently better than the offensive technology (and organisation) - and so neither side is able to launch large mobile offensives and fight the war of manouevre. Which means that to gain territory tends to require bloody assaults against prepared positions - where the enemy if forced to retreat can just fall back to the next prepared position, and the whole thing begins again. So any major offensive results in mass casualties for only a few hundred square kilometers of territory captured.
The Russians haven't managed to gain mobility, and fight according to their own doctrine of deep battle, since the very first weeks of the war. Ukraine maanged it briefly in Autumn 2022, around Kharkiv and Izium - and after their big offensive failed, the next year, they were only able to manage the same mobility again by going into Russia itsefl. Ukraine is so heavily mined and entrenched that it's pretty hard to make progress anywhere.
Hence the war can go on as a stalemate for as long as both armies can sustain sufficient morale and get sufficient supplies.
Hence the war can go on as a stalemate for as long as both armies can sustain sufficient morale and get sufficient supplies.
Or get enough pressure from the outside, but all the countries let Russia evade the sanctions, knowingly or not.
Sadly the Russian agent in the White House is working hard to push on Ukraine only to be sure his master in the Kremlin gets what he wants.
I'm quite confident that when the US will stop to provide materials to Ukraine, something that will come soon, Europe will step up to compensate . Too many countries know what is at stake now, and know that when you let a dictator invades a country and you'll appease him it doesn't end well.
The big problem for Ukraine will be the loss of US intelligence. Most of European countries never developed such a spying network, relying on the US. Relying on the US was a big mistake now it joined the axis of Evil. I hope those countries will get the lesson.
"Nobody is claiming that Ukraine is winning" - you obviously don't read the Kyiv Independent.
Ukraine can't win. Despite all the wishful thinking.
It can never win a war of attrition against Russia and it can't win against an America that wants to rape it. The Russians are after exactly the same minerals that the US wants and Trump won't be persuading Putin to give them up, ever.
Putin has no incentive to stop until he gets what he wants - an end to the war will inevitably demand reparations for the damage he's caused but that will give him even less incentive to stop.
As for the comment about sustaining sufficient morale and get sufficient supplies, you and many others have totally missed the point - it's about Ukrainians dying meaningless deaths fighting an enemy who effectively has an unlimited supply of soldiers. It's senseless to allow a generation of young men to be lost due to catastrophic burden that will put on the country for decades. Fighting to the last Ukrainian standing is really, really stupid, yet that is exactly US, and now European, policy. And Europe won't be borrowing billions to rebuild Ukraine any time soon, they'll be too busy funding their own defence procurement.
This morning, the BBC Today programme was positively cheerleading the efforts of medical facilities who are addressing the needs of at least 300,000 Ukrainians who have been left disabled as a direct result of the fighting. Yet you and many others are calling from your armchairs to carry on being dismembered and dying, all whilst fooling yourselves that the war is a "stalemate".
This is starting to look like a (very high stakes) game of ping pong.
Russia : take this, we disrupt your nuclear reactors
Ukrains : take this, we obliterate your TikTok soldiers
Russia: oh yeah ? Well now we infiltrate your command structure and steal yiour battle plans
Ukraine : Really ? Well now we know where all of your soldiers are and can prdict their movements
. . . (to be continued)
Putin wants to extend Russia's borders in a SW direction. The capitulation forced on Ukraine to surrender Crimea and the occupied parts of the Eastern Oblasts is just a pause for Putin, and Trump's motivation is not peace, but to have a foreign policy 'success' in his first 100 days in office. Like Boris Johnson's insistence on getting a Brexit deal done by a specific date, it is all about presentation, nothing to do with fairness or justice or getting things right.
Even though I believe the comment referred to giving Trump an excuse for taking Canada, your point is still pertinent.
Naturally a peace deal with Russia staying in control of its current seized land, which stretches as far as Kherson, is a terrible idea.
It gives them time to regroup and in future push on to Odesa which would give Russia total control of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, give it easy access to start more shenanigans in Moldova, and bring NATO countries much closer to the front line.
"give it easy access to start more shenanigans in Moldova, and bring NATO countries much closer to the front line"
NATO could well be a problem for defence when it includes unreliable and erratic nations like the US, and not-100% reliable members like Turkey and Hungary.
About time the makeweight leaders of Europe realised we need two things; rapid rearmament, and a European Mutual Defence Treaty backed by a 100% European defence command structure that includes the French (without conceding to their Franco-centric idiocy). Despite my somewhat disparaging remark about France, they extended their nuclear umbrella to Europe, Starmer missed a massive opportunity by not beating them to it, and should now do so.
"Starmer missed a massive opportunity by not beating them to it"
Starmer is no strategist or planner, he's a box ticker.
Despite being completely wrong about everything else, Boris Johnson nailed it when he nicknamed him Captain Hindsight.
Unfortunately Putin is way ahead of him, as is, incredibly, Trump who has left Starmer on the back foot at every turn. That those two are probably on the same team is no excuse. In fact, Starmer might well be on the same team as well since he's effectively Putin's useful idiot due to his predictability.
On the other hand, David Eby has already pointed out that Alaska is Kalinigrad-on-the-Gulf.
Trump will retreat to Mar a lago soon, stop coming into the office, and just spew tweets and diktats, while a rudderless US gets mired in wars e.g. in Panama against Chinese backed contras,
A rapidly re-arming Canada, may begin border crossings to protect it's indigenous people who re being oppressed, working up to full anschluss with West Yukon.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
