Habr Special is a podcast to which we will invite programmers, writers, scientists, businessmen and other interesting people. The guest of the first issue is Daniil Turovsky, special correspondent of Meduza, who wrote the book “Invasion. A Brief History of Russian Hackers. The book has 40 chapters that tell about how the Russian-speaking hacker community was born, first in the late USSR, and then in Russia, and what it has become now. It took the author years to collect the invoice, but only a few months to issue it, which is very fast by the standards of publishing houses. With the permission of the Individuum publishing house, we publish , and in this post - a transcript of the most interesting of our conversation.
Where else can you listen:
On Yandex.Music, Overcast, Pocketcast and Castbox, the release will appear by next week. We are waiting for the appraisal.
About the heroes of the book and special services
“Tell me about the toughest precautions of those you met while collecting the invoice.
- Most often, these acquaintances begin with the fact that you are introduced to someone. You understand that you need this person, and you get close to him through several people. Otherwise, without a proxy person, it is impossible.
Several meetings took place on the tracks or near the stations. Because there are a lot of people during rush hour, it's noisy, no one pays attention to you. And you walk in circles and talk. And it's not just in this thread. This is a common method of communicating with sources - to meet in the most "gray" places: by the road, on the outskirts.
There were conversations that simply did not get into the book. There were people who confirmed some information, and it was impossible to talk about them and quote them. Meetings with them were a little more difficult.
In "Invasion" there are not enough stories from inside the special services, because this is an extremely closed topic, of course. I wanted to go visit them and see what it looks like - to communicate at least officially with people from the Russian cyber troops. But the standard answers are either "no comment" or "don't deal with this topic."
These searches look as stupid as possible. Cybersecurity conferences are the only place where you can meet people from there. You approach the organizers and ask: are there people from the Ministry of Defense or the FSB? They tell you: these are people without badges. And you walk through the crowd, looking for people without badges. The success rate is zero. You meet them, but then nothing happens. You ask: are you from there? - Well, yes, but we will not communicate. These are extremely suspicious people.
- That is, over the years of work on the topic, there was not a single contact from there?
- No, there is, of course, but not through conferences, but through acquaintances.
- What distinguishes people from the special services from ordinary hackers?
— The ideological component, of course. You cannot work in departments and not be sure that we have foreign enemies. You work for very little money. In research institutes, for example, where they are actively engaged in defense, salaries are catastrophically small. At the initial stage, it can be 27 thousand rubles, despite the fact that you must know a lot of things. If you are not directed in terms of an idea, you will not work there. Of course, there is stability: in 10 years you will have a salary of 37 thousand rubles, then you will retire with a higher rate. But if we talk about the differences in general, then in communication there is not a very big difference. If you don't talk about certain topics, you won't understand.
- Have there been any messages from the security forces since the book was published?
Usually they don't write to you. These are silent actions.
After the book came out, I had an idea to go through all departments and put it on their doorsteps. But I still thought that this is some kind of actionism.
Did the characters in the book comment on it?
- The time after the release of the book is very dumb for the author. You walk around the city and all the time it seems that someone is looking at you. It's an exhausting feeling, and with a book it lasts longer because it spreads more slowly [than an article].
I've discussed with other non-fiction writers how long it takes for characters to respond, and everyone says it's about two months. But all the major feedback I was craving for came in the first two weeks. Everything is more or less OK. One of the characters in the book added me to My List on Twitter, and I don't know what that means. I don't want to think about it.
But the cool thing about these reviews is that the people I couldn't talk to because they were in American prisons have now written to me and are ready to tell their stories. I think there will be additional chapters in the third edition.
- Who contacted you?
— I won't speak by name, but these are the people who attacked American banks and e-commerce. They were lured to European countries or America, where they served time. But they got “successfully”, because they sat down until 2016, when the terms were much shorter. If a Russian hacker gets there now, he gets a lot of years. Recently someone was given 27 years. And these guys served one six years, and the other four.
- Were there those who refused to talk to you at all?
Of course, there are always such people. The percentage is not very large, as in a regular report on any topic. This is the amazing magic of journalism - almost everyone you go to seems to be waiting for a journalist to come to them and listen to their story. This is due to the fact that people in general are not really listened to, and they want to talk about their pain, incredible stories, strange events in life. And even relatives are usually not very interested in this, because everyone is busy with their life. Therefore, when a person comes who is extremely interested in listening to you, you are ready to tell him everything. Often it looks so amazing that people even have documents ready and daddies with pictures. You come, and they just lay them on the table for you. And here it is important not to let the person go immediately after the first conversation.
One of my top journalism tips came from David Hoffman, one of the best non-fiction writers. He wrote, for example, The Dead Hand, a book about the Cold War, and The Million Dollar Spy, also a cool book. The advice is that you need to go to the hero several times. He said that the daughter of one of the heroes of the “Dead Hand”, associated with Soviet air defense, for the first time spoke in great detail about her father. Then he [Hoffman] returned to Moscow and visited her again, and it turned out that she had her father's diaries. And then he came to her again, and already when he left, it turned out that she had not only diaries, but also secret documents. He says goodbye, and she: “Ah, I have some additional documents in that box.” So he went many times, and ended up with the fact that the daughter of the hero handed over floppy disks with materials that his father had collected. In a word, you need to build trusting relationships with the characters. You have to show that you are extremely interested.
- In the book you mention those who acted according to instructions from the Hacker magazine. Is it correct to call them hackers at all?
- The community, of course, considers them boys who decided to cut down money. Not very respected. As in the bandit community, the same hierarchy. But the entry threshold has now become more difficult, I think. Then everything was much more open in terms of instructions and less protected. In the late 90s and early XNUMXs, the police were not at all interested in this. Until recently, if someone was jailed for hacking, then they were jailed for "administrative", as far as I know. Russian hackers could be imprisoned if they proved that they were in an organized criminal group.
- What happened to the US elections in 2016? You don't mention much about it in the book.
- It's on purpose. It seems to me that now it is impossible to get to the bottom of the matter. I did not want to write and understand a lot about this, because everyone has already done it. I wanted to tell you what could have led to this. In fact, almost the entire book is about it.
There seems to be an official American position: this was done by personnel officers of the Russian special services from Komsomolsky Prospekt, 20. But most of those with whom I spoke say that something may have been supervised from there, but in general it was done by freelance hackers, not staff members. Very little time has passed. Perhaps more will be known about this later.
About the book
— You say that there will be new editions, additional chapters. But why did you choose the format of the book as a finished work? Why not web?
- No one reads special projects - it is extremely expensive and extremely unpopular. Although it looks nice, of course. The boom began after the Snow Fall project, which was released by the New York Times (in 2012 - ed. note). It doesn't seem to work very well because people on the internet aren't willing to spend more than 20 minutes on a text. Even on Medusa, large texts need to be read for a very long time. And if there is more, no one will read it.
A book is a weekend reading format, a weekly magazine. For example, The New Yorker, where texts can be as large as a third of a book. You sit down and are immersed in only one process.
— Tell us how you started working on the book?
— I realized that I needed to write this book at the beginning of 2015, when I went on a business trip to Bangkok. I was making a story about Humpty Dumpty (an Anonymous International blog — ed.) and when I met them, I realized that this was an unknown secret world that was almost not explored. I like stories about people with a "double bottom", who in ordinary life look super ordinary, but suddenly they can do something unusual.
From 2015 to the end of 2017 there was an active phase of collecting invoices, materials and stories. When I realized that the base was assembled, I went to America to write it, having received a fellowship.
- Why exactly there?
- Actually, because I received this fellowship. I sent an application that I have a project and I need time and space to do it only. Because it is impossible to write a book if you work in everyday mode. I took a vacation at Medusa at my own expense and went to Washington for four months. Four months were perfect. I got up early, studied a book until three in the afternoon, and after that I had free time when I read, watched movies, met with American reporters.
The drafting of the book took those four months. And in March 2018, I returned with the feeling that he was no good.
Was it your feeling or the editor's opinion?
- The editor appeared a little later, but at that time it was my feeling. I have it constantly - from everything that I do. This is a very useful feeling of hatred and dissatisfaction with yourself, because it allows you to grow. It happens that it turns into a completely negative direction when you start to bury [work], and then it is already very bad.
Just in March, I started to dig myself in and for a very long time did not finish the draft. Because the draft is only the first stage. Somewhere until the middle of summer, I thought that I needed to score on the project. But then I realized that there was actually quite a bit left, and I did not want this project to repeat the fate of the previous two that I had - two other books that did not come out. These were projects about labor migrants in 2014 and about the Islamic State in 2014-2016. The drafts were written, but were in a less complete state.
I sat down, looked at the plan that I had, realized what was missing, added the plan, restructured it. I decided that this should be the most popular reading, in the sense that it should be easy to read, and I broke it into small chapters, because not everyone is ready to read big stories now.
The book is conditionally divided into four parts: Roots, Money, Power and War. It seemed to me that there were not enough stories for the first. And probably still not enough. Therefore, we will have an addition and we will add them there.
Around this moment, I agreed with the editor, because neither long texts nor books can be worked without an editor. It was Alexander Gorbachev, my colleague, with whom we were working at that moment in Meduza, the best editor of narrative texts in Russia. We have known him for a very long time - since 2011, when we worked at Afisha - and we understand each other in terms of texts by 99%. We sat down and discussed the structure, decided what needed to be redone. And until October-November, I finished everything, then editing began, and in March 2019 the book went to the publisher.
- It seems, by the standards of publishing houses, two months from March to May is not a lot at all.
— Yes, I like working with the publishing house Individual. That's why I chose it, realizing that everything will be arranged that way. And also because the cover will be cool. Indeed, in Russian publishing houses, the covers are catastrophically vulgar or strange.
It turned out that everything is faster than I thought. The book went through two proofreadings, they made a cover for it, and printed it. And all this took two months.
— So your main job at Medusa led you to write books several times?
— This is due to the fact that I have been doing long texts for many years. To prepare them, you need to dive deeper into the topic than for a regular reportage. It took years, although of course I am not a professional in either. That is, you can’t compare me with researchers of a scientific nature - it’s still journalism, rather superficial.
But if you have been working on a topic for many years, you get an insane amount of texture and characters that are not included in Medusa's materials. I prepared the topic for a very long time, but in the end only one text comes out, and I understand that it was possible to go here and there.
Do you consider the book successful?
- There will definitely be an additional print run, because this one - 5000 copies - is almost over. In Russia, five thousand is a lot. If 2000 is sold, the publishing house opens champagne. Although, of course, compared to views on Meduza, these are surprisingly small numbers.
- How much is the book?
- In paper - about 500 ₽. Books are now much more expensive. I've been biting my elbows for a long time and was going to buy Slezkin's "Government House" - it costs under two thousand. And on the day when I was already going, they gave it to me.
- Any plans to translate "Invasion" into English?
- Of course I have. From the point of view of readings, it is more important that the book be published in English - the audience is much larger. Negotiations with an American publishing house have been going on for some time, but it is not clear when it will be released.
Some people who have read the book say it feels like it was written for that market. It contains some phrases that the Russian reader does not really need. There are explanations like "Sapsan (high-speed train from Moscow to St. Petersburg)". Although there are probably people in Vladivostok who don't know [about Sapsan].
About the topic
— I caught myself thinking that the stories in your book are perceived as rather romanticized. It seems to show between the lines: it's cool to be a hacker! Doesn't it seem that after the release of the book, some responsibility fell on you?
— No, it doesn't seem so. As I said, there is no additional idea of mine here, I tell what is happening. But the task of showing it attractively is not, of course. It looks like this because in order for a book to be interesting, the characters must be interesting.
Have your online habits changed since writing? Maybe added paranoia?
“I have eternal paranoia. Because of this topic, it has not changed. Maybe I added a little bit because I tried to communicate with government agencies and they made me understand that I didn’t need to do this.
- In the book you write: “I was thinking about how to ... work in the FSB. Fortunately, these reflections did not last long: soon I became seriously interested in texts, stories, journalism. Why "fortunately"?
- I don’t really want to work in the special services, because it’s clear that you [in this case] get into the system. But really, “fortunately” is about collecting stories and doing journalism, which is exactly what I need to do. This is clearly the most important thing in my life. Both now and later. Cool that I found this. In information security, he would obviously not be very happy. Although all my life it was very close: my father is a programmer, and my brother is engaged in the same [IT] things.
Do you remember how you yourself first appeared on the Web?
- It was very early - in the 90s - we had a modem that made terrible sounds. I don’t remember what my parents and I watched at that time, but I remember when I myself became active on the Internet. It was probably the year 2002-2003. I spent all the time sitting on literary forums and forums about Nick Perumov. A lot of years of my life was associated with competitions and studying the work of all kinds of fantasy writers.
What will you do if your book is pirated?
— On Flibust? I check every day, but it's not there. One of the heroes wrote to me that he would download it only from there. Against I will not, because this cannot be avoided.
I can tell you in what cases I myself can pirate. These are cases where it is very inconvenient to use [services] legally. In Russia, when something comes out on HBO, it's impossible to watch it on the same day. You have to download somewhere from strange services. One of them seems to represent HBO officially, but in poor quality and without subtitles. It happens that it is impossible to download the book anywhere, except for the Vkontakte documents.
In general, it seems to me that now almost everyone has relearned. Hardly anyone listens to music from the site zaycev.net. When it becomes convenient, it's easier to pay for a subscription and use it that way.
Source: habr.com