Bellingcat
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2024
49:16 · 395K views · Dec 21, 2020
Bellingcat's publication of the recorded call in which Alexey Navalny, posing as a security aide, gets FSB officer Konstantin Kudryavtsev to describe the operation to poison him. It has English subtitles.
HN cites it as a striking confession obtained through caller ID spoofing and social engineering.
4 comments from Hacker News
I highly recommend reading Bellingcat's investigation into the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and how they tracked down the individual FSB officers responsible: [LINK] It's the most impressive investigative work I have ever read. One can only imagine the capabilities of nation state actors if an NGO is capable of this. Even more incredible is that Alexei Navalny personally called an FSB officer and was able to extract a confession: this video
If you haven't seen the full investigation released last week I'd strongly recommend you check it out, top notch investigative journalism. The video has English subtitles: [LINK] Also here's the full phone call with the FSB agent, with english transcript: this video
In case you missed it: Navalny found conclusive evidence of a cover-up for his poisoning [1] [2] [3]. But the best part is how he did it: caller ID spoof + social engineering. IMO exploiting the authoritarian nature/culture was really clever. Every time Kudryavtsev demurs about revealing more details, Navalny (as Ustinov) calls him by his full name. To me, it sounds like he's threatening him or reminding him of their relative position in the hierarchy. Each time, Kudryavtsev continues to spill the beans and give up co-conspirators. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video
Did you not see the YouTube video where one of the agents admits it on the phone and describes the process? I thought it was already established that Russia did this beyond reasonable doubt. this video