The GRU, according to Crowdstrike, developed a variant of X-Agent to infect an Android mobile app in order to geolocate and destroy Ukraine’s D-30 howitzers. To do this, they chose an artillery app which had no way to send or receive data, and wrote malware for it that didn’t ask for GPS position information? Bitch, please.
Crowdstrike never contacted the app’s developer to inform him about their findings. Had they performed that simple courtesy, they might have learned from Jaroslav Sherstuk how improbable, if not impossible, their theory was. Instead, they worked inside of their own research bubble, performed no verification of infected applications or tablets used by Ukraine’s artillery corps, and extrapolated an effect of 80% losses based upon a self-proclaimed, pro-Russian propagandist and an imaginary number of infected applications.
Major media outlets including the The Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, and PBS Newshour ran the story without fact-checking a single detail. Motherboard, Forbes, SC Magazine, and other media did the same. Only VOA and Bloomberg took the time to question Crowdstrike’s claims and do some of their own investigating.
