You’ve done a forensic examination to make this determination? Or you’re just guessing?
1 Like
… possibly, of OSM US Slack** a couple of days ago where one of the admins said exactly that. 
** and elsewhere I think; that was the first place I could quickly find it.
2 Likes
who says it was them who added it? Nobody likes vandalism, by definition, so if you want to make someone look bad…
neither, as SomeoneElse mentioned admins were dealing with it - and as I understand it, this attacks are unrelated. And DDoS attacks of criminal variety with attempted extortion are repeatedly happening - and have different level of noticeability.
(and obviously, OSMF is never paying criminals - thanks to great work of our admins sooner or later they go away to attack a different target)
1 Like
RIght. Unless you’ve determined who is actually behind it (and if so, OSMF should be seeking appropriate legal redress if feasible), all you can say is “these attacks look different” or “these attacks are coming from separate IP addresses” and so forth. If you don’t know who’s behind it, then it’s irresponsible to say “these are not related”.
There are any number of actors that desire for the map to look a certain way. For some groups, having borders (in particular) be in a certain place, or not in a certain place, is not just a preference - it’s existential. Perception matters, and convincing the world of your version of reality, as represented on maps, is tied to public support and things like international aid and arms for war. In other words, for certain groups, what’s on the map is literally a matter of life or death.
If having the map look a certain way is existential, then having no map at all is better than having the “wrong” map. And so, there is plenty of motivation for groups that are on the wrong end of what’s on OSM to conclude that OSM’s very existence is an existential threat.
At any given time, we could be facing an attack ranging from a single disgruntled individual clicking around in iD all the way up to a nation’s intelligence service or armed forces depending on perceptions of national interest.
I do not think that a bunch of hobbyists are likely to prevail against a group that decides that OSM’s existence is an existential problem. It is too easy to harm OSM, and someone whose interests are existential are unlikely to get bored. And that is why I’ve repeatedly called for OSMF to seek the level of assistance and expertise that’s commensurate with the scale of the potential threat it faces.
2 Likes
That is currently being worked on. Hats off to the people doing that. Right now.
7 Likes
If we can identify the culprit we can either engage with law enforcement or, if their government is protecting them, protest so that goodwill to the country is damaged. This last doesnʼt work as well if the country doesnʼt need international goodwill and doesnʼt care about its reputation.
Those aren’t streets. The lines, combined with you finding it blurry, means your browser is likely zoomed in or out, or something elsewhere in your system is scaling the images. spiekerooger’s theories are incorrect.
Yes indeed I was zoomed in 110%, it was causing the blur and the white tiles border.
Though I still have the Russian street names on certain zoom level and certain tiles.
2 Likes
The white grid lines (not talking about streets) show up in Safari based browsers on iOS, it is probably an upstream Leaflet issue. Maybe sth. triggers an autoscaling in iOS Safari on www.openstreetmap.org, haven’t checked this yet.
About blurry and lines: we already found out that the user was using a 110% scale in his browser, so that was solved already.
1 Like
So far, I haven’t seen any public news items about the attacks in OpenStreetMap.
I am not in a place to give further details, but this is now being done.
17 Likes
rhaag wrote:
https://tile.openstreetmap.org/19/274778/177218.png
Tile is clean. Last rendered at Mon Jun 17 14:34:36 2024.
https://culebre.openstreetmap.org/19/274778/177218.png/status
A tile with vandalism from this afternoon, that was not expired by the revert.
Can you run through the list here to make sure that the data has actually been fixed?
To be clear - the processes to “revert the problems in the data” and “recreate tiles” are completely separate - doing the first will only trigger the second in the same way that any map edit will.
You’re right, I was assuming that is has been fixed, because I know there was a revert.
I just double-checked and it’s indeed fixed in the data.
1 Like
I know, but it has been a recurring problem that the revert doesn’t trigger a rerendering for some tiles.
It was a worldwide problem, and there’s a summary about it here. Problems have been fixed in the data itself, but the tiles that you see in your web browser might take a little while to catch up.