The Russian Security Paradox
DNS/MX RECORDS
The subdomain ksmg.sns.am confirms the NSS uses Kaspersky Security for Mail Gateway -- a Russian cybersecurity product. The United States banned Kaspersky from federal agencies in 2017 over concerns about Russian intelligence access. Armenia's national security service uses it to filter all its email.
The same NSS that deployed Predator spyware on Armenian citizens and uses parents of missing soldiers as informants routes all its email through Russian security software. If Russian intelligence wanted a man-in-the-middle on NSS communications, the infrastructure is already in place.
The Exposed Infrastructure
SUBDOMAIN ENUMERATION
| SUBDOMAIN | WHAT IT IS | RISK |
|---|---|---|
| ksmg.sns.am | Kaspersky Security for Mail Gateway | Russian software on NSS email |
| matrix.sns.am | Matrix encrypted chat server | Internal communications platform on a public subdomain |
| docs.sns.am | Document management system (Helix.am / PHP CodeIgniter, built Dec 2018) | Has not been updated in 7+ years. Open public registration page still live. |
| sahmanapah.sns.am | Border Guard portal (same Helix.am CMS) | Rebuilt three times. Last update 2022. |
| old.sns.am | Legacy Joomla 1.5 website (rt_afterburner template, 2003-2018) | Severely outdated CMS, many known exploits |
The Leak: 26 Files in a Public Uploads Directory
RECOVERED FROM PUBLIC SERVER + WAYBACK MACHINE
The NSS left 26 official documents at sns.am/public/uploads/files/ -- a publicly browsable directory with no authentication. The files were indexed by the Wayback Machine before anyone noticed. OWL recovered all of them, stripped the metadata, and republished them at owlorg.com/docs/nss/. Every file below is directly downloadable.
The Scientific-Educational Center's academic papers. Joint border-crossing orders with the State Revenue Committee. Internal HR orders signed by the then-Director. Quarterly citizen appeal reports showing that 37% of all correspondence received by Armenia's national security service is job applications. Court decisions the NSS quietly collected from the Cassation and Constitutional courts. The full 2020 National Security Strategy. A 275-page book on Ottoman intelligence operations published by the NSS itself.
1. The Current Director's Paper (2021)
"Some Issues of Judicial Supervision of Pre-Trial Investigation in the Context of Features of Intelligence and Tracking Activity" -- published in Datakan Ishkhanutyun (Judicial Power), Issues 7-8, 2021. At the time, Andranik Simonyan was Deputy Director of the NSS and a PhD candidate. He would become Director in 2025. The paper argues for broader NSS authority to conduct "operative-intelligence measures" (wiretapping, tracking, searches) under reduced judicial oversight.
It was published during the exact period Predator spyware was actively deployed in Armenia (Oct 2020 -- Dec 2022). The paper solves the exact legal problem Predator creates: how to surveil people who aren't formal suspects. Simonyan's personal email is exposed in the paper metadata: simonyan21@gmail.com.
Download: engibaryan_simonyan.pdf (385 KB, 13 pages) · duplicate: file-5BYsoQETVA.pdf
2. NSS Instructor at Russian "Color Revolution" Conference (2021)
Moscow State Linguistic University, Russian Ministry of Science, October 27-29, 2021. Conference topic: "Information Wars and Color Revolutions." The participant from Armenia was T.A. Sakoyan, Assistant Professor, Department No. 1, NSS Scientific-Educational Center. Sakoyan uses a rambler.ru Russian email address. The NSS later scanned the Russian conference proceedings with ABBYY FineReader and preserved them internally.
The "color revolution" framework is the exact ideology the Kremlin uses to delegitimize democratic movements -- including Armenia's own 2018 Velvet Revolution. An NSS instructor participated in its dissemination. The NSS then stored the materials for in-house use.
Download: MP.pdf (327 KB, 11 pages) · duplicate: file-dvOeDj3ws5.pdf
3. Cyber Weapons Training Paper (2023)
"History of Cyber Weapons Application", written in Russian by Major N. Hayrapetyan, Assistant Professor, Department No. 5 of the NSS Scientific-Educational Center. The paper covers cyber terrorism, terrorist recruitment through the internet, cell coordination, and weapons procurement through cyberspace. Created January 6, 2023.
Department 5 is the NSS's cyber unit. An NSS major is teaching about cyber weapons while the NSS's own infrastructure (docs.sns.am, mail.sns.am, the Kaspersky mail gateway) has catastrophic security holes and a 7-year-old unpatched CMS.
Download: file-HiuMMPCyRe.pdf (197 KB, 11 pages)
4. The National Security Strategy (2020)
The complete Armenia National Security Strategy 2020, 45 pages, published under the Pashinyan government in the pre-war period (July 31, 2020). The file is a large, image-heavy PDF created in Adobe InDesign CC 14.0 on Windows. The full official document is now mirrored here.
Download: national_security_strategy_2020.pdf (30.4 MB, 45 pages)
5. The Ottoman Intelligence Book (2016)
"Western Armenians as Targets of Ottoman Secret Services 1878-1923", a 275-page book published by the NSS Scientific-Educational Center. Author Hakob Hatikyan, PhD in History. Supervisor: Prof. Arsen Avagyan. Editor: Assoc. Prof. A.L. Kinaktsyan. ISBN 978-9939-1-0325-9. This confirms the NSS operates an academic publishing arm -- the kind of work that would normally sit in a university press, not a security service. Metadata reveals a Georgian typesetter prepared the layout.
Download: file-mCFfj3stTL.pdf (1.9 MB, 275 pages)
6. Joint Border-Crossing Order (December 2022)
Joint order No. 134-L / 1407-L dated December 7, 2022. A 67-page operational document defining the complete procedures at Armenia's 8 border crossings: person and vehicle entry/exit, cargo and animal transport, the division of authority between NSS Border Guards and customs officers. Based on Government Decision 735-N of May 12, 2011.
This is the procedural manual for how Armenia runs its land borders. Downloads: file-9l8genVF0s.pdf (354 KB, 67 pages) · high-res duplicate: file-fPbJIQp1Qy.pdf (529 KB)
7. Director Abazyan's Internal HR Orders
Two internal orders signed by then-Director Armen Abazyan, the man who would later be fired in June 2025 for refusing to arrest opposition figure Samvel Karapetyan:
- Order No. 78-L (October 30, 2023) -- procedure for calculating unused-vacation compensation for former NSS servicemen. 2 pages. file-0OvbHyApTv.pdf
- Order No. 51-L (August 28, 2024) -- commission for housing improvement for disabled Border Guard veterans and families of killed servicemen. 10 pages. file-gHVT8kGulg.pdf
Both carry Abazyan's signature. The Ottoman book lists the same Director's Office as the publisher.
8. Citizen Appeals Reports (2023)
Two quarterly reports on citizen correspondence:
- Q1 2023: 1,099 letters received. 90.4% on paper. 2.5% online. Job applications were 36.8% of all NSS mail -- the largest single category, larger than law enforcement matters or information requests combined. file-BfBChZOGsR.pdf (80 KB, 1 page)
- Q3 2023: 832 letters. Job applications dropped to 216 (26%) with 50% rejected. Information requests rose to become the largest category. file-df7qHcctQd.pdf (58 KB, 1 page)
Take-away: Armenia's national security service is still running on paper -- and is being used as an employment office for almost 40% of its incoming correspondence.
9. Court Decisions the NSS Collected
The NSS systematically collected court decisions from the Cassation Court and the Constitutional Court. The PDFs were generated via wkhtmltopdf from arlis.am, the Armenian legal information system. This shows the NSS quietly monitors and archives judicial activity.
| Court | Decision | Date | File |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cassation Court | EAQD/0172/11/17 -- Criminal case, Yerevan Appeals Court (Criminal Division) | Sep 18, 2019 | file-Hlud7q6z5m.pdf (278 KB) |
| Cassation Court | EKD/0229/01/16 -- Criminal case, Yerevan Kentron District | Apr 11, 2019 | file-mLEqi3qO5o.pdf (224 KB) |
| Cassation Court | SD2/0004/01/14 -- Criminal case, Shirak province | Feb 27, 2015 | file-PrHskMmuov.pdf (138 KB) |
| Cassation Court | Court decision | Dec 28, 2021 | file-Cx4tNIzUbJ.pdf · SD.pdf |
| Constitutional Court | SDO-1010 -- Law on State and Official Secrets. Filed by the Helsinki Citizens Assembly Vanadzor Office challenging the NSS's authority to classify information. | Jan 7, 2022 | file-ooCLhG3gnq.pdf (130 KB, 7 pages) |
Why SDO-1010 matters: it is the foundational court case on whether NSS secrecy claims can be challenged by citizens. The NSS kept a copy. Other court decisions listed here relate to criminal matters the NSS was involved in.
10. Additional Documents
Five additional Word documents in the drop -- working files, internal correspondence, and draft orders. Filenames are the hashes the NSS itself used:
- file-L5rh7zDZtn.docx (13 KB) · file-B2mcPoAzyV.docx (13 KB)
- file-E1OLNaAFRA.docx (14 KB) · file-du8ai9qCqM.docx (12 KB)
- file-Bz6wDUmYBx.doc (48 KB, legacy Word binary)
- file-FntGI2cJf2.pdf (80 KB) · file-75elLZlT6j.pdf (1.6 MB, 20 pages)
The Named Officers
FROM THE LEAKED DOCUMENTS
| NAME | RANK / POSITION | EVIDENCE FROM DROP |
|---|---|---|
| Andranik Simonyan | Colonel (2021), now Major General and NSS Director (2025-) | Co-authored the Engibaryan surveillance paper while Deputy Director |
| A. Abazyan | Major General, NSS Director until June 2025 | Signatures on Orders 78-L and 51-L. Fired for refusing to arrest Samvel Karapetyan. |
| Major N. Hayrapetyan | Assistant Professor, Dept. 5, NSS Scientific-Educational Center | Author of the cyber weapons paper |
| T.A. Sakoyan | Assistant Professor, Dept. 1, NSS Scientific-Educational Center | Attended Russian color-revolution conference. Uses rambler.ru email. |
| Hakob Hatikyan | PhD in History, NSS Scientific-Educational Center | Author of the 275-page Ottoman intelligence book |
| A.L. Kinaktsyan | Associate Professor, NSS Scientific-Educational Center | Editor of the Ottoman book |
| Arsen Avagyan | Prof., Doctor of Historical Sciences | PhD supervisor on the Ottoman research |
How We Got Them
Every document was recovered via one of two paths: (1) direct download from sns.am/public/uploads/files/ while the directory was still publicly browsable; (2) Wayback Machine cache for files that had been removed by the time we looked. Each file's original name -- the hash the NSS server used -- has been preserved for verification. We stripped all metadata (exiftool, mat2, and a custom OLE scrubber for the one legacy .doc) before republishing. There is nothing in these files that identifies OWL.
Full document archive: owlorg.com/docs/nss/
Why This Matters
The agency that deployed Predator spyware on Armenian citizens cannot secure its own web server. The man who will become its Director in 2025 wrote a paper in 2021 arguing for exactly the surveillance expansion that Predator was secretly delivering. Another instructor at the NSS academy attended a Russian government conference on "color revolutions" -- the ideological framework Moscow uses to delegitimize the Velvet Revolution that put this government in power. The NSS uses a Russian antivirus company for its email security. Its Director was fired in June 2025 for refusing to arrest an opposition billionaire, and the man who replaced him had already published the legal manual for the expanded surveillance state. The documents in this drop are not classified. They are the operating memory of an intelligence service that doesn't know what it is for, run by a leadership class that writes its own justifications and then enforces them.
Sources: all 26 documents recovered from sns.am/public/uploads/files/ via direct download and Wayback Machine cache. Subfinder + theHarvester subdomain enumeration. DNS/MX records for ksmg.sns.am, matrix.sns.am, docs.sns.am, sahmanapah.sns.am, old.sns.am. Document-level analysis and timeline in OWL's internal NSS Documents Analysis dossier.