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I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that

I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. But this kinda shows the response I was referencing to. A lot of people like to think of ransomware attacks as the ultimate stress test as far as security goes, and thus a good thing - but let's not get too blinded by our professions (most probably in tech), these kinds of attacks can have serious consequences: Imagine if some foreign state agency (masquerading as hackers) launches a multiheaded attack on, say, utilities plants - in the middle of the winter. The victims/targets will pay whatever us necessary. With that said, I understand that many people will recoil at such things - we saw what the patriot act did, and how easy it is to overstep and abuse such laws, in the name of "national security". But it is a serious problem, in the same way actual piracy thrived in the gulf of Aden, as soon as the shipping companies started paying.

vkou 5y ago
Terrorism is a non-state use of violence for political aims. Ransomware is non-state, not violent, and is done for economic, not political aims.
- waihtis 5y ago
  > non-state > economic, not political There’s a well known phenonenom of a certain large nation harbouring cybercrime gangs and keeping them on the government leash. Their economic activity benefits the governments political agenda. Ergo all conditions are true.
  - vkou 5y ago
    There's also a well-known phenomena of large nations harboring multi-national corporations that break the law in other nations they operate in. That doesn't mean that the large, developed nations in question are engaging in organized crime. Taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage does not mean that their government is in collusion with them. If it did, then we could pile a lot of crimes at the feet of Western governments. Some mining firm violently puts down a strike in Central America? Clearly, we can conclude that Canada/the US is engaging in terrorism! [1] [1] https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1272&context=all_papers https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2] [2] 28 Canadian companies, 44 deaths, 30 of which were targeted extra-judicial killings. Are we going to lay those at the feet of Parliament, too? [3] [3] Or do we have one set of standards for Russia, and another for our own behaviour?
    - waihtis 5y ago
      There is no sense to your comparison when you’re putting a criminal enterprise (which exists to do harm and harm only) and legitimate business into the same bucket.
      - vkou 5y ago
        A 'legitimate business' that occasionally dabbles in murder is also a criminal enterprise.
        waihtis 5y ago
        Agree to a certain extent - executives in such companies need to pay the price on their actions, whether involed directly or via a proxy
- fencepost 5y ago
  Ransomware is non-state Are there no ransomware operations linked to North Korea? I was under the impression that there was some level of activity there to maintain supplies of globally-usable currency.
  - Forbo 5y ago
    Last I heard, they were more oriented toward cryptocurrency trojans and botnet mining operations, but I could be mistaken.
  - vkou 5y ago
    North Korea is... A special case, and it is still quite unlike any other country in the world.
    - zepto 5y ago
      That’s true of the US, Russia, and China too.
      - vkou 5y ago
        Neither of those countries have the government responsible for all economic activity that happens through the internet. The Great Firewall is likewise, not remotely similar to the restrictions placed on internet access in North Korea.
        zepto 5y ago
        True, if that’s the point you intended to make.
Arubis 5y ago
I'd like to lean towards keeping terrorism defined essentially by intent--namely, the intent to use asymmetrical, threateningly or actually destructive, and emotionally activating ("terrorizing") means to manipulate a body politic or society towards a desired change. If serious ransomware attacks are being conducted by state actors with the sole intent of causing damage, and we want to use powerful terminologies to describe them, "acts of war" seems a reasonable start. Yes, this is semantics--but some of my concern here is that just freely tossing around "terrorism" gives cover for organizations not to be diligent in at least attempting to secure their networks and digital assets.
schoen 5y ago
Maybe people didn't like your use of the term "terrorism" for national security threats? A common understanding is that terrorism is intended to frighten people or make them feel unsafe, while various official definitions of terrorism include the idea that it's intended to coercively achieve some particular political goal. If attackers just intend to get money, they're probably well-described as extortionists (or in some cases, as you said, akin to pirates). If they just intend to damage a particular society without demanding anything from it or getting it to change its behavior, they might be saboteurs. Attacks with these motives or that pretend to have these motives could still be considered national security threats (and taken very seriously), but maybe shouldn't be described specifically as terrorism.
- squeaky-clean 5y ago
  They may have just intended to get money, but they definitely spread terror. I had to have like an hour long phone call with my mother on Monday explaining why she had to go to 4 gas stations before she could get any gas, and that no the pipeline was not going to explode.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    From the satire site that shall not be named: "People in the Middle East head to bomb shelters after learning that Americans are experiencing gasoline shortages."
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    Could it perhaps have been the use of the word 'terrorism' in news reports that prompted her fear of the pipeline exploding?
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  On the high seas of the Internet there is a thin line between pirates and state actors. There could even be "privateer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer) attackers who work for a nation and for profit at the same time. From the victim's perspective it matters less who is attacking you or why they are attacking you and much more what the results of the attack are, how you can mitigate and recover from the damage, and what needs to be done to prevent future attacks. For the case of DarkSide and Colonial Pipeline, the attackers did not claim to have a political motive, but the resulting fuel shortages and panic buying might as well have been a form of terrorism.
citizenkeen 5y ago
"Intentional threats to national security" are not ipso facto terrorist acts, but they should be addressed with the same level of severity.
- iratewizard 5y ago
  Agreed. To call it terrorism would water down the meaning of the word.
jcranmer 5y ago
> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. A precise definition of terrorism tends to be difficult to pin down (mostly due to the difficulty of considering what is a legitimate asymmetrical warfare tactic by a nascent liberation movement versus an illegitimate terrorist act). But a general rule of thumb is that terrorism is a) violence b) directed at civilian populations c) to effect policy. However, there are threats to national security that are not terrorist in nature; gang warfare in Mexico and Central America would be an example of such a threat.
kordlessagain 5y ago
HN is full of assholes who practice deprecating others to find their own worth. Set yourself free of their dogma and change the world the way you see it!
- papito 5y ago
  Some downvoting can be truly surprising, and one factor may be because HN is much more international, while I think of it as "American". It is Y-Combinator, after all. Funny fact - one way to get down votes on HN is to say something negative about that shit-tier human Peter Thiel. Apparently becoming rich off of venture capital makes you automatically a good human being.
  - kordlessagain 5y ago
    Truth! Fuck that guy and all the “VC” that follows. Shit bags, all of them!
- dang 5y ago
  "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
arcticbull 5y ago
IMO terrorism is a "waffle word" that doesn't really have any meaning anymore. Originally a use of violence and intimidation against civilians in pursuit of political ideology, it's come to mean "people we don't like, who aren't state actors and don't fit conventional organized crime narratives." I don't think it's necessary to staple the term to the action in order to take it seriously. It should, however, be taken seriously as the national security threat it is. For instance, climate change is a national security issue but oil executives, while distasteful, aren't terrorists. I agree that many folks in the tech community (and especially here, though I don't know if they're overrepresented here) treat technology as platonic. That's not going to cut it moving forward. Technology that enables bad things in the world should be curtailed even if its "neat."
- walshemj 5y ago
  Original its terror for terrors' sake to disrupt society not for individual aims is my understanding.
- watwut 5y ago
  Original definition did not required target to be civilians. Suicide attacks against military were called terrorism too.
- Inhibit 5y ago
  To your point these folks seem pretty well defined as organized crime. Or possibly foreign military if appropriate. I'm not sure leaving infrastructure hanging out in the breeze can be compensated for by cracking down on personal liberty, however. Unless you're proposing cutting off international computer network integration.
- splithalf 5y ago
  It’s a scare word and has always been. Like “conspiracy theory” it’s purpose is to stop thought and prevent thinking. It’s easily replaced with real words with concrete meanings. Are mass shootings terrorism? Since it’s widely used scare word to describe generally “bad acts towards groups of people” I think ransomware fits, but so does a lot of graffiti. Maybe it’s better to quibble over terms than to talk about how Bitcoin is responsible.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. Well... yes? That isn't a sense of the word "terrorism".
ChuckMcM 5y ago
FWIW in June of 2011 the Pentagon issued a report that defined how 'cyber attacks' can be classified as an act of war. Part of the defense department review of threats against the US. However, they have to be plausibly tied to a state actor such as Russia or North Korea (to give two examples) The net result was that the Pentagon considers military response (both kinetic and cyber) as legal and sanctioned ways to respond to cyber attacks. Generally though, the Justice department defines terrorism to be "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" These ransomware attacks fall in the middle. They are 'deniable' by state actors as just crooks who happen to be within their borders. They certainly don't push any social objective other than to enrich the criminals. So that leaves them under the jurisdiction of law enforcement. I have read anecdotal evidence that there are the equivalent to "Letters of Marque"[1] for Russian criminals who attack enemies of the Kremlin. They wouldn't completely qualify as the Russians aren't actually in a declared state of war (this works fine for North Korea) but conceptually if you accept that criminals are gonna crim, then pointing them at people you don't like at least keeps the damage outside of your area of concern. In this particular case, the fairly rapid take down of these guys gives me pause. One wonders if the FBI and Interpol had Colonial pay with Bitcoin that they then traced to the destination wallets. And then working backward from there to the server infrastructure. That would be an interesting capability if it exists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Reading about the Letter of Marque was fascinating! Can you share your evidence of the Russian version in use today?
- moftz 5y ago
  In the book Ghost Fleet, a billionaire obtains a letter of marque to go hijack a Chinese space station that is shooting down US satellites.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Treating more and more attacks "as terrorism" has it's limits. The US may have awesome offensive cyber attack abilities but stopping widespread ransom wear requires systematic security, not threatening the bad guys, since there will always be more bad guys.
podgaj 5y ago
Serious side effects, yes. I am homeless and live in my van in North Carolina and having to ration my gasoline waiting for the idiots to stop hoarding. These people thought they were sticking it to the man but they were actually sticking it to people like me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I am getting close to homeless, and know people who never thought they would be without a home very scared. I wish Biden realized how hard homeliness can be. Cities, and towns, need to stop ticketing vechicles that are parked overnight, and used as residences. I would like to see any federal, state, or local land, set aside for the homeless. Hang in there.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  I'm sorry for your situation. I'm living the RV life myself. If there is anything I can do to help, let me know. (In Virginia)
da39a3ee 5y ago
The definition of terrorism isn't a "threat to national security". For example, your country could do something evil and wrong, grievously and unjustifiably violating the interests of an entity with a military, and be deservedly subject to military action, constituting a threat to national security. That wouldn't be "terrorism", it would just be "military action".
babypuncher 5y ago
That reasoning is really dumb. It's like saying school shootings are the ultimate stress test on a local police department. They sure are, but nobody in their right mind should ever argue that getting real world experience with one is ever a good thing.
darig 5y ago
> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism. Maybe it's time to treat distributing software that is susceptible to ransomware attacks as terrorism.
bityard 5y ago
You could treat ransomware attacks with the same seriousness as terrorism since the practical effects are similar, but the key point of terrorism is that it is politically motivated. So a terrorist group could launch a ransomware attack, but not all ransomware campaigns are terrorism. The meanings of words is important; rational discussion is impossible when people shift commonly-accepted meanings and definitions to suit their agenda. It's an extremely common strategy in politics. And the word "terrorism" already received more than its fair share of this treatment quite thoroughly in the decade following 9/11.
hinkley 5y ago
As far as I'm concerned, ransomware attacks essentially fall into the same classification as highwaymen, bandits, and pirates. We tend to take those pretty seriously. Or at least, we did once they've robbed the wrong people. Sounds like the ransomeware people finally robbed the wrong people.
- lovemenot 5y ago
  We have only DarkSide's word for what happened to them. No corroboration. Not saying it's false, but the story doesn't ring true to me. They appear to be sophisticated, yet they made the newbie error of keeping all the funds in a network accessible device, rather than a cold wallet. Really?
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    One of the things that criminal gangs always need to be aware of is being defrauded by their own collaborators. So they often have to make sub-optimal choices on OpSec because they have to work with hostile actors.
Ericson2314 5y ago
"terrorism" is an inconsistent categorization of things that we should just stop using.
EamonnMR 5y ago
No imagination required; this cyberattack on infrastructure masqueraded as ransomware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware)
- suifbwish 5y ago
  I will never understand why people link to paid articles in a public forum. There are too many other reliable sources for that exact info for anyone who isn’t wealthy to pay for dumb sites like that.
  - EamonnMR 5y ago
    Fair enough, I just wanted to find an article that explained NotPetya. But wikipedia does a fine job.
- moftz 5y ago
  You need to consider the motivation. Were the hackers just looking for a victim with deep pockets that would want to just hand over the money as soon as possible or were they actually looking to bring down a major pipeline? Giving the victim the chance to recover once the ransom is paid seems like it was more about the money. The attack could just have easily deleted everything from the network and totally crippled Colonial.
turtletontine 5y ago
I'd say ransomware is much closer to "piracy" than terrorism, but totally agree that this incident shows there's not much distance between this and cyber terrorism. (Even if it's just criminals accidentally throwing themselves into the spotlight.) For say a nation engaging in cyber war, this could be flipped around: attacking basic infrastructure but disguising it as smaller groups of criminals trying to make a buck. Not sure how effective the disguise would be, but it could obviously do some serious damage.
concordDance 5y ago
> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security Um. Terrorism is basically never a threat to national security.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Threats to financial centers and satellite offices of major intelligence offices that are part of the US intelligence apparatus such as in 9/11 are definitely threats to national security. Not sure if you were being sarcastic?
  - concordDance 5y ago
    That's an outlier as far as terrorism goes. And even 9/11 harmed US power only by causing it to spend trillions in Iraq.
IncRnd 5y ago
> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. But this kinda shows the response I was referencing to. Terrorism has a legal definition, and something affecting national security is not the determining factor in calling something terrorism. "Terrorism includes the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." [1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/0.85 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/0.85

vkou 5y ago

Terrorism is a non-state use of violence for political aims. Ransomware is non-state, not violent, and is done for economic, not political aims.

waihtis 5y ago
> non-state > economic, not political There’s a well known phenonenom of a certain large nation harbouring cybercrime gangs and keeping them on the government leash. Their economic activity benefits the governments political agenda. Ergo all conditions are true.
- vkou 5y ago
  There's also a well-known phenomena of large nations harboring multi-national corporations that break the law in other nations they operate in. That doesn't mean that the large, developed nations in question are engaging in organized crime. Taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage does not mean that their government is in collusion with them. If it did, then we could pile a lot of crimes at the feet of Western governments. Some mining firm violently puts down a strike in Central America? Clearly, we can conclude that Canada/the US is engaging in terrorism! [1] [1] https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1272&context=all_papers https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2] [2] 28 Canadian companies, 44 deaths, 30 of which were targeted extra-judicial killings. Are we going to lay those at the feet of Parliament, too? [3] [3] Or do we have one set of standards for Russia, and another for our own behaviour?
  - waihtis 5y ago
    There is no sense to your comparison when you’re putting a criminal enterprise (which exists to do harm and harm only) and legitimate business into the same bucket.
    - vkou 5y ago
      A 'legitimate business' that occasionally dabbles in murder is also a criminal enterprise.
      - waihtis 5y ago
        Agree to a certain extent - executives in such companies need to pay the price on their actions, whether involed directly or via a proxy
fencepost 5y ago
Ransomware is non-state Are there no ransomware operations linked to North Korea? I was under the impression that there was some level of activity there to maintain supplies of globally-usable currency.
- Forbo 5y ago
  Last I heard, they were more oriented toward cryptocurrency trojans and botnet mining operations, but I could be mistaken.
- vkou 5y ago
  North Korea is... A special case, and it is still quite unlike any other country in the world.
  - zepto 5y ago
    That’s true of the US, Russia, and China too.
    - vkou 5y ago
      Neither of those countries have the government responsible for all economic activity that happens through the internet. The Great Firewall is likewise, not remotely similar to the restrictions placed on internet access in North Korea.
      - zepto 5y ago
        True, if that’s the point you intended to make.

Arubis 5y ago

I'd like to lean towards keeping terrorism defined essentially by intent--namely, the intent to use asymmetrical, threateningly or actually destructive, and emotionally activating ("terrorizing") means to manipulate a body politic or society towards a desired change. If serious ransomware attacks are being conducted by state actors with the sole intent of causing damage, and we want to use powerful terminologies to describe them, "acts of war" seems a reasonable start. Yes, this is semantics--but some of my concern here is that just freely tossing around "terrorism" gives cover for organizations not to be diligent in at least attempting to secure their networks and digital assets.

schoen 5y ago

Maybe people didn't like your use of the term "terrorism" for national security threats? A common understanding is that terrorism is intended to frighten people or make them feel unsafe, while various official definitions of terrorism include the idea that it's intended to coercively achieve some particular political goal. If attackers just intend to get money, they're probably well-described as extortionists (or in some cases, as you said, akin to pirates). If they just intend to damage a particular society without demanding anything from it or getting it to change its behavior, they might be saboteurs. Attacks with these motives or that pretend to have these motives could still be considered national security threats (and taken very seriously), but maybe shouldn't be described specifically as terrorism.

squeaky-clean 5y ago
They may have just intended to get money, but they definitely spread terror. I had to have like an hour long phone call with my mother on Monday explaining why she had to go to 4 gas stations before she could get any gas, and that no the pipeline was not going to explode.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  From the satire site that shall not be named: "People in the Middle East head to bomb shelters after learning that Americans are experiencing gasoline shortages."
- mannykannot 5y ago
  Could it perhaps have been the use of the word 'terrorism' in news reports that prompted her fear of the pipeline exploding?
thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
On the high seas of the Internet there is a thin line between pirates and state actors. There could even be "privateer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer) attackers who work for a nation and for profit at the same time. From the victim's perspective it matters less who is attacking you or why they are attacking you and much more what the results of the attack are, how you can mitigate and recover from the damage, and what needs to be done to prevent future attacks. For the case of DarkSide and Colonial Pipeline, the attackers did not claim to have a political motive, but the resulting fuel shortages and panic buying might as well have been a form of terrorism.

citizenkeen 5y ago

"Intentional threats to national security" are not ipso facto terrorist acts, but they should be addressed with the same level of severity.

iratewizard 5y ago
Agreed. To call it terrorism would water down the meaning of the word.

jcranmer 5y ago

> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. A precise definition of terrorism tends to be difficult to pin down (mostly due to the difficulty of considering what is a legitimate asymmetrical warfare tactic by a nascent liberation movement versus an illegitimate terrorist act). But a general rule of thumb is that terrorism is a) violence b) directed at civilian populations c) to effect policy. However, there are threats to national security that are not terrorist in nature; gang warfare in Mexico and Central America would be an example of such a threat.

kordlessagain 5y ago

HN is full of assholes who practice deprecating others to find their own worth. Set yourself free of their dogma and change the world the way you see it!

papito 5y ago
Some downvoting can be truly surprising, and one factor may be because HN is much more international, while I think of it as "American". It is Y-Combinator, after all. Funny fact - one way to get down votes on HN is to say something negative about that shit-tier human Peter Thiel. Apparently becoming rich off of venture capital makes you automatically a good human being.
- kordlessagain 5y ago
  Truth! Fuck that guy and all the “VC” that follows. Shit bags, all of them!
dang 5y ago
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

arcticbull 5y ago

IMO terrorism is a "waffle word" that doesn't really have any meaning anymore. Originally a use of violence and intimidation against civilians in pursuit of political ideology, it's come to mean "people we don't like, who aren't state actors and don't fit conventional organized crime narratives." I don't think it's necessary to staple the term to the action in order to take it seriously. It should, however, be taken seriously as the national security threat it is. For instance, climate change is a national security issue but oil executives, while distasteful, aren't terrorists. I agree that many folks in the tech community (and especially here, though I don't know if they're overrepresented here) treat technology as platonic. That's not going to cut it moving forward. Technology that enables bad things in the world should be curtailed even if its "neat."

walshemj 5y ago
Original its terror for terrors' sake to disrupt society not for individual aims is my understanding.
watwut 5y ago
Original definition did not required target to be civilians. Suicide attacks against military were called terrorism too.
Inhibit 5y ago
To your point these folks seem pretty well defined as organized crime. Or possibly foreign military if appropriate. I'm not sure leaving infrastructure hanging out in the breeze can be compensated for by cracking down on personal liberty, however. Unless you're proposing cutting off international computer network integration.
splithalf 5y ago
It’s a scare word and has always been. Like “conspiracy theory” it’s purpose is to stop thought and prevent thinking. It’s easily replaced with real words with concrete meanings. Are mass shootings terrorism? Since it’s widely used scare word to describe generally “bad acts towards groups of people” I think ransomware fits, but so does a lot of graffiti. Maybe it’s better to quibble over terms than to talk about how Bitcoin is responsible.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

ChuckMcM 5y ago

FWIW in June of 2011 the Pentagon issued a report that defined how 'cyber attacks' can be classified as an act of war. Part of the defense department review of threats against the US. However, they have to be plausibly tied to a state actor such as Russia or North Korea (to give two examples) The net result was that the Pentagon considers military response (both kinetic and cyber) as legal and sanctioned ways to respond to cyber attacks. Generally though, the Justice department defines terrorism to be "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" These ransomware attacks fall in the middle. They are 'deniable' by state actors as just crooks who happen to be within their borders. They certainly don't push any social objective other than to enrich the criminals. So that leaves them under the jurisdiction of law enforcement. I have read anecdotal evidence that there are the equivalent to "Letters of Marque"[1] for Russian criminals who attack enemies of the Kremlin. They wouldn't completely qualify as the Russians aren't actually in a declared state of war (this works fine for North Korea) but conceptually if you accept that criminals are gonna crim, then pointing them at people you don't like at least keeps the damage outside of your area of concern. In this particular case, the fairly rapid take down of these guys gives me pause. One wonders if the FBI and Interpol had Colonial pay with Bitcoin that they then traced to the destination wallets. And then working backward from there to the server infrastructure. That would be an interesting capability if it exists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque

imwillofficial 5y ago
Reading about the Letter of Marque was fascinating! Can you share your evidence of the Russian version in use today?
moftz 5y ago
In the book Ghost Fleet, a billionaire obtains a letter of marque to go hijack a Chinese space station that is shooting down US satellites.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Treating more and more attacks "as terrorism" has it's limits. The US may have awesome offensive cyber attack abilities but stopping widespread ransom wear requires systematic security, not threatening the bad guys, since there will always be more bad guys.

podgaj 5y ago

Serious side effects, yes. I am homeless and live in my van in North Carolina and having to ration my gasoline waiting for the idiots to stop hoarding. These people thought they were sticking it to the man but they were actually sticking it to people like me.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I am getting close to homeless, and know people who never thought they would be without a home very scared. I wish Biden realized how hard homeliness can be. Cities, and towns, need to stop ticketing vechicles that are parked overnight, and used as residences. I would like to see any federal, state, or local land, set aside for the homeless. Hang in there.
imwillofficial 5y ago
I'm sorry for your situation. I'm living the RV life myself. If there is anything I can do to help, let me know. (In Virginia)

da39a3ee 5y ago

The definition of terrorism isn't a "threat to national security". For example, your country could do something evil and wrong, grievously and unjustifiably violating the interests of an entity with a military, and be deservedly subject to military action, constituting a threat to national security. That wouldn't be "terrorism", it would just be "military action".

babypuncher 5y ago

That reasoning is really dumb. It's like saying school shootings are the ultimate stress test on a local police department. They sure are, but nobody in their right mind should ever argue that getting real world experience with one is ever a good thing.

darig 5y ago

> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism. Maybe it's time to treat distributing software that is susceptible to ransomware attacks as terrorism.

bityard 5y ago

You could treat ransomware attacks with the same seriousness as terrorism since the practical effects are similar, but the key point of terrorism is that it is politically motivated. So a terrorist group could launch a ransomware attack, but not all ransomware campaigns are terrorism. The meanings of words is important; rational discussion is impossible when people shift commonly-accepted meanings and definitions to suit their agenda. It's an extremely common strategy in politics. And the word "terrorism" already received more than its fair share of this treatment quite thoroughly in the decade following 9/11.

hinkley 5y ago

As far as I'm concerned, ransomware attacks essentially fall into the same classification as highwaymen, bandits, and pirates. We tend to take those pretty seriously. Or at least, we did once they've robbed the wrong people. Sounds like the ransomeware people finally robbed the wrong people.

lovemenot 5y ago
We have only DarkSide's word for what happened to them. No corroboration. Not saying it's false, but the story doesn't ring true to me. They appear to be sophisticated, yet they made the newbie error of keeping all the funds in a network accessible device, rather than a cold wallet. Really?
- spoonjim 5y ago
  One of the things that criminal gangs always need to be aware of is being defrauded by their own collaborators. So they often have to make sub-optimal choices on OpSec because they have to work with hostile actors.

Ericson2314 5y ago

"terrorism" is an inconsistent categorization of things that we should just stop using.

EamonnMR 5y ago

No imagination required; this cyberattack on infrastructure masqueraded as ransomware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware)

suifbwish 5y ago
I will never understand why people link to paid articles in a public forum. There are too many other reliable sources for that exact info for anyone who isn’t wealthy to pay for dumb sites like that.
- EamonnMR 5y ago
  Fair enough, I just wanted to find an article that explained NotPetya. But wikipedia does a fine job.
moftz 5y ago
You need to consider the motivation. Were the hackers just looking for a victim with deep pockets that would want to just hand over the money as soon as possible or were they actually looking to bring down a major pipeline? Giving the victim the chance to recover once the ransom is paid seems like it was more about the money. The attack could just have easily deleted everything from the network and totally crippled Colonial.

turtletontine 5y ago

I'd say ransomware is much closer to "piracy" than terrorism, but totally agree that this incident shows there's not much distance between this and cyber terrorism. (Even if it's just criminals accidentally throwing themselves into the spotlight.) For say a nation engaging in cyber war, this could be flipped around: attacking basic infrastructure but disguising it as smaller groups of criminals trying to make a buck. Not sure how effective the disguise would be, but it could obviously do some serious damage.

concordDance 5y ago

arthurcolle 5y ago
Threats to financial centers and satellite offices of major intelligence offices that are part of the US intelligence apparatus such as in 9/11 are definitely threats to national security. Not sure if you were being sarcastic?
- concordDance 5y ago
  That's an outlier as far as terrorism goes. And even 9/11 harmed US power only by causing it to spend trillions in Iraq.

IncRnd 5y ago

> I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. But this kinda shows the response I was referencing to. Terrorism has a legal definition, and something affecting national security is not the determining factor in calling something terrorism. "Terrorism includes the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." [1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/0.85 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/0.85