4 ms·

I wonder if "ransomware" is merely a cover, and some of this is Russia beta testing economic and infrastructure warfare.

• bdamm 5y ago
  It could be, but that's something that only privileged elected officials e.g. members of the intelligence committee, US President, past presidents, etc, get to know. If you let yourself get into conspiratorial thinking you'll soon find yourself without any moorings whatsoever. It could also be many other countries or even private entities that get excited about extracting money from big US companies. The list of possibilities is very long.
  • ergot_vacation 5y ago
    Cyber attacks between major powers targeting important infrastructure aren't conspiracy theories; we have plenty of confirmed cases of it at this point. Whether this situation in particular, or the recent oil disruption are targeted attacks is hard to say. As with the "lab origin" situation, it's probably best to avoid whatever the mainstream media is saying and try to find the few rogue experts who aren't being paid to say the right thing (or nothing at all) and thus have no incentives other than the satisfaction of offering a frank assessment (with any luck, you can find them before they're banned from all social media platforms for "misinformation" (ie, disagreeing with the party line)). It took years for any official confirmation of Stuxnet being a state-sponsored attack. But if you were paying attention to the right people, you knew it had all the fingerprints of such an attack pretty early on.
    • bdamm 5y ago
      As a layperson in basically all fields except the very narrow field of my professional career, I have basically a zero chance of finding the "right people" and about a 99% chance of finding someone who sounds like the "right people" and aren't.