> I don't like extortion, and if I suffered acute harm due to extortion, I'd be more upset, but I still wouldn't try to claim extortion is terrorism. That make

> I don't like extortion, and if I suffered acute harm due to extortion, I'd be more upset, but I still wouldn't try to claim extortion is terrorism. That makes you an outlier. IANAL, but in a number of jurisdictions under common law (including the United States), when a person is killed - in this example, a patient dying because of EMR corruption/unavailability - in the commission of another crime - extortion - it is considered murder under the felony murder doctrine[0]. Now, again, IANAL and the minds of judges and jurors are fickle, but it seems to me if you could prove a relationship between "Guy in Russia locks a Cerner Millennium or Epic Systems database" and "Patient who was in the hospital died because information in database could not be accessed", you could possibly convict them of murder even though they only wanted money out of it, because you could potentially convince the court that as a hacker, the person in Russia should have known that this would necessarily bring about the risk of patient harm. After all, isn't that what makes the EMR worth encrypting to them? It's also worth noting that terrorist organizations routinely take people hostage to extract ransoms that then get used to finance their operations. The fact that the terrorist organization in this case is likely to be the Russian SVR is immaterial. They are a government under a ton of sanctions and are looking to replenish funds however they can. Cryptocurrency is incredibly useful if you're looking to evade international sanctions. [0]https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-murder/ https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-mur...