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Comment by shabier | Hacker News Reader

> Ok, but what does Russia offer the rest of the internet besides badly written malware ... honeypots full of fuzzing robots?

Does that even matter? The access to the general internet isn't something you have to "earn". You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.

> The Russian government actively promotes hacking against the west and refuses to prosecute anyone for it.

Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.

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> Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.

Indeed, all those NSA ransomware attacks on hospitals have to stop!

Perhaps they’re not actually equally guilty and the NSA is far more careful with their approach than the Russians?

The NotPetya wiper worm was released by the Russian government, the NSA has never been accused of anything similar.

This kind of false equivalency is nothing but dishonest, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Why are you repeating a propaganda rhetoric that was designed specifically to target people who don't understand how computer networks and infosec works?

Go on, explain.

> The NotPetya wiper worm was released by the Russian government, the NSA has never been accused of anything similar.

Indeed. When the US released Stuxnet it was specifically made to be discreet and dormant unless activated on a specific target.

Russia just throws a pipe bomb into the room and hopes the door is thick enough to withstand the blast.

> The NotPetya wiper worm was released by the Russian government, the NSA has never been accused of anything similar.

Of course it has. The NSA was accused of created Stuxnet, the worm that targeted Iran industrial control systems (such as nuclear power plants). Wikipedia[0] says:

> On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times said that Stuxnet is part of a US and Israeli intelligence operation named Operation Olympic Games, devised by the NSA under President George W. Bush and executed under President Barack Obama.

and:

> A Wired magazine article about US General Keith B. Alexander stated: "And he and his cyber warriors have already launched their first attack. The cyber weapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Stuxnet was a masterpiece of restraint and engineering. It was discreet, controlled, effective, and it didn't break the entire internet.

Petya was an international crisis.

I believe you missed an important point.

> Our government friends at the NSA are equally guilty of that as well, I'm not seeing much outrage over that either.

Not the same. In Russia the only cybercrime that goes to court is Russian on Russian crime. Crime against the west isn't a crime. Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.

If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.

> You're not more entitled to be in this space more than the next person regardless of your contribution, beliefs or identity.

You probably typed your message on an Intel, AMD, or ARM CPU running on 95% American code. Russians are entitled to what the west decides to give them unless they want to do a better job themselves.

> Russians are entitled to what the west decides to give them unless they want to do a better job themselves.

Please get off your high horse, that's just disgusting. Yikes.

That's a very conversationally-bankrupt response.

> Not the same. In Russia the only cybercrime that goes to court is Russian on Russian crime. Crime against the west isn't a crime.

Nonsense, that's not how it works.

> Russians are allowed to write malware and defraud targets... just so long as those targets are not Russian.

Nope. Article 273 of the Criminal Code.

> If I ripped off 10,000 Russian grandmothers as an American; the FBI would find me and prosecute me.

Unlikely.

It seems like you are not entirely aware that we don't actually have functioning global anti-crybercrime mechanisms. If you think FBI would care what you do with Russian part of the internet, you are deluded. Try hosting something in Russia, you will quickly change your assumptions of the threat model.

Really, it's surprising to see people on Hackernews who don't understand how infosec is a thing and why cybercrime actually works, when technology-wise everything should be more or less traceable.

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