Probably hoped the effects would negatively effect people there so they could put pressure to stop the murder of other innocent civilians.
Arguments like this are similar to the BLM protest that try to equate property with human lives.
Arguments like this are similar to the BLM protest that try to equate property with human lives.
Yeah, but the problem with this is that, taken to its logical conclusion, you end up with a nihilistic view that's basically "do you support The Cause? if yes then any protest action is acceptable, if no then any minor transgression should be cracked down by law enforcement". This works especially well when The Cause is something that could plausibly affect tens of millions of people, so you can excuse quite a lot of damage.
If you left your car running while you ran into the store you don't have the right to shoot the guy in the back as he drives off. You file a police report and potentially sue for damages.
You definitely don't have the right to shoot someone for burning down your local Target.
I believe the crux of the political theory is that in a representative democracy, nobody has no influence over the issue.
If you burn down people's houses, you will be arrested and go to jail.
Could be. But by whom? To what effect?
One of the downsides of losing credibility as a nation state is the concepts of deference, retaliation and proportionality lose weight. There is no indication that the facts on the ground would affect whether Putin deems something a cyber attack. Worse, one's own policing actions are likely to cause more damage as propaganda pieces than ignoring the issue.
Yes, in an international law framework this would be prosecuted in the U.S. But in that framework Russia wouldn't be in Ukraine. Add to that it's tacit approval of its own hackers, and it's difficult--in a realpolitik frame--to find support for doing anything about this other than minor finger wagging.
The general public. I speculate that publicity was one of the main objectives behind this operation to draw attention to his political grievances and maybe demands.
Perhaps we should focus more on the issue of bragging rights. The perpetrator probably thinks he's some kind of a hero having conducted this operation and it was some kind of a heroic feat sticking up to Putin when he in fact is more of a lousy vandal destroying some poor guy's store window than an epic warrior conquering foreign lands and subduing evil emperors.
The more people realize this and esp. people who are prone to commit these acts, the more innocent people would be spared the damage incurred by those reckless attacks.
Weaponizing open source is such an awful precedent. There are extremist groups of every shade who harbor ill intent towards some other group or institution. For a rather mundane example: "My malicious npm module detects you are running the Brave browser? The evil Brendan Eich runs that, say goodbye to your filesystem!" Never mind if you are part of a group that is mired in controversy, chief among them at this time being Russian.
And in this case the 'horrible act' is not wanting your free labour to be used in another country.
A) IP geolocation is far from perfect, quite a few completely unrelated people could have been affected.
B) There was a chance of massive collateral damage to stuff like hospitals, water company, etc. and therefore affecting civilians, including children. If you think Putin wouldn't use that to rally Russia and launch a massive war, you haven't observed Putin for long.
We got very lucky this software equivalent of a warcrime was stopped early. Yet the punishment was absurdly light. I will staying away from NPM after that.
Do you believe that node-ipc would do this but the current vastly more impactful sanctions regime wont?
Also, everybody capable of thinking understands that Russia isn't capable of launching another "massive war" when it already has almost all of its conventional combat power committed to Ukraine.
If you think Putin would launch a nuclear war over wiper malware, you're an idiot. There's no other kind of "massive war" he could launch at this point.
> this software equivalent of a warcrime
Why not call it software holocaust if we're gonna go there? What's wrong with you?
>There's no other kind of "massive war" he could launch at this point.
Russian society isn't anywhere near enthusiastic. That's why Putin has been searching for ever dumber excuses. Give him an actual indefensible incident to rally society around, and he'll get a lot more manpower. That could expand the war to Odessa and Moldova, and also 'retaliatory' cyberwar in the West.
Now, there's a level of escalation I'm fine with risking - say, over stationing peacekeepers in parts of Ukraine. Stuff that actually helps Ukrainians. But over an self-appointed idiot's personal action which doesn't help anyone and nobody asked for? $#@! no.
>Why not call it software holocaust if we're gonna go there? What's wrong with you?
It's attacking civilians as to influence their government (except Russia is a dictatorship and the government doesn't even care). I have more pointed comparisons in mind, but I'll spare the thread.
Also, Russia is relatively self-sufficient foodwise. There'll be shortages but no starvation. I'm sure though that if starvation was serious possiblity the West would exclude food imports.
Ah yes, because seizing Russian assets overseas is the same as "not trading with them".
Your bank account is held under terms. There are cases where freezing withdrawals is allowed.
If you wish to avoid that, you are entitled to store your money under your mattress (or use the latest crypto fad and be subject to absurd exchange rate variations).
Nobody was forcing Russia's ruling class to have all their money in overseas bank accounts.
That's just absurd fanfic. Sending in untrained "manpower" with no equipment would not help advance Russian goals.
"Cyberwar"? Russia has never before needed any excuses to unleash wiper worms like NotPetya onto the whole world.
>It's attacking civilians as to influence their government
Exactly like sanctions. Are you against sanctions too? If not, how do you explain that inconsistency?
Some of them probably have military training, and quantity has a quality of its own. Regardless, Russia will not be able to subdue Ukraine, but there's nothing good coming from a more enthusiastic Russian society.
>"Cyberwar"? Russia has never before needed any excuses to unleash wiper worms like NotPetya onto the whole world.
Our tolerance for that was absurd. As is our tolerance for this action.
>Exactly like sanctions. Are you against sanctions too? If not, how do you explain that inconsistency?
I'm for sanctions. It's not inconsistent. There's a law for these things. That law allows sanctions but not attacking random civilians. It also prefers actions by legitimate authorities and not random vigilants. It also states that any possible harm to civilians must be incidental to the method, and that any harm be proportional to the possibility of achieving a legitimate goal (kicking Russia out).
This action was by a random person (not even an Ukrainian), unauthorized by anyone (definitely not any Ukrainian authority), and was at best counterproductive (nobody has given me any way where this advances kicking Russia out), so any possibility of civilian harm is criminal.
You are mistaken if you believe that Russian society isn't already enthusiastic. But this isn't a country with the warrior culture US has, dying for your country isn't cool in Russia, it just means that you were too poor and/or stupid to dodge the draft.
> There's a law for these things. That law allows sanctions but not attacking random civilians.
Which law is that?
> It also states that any possible harm to civilians must be incidental to the method
Many of the sanctions are specifically targeting civilians, civilian businesses.
> and that any harm be proportional to the possibility of achieving a legitimate goal (kicking Russia out).
Oh no, you're deeply mistaken. The sanctions will not go away even if Russia gets kicked out of Ukraine, they're very much intended to be punitive.
It's a society where showing up for what the authorities do is common.
>Which law is that?
A long codicil of war conventions (Geneva, Hague) and anti-terrorism conventions. What I wrote is a common exegesis.
>Many of the sanctions... The sanctions will not go away.
As I wrote, there's a difference between 'we won't trade with you' and actively harming someone. Also, if Russia withdraws completely and lets Ukraine join NATO, I'm pretty sure the West will drop sanctions. There'll be no point in maintaining them - if you want to change Russia, you'll need a finer instrument.
For a variety of reasons much of my circle of friend consists of Russians living abroad, you're mistaken if you believe that they support Russian leadership out of fear of what might happen if they didn't.
>A long codicil of war conventions (Geneva, Hague) and anti-terrorism conventions. What I wrote is a common exegesis.
But sanctions do exactly that. Attack random civilians.
> As I wrote, there's a difference between 'we won't trade with you' and actively harming someone.
It's not "we won't trade with you", that's a dishonest way of putting it. It's "we won't allow others to trade with you", which is very much actively harming someone.
In case you haven't checked, both targeted countries are authoritarian regimes where any kind of civil protest is ignored at best or actively suppressed at worst. And violent regime changes (aka revolutions) coming from the people don't work, at least not without the support of part of the governing elites (which aren't impacted by that kind of actions)