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Comment by figassis | Hacker News Reader

The nature of criminal hackers is not to care about this. If it has value (financial or ideological) they will target it. Often the point is to send a message. I’m not sure they care not to attack the red cross. Also, cybercrime is one way countries try to act in the shadows. The point is to not be discovered so they can do things that are not allowed by international law. Why could they respect this if people can only accuse them and not prove it? Even when there are mountains of evidence, they still say it wasn’t us…or simply remain quiet. Did any country come forward on the pipeline attack?

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Because when you actually read the linked article, you will see that it usually contrasts cybercrime with the use of cyberattacks during a time of armed conflict. In other words, this isn’t about cybercrime. This is clearly targeting states parties to the Geneva Conventions. So, if we (US) go to war with China, the idea would be this would serve to validate that some digital resource or system is entitled to protection from attacks by either side in the same way that ambulances are supposed to be. Attacks on ambulances are no less war crimes just because no one wants to admit publicly they were the attacker.

Wonder if the real goal is that when these people are caught you go after them for crimes against humanity and not just hacking.

I presume you're correct. They're trying to create a digital equivalent of the red cross emblem and encourage others to make it the norm. It sounds unbelievable that it would be effective, but so does a white paint job and a red sticker on a vehicle.

Yes, but as I said in a separate comment elsewhere on this story, the sort of interesting question is, how do they extend the legal protection to this digital emblem? I smell a draft additional protocol in the pipeline.

A cynical person might even suggest that the mere existence of such emblems, which are actually ineffective at increasing digital security but rather only provide a legal framework for prosecution, would encourage false flag operations.

With that argument you could say that the red cross in the non-digital world encourages false flag operations.

I think it’s still much easier to attribute a physical attack than a digital one.

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