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Comment by hosh | Hacker News Reader

The headline of the article called these people cyber activists, and in the text of the article, they were called cybercriminals. Which is it? It reminds me a bit with the situation with privateers during the age of sail. These were often people operating at the edge of the law, or even outright outlaws, given a letter of marque, a license to raid warships and commerce against a specific adversary. I'm sure out on the high seas, abuses happen.

The people who put together the doctrine on 4th Generation Warfare talked about the blurring of civilian and military. Rules of engagement gets fuzzier.

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Russians are kiling civilians with drones each day. I don't think this is some gray area hybrid warfare, it's just regular people not wanting drones to kill their neighbours.

> Russians are kiling civilians with drones each day.

Same do Ukrainians, don't they? More over, long before they killed civilians and defenders in Iraq and Afghanistan on Americans invitation. Then left without even saying 'sorry'. Since 2014 they were shelling Donetsk just for fun, killing people at random. So, it's more complicated than you'll find in western mass media. Especially in EU where full picture is illegal.

No, they do not. Ukrainians have not and do not deliberately target civilians in their war of self-defense against the invading russian army.

Russia consistently and deliberately targets civilians. There is no "both sides" here.

> Ukrainians have not and do not deliberately target civilians

There news on Russian side daily of Ukrainians doing exactly this, deliberately targeting civilians. Also usually their own non-combatants who are trying to surrender. This is war crime.

There are dirty tactics in this war which western public will learn about later. For now it's given a rosy optimistic picture approved by Zelinsky office. That's how 'Support Ukraine' is pushed on them. In fact it's 'support the war', as Ukrainians are dying in big numbers. By the way, official number of civilians killed 3 years is lower that in Gaza in 3 months.

I have no doubt that russian media makes absurd claims like that.

If you actually believe this nonsense, I pity you.

Have some self awareness. One could say the exact same things about western media.

in 2014 russia invaded.

Whatever, that's doesn't justify shelling a city. BTW, it's considered Ukrainian territory and those civilians killed by Ukrainian military were Ukrainians. However it was supported by the government up to and including Zelinsky, and by the majority of 'true Ukrainians'. Nobody was prosecuted.

There was no shelling of civilians.

It seems like it might be a translation issue. The site seems pretty overtly pro Ukraine, so they probably don't want to cast these hackers in a negative light. They might have just thought "cyber criminal" was a straight synonym for "hacker".

Kind of a Robin Hood situation: Hero for some, criminal to the others.

The article might be a collage of several other articles, and they didn't check for consistency.

I would love some other term for the aligned side people in cyberwarfare, sort of "cybersoldier" or "networkmilitia", not already somehow cliched in some film. "Cyberactivists" sounds like online protesters (in facebook and such)

Wikipedia has an entry for "hacktivism".

The people who illegally obtained classified information to leak to WikiLeaks have made a political impact: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/26/wikilea... as well as reprisals in the form of arrests and prosecutions.

We also call Greenpeace "activists", but they also employed violent direct-action in their efforts against whaling.

Carl Icahn calls himself a shareholder activist, and many people still consider him a vulture capitalist.

Most likely they are being organized by the UKR military. So, not criminals, for sure.

> cyber activists, and in the text of the article, they were called cybercriminals

depends who's side you are on

Change the language then use GTranslate

It just says "Хакеры" (hackery, hackers)

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