I have a horrible suspicion that the attacks are continuous and ongoing, but the high stress levels of the present situation make it easier for people to click on the wrong email or link on their XP hospital PCs.

The current top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665562) has a translation that mentions the email containing the virus was about COVID-19

Do not defend the pieces of shit that launch attacks during a pandemic.

there will be a special lesson after this, because we're in a wide global stress and indeed, when something is overloaded, other issues are felt deeper. It's also a time when people can act foolish and be tempted to be antisocial, so more stupid hacks, more angry people, or even more dormant ennemies trying to benefit.

Accident analysts call this "cascade failure". Something goes wrong, and the safety system intended to deal with it is also broken.

due to the significant danger posed to the lives of so many I hope they are caught and severely punished. this is not the type of person that you can rehabilitate.

“Rehabilitation” isn’t the opposite of “punishment”. In fact punishment is part of the process of rehabilitation.

If, as you say, rehabilitation is impossible, punishment would be illegitimate. Because we don’t harm people just to satisfy our thirst for revenge.

Rehabilitation does not necessarily require punishment, and there are reasons for punishment that are not based on rehabilitation.

It is possible for someone to be rehabilitated on their own as they change, or through someone taking action that is not punishment (explaining the impact of the actions which the person may not have been thinking of, etc).

It's possible to punish someone with no thought as to rehabilitation. Capital punishment is this. The purpose is not to benefit the person in any way, but to benefit society by providing a negative example to others so they don't attempt the same actions (it doesn't matter if you believe it works, this is the purpose it's done).

I would suggest prison as a way of preventing them from doing it again. not to harm them but to prevent them from causing harm.

You have it backwards. The punishment is must be there as a deterrent, regardless of the possibility of rehabilitation.

Otherwise nobody would care whatever a judge decides.

Is this an individual? Or a team working for an institution?

In some cases, people with no hope is used to execute wrong commands. As humanity, we have seen in the past military actions against people without weapons (killing them at times). I do not think the issue is them trying to do bad things, and maybe the point is we are living in a world where there are many more borderlines that are easily recruitable for some dollars.

I doubt this simply a shitty person as opposed to a military action by funded institutions.

What's with this conspiracy theory? The average person can pull this shit off, why do you have to "believe" that it's something "funded institutions" (do you not even dare write "state sponsored"?)? What world view do you have that you'd rather have it be a state rather than shitty people? So you can think "$ENEMY_STATE is so fucking evil"?

Maybe it's 1 person, maybe it's organized criminals, do they count as "funded institutions"? Maybe it's a state... but well if you have beliefs, you gotta have the evidence!

Disregard for human life seems to be a pattern of online lulz. I mean, this is on a different scale from "SWATTING" but the same sociopathy, no?

this is much more likely to be a malicious state actor than uncoordinated attacks by random internet idiots

How is this "much more likely to be a malicious state actor"? There is literally nothing about this attack that indicates a state actor.

It’s likely to be a “state actor” for the same reason people like to use the term “state actor”: it’s so much more exciting than the alternative.

ransomware is not a typical attack from a state actor

NotPetya had ties to Russian intelligence, and WannaCry had ties to North Korea. Not saying this is a state actor, just pointing out ransomware is just another tool for them.

How do you know it's not ths Chinese or North Koreans looking for bitcoins? It is documented they do transact in bitcoin on the hacking market a lot.

Being angry at a particular person and wanting to get them killed is really bad but it's something a lot of people are capable of. Getting a bunch of random people killed to make a quick buck is different.