A common understanding is that terrorism is intended to frighten people or make them feel unsafe, while various official definitions of terrorism include the idea that it's intended to coercively achieve some particular political goal.
If attackers just intend to get money, they're probably well-described as extortionists (or in some cases, as you said, akin to pirates). If they just intend to damage a particular society without demanding anything from it or getting it to change its behavior, they might be saboteurs.
Attacks with these motives or that pretend to have these motives could still be considered national security threats (and taken very seriously), but maybe shouldn't be described specifically as terrorism.
From the victim's perspective it matters less who is attacking you or why they are attacking you and much more what the results of the attack are, how you can mitigate and recover from the damage, and what needs to be done to prevent future attacks.
For the case of DarkSide and Colonial Pipeline, the attackers did not claim to have a political motive, but the resulting fuel shortages and panic buying might as well have been a form of terrorism.
You can make a reasonable argument that "nothing is apolitical" but but that's not the definition of political being used when people say what terrorism is.
I have to believe that played a role in the response they received as well.
I'm a frequent "everything is political" commenter myself, but since when is naked self interest through theft a political action?
The insanity of it all is incomprehensible.
That only true when right is up and down is left.
How does taxation drive value? Which taxation? There are governments that don't charge income taxes, there are governments that don't charge property taxes, there are governments that don't charge sales taxes.
Tally sticks are an early example of monetized debt as a taxation medium.
Also note that the work of legal historians such as Christine Desan who are not affiliated with MMT economists concurs with this analysis.
Also note that most mainstream economists do actually agree with the tenets of MMT when individually stated but base their disagreement on a deliberate misreading/misstatement of MMT which they then proceed to criticise.
That taxation is sufficient to drive demand for a currency is not contentious, that it is necessary is unconfirmed.
>As noted in previous stories here, during times of conflict with Russia’s neighbors, Slavik was known to retool his crime machines to search for classified information on victim systems in regions of the world that were of strategic interest to the Russian government – particularly in Turkey and Ukraine.
>“Cybercriminals are recruited to Russia’s national cause through a mix of coercion, payments and appeals to patriotic sentiment,” reads a 2017 story from The Register on security firm Cybereason’s analysis of the Russian cybercrime scene. “Russia’s use of private contractors also has other benefits in helping to decrease overall operational costs, mitigating the risk of detection and gaining technical expertise that they cannot recruit directly into the government.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/12/inside-evil-corp-a-100m-...
maybe in as far as their capabilities go, but the important characteristic of a state actor is that retaliating against them is construed as a retaliation against the state that backs them. Darkside is very different to a state actor, as demonstrated here - retaliation has no significant geopolitical implications, so it can be swift and harsh.
Would that change if they, for example, demanded the release of prisoners of a specific political persuasion?
How would that not be classified as a political motive?
Yes.
"Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentional violence to achieve political aims." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
Generally though, the Justice department defines terrorism to be "the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives"
These ransomware attacks fall in the middle. They are 'deniable' by state actors as just crooks who happen to be within their borders. They certainly don't push any social objective other than to enrich the criminals. So that leaves them under the jurisdiction of law enforcement.
I have read anecdotal evidence that there are the equivalent to "Letters of Marque"[1] for Russian criminals who attack enemies of the Kremlin. They wouldn't completely qualify as the Russians aren't actually in a declared state of war (this works fine for North Korea) but conceptually if you accept that criminals are gonna crim, then pointing them at people you don't like at least keeps the damage outside of your area of concern.
In this particular case, the fairly rapid take down of these guys gives me pause. One wonders if the FBI and Interpol had Colonial pay with Bitcoin that they then traced to the destination wallets. And then working backward from there to the server infrastructure. That would be an interesting capability if it exists.
If serious ransomware attacks are being conducted by state actors with the sole intent of causing damage, and we want to use powerful terminologies to describe them, "acts of war" seems a reasonable start.
Yes, this is semantics--but some of my concern here is that just freely tossing around "terrorism" gives cover for organizations not to be diligent in at least attempting to secure their networks and digital assets.
The meanings of words is important; rational discussion is impossible when people shift commonly-accepted meanings and definitions to suit their agenda. It's an extremely common strategy in politics. And the word "terrorism" already received more than its fair share of this treatment quite thoroughly in the decade following 9/11.
I don't think it's necessary to staple the term to the action in order to take it seriously. It should, however, be taken seriously as the national security threat it is. For instance, climate change is a national security issue but oil executives, while distasteful, aren't terrorists.
I agree that many folks in the tech community (and especially here, though I don't know if they're overrepresented here) treat technology as platonic. That's not going to cut it moving forward. Technology that enables bad things in the world should be curtailed even if its "neat."
I'm not sure leaving infrastructure hanging out in the breeze can be compensated for by cracking down on personal liberty, however. Unless you're proposing cutting off international computer network integration.
A precise definition of terrorism tends to be difficult to pin down (mostly due to the difficulty of considering what is a legitimate asymmetrical warfare tactic by a nascent liberation movement versus an illegitimate terrorist act). But a general rule of thumb is that terrorism is a) violence b) directed at civilian populations c) to effect policy.
However, there are threats to national security that are not terrorist in nature; gang warfare in Mexico and Central America would be an example of such a threat.
Well... yes? That isn't a sense of the word "terrorism".
Sounds like the ransomeware people finally robbed the wrong people.
Not saying it's false, but the story doesn't ring true to me.
They appear to be sophisticated, yet they made the newbie error of keeping all the funds in a network accessible device, rather than a cold wallet. Really?
Terrorism has a legal definition, and something affecting national security is not the determining factor in calling something terrorism.
"Terrorism includes the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." [1]
For say a nation engaging in cyber war, this could be flipped around: attacking basic infrastructure but disguising it as smaller groups of criminals trying to make a buck. Not sure how effective the disguise would be, but it could obviously do some serious damage.
Um. Terrorism is basically never a threat to national security.
These people thought they were sticking it to the man but they were actually sticking it to people like me.
I wish Biden realized how hard homeliness can be. Cities, and towns, need to stop ticketing vechicles that are parked overnight, and used as residences. I would like to see any federal, state, or local land, set aside for the homeless.
Hang in there.
Funny fact - one way to get down votes on HN is to say something negative about that shit-tier human Peter Thiel. Apparently becoming rich off of venture capital makes you automatically a good human being.
Ransomware is non-state, not violent, and is done for economic, not political aims.
There’s a well known phenonenom of a certain large nation harbouring cybercrime gangs and keeping them on the government leash. Their economic activity benefits the governments political agenda. Ergo all conditions are true.
That doesn't mean that the large, developed nations in question are engaging in organized crime.
Taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage does not mean that their government is in collusion with them.
If it did, then we could pile a lot of crimes at the feet of Western governments. Some mining firm violently puts down a strike in Central America? Clearly, we can conclude that Canada/the US is engaging in terrorism! [1]
[1] https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2]
[2] 28 Canadian companies, 44 deaths, 30 of which were targeted extra-judicial killings. Are we going to lay those at the feet of Parliament, too? [3]
[3] Or do we have one set of standards for Russia, and another for our own behaviour?
Are there no ransomware operations linked to North Korea? I was under the impression that there was some level of activity there to maintain supplies of globally-usable currency.
The Great Firewall is likewise, not remotely similar to the restrictions placed on internet access in North Korea.
A lot of people like to think of ransomware attacks as the ultimate stress test as far as security goes, and thus a good thing - but let's not get too blinded by our professions (most probably in tech), these kinds of attacks can have serious consequences: Imagine if some foreign state agency (masquerading as hackers) launches a multiheaded attack on, say, utilities plants - in the middle of the winter. The victims/targets will pay whatever us necessary.
With that said, I understand that many people will recoil at such things - we saw what the patriot act did, and how easy it is to overstep and abuse such laws, in the name of "national security". But it is a serious problem, in the same way actual piracy thrived in the gulf of Aden, as soon as the shipping companies started paying.