I guess I used too extreme an example so you misunderstood. The distinction I'm making is that those things you mentioned put the person doing them at risk of arrest because they must be physically present while hacking from Russia doesn't.

Cellphone jammers are probably a clearer example of cheap tech that can be used covertly but it's illegal and people usually don't.

Another important factor is that they aren't scalable because it takes a human a lot of work to hack only extremely local targets, not a program that can scan computers all over the world automatically.