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A comment on Hacker in Snowflake Extortions May Be a U.S. Soldier. Parent comment

Re:Hacker in Snowflake Extortions May Be a U.S. Soldier by lupusreal on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @09:38AM (#42256431)
If your company just got pwned, you'll probably be thankful to have an excuse to tell your investors that it was a Russian/etc "state actor" and therefore they should feel sympathy for you being the victim of a foe that far outclasses your assuredly reasonable and competent security measures.

Looks a lot better than getting pwned by some jackass American teenager. So if the attack came from a Russian IP, or used some Cyrillic characters or something like that, there's a "face saving" incentive to take that probable misdirection at face value.

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Re:Hacker in Snowflake Extortions May Be a U.S. Soldier by pphysch on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @12:07PM (#42257638)
This is right. So many incentives are stacked in favor of making false attributions, specifically to enemy state actors:

- real attacker doesn't want to get caught

- victim doesn't want to admit being pwned by a script kiddy or petty criminal

- military-industrial complex needs foreign threat inflation to stay in business

- media loves the intrigue

The pushback would come from the foreign state being falsely slandered, but they never get a say anyways.

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Re:Hacker in Snowflake Extortions May Be a U.S. Soldier by ANewFormation on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @11:22PM (#42262436)
solarwinds123
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