Existing framing seems to have been that this is on Putin to make Russia act as a "responsible state". These are a vastly different category than something like the 9/11 level attacks -- the pipeline hack caused a hick-up in prices, the JSB hack went mostly unnoticed, and none of them seem like something that would get its own sentence, if even a mention, in most history books. Could it be that there's a bigger picture here, of painting Putin's Russia as a moody teen which may throw out hurtful spats here and there but will one day grow up and join the international community?
Even looking at the results of the hacks alone, of all the ways hackers can make money, ransomware is certainly not as good as bounty programs and responsible disclosure, but also far from "scorched earth" sabotage like one might see in a confrontation between nation states. On the contrary, they get businesses to both fix problems as well as incentivize them to proactively care more about the security of their systems and with that the privacy of their customers and all the other externalities of insufficient attention having been paid to to cyber security in the past.
This sounds about right. I'd just add that letting a same party Senator or two hold up his domestic agenda also signals weakness abroad.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill
Existing framing seems to have been that this is on Putin to make Russia act as a "responsible state". These are a vastly different category than something like the 9/11 level attacks -- the pipeline hack caused a hick-up in prices, the JSB hack went mostly unnoticed, and none of them seem like something that would get its own sentence, if even a mention, in most history books. Could it be that there's a bigger picture here, of painting Putin's Russia as a moody teen which may throw out hurtful spats here and there but will one day grow up and join the international community?
Even looking at the results of the hacks alone, of all the ways hackers can make money, ransomware is certainly not as good as bounty programs and responsible disclosure, but also far from "scorched earth" sabotage like one might see in a confrontation between nation states. On the contrary, they get businesses to both fix problems as well as incentivize them to proactively care more about the security of their systems and with that the privacy of their customers and all the other externalities of insufficient attention having been paid to to cyber security in the past.