Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth orders a halt to offensive cyber operations against Russia
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth orders a halt to offensive cyber operations against Russia
Wait, why were we taking offensive actions?
Every nation outside of Russia has been under attack from Russian mercenary groups for over a decade. In the news they're typically referred to as "ransomware gangs". This is a euphemism. The reality is that these groups all have ties back to FSB or other parts of the Russian military structure. They operate with the approval of the Russian government, and they attack Russia's adversaries. They attack civilian infrastructure indiscriminately, disabling power, water, logistics, schools, hospitals... they don't care what the damage is, they don't care if people die because of their actions.
NotPetya is the classic example. That was 8 years ago. Since then the frequency and scope of attacks has increased.
It seems like we also don't care what the damage is or else we would make at least some effort to secure our IT systems. Of course the robber should be blamed but those who leave their doors wide open are guilty too. If we care so much about the consequences of ransomware attacks, why do we not act and avoid shitty software that only compromises security and instead built more resilient systems?
Any security system is only as strong as its weakest link.
Typically that is the humans operating within it.
The US government stepped up it's Cyber security under Obama. And until now they've had an open offer for anyone with basic cyber security certs to get a government job auditing companies and begging them to put modern security practices into place.
Trump shut them down.
Bah, you should see how many gov systems aren't even FedRamp certified. It's crazy how far behind the USA is on basic hardening of systems.
Oh I understand, and somehow that is better than it was.
Because the two countries have been attacking each other economically, politically, intellectually, and digitally for decades now.
Just because people aren't shooting guns at each other doesn't mean a war isn't happening.
The US is also at war with China.
There was a 2 decade pause after the Soviet Union fell apart. And I would qualify that China is lower grade than Russia. We're in an arms race with China and we are both doing intense intelligence work against the other. But China isn't trying to actively sabotage infrastructure or civilian business. The Russians are doing all that because it's all they can do. The Chinese are playing a longer game that they hope will see us pushed out of Asia without warfare beyond the intelligence world.
Maybe because russia has been taking offensive actions against the US and its allies. They helped install agent Krasnov as president FFS.
The US is likely taking offensive actions against everyone not a close ally. Probably even many of those who are.
These days, allies and adversaries have been given reverse roles.
We've been in a cyber and shadow war with Russia for a little over a decade now. The closest we've come to a hot war so far is when Russia ordered it's mercenaries to take an oil field guarded by US troops in Syria. (We were backing the rebels, they were backing Assad) We asked them if they were Russian and the Russians denied it so we unleashed the full power of the US Air Force on the column. Something like 5 guys out of 300 survived.
And ever since then Russia has decided a campaign of political influence, hacking, and physical sabotage was the way to go.
So yeah a country isn't going to just sit there and take that, there should be a response. If for nothing else then to counter their efforts.
A response would be defensive action. This is specified as OFFENSIVE action, which we shouldn't be taking unless we are at war.
I disagree, offensive actions reach out into Russian systems and can have multiple end results from accessing and pulling info, implanting back doors into key systems, probing for systems and capabilities.....
Defensive measures, to me that means firewalls, logging, and hardening. our systems
:::.
Yeah. I think you're getting the scope of things. We're being attacked and these chuds just told our guys to stop fighting.
B/c USA is a genocidal empire. Ofc it's been attacking the alt-empire. It's just completely hidden from us until someone dares to stop it. Then the imperial media goes apeshit.
