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Comment by stocksinsmocks

4 days ago

So why do we never hear of US sponsored hackers attacking foreign businesses? Or Swedish cyber criminals? Does it never happen? Are “Chinese” hackers just the only ones getting the blame?

US, Israel, NK, China, Iran, and Russia are the countries you typically hear about hacking things.

Now when the US/Israel are attacking authoritarian countries they often don't publish anything about it as it would make the glorious leader look bad.

If EU is hacked by US I guess we use diplomatic back channels.

I don't think many other countries have that combination of "don't care if others know" approach and level of state sponsorships. China really seems to do some spray and pray attacking private companies too. Same for Russia and NK. Compared to that, for example the "equation group" from the US seems really restrained and targeted.

If the US groups for example started doing ransomware at scale in China, we'd know about that really soon from the news.

Stuxnet was very high profile but I think the incentives to go public and place blame are complicated.

How much news do you read in Chinese?

The US government has hacked things in China. That you have not heard of something is not evidence that it doesn't exist.

North Korea also does plenty of hacking around the world. That's how they get a significant portion of their government budget, and they rely on cryptocurrency to support that situation.

Ukraine and Russia are doing lots of official and vigilante hacking right now.

Back in the mid 2000s, there was a guy who called himself "the jester" who was vaguely right wing and spent his time hacking ISIS stuff. My college interviewed him.

Is it possible that you're biased and assume since China does this that the US also hacks private corporations?

  • It’s just that the CIA is so good at regime change, you would think they would also hack private companies if they needed to.