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US Weighs Sanctioning Russia As Well As China In Cyber Attacks
New submitter lvbees7 writes with news that U.S. officials have warned that the government may impose sanctions against Russia and China following cyber attacks to commercial targets. According to the Reuters story: The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no final decision had been made on imposing sanctions, which could strain relations with Russia further and, if they came soon, cast a pall over a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September. The Washington Post first reported the Obama administration was considering sanctioning Chinese targets, possibly within the next few weeks, and said that individuals and firms from other nations could also be targeted. It did not mention Russia.
To be fair, I think the problem with Russian/Chinese cyber attacks is that they're designed to embarass governments and disrupt civilian life or gain commercial advantage - leaking people's personal details, or stealing corporate secrets.
The US' argument is probably that it's programs are oriented wholly towards state security rather than to gain explicit commercial advantage or simply to be dicks for the sake of it.
There's still some hypocrisy, but this is a fairly reasonable explanation for the most part. I don't see the US hacking into China or Russia's massive state run organisations and releasing all the personal data they hold just for shits and giggles to embarrass them.
So I think the point the US is making is that rather than descend quite to their level, it'd rather punish them. The alternative is that the US expands it's programs to steal more Chinese/Russian corporate data, and to generally make life miserable for their citizens by stealing and releasing all their personal data, or DDoSing their bank websites and such.
Yes, as a non-American US spying is incredibly annoying, but you can't really use it as a catch all "But you do it too!" argument against every initiative the US takes in this area.
Personally I'd much rather see this sort of response, than I would all out international cyber warfare where as with all warfare where it just escalates and escalates, and the only real victims are civilians who lose their jobs and become victims of identity theft and so forth.
So yeah, US spying is wrong, but this response is far better than responding in kind and risking escalation.
Pollute like the earth was going out of style? Meh. Murder your own people? Meh. Play thought police at a level that would make Big Brother jealous. Meh. Invade a neighboring country? Meh. But steal a database or two? Now THAT really pisses me off.