It was a mistake to attack the business side of the oil company, because it created what could be sold as reasonable doubt to shut down the pipeline. As a result, the ransom had the optics of an attack on infrastructure. As evidenced by the coverage of Americans desperately filling up containers. This created the impetus for the US to treat this as an incident far and above the ambient ransomware activities leading u…
I got downvoted for saying that maybe it's time to treat serious ransomware attacks (infrastructure, security, health, etc.) as terrorism - as in the sense that they're a threat to the national security. But this kinda shows the response I was referencing to. A lot of people like to think of ransomware attacks as the ultimate stress test as far as security goes, and thus a good thing - but let's not get too blinded b…
A precise definition of terrorism tends to be difficult to pin down (mostly due to the difficulty of considering what is a legitimate asymmetrical warfare tactic by a nascent liberation movement versus an illegitimate terrorist act). But a general rule of thumb is that terrorism is a) violence b) directed at civilian populations c) to effect policy.
However, there are threats to national security that are not terrorist in nature; gang warfare in Mexico and Central America would be an example of such a threat.