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German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

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Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#91

Post by lovich »

Aurornis wrote: post #84
mc32 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately language tends to get diluted. Nowadays in pop culture it means publishing anyone's personal information, usually against their wishes.

This does seem close to the original intent of "doxxing", where information ("dox") is publicized that connects a real-world identity to a previously anonymous online persona. These are hackers in the classic sense who were going out of their way to stay anonymous. The dilution of the word doxxing has been interesting, though. Some of the recent "doxxing" controversies have been about figures who weren't all that ano…

Beyond diluting it also seems that people are increasingly under the impression that internet rules are also the same in real life.

I’ve been seeing it come up in discussions about court cases where people are under the belief that requiring online personalities real names in the court documents is somehow illegal because it’s doxxing.

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#92

Post by gigatexal »

mc32 wrote: post #19
gigatexal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ethics and morality are not interchangeable are they? anyway individuals willingly give to teh state some autonomy in return for the safety of governance... that's the social contract free people have with government "doxxing" a Russian ransomware group is the kind thing to do. bombing them out of existence is within the remit of the range of ideas a government could resort to...

Not disagreeing with your preface but I was under the impression that while it took governments some time to figure things out, kinetic bombing in retaliation for cyberwarfare was pretty much ruled out unless the cyberwarfare results in direct mass casualties (for example cyber sabotaging a refinery results in an explosion which results in casualties.). Else we’d have bombed North Korea, China, Ukraine, Russia, Roman…

Yeah bombing as a counter to cyber attacks is a last ditch Pandora’s box thing

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#93

Post by jojomodding »

flipped wrote: post #80
seanhunter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the “Broken Window” fallacy[1] which was explained by Bastiat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

[flagged]

The wildfire industry brings growth but it would be a whole lot better if we didn't have wildfires.

The same thing is true with computers. Imagine all the nice things we could have if we didn't have to worry about people abusing the systems we build.

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#94

Post by a2800276 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #81
landl0rd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if I kidnap someone it's kidnapping. If the police based on probable cause receive and execute a warrant for someone's arrest, it's an arrest. This is how the state monopoly on violence works.

And if the state kills somebody without the cover of a legal pretext, it's called an "extrajudicial killing" rather than a murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrajudicial_killing#United_S...

More to the point, if the police or whoever shoot someone in self defence, that someone is "killed". If I, or the police shoot someone for fun, it's "murder". In both cases the victim is "killed"

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#95

Post by jojomodding »

flipped wrote: post #82
oytis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right. They also create jobs for police though, and now German police is doing theirs

German govt is also one of the most corrupt and vastly incompetent govt. It's run by bunch of boomers. Most of the prolific ransomware gangs have terrible opsec. De-anon'ing them is child's play. Most of the opsec-aware TAs never even get attributed, let alone get caught for any breaches.

> One of the most corrupt

It's on like place 10 out of 180, which makes it one of the least corrupt places.

It also has some surprisingly non-boomer departments, like the Sovereign Tech Fund. Either way you need to celebrate police doing good things and immoral actors being exposed, it can only have good outcomes.

Perhaps it deters them, or deters the next generation of such hackers. Or at least it makes their life less enjoyable, which is fair since they were only able to afford their travels due to their illicitly acquired wealth.

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#96

Post by jojomodding »

hobofan wrote: post #85
jojomodding wrote: post #53

So apparently some CCC-connected hackers already unmasked one of them years ago (as reported in the update, which could have also just linked to the talk here: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12134-hirne_hacken_hackback_edit... ) Makes you wonder if the investigators discovered this independently, or decided to maybe ask the hackers already involved in defending against them for help...

I'm not deep into the topic, but AFAIK there generally isn't a warm connection between the CCC and the BND in Germany (in the recent years mostly due to the BNDs involvement ins spying on German citizens, but I think there is also deeper history there). If a hacker collaborates with the BND they do run a risk of many of their peers not wanting to collaborate with them anymore.

Maybe the special agents watched the talk in their free time

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#97

Post by randomNumber7 »

alistairSH wrote: post #69

How is "this is the name of the formerly anonymous extortionist" doxxing? Unless there's something not covered in the article, his current address, family members, phone, etc were not listed. That's not doxxing; that's "here's a guy were want to arrest."

That wouldn't sound cool. Especially as noone actually gives a fuck about what germany wants.

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#98

Post by randomNumber7 »

twodave wrote: post #89

Some of the comments here (and lately on HN in general) are very concerning to me. Are we really going to pretend that people accused of real crimes shouldn’t be arrested, charged and, if found guilty, have an appropriate sentence? It doesn’t take many more than 2 brain cells rubbing together to see that that won’t end well. Whataboutism, political differences, and even real injustices in my opinion do not make this…

It probably depends on what people think about the laws that define what a "real crime" is.

E.g. in germany it was a real crime to grow some weed. Now it's legal, but even before a lot of reasonable people didn't want someone go to jail over weed.

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#99

Post by foepys »

hobofan wrote: post #85
jojomodding wrote: post #53

So apparently some CCC-connected hackers already unmasked one of them years ago (as reported in the update, which could have also just linked to the talk here: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12134-hirne_hacken_hackback_edit... ) Makes you wonder if the investigators discovered this independently, or decided to maybe ask the hackers already involved in defending against them for help...

I'm not deep into the topic, but AFAIK there generally isn't a warm connection between the CCC and the BND in Germany (in the recent years mostly due to the BNDs involvement ins spying on German citizens, but I think there is also deeper history there). If a hacker collaborates with the BND they do run a risk of many of their peers not wanting to collaborate with them anymore.

It also has something to do with the so called "Hackerparagraph" [1] under which whitehat hacking is basically impossible in Germany. Even writing a program that could potentially be used for hacking is a crime. If you followed the law word for word the authors of e.g. curl could be charged under this law.

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbereiten_des_Aussp%C3%A4hen... [de]

Re: German police name alleged leaders of GandCrab and REvil ransomware groups

#100

Post by randomNumber7 »

Sharlin wrote: post #57
KPGv2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Doxxing" is from the 90s and was used to describe a hacker unmasking another hacker so they could be arrested. That's almost exactly the same usage as here.

Semantic shift happens over time. A 2026 article is supposed to communicate to 2026, not 1996, readers.

Germany is a bit backwards.
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