Nevermind that the target of the hacks, hacks who share the same infrastructure, all focus on entities of Moscow's interest.
Navalny, MH17, DNC, Syria, Bellingcat. Gee wonder what the common thread here is.
You posted this comment 7 minutes after I posted the link. 6 minutes prior to that, you posted another comment in this thread, so I know you haven't immediately started reading the article. Since the article is quite long, I highly doubt that you've read it.
And no, none of the presented arguments there are "but Russians wouldn't possibly do that this way".
"“If the guys are really good,” says Chris Finan, CEO of Manifold Technology, “they’re not leaving much evidence or they’re leaving evidence to throw you off the scent entirely.” How plausible is it that Russian intelligence services would fail even to attempt such a fundamental step?"
"On the other hand, sloppiness on the part of developers is not entirely unknown. However, one would expect a nation-state to enforce strict software and document handling procedures and implement rigorous review processes."
"The strings in the code quite transparently indicate its intent, with no attempt at obfuscation. It seems an odd oversight for a nation-state operation, in which plausible deniability would be essential, to overlook that glaring point during software development."
Acting befuddled is not a reasonable means of helping to cast suspicions aside.
Nothing can change who these attacks, sharing the same infrastructure, targeted. Opponents of Russia's current ruling order. Very specific frame up jobs against Putin's political opposition and phishing against civilian analysts who just happened to be making news regarding MH17? Come on now.
The purpose of HN is to gratify intellectual curiosity, not smite enemies. The lines aren't sharply drawable, of course, and it's understandable if discussion crosses into political topics sometimes—but that's quite different from using the forum as a political or ideological platform. We use the 'primarily' test: if an account is primarily using HN that way, it's abusing the site and we ban it.
I guess you didn't check my submission history then. If you want to discuss incivility, trying to frame someone up to meet the metrics for banning seems awful uncivil.
