Closer relations between Washington and Moscow could change the stakes for hackers given leeway by the Kremlin
Last week I had my Steam account targeted by some Russian suka, turned on my computer to find my Steam account locked down with a warning about suspicious activity and a phone I did not recognize among my authorized devices, geolocated to Russia. I have since doubled down on security across all my accounts, but I remain wary. And of course it was Russia, because that seems to have become a cyberden of thieves now, if somebody tries to hack you odds are they are Russian.
I really hope the EU also doubles down on internet security. I don’t know if it’s possible to sever all connections to the Russian parts of the internet, but that would be nice and would definitely help me sleep easier at night.
Its a problem with basically all the post-communist states. When the soviet world collapsed it left a lot of early computer professionals, if not outright intelligence officers, out in the cold, and many of them turned to crime to support themselves. That fostered the environment of hacking and scams that exists today.
The one time my steam account was getting hammered with access attempts, they were from Serbia.
That could make things much trickier for them… no more “is the OS localized to Russia?” quick check; the global defaults are en-us, and plenty of people use US VPNs.
