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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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Generally, a hack of this extent and visibility cannot be easily repeated with the same methods once its done - even if youre openly hostile towards the states in question, there needs to be a reason why its used now.

That's assuming it required burning some zero-days. Could be that the target was vulnerable in a well understood, but relatively unique way, and the attacker thought the window would eventually close as the technical debt was paid down and decided it was worth pulling the trigger now. Of course, any large scale attack using a known vulnerability will increase scrutiny on that vulnerability and likely send anyone potentially vulnerable to it scrambling for a fix, but maybe only this part of the grid was vulnerable to this attack, other parts of the grid are not so heightened awareness doesn't burn any cards the attacker had in hand.

I guess I dont expect anything of this impact to be vulnerable in a well understood way that basically anyone could exploit, else it would be down a lot more often. And even if you think the window might close, then gain from doing it like this, even if youre never found out, is ~zero. I doubt those triggers are worth pulling any time before the "enemy has a war economy" stage.