We can choose to assume that he omitted the nuance you're adding (eg for brevity), or that he has no clue. I'd say most evidence points to the latter. Which is sad because I often enjoy his blog a lot.
This makes sense. Moldova, like the Ukraine, has a significant portion of the population that identifies as Russian. Romania does not.
The "weird trick" or "see something say something" or "kiss the Barney Stone" or "rub Buddha's Belly" or some other simple token action is an effective way to create engagement with a narrative.
Part of the art of "hacking" is social engineering after all.
Yh. Non-ethnic Russians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give...
Polls say about 2/3 think that the war in the east of Ukraine is with Russia (and not with independent separatists).
"We must ally with Russia" believe is only held by some.
In any case, even what you described would be far from "favorable relations". This quote only shows the author's ignorance.
Mainly those that believe in concepts such as 'borders' and 'sovereignty'
You might personally feel that those residents welcomed foreign troops with open arms, but it's not a narrative that Russian forces crossed Ukraine's border to annex territory that didn't belong to it.
Maybe this is from a language barrier/confusion? I know that the modern state of Romania comes from a union of the Wallachian/Transylvanian/Moldavian principalities, and modern Moldova originates from part of the historical Moldavian principality which the USSR forced independent Romania to secede (?).
I think the Moldavian would refer to themselves as "Romanians" as a group of people, unless emphasizing the particular government/nationality? I know this is probably a controversial topic, I really don't know much about the modern geopolitical status there, just speculating why the article may conflate Romanian and Moldova.
I bet it just stems from a lack of reading comprehension. Moldova has 2 keyboard layouts (Romanian and Russian) according to the screenshot posted in the article, so I presume they just read "Romanian" which vaguely sounded like a country name they sometime read about, and chucked it into the list.
Nonetheless:
- The list of countries is taken from the malware. It is not speculation.
- The fact that a number of major malware strains do not install on machines with Russian and various other Eastern European localisation settings is an objective fact as anyone in the malware field can tell you.
These organisations exist to make money and "the heat" is a detriment to making money. These groups are able to operate with impunity because they take such drastic steps to not anger the local authorities(legitimate and illegitimate). As other commentators have pointed out, these list of countries are likely at the behest of those people, who have various reasons for choosing them. If interested, you can google about a fellow named Paunch if you want to understand the consequences of shitting where you eat as a Russian "cybercriminal".
From a purely money-making perspective, it's a lot more effective to fly under the radar and infect companies far away from them. The ROI simply isn't there for these groups to infect machines closer to home.
That is, of course, until you do something like this, which was clearly and obviously a massive fuck up.
TBH I'd never think of the countries on that list as Eastern European. With the possible exception of Moldova because it's originally a part of Romania.
I wonder what part of the story I don't know much about (eg the motivations of ransomware gangs) is similarly baseless speculation.
Moldova is also a Romanian region.