My Life Is Not Getting Any Less Surreal
Good is bad, up is down, cheese is chalk...
For yesterday, I received the following comment on my “What the Hell Happened?” post about the FBI raiding us:
…I have no idea how to respond, really. (Although I guess I’m doing so in this rambling post.)
On the one hand, my former career was in system administration (not specialized in infosec, admittedly, but whether or not you specialize in infosec, infosec specializes in you), which has left me with a few leetle prejudices here and there about ransomware and the authors of same.
On the other hand, I have developed a much stronger prejudice where people who terrify my wife, smash up my house, and take my stuff are concerned; and it cannot be denied that this is a more courteous and to-the-point apology than the Feds (whose “sorry for the inconvenience” - inconvenience! - provided us with a whole new reference point for the definition of pro forma).
On net, while I do need to report this contact to the FBI - if only so that they don’t notice it themselves and decide that not telling them about this new piece of extremely circumstantial not-really-evidence justifies coming back here and re-wrecking whatever they missed last time - I actually feel a little bad about it, albeit tempered by the knowledge that CerebrateFBIGuy appears to be very good at not being caught, and that based on my experience of their performance, shoving this Substack comment under the Feds’ nose will move the needle not one jot.
On the gripping hand:
Thanks for the apology, CerebrateFBIGuy. It’s appreciated. (I trust you’ll understand if I can’t quite bring myself to wish you well in your future endeavors.)
And…
…well, insofar as I’ve reached any other conclusions, I should perhaps like to suggest to the FBI that however much fun they may find their no-knock terror raids - given that they have managed to in one swell foop convert someone who would have cooperated with/assisted them, had they asked, into someone who considers them the very-definitely-less-sympathetic party - that they should go home and rethink their life.
I suppose that's a reasonably mature reaction to an unexpected result in one's ego-googling. Perhaps "check if your new anonymous handle is being extensively used by innocents" should be added to the internet villain checklist. But I remain in agreement that the FBI managed to maintain their position as the top villain in this story.