[hugh4life]

I don't know anything special that leads to this conclusion, but let's pretend that Russia is not only shadowbrokers(and I don't know that) but that this ransomware was also released by Russian government(I really don't know that...)?

In that thought experiment, what could be the possible reason for attacking themselves so hard? Well, to give themselves more plausible deniability(and the whole attack would be done as an attempt to discredit the NSA)... but also to justify an agenda of technological sovereignty. Russia is in a tug of war with American corporations over where data is stored and they've even blocked the Microsoft owned linkdin. It's impossible to find an alternative to Windows(considering Russia is such a big PC gaming country), but who knows in 10-15 years.