[4gotunameagain]

I was looking for a solid argument, since I am not able to provide one. So far there are none presented here either.

Are we really going to justify this just by "it is against the law"? So many things are against the law, so many ancient laws demonstrate the inability of humans to create the absolute corpus of ethical behaviours™.

[mcguire]

Since you asked,...

The Kantian categorical imperative goes something like, "act as if the basis of your actions would be made universal law." What happens if everyone conducts denial of service and ransom attacks against anyone they perceive as a legitimate target?

https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/growing-threat-ransomware...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ruthless-cyber-gang-behind-...

[pope_meat]

We'd love in the world that we live in now. Iran's centrifuges have some experience with that.

I think it's kind of neat that we're waging war via bit flipping instead of meat flipping, let's call it progress.

[dcow]

We'd probably have a society that is really good at building safe redundant software services such that this is no longer a threat (;

[_manifold]

The fact is that these particular situations are much more complex than a false dichotomy of "good" and "evil" corporations, or "large" and "small" corporations.

Take any organization you think is "worthy" of being attacked in this manner, and consider all of the implications of such an attack. Think about the people inside the organization, and those outside of the organization that benefit from that its continued operations.

I think it's fair to say the public opinion of oil companies is fairly low; however, arguably the biggest impact of the Colonial Pipeline attack was not on the executives running the company, but on the end customers of gas stations unable to fuel their vehicles due to the shortage (whether truly real or created by panic). I would argue that everyday workers unable to get to work or to the store to buy food is more important than a few executives not getting their bonuses or having their shares lose value.

This isn't to say that these corporations are above all reproach and should be allowed to continued operating in whatever way they see fit simply because they have employees and customers are relying on them. But it's also the wrong mindset to think that it's OK to attack corporations in this way just because they "deserve it" in some way.