Sounds like a lyric from a Pet Shop Boys song.

The hackers who assaulted Colonial Pipeline, ostensibly for ransom, claim they

only want[] to make money, not disrupt society….

Never mind that their attack on a major oil pipeline does precisely that disruption.

Never mind, either, that these hackers aren’t total idiots—they knew their assault would disrupt a major segment of our economy and so our society. That was the purpose of the attack; this was no petty criminal act. Demanding to be paid by their victim is simply a distraction.

They claimed this, also:

From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.

Right. And they have some bridges across the Reka Vop’ to sell us, also. All illegal behavior, much less terrorist behavior, if left unanswered has social consequences.

No, these…personages…have simply applied a Willy Sutton tenet to their terrorism:

Go where the money is. Go there often.

Our Federal government, actively aided by our State governments, need to get aggressive with active responses to such attacks. The time for passivity, for merely acting defensively after the fact, is long past. Terrorists, physical or cyber, network entities or state-sponsored, need to be burned to the ground.

The negligence of company CEOs, COOs, and CIOs, including those officers at Colonial Pipeline, in not being serious about hardening their systems, also badly wants sanction.