The goods are then resold to Russian customers but that business model looks dead in the water. Meanwhile, ripped off retailers should be able to rejoice until the criminals devise a workaround for the lack of illicitly purchased goods. China won't play along with that however.
Note that I am of course not complaining about the couriers themselves above. It's amazing how they soldier on, despite the double whammy of delivery agents being laid low by Covid, and supply chains breaking everywhere.
As a friend noted, however, just in time is great until it's just not there anymore. If the pandemic and the war in Ukraine isn't a wake-up call for New Zealand in that respect, I don't know what is because things aren't going to get easier in the future.
Legit supply chains proving to be fragile and having to be re-engineered to fit a deeply troubling new global reality doesn't mean lucrative cyber crime will go away though.
Things have been fairly quiet on the hacking front though. Russia's unleashed destructive malware, so-called disk wipers, that erase data on computers. Customers of satellite provider Viasat which provides service to Eastern Europe have been advised not to update their modems, as an alleged hack means the new code permanently bricks their devices which of course kills communications.
Ideally, wiper-ware targets critical infrastructure installations for maximum damage and psy-ops effect, along with industrial control systems to dent a nation's economy. Financial systems are also targeted. This has happened regularly in recent times, and government spooks around the world like Germany's Bundessicherheitsamt are worried about it, with reason.
As New Zealand is now supposedly on the Kremlin's 43-nation hit list for retaliation over the crippling sanctions levied on Russia, security check-ups for our IT solutions are advised. And yes, we should be proud to be on that list, as anything else is shameful.
The virtual fog of war is very confusing though. An eternity ago (OK, 2018) I wrote about how Russia was planning to cut itself off from the internet, in technical terms, with its own restricted data routing and domain name system servers.
At the time, I could not imagine Russia would be stupid enough to invade a country like Ukraine, and the whole internet isolation exercise seemed a colossal waste of time and effort.
Now, however, it appears to be happening from both sides of the conflict. Obviously, Western service providers and IT corporations are leaving in droves - and no, Russia's promises of massive tax cuts won't entice them to stay - because the invasion making it morally indefensible to operate in the Vlad-y hellscape and also due to new laws that make it dangerous for staff to remain in the country.
That's a real loss for Russia in more ways than one, as apart from the financial implications, it'll limit news from the outside world. Yes, you could argue that liberating itself from Facebook and other social media is a net win for Russia but it's being replaced by risible state-operated news sources, which isn't going to help anyone, bar perhaps Putin and cronies in the short term.
There's now talk that Russia's hand is hovering over the big red Isolate Network button, cutting off what remains of internet connectivity for the country.
Now that would be a drastic move, as it would severely limit the operational capabilities of the successful and very lucrative Russian ransomware industry, which in many cases is connected to the nation's intelligence services.
They've still got long lists of potential targets that are openly advertised in ransomware forums, as well-known Infosec persona The Grugq notes.
If it becomes too hard for victims whose data is held hostage to pay extortionists, that would leave Russia with oil and gas as its main foreign exchange earners even in the unlikely event that we all super quickly switch to electric cars and trucks.
We'll see how this pans out, but now if you'll excuse me, I need to find out where the gear I was going to write about this week has gone.
