The implied meaning might have been "a significant post on a nation-state's cyber attack budget"? I'm pretty sure they did not mean "the total budget of a nation-state" or anything of the sorts, since that's obviously wrong.
One has to agree, an entity willing to drop a cool $100k on finding a single SHA1 collision to try and attack your git repo is a lot closer to nation-state level than the for-the-lulz level.
Why do people always say 'nation-state' specifically in these cases, as well? Some of the richest states in the world aren't nation-states, like the UK.
I imagine because what they actually mean (state) gets ambiguous and confusing because of the united states, which are not really states in the same sense.
$100k isn't that much money, particularly since collisions can be reused for multiple attacks w/ length-extension. Heck Bitcoin has had (ineffective) spam attacks that have probably have cost around that much, and there's good reason to suspect they've been privately funded by angry trolls.
There's a lot of people for whom $100k is "fuck you" money.
"fuck you money" is something different - it's the amount of wealth you need (varying per individual) where you can comfortably say "fuck you" to a particular job or opportunity or proposal someone makes to you if you don't want to do it. I believe the term you're looking for is something like "chump change"
I have seen it used in that (to mean the same as chump change) in linkedin articles by random recruiters, so I guess it will suffer the fate of literally vs. figuratively. Terrible.. but use dictates meaning, if it goes mainstream.
Can you give an example? "Fuck you money" is pretty literal already, - the money required to be able to say "fuck you." I can't see how it can make any sense in any other context.
One has to agree, an entity willing to drop a cool $100k on finding a single SHA1 collision to try and attack your git repo is a lot closer to nation-state level than the for-the-lulz level.