I now ignore all Ron Amadeo articles on Ars. I don’t know where his disdain for Google originated but his predictably snarky dismissals of all things Google are just bad and lazy journalism.
This is the flipped script for our social contract with Google…they release product, they don’t have any obligation to care about users…dismissing us less loudly than the author, but no less real…
Technically yes, but I suspect the ransomware comparison was brought up to paint how malicious it is. Otherwise the better analogy would be dropping your phone from 50ft.
Well, no, ransomware is worse than losing all data on the device, since ransomware gangs generally also destroy your backups and also attempt extortion with threats to publish your data. All backups help against accidental destruction and incidents like in this article, but for ransomware protection most cloud storage solutions won't help you, you need either offline or append-only backups.
That asks a question: is a malware defined by its intent, or by what it actually does?
Functionally speaking, NotPetya was indistinguishable from a ransomware. It's creators intent however would make it a wiper.
