Governments are made up of people. There is likely at least 1 real person (if not more) for whom this attack has been the entirety of their professional life for years.
If so, then they were paid for those hours and are perfectly whole right now. Maybe their career takes a dent but I do not weep for whoever this was no matter which government they worked for, unless it was so bad they were actually a slave and forced to do this against their will.
The government who paid them just lost the investment, but who cares about them? It's only a good thing if this does not get a reputation for being a good invesment.
If it was a criminal, then the same as the government they lost the investment but again that's only a good thing.
> > and when they can finally see a finish line it is just poof... gone in a day. It was two years of effort from at least one guy and more likely a team.
> If so, then they were paid for those hours and are perfectly whole right now.
People are not ideal money-fed automatons. Even if you're fully paid for your software development, it feels bad to see all your work thrown away.
If only I had also said something like "maybe their career takes a dent but I do not weep for anyone who worked on this" to indicate that I understood that obviosity.
> > People are not ideal money-fed automatons. Even if you're fully paid for your software development, it feels bad to see all your work thrown away.
> maybe their career takes a dent but I do not weep for anyone who worked on this
Even if they were fully paid, and even if their career is not affected at all (or even improves, "I wrote the xz backdoor" would be an impressive line in a curriculum if you disregard the moral aspects), it can still feel bad to see your work thrown away so close to the finish line. People are not career-driven automatons.
But I agree with you, I do not feel bad for the author of this backdoor; whoever did that does deserve to see this work unceremoniously dumped into the trash. But I can understand why the ones who worked on that code would feel bad about it.
I don't see why; news coverage has pretty uniformly taken the view that "this guy was an evil genius, and we escaped his incredibly well-executed plot by the skin of our teeth".
The statement was that someone had a really bad day.
The implication that people are driven by money and nothing else, or even that they have no right to feel like they had a bad day if they were paid, is absurd.
Nobody is saying that you should be sympathetic. It’s just an interesting comment: An interesting thing to think about. A worthwhile contribution to the conversation. This was someone’s very bad ending to a very long project.
