Protesting the Ukraine war, US programmers update software to wipe Russian PC data
Recently, in a move supposedly protesting the war between Russia and Ukraine, an American programmer updated his software to erase all data of PCs of Russian origin.
That software is node-ipc, a popular NodeJS library with over 1 million weekly downloads. On March 7, the author of this library, Brandon Nozaki Miller, or “RIAEvangelist” on GitHub, released updates 10.1.1 and 10.1.2.
Brandon Nozaki Miller
These two versions of node-ipc come with destructive behavior. After updating, node-ipc will check the IP address of the user’s computer. If it detects an IP address from Russia or Belarus, it will immediately replace all data on the computer, including system files, with a heart-shaped emoji. This will cause the operating system, applications and user’s personal data to be damaged immediately.
5 hours after versions 10.1.1 and 10.1.2, Brandon continued to release version 10.1.3. This version completely removes code with destructive behavior.
Thought everything was over, but 4 hours later, Brandon once again released version 11.0. This time, node-ipc includes a new library called “peacenotwar” (peace not war), also developed by Brandon.
The peacenotwar library does not contain data destruction, but it will leave a text file on the user’s Desktop with the name “WITH-LOVE-FROM-AMERICA.txt” (Dear from the US). The content of the file includes the author’s message about the war, translated into many languages such as Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
“War is not the answer, no matter how bad it is. War brings tragedy and destruction, robbing precious moments and hope for the future of generations. Destination. must always be peace.
Soldiers bring boots for their country, obeying government orders. Find the strength to forgive, come together and stand up to injustice and real evil.
We are all connected through humanity and separated only by geographical distance. As individuals, we can feel small. But when many people share the same action and will, we will make big changes.
Do what you think is right and follow your own ethics.
God will bless you and your family. Please stay safe.”
Accompanying the above text is a link to the song “One Day” by Matisyahu. The song has content calling for peace around the world.
After the harmful behavior caused by Brandon Nozaki Miller, a series of users expressed anger. The official node-ipc GitHub page is flooded with negative, even cursing comments towards this developer. Some even went to their personal YouTube channels to comment. Most users believe that Brandon’s work will not help avert the war between the two countries, but only harm other people’s computers and the reputation of the open source software community.
All negative comments have been deleted by this developer
Faced with these comments, Brandon still thinks what he’s doing is right and has no plans to completely remove political code. “We all need to follow our own ethics. We can’t do more.”, Brandon wrote. Most of the negative comments from other people are also deleted by this programmer.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: genk.vn – Read the original article here
