Vindication: Majoring in Russian Was an Excellent Cybersecurity Choice

Try This One Weird Trick Russian Hackers Hate

This is a bit dated but a fun tidbit about the geopolitics behind many cybersecurity issues. The author suggests that having a Cyrillic keyboard installed on your system may cause malware to abort.

Digital extortion gangs like DarkSide take great care to make their entire platforms geopolitical, because their malware is engineered to work only in certain parts of the world Basically, the hackers want to avoid consequences for computer users inside the former Soviet Union.

Surely, this wouldn't work for American geopolitically concerned malware as large swaths of the world likely have an English keyboard installed on their computer. What might be the kill switch for American malware?