alt Hacker News> Russian locale kill switch: Exits silently if system locale begins with "ru", checking Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().locale and environment variables LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LANGUAGE, and LANG
So bold and so cowards at the same time...
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"Discretion is the better part of valor", "Never point it at your own feet", "Russian roulette is best enjoyed as a spectator", and many other sayings seem applicable.
Smells like blackmail from another nation..
That isn't a smoking gun. I think it was the Vault7 leaks which showed that the NSA and CIA deliberately leave trails like this to obfuscate which nation state did it. I'm sure other state actors do this as well, and it's not a particularly "crazy" technique.
ah yes, because everyone sets locale on their npm publish github CI job.
obvious misdirection, but it does serve to make it very obvious it was a state actor.
The worst thing is that you can't even tell if that's "real" or just a false flag.