What if a hacker group considered a part of a nation’s intelligence company seems to be a hacker-for-hire contractor? Or cybercriminals briefly conscripted to work on behalf of a authorities? “Assessments change over time,” Lee says. “Like, ‘We told you it was Dirty Mustard and now it’s Swirling Tempest,’ and you’re like, what the fuck?” (Lee’s personal agency, Dragos, admittedly offers hacker teams mineral names which might be usually confusingly much like Microsoft’s previous system. But at the very least Dragos has by no means referred to as anybody Gingham Typhoon.)

When I reached out to Microsoft about its new naming scheme, the top of its Threat Intelligence Center, John Lambert, defined the rationale behind the change: Microsoft’s new names are extra distinct, memorable, and searchable. In distinction to Lee’s level about selecting impartial names, the Microsoft staff needed to present prospects extra context about hackers within the names, Lambert says, instantly figuring out their nationality and motive. (Instances that aren’t but absolutely attributed to a recognized group are given a short lived classifier, he notes.)

Microsoft’s staff was additionally simply operating out of parts—there are, in any case, solely 118 of them. “We liked weather because it’s a pervasive force, it’s disruptive, and there’s a kindred spirit because the study of weather over time involves improvement in sensors, data, and analysis,” says Lambert. “That’s cybersecurity defenders’ world, too.” As for the adjectives previous these meteorological phrases—usually the true supply of the names’ inadvertent comedy—they’re chosen by analysts from an extended checklist of phrases. Sometimes they’ve a semantic or phonetic connection to the hacker group, and generally they’re random. “There’s some origin story to each one,” Lambert says, “or it could just be a name out of a hat.”

There’s a sure, cussed logic behind the cybersecurity trade’s ever-growing sprawl of hacker group handles. When a risk intelligence agency finds proof of a brand new staff of community intruders, they can not be certain they’re seeing the identical group that one other firm has already noticed and labeled, even when they do see acquainted malware, victims, and command-and-control infrastructure between the 2 teams. If your competitor is not sharing all the things they see, it is higher to make no assumptions and observe the brand new hackers below your personal identify. So Sandworm turns into Telebots, and Voodoo Bear, and Hades, and Iron Viking, and Electrum, and—sigh—Seashell Blizzard, as each firm’s analysts get a distinct glimpse of the group’s anatomy.

But, sprawl apart, did these names should be fairly so on-their-face ridiculous? To some extent, it might be sensible to present names to hacker gangs that rob them of their malevolent glamour. Members of the Russian ransomware group EvilCorp, as an illustration, aren’t prone to be pleased with Microsoft’s rebranding them as Manatee Tempest. On the opposite hand, is it actually applicable to label a gaggle of Iranian hackers that seeks to penetrate essential parts of US civilian infrastructure Mint Sandstorm, as in the event that they’re an unique taste of air freshener? (The older identify given to them by Crowdstrike, Charming Kitten, is actually not any higher.) Did the Israeli hacker-for-hire mercenaries often known as Candiru, who’ve bought their companies to governments targeting journalists and human rights activists, actually must be renamed Caramel Tsunami, a model befitting a Dunkin’ beverage, and one which’s already taken by a strain of cannabis?