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Fortune 500 Company Hires Ransomware Gang To Hack the Competition (vice.com)
It's no secret that ransomware hackers are in the business to make money. But a new business arrangement hitting the news today may surprise many. Vice's Motherboard, citing research and investigation (PDF) from security firm F-Secure, is reporting that a Fortune 500 company, the name of which hasn't been unveiled, hired a ransomware gang to hack its competitors. From the article: In an exchange with a security researcher pretending to be a victim, one ransomware agent claimed they were working for a Fortune 500 company. "We are hired by [a] corporation to cyber disrupt day-to-day business of their competition," the customer support agent of a ransomware known as Jigsaw said, according to a new report by security firm F-Secure. "The purpose was just to lock files to delay a corporation's production time to allow our clients to introduce a similar product into the market first."In a statement to Motherboard, Mikko Hypponen said, "If this indeed was a case where ransomware was used on purpose to disrupt a competitor's operation, it's the only case we know of." F-Secure adds that the consumer representative noted that "politicians, governments, husbands, wives -- people from all walks of life contract [them] to hack computers, cell phones."
There was a customer who walked into my shop to get his iPhone 4s fixed a month or so ago. While he was waiting, we made small talk, and he bragged about his pickup truck. He told me that it has a 'chip' that makes it produce 900HP. He used to have a 1000HP chip, but his grandfather saw him spinning his tires, so he told him to take it out.
The truck was a rusty, 20-year-old Dodge, with a V8 that produces about 240HP from the factory.
Did I smile and nod, occasionally saying 'Wow'? Of course. Did I believe him? Not in the least.
This also reminds me of a story from one of the Gawker blogs, where a writer interviewed taxi drivers. The question she asked was: "Have you ever been propositioned by a passenger?" Most said "No", a couple said "Once", and one guy claimed that it happened every night, and that he had women falling all over him.
The part of this story that makes it a little unbelievable is the range of customers he claimed to have. 'Husbands and wives'; do they have a website where we can go and order some hacking? If not, how are these average citizens finding them? 'Governments'? I should expect that most interested governments would instead invest into their own cyber-military, rather than hiring a 2-bit scammer. This just doesn't smell right.
I keep thinking that we seem to be inching closer and closer to Shadowrun... but I'm still waiting for the elves, orcs, and the magic to start popping up. Nevermind a dragon running for president.