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UK Cybersecurity Executives Plead Guilty To Hacking A Rival Firm (zdnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "Five employees from cybersecurity firm Quadsys have admitted to hacking into a rival company's servers to allegedly steal customer data and pricing information," ZDNet is reporting. After a series of hearings, five top-ranking employees "admitted to obtaining unauthorised access to computer materials to facilitate the commission of an offence," including the company's owner, managing director, and account manager. Now they're facing 12 months in prison or fines, as well as additional charges, at their sentencing hearing in September. The headline at ZDNet gloats, "Not only did the Quadsys staff reportedly break into servers, they were caught doing it."

14 comments

  1. Story from friday? by NotInHere · · Score: 1

    Is this a dupe of the story from friday? https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

    Or is it a follow-up?

    1. Re:Story from friday? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope and nope. Anything else you need help with?

    2. Re:Story from friday? by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      No, but when the editors tag a second story to the first, that one would fit here. Maybe they're more sensitive to the negative reaction that it provokes. I am bit surprised it isn't under "Related Links".

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. Security: You keep using that word... by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Funny
    It's not that I'd encourage my cyber security team to hack into a rival firm;

    It's just that if they did, I'd expect them not to get caught.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re: Security: You keep using that word... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It wasn't the team though. The owner, director, and a manager shouldn't be hacking anything (because they're not talented enough). They likely tried because the actual team said no, that's illegal.

    2. Re:Security: You keep using that word... by lucm · · Score: 2

      "Cyber security" is stretching things a bit, they're essentially some kind of GeekSquad and their "security" expertise is installing antivirus software.

      The article title is misleading, I guess it creates more traffic than "small IT provider gets caught trying to hack the Google Drive of another small IT provider".

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  3. Brownie point for EditorDavid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The brownie point is because EditorDavid (unlike a certain co-editor) didn't tack on a completely unrelated crime story onto the end of the submission.

    1. Re:Brownie point for EditorDavid by sittingnut · · Score: 1

      however he may have missed linking to related story posted recently.
      https://it.slashdot.org/story/...
      in fact, given the lack of details in that story, this may well be a further development same story.

  4. Idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Five employees from cybersecurity firm Quadsys have admitted to hacking into a rival company's servers to allegedly steal customer data and pricing information,"

    And they work in security??? The most basic security principle is "never admit anything".

  5. "Hacking": You keep using that word... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, "hacking" is one of those terms that mean exactly nothing these days. Whatever it was that happened, which they're not telling because that would be actually informative, the claim is this: It was dodgy, and it involved computers, therefore ZOMG HAXX!!1!

  6. Risk/benefits analysis failure by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    It seems like the costs of a lawsuit for anticompetitive behavior would far exceed any benefit derived from stealing a competitor's customer data. Also, shame on the competitor's IT department for allowing the company to be hacked in the first place.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  7. WHO DID THEY HACK? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All Google results that I see lead to the same three or four press release type writeups from this year and last repeated verbatim by about a dozen "news sources" and every last one of them doesn't go any further than using the phrase "a rival firm."

    Who did they hack? It's in the interest of the public to know this information so we can choose to not only avoid the criminal hackers but also the incompetent buffoons who call themselves a "cyber security firm" but got bent over and owned like bitches.

    1. Re:WHO DID THEY HACK? by Cederic · · Score: 2

      the incompetent buffoons who

      ..identified an attack, identified the people behind it and took out a competitor.

      Given that perfect security is effectively impossible, I'll take that booby prize.

  8. Prison, really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone think that they're getting off rather lightly? 12 months OR fines, meaning it'll be the latter and expensed to the business... Surely any average Joe doing the same would be facing decades in addition to a fine they can't afford?