How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
The “hackers for hire” industry continues to grow unbothered. Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using spyware and other security and privacy circumventing tools to target dissidents and other sensitive targets. But another equally invasive and secretive industry has developed over the last decade, involving the use of foreign hackers to win lawsuits and arbitration battles.
To discuss this issue, Alvaro Marañon, fellow in cybersecurity law at Lawfare, sat down with Chris Bing and Raphael Satter. Chris is a reporter for Reuters, covering digital espionage and Raphael is a journalist and writer for Reuters, covering cybersecurity. Chris and Raphael recently published an extensive investigation, entitled “How Mercenary Hackers Sway Litigation Battles”, where they breakdown this hackers-for-hire business model in India.
They discussed the details around the structure of this marketplace such as how the clients and hackers are matched, the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by the various hacking groups, and what the significance of this illicit industry could be for other sensitive communities.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:55.6 | You might assume that in order to find these guys you'd have to navigate onto the dark |
| 1:12.4 | net or find some shady middleman somewhere. |
| 1:16.0 | But in many cases we saw that the clients would be found on LinkedIn. |
| 1:21.3 | The Indian hackers would trawl LinkedIn for private investigators, send them direct messages |
| 1:27.9 | to the effect of, hey do you need some cyber investigation help? |
| 1:32.2 | Rarely was it described openly as hacking but private investigators that we spoke to said |
| 1:36.9 | that they all immediately understood the kinds of services that were on offer. |
| 1:41.4 | And the Indians would proceed in that way messaging hundreds and hundreds of private investigators |
| 1:47.7 | all across the world just directly on LinkedIn, cold calling. |
| 1:54.1 | I'm Alvaro Maranjón, fellow and cyber security law at LawFair and this is the LawFair |
| 2:00.1 | podcast July 12, 2022. |
| 2:03.7 | The hackers for higher industry continues to grow and bother. |
| 2:07.4 | Reports in recent years have uncovered details about governments and officials using |
| 2:12.0 | spyware and other security and privacy circumventing tools to target both dissidents and other |
| 2:17.3 | sensitive targets. |
| 2:19.4 | But another equally invasive and secretive industry has developed over the last decade involving |
| 2:24.9 | the use of foreign hackers to win lawsuits and arbitration battles. |
... |
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