Cyber security researchers become target of criminal hackers
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Robert M Lee, the chief executive of cyber security company Dragos, received an ominous message earlier this year. An organised criminal hacking group had broken into Dragos’s employee network, telling Lee they would release the company’s proprietary data unless a ransom were paid.
He refused to negotiate, so the hackers raised the stakes. They found his son’s passport online, school and telephone number. Lee said the message was clear: pay up, or your family is in danger.
“When you start talking about the life and safety of your kid, things take a different spin,” said Lee, a veteran of the US military and the National Security Agency.
A number of western cyber security professionals told the Financial Times that online threats had increasingly turned real in recent times. Called in by companies to thwart hacking groups, computer engineers are then becoming a target.
The criminal group that threatened Lee, which he declined to name, was known to resort to “swatting” — a practice when someone maliciously calls the local authorities pretending to be a victim of an armed attack, prompting a police SWAT team being sent to a target’s home.
“Basically, they’re trying to get someone killed,” said Lee, who was told by local police that their best option in that situation was to lie down on the floor.
The threats are broad and often inventive. One Ukrainian hacker mailed a gram of heroin to the home of Brian Krebs, a journalist turned cyber security analyst. They followed up by having a florist deliver a giant bouquet in the shape of a cross to Krebs’s home.
Some hacking victims have been told to send money to the bank accounts of cyber security professionals in an effort to frame them. A North Korean hacking group pretended to be security researchers on LinkedIn, with prospective contacts then sent malware hidden in an encryption key.
“We’re an organisation that calls out threat actors all the time, and so we have to think about our own security from a company perspective, from an individual perspective, from a physical…
