What do you do when you find yourself the target of a massive hacking campaign, and you are getting thousands of phishing emails and someone following you in your car. You might turn to Citizen Lab who has the ability to research who is behind this and help bring the hackers to justice. Our guests this episodes are Adam Hulcoop and John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab. This episode also has an interview with Matthew Earl of Shadowfall. Sponsors Support for this show comes from LastPass by LogMeIn. LastPass is a great password manager but it can do so much more. It can setup 2FA for your company, or use it to monitor what your users are doing in the network. Visit LastPass.com/Darknet to start your 14 day free trial. Support for this show comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The debate of whether it is ethical for a company to break the law to achieve their objectives and the consequences that follow.
The speaker explains the work of their short focus firm that investigates listed companies that use unethical conduct by management, possible fraudulent practices, or aggressive accounting. They also share an example of their work that uncovered a network of companies used for money laundering purposes.
Private detectives in the US are using email scams, which prompt suspects to click malware links, to monitor potential criminals and build cases against them. The "business email compromise" scams enable investigators to gather evidence without having to rely solely on publicly available data, according to operative Keith Mularski.
Citizen Lab has discovered a large number of phishing links that are being sent to victims with a high level of sophistication - when opened, it preloads text and screens to convince the user that they are already signed into their Gmail and just need to re-enter their password. The hackers use URL shortening software to hide what the actual URL is.
The hosts delve into the process of analyzing hacker targets and use the commonalities between targets to deduce who might have an interest in targeting them.
The speaker investigated groups of people who were all being targeted at the same time, from different fields such as finance and politics, and discovered a connection through their advocacy for the Exxon New campaign.
A hacking group found a job description online that mirrored the work of the Dark Basin hackers, revealing their true identity through the group's personal information and web presence.
Private investigators are not hesitant to utilize illicit hacking services such as those offered by Beltrox in order to find information for their clients. Despite potential legal consequences for these actions, some investigators openly vouch for the services on LinkedIn.
Large and small organizations are vulnerable to hacking, and this type of activity is different from ransomware and fraud. One example is Belltracks, which operates in the open and provides services for adversaries of companies to directly benefit.
The credibility of reputable organizations like Citizen Lab is essential to confirm reports of digital surveillance and protect people from sounding like conspiracy theorists. This episode also features an unrelated advertisement for a shop with a variety of shirt designs.