Revenge Hacking Brings Daylight or a Slippery Slope?
Revenge Hacking Is Hitting the Big Time
Companies are hacking back against cybercriminals to try to preventor at least limit the damage ofEquifax-style disasters. One problem: Its not all that legal.
JOSEPH COX
09.19.17 1:00 AM ET
The plan was to hack the hackers. Cybercriminals had targeted a global banks customers with phishing emails to break into their accounts. The legal optionwaiting for law enforcement to investigate and perhaps apprehend the hackerswould have taken too long. So the bank was willing to try something else, and a team of security consultants offered to strike back.
The idea, one member of the team said, was full breach. Collect intel on suspects; who possibly had been caught [by the hackers attacks], and then destroy any stolen data. The Daily Beast granted anonymity to the source, who worked with the hacking team on behalf of the bank, to discuss sensitive industry practices. They did not name the bank.
The banks team broke into the hackers infrastructure on a selection of overseas servers, and found a list of who exactly the attackers had phished, as well as clues on their location.
Rather than attackers quietly stealing information from, say, Equifax, imagine if a group of counter-hackers caught them in the act? What if they then struck backand deleted the siphoned data before more damage could be done?