Cyberextortion



The New York Times online has an article on the rise of Cyberextortion. Businesses are usually targetted. That was true in the case of the focus of this article.


Apparently the person in question used stolen Internet account information and “pirated wireless access” *(unsecured, open access points?), to threaten the company with the release of lots of information. The FBI was called in but didn’t have the resources to devote much to it, so a private Psychologist was hired to analyze the “stalker”.

There are also mentions of the ties I’ve referred to of the Russian mob and Russian/Eastern Bloc computer hackers. They also point out that former employees should be taken into consideration. (How many businesses go ahead and purge a former employees access capabilities after their departure?)

The person in this article was quite sophisticated, wary of capture and had obtained information from dumpsters(shred those documents and wipe those hard drives), threatened DDoS attacks, etc. He also had hand grenade components and the makings of ricin. This was one dangerous individual. A home grown terrorist of sorts, his target being getting money out of a specific company.

I guess this article is for all those businesses that say, “why should I be concerned about data security we don’t deal with anything secret?”

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