From the Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team to the extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison and the recent Panama Papers, journalists are increasingly finding opportunities to uncover important stories using data illegally taken from databases or servers by hackers.
Due to the recent large number of data breaches, journalists must sooner or later realize that they need to start dealing with this data even if it doesn't always turn out to be a big story.
When handling such data, journalists must confirm its accuracy as much as possible, understand that the source may not be impartial, and decide which parts and elements should be published. It is not much different from when writing a story from an informant.
https://www.secnews.gr/102818/ta-panama-papers-proilthan-apo-hack-se-email-server-tis-mossack-fonseca/The Panama Papers came from a hack on a Mossack Fonseca email server
Of course, journalists have to deal with some ethical issues when dealing with leaks and whistleblowers. Data obtained through hacking can contain explicit company emails, internal documents, or even product source code, and publishing such data could lead to criminal prosecution, especially if the journalist has not reported the data responsibly.
When data comes from hacking, it has been stolen and is therefore confidential by nature. The journalist must decide whether it is right, whether it is in the public interest, whether it is appropriate to break that trust and publish something.
Journalists are generally protected when reporting on illegal acts, including hacking, provided they are not involved in the illegal act themselves. But a secondary question remains: What is in the public interest?
https://www.secnews.gr/103117/sti-fulakh-odhgeitai-dhmosiografos-gia-emploki-se-upothesi-hacking/btn-large” variation=”btn-success”]A journalist is being taken to prison for involvement in a hacking case!
Plenty of high-profile stories have emerged from data breaches. Documents revealed that Hacking Team had sold malware to Sudan despite the country being on a United Nations sanctions list. Emails showed that Noel Biderman, the founder of Ashley Madison, wanted to hack a rival dating site when given the chance. The poor security practices of toy maker VTech were exposed when a hacker managed to obtain headshots and chatlogs from the company’s server.
It is unlikely that these stories (which reveal commercial fraud, criminal behavior, and corporate negligence) would have come to light if there were no journalists to download, verify, and publish about the hacked data.
Essentially, reporting based on hacked data is nothing new, but the basic questions surrounding publishing are the same as any other story. Is this information in the public interest? What kinds of data should be published, and what should remain private?
https://www.secnews.gr/103051/terastia-diarroh-dedomenwn-apo-tin-kuvernisi-ths-surias/Huge data leak from the Syrian government?
