Not from governments but from your neighbor - Interested parties pay hackers up to 4000 euros depending on the complexity of their case
For a few years now, it has been known that there are groups of hackers on the internet willing to offer their spying (and other) services to interested governments, companies or circles, for a fee of course. The new development is that anyone can now hire such hackers to discreetly do their "little job": from getting revenge on the landlord who raised their rent (by carrying out a cyberattack on their website), to hacking into their wife's Facebook or Gmail accounts to see if she is cheating on him.
According to the New York Times, one can now hear stories of ordinary people paying between $500 and $2,000 for such cases, which turn hackers into a kind of private detective, whom one resorts to in order to bring hidden secrets to light or to bring out one's repressed feelings.
Thus, hacking has now escaped the domain of secret services, organized crime gangs or politically motivated hacktivists. It has now become a very personal affair and the hacker is now surrounded by the "halo" of a useful - if usually illegal - supporter for the ordinary citizen. Alongside the cyberattacks highlighted by the press against government targets or large companies (like Sony more recently), an increasingly active "craft" of hackers is developing in the background, who are hired for a fee by ordinary people like your neighbor.
In fact, a new website, Hacker's List, which "opened" in early November last year, aims precisely to bring hacker-subcontractors into contact with prospective clients who want to "download" an unwanted photo of themselves from a website or "hack" into the databases of a competing company (or perhaps the one where they themselves work) in order to steal its clientele.
In the approximately three months that Hacker's List has been operating, over 800 proposals for "jobs" have been submitted to the approximately 40 hackers who collaborate with the website, who then compete among themselves to see who will "get" the job (even lowering the price to be more competitive...).
The entire process is done anonymously, and Hacker's List takes a commission for every deal closed. In fact, to inspire the necessary trust in prospective clients, the administrator of the broker website offers to hold the money as a guarantee pending payment to the hacker, until the latter does the job he or she has undertaken.
Prices for hiring hackers start at $100 (about €80) and go up to $5,000 (€4,000). Prospective clients come from all over the world, and some ask for things like a hacker finding a lost password or changing their grades in their school's digital file.
These "mundane" requests show how commonplace "low-profile" hacking is becoming, which, however, constitutes a new challenge and threat for the competent authorities. According to experts in the field of cybersecurity, the electronic violation of personal user accounts has become a frequent phenomenon, which is why, not long ago, the internet was filled with photos of naked celebrities, which had been intercepted.
There is even another website (hackerforhirereview.com) that specializes in evaluating how well services like Hacker's List do their job. Its creator, hacker "Eric," gave Hacker's List a very good rating because, as he said, it limits the possibility of a hacker exploiting the client or vice versa.
Hacker's List, which operates from Colorado, USA but is legally based in New Zealand and even has a Twitter account (@hackerlist), claims to be operating within the legal boundaries, without violating them. Its reasoning is that while the hacker may indeed do something illegal, although not necessarily, the "broker" is merely mediating, without adopting any illegality. It is doubtful, however, that the authorities also see the matter from this perspective..
Apparently, that's why the three co-founders of Hacker's List have so far avoided revealing their real names. As they claimed to the New York Times (if they're telling the truth), one is a former hacker, the second is a lawyer, and the third has a master's degree in business administration, while they also use the services of a legal advisor!
As they said, they were three old friends who, one day while drinking at a bar, decided to open a brokerage firm-website for hackers. And this was just a few months after the extensive Firehacker operation in the US, with many arrests by the FBI against hackers who were precisely offering their services for free. In fact, the FBI collaborated with the corresponding services of China, India and Romania, as some websites where hackers advertised their services were based in these countries.
But apparently the market for hiring hacker services never dies, as demand never stops and supply responds. After all, there is no shortage of companies that hire "good" (so-called ethical) hackers to protect them from the "bad" ones.
According to NeighborhoodHacker.com, companies are increasingly concerned about their employees poking their (electronic) noses into confidential information. Hiring an ethical hacker ensures that there are no eavesdroppers on the company's network.
Source: protothema.gr
