[HN Gopher] Hackers are reportedly getting laid off by organized...
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Hackers are reportedly getting laid off by organized crime groups
Author : ushakov
Score : 156 points
Date : 2023-02-24 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| so is this getting logged in layoffs.fyi?
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| I know a lot of people who would like to see that. The FBI and
| IRS, for example.
| alexnastase wrote:
| When I first read the title I could have sworn it's a post from
| The Onion
| paulpauper wrote:
| I am sure Nigerian email scammers had a similar problem. At some
| point, there is maximum saturation of the market and no more
| victims left. Companies, individuals beefing up security,
| refusing to pay ransoms either by having it decoding by security
| researchers or having data backed up.
| LightDub wrote:
| I feel for them. For any reading, see link below for networking
| and opportunities.
|
| https://www.meetup.com/topics/softwaredev/ng/
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Brother, there are always new marks.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I can see this.
|
| I was recently contacted by IP's abuse department about something
| on my network sending out malicious requests.
|
| It turned out to be an old WiFi router I had, which was fixed by
| an update. I'm guessing it was compromised a while back and was
| only recently used.
|
| The Fed reversing monetary policy has some interesting
| consequences.
| testTED wrote:
| You kept the router?
|
| Did you at least flash it?
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| Yup. That's what the "fixed by an update" part referred to.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Do they get outplacement help? Severance pay? I'm guessing the
| NDA is, uh, pretty strictly enforced...
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Implicit non-disparagement clause
| seanhunter wrote:
| I wonder if the crime bosses send out an email saying they take
| full responsibility for overhiring during boom times.
| jmspring wrote:
| PIP culture could be impactful.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Yes, but written by ChatGPT.
| ushakov wrote:
| Just like the regular layoff emails
| hbn wrote:
| My fellow Hackiez, you know I've always considered you family.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Mi casa es su casa no more
| [deleted]
| khana wrote:
| [dead]
| trentnix wrote:
| Be careful with that severance package, boys and girls.
| outside1234 wrote:
| 7% of them?
| subsubzero wrote:
| I remember when the pandemic happened all of a sudden robo spam
| calls suddenly completely stopped for me. So even the pandemic
| hit cyber criminals! Also for whatever reason spam calls for me
| have greatly decreased in the past 6 months, for a while I was
| getting 3-4 spam calls a day and now its 1-2 a week.
| deelowe wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is due to STIR/SHAKEN [1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN
| echelon wrote:
| Once they learn LLM+SST+TTS, though...
|
| Only strong legislation will stop it.
| roywashere wrote:
| In NL, almost zero calls. What is the difference?
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Not enough scammers speak Dutch? One day they'll realise
| they can robo call people in NL in English and be
| understood most of the time.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| English is a great language for scammers because it scales
| well worldwide - that one language covers the US, Canada,
| UK, Australia, New Zealand and others, so an English-based
| scam operation has a much larger addressable market than
| other languages which would usually be limited to a single
| country.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Most people in NL speak English, though. They could
| definitely be targeted by English payloads.
| scrame wrote:
| lol, how? The calls aren't coming from places that respect
| laws, they way that CAN-spam didn't stop spam mails.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Require phone carriers to block networks that consistently
| send spam calls. This puts pressure on foreign networks to
| clamp down on the practice.
| nawgz wrote:
| Because the calls are being enabled by absurdly weak
| security on the part of the telecoms. You think they can't
| stop spoofed numbers? They're making money allowing it is
| all
| WalterSear wrote:
| And when they aren't, they don't want to spend the money
| to stop them.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| This is true, but they're a lot more email servers that
| there are telco carriers. So it's not entirely unwinnable.
| drewbitt wrote:
| For me, they've moved on to spam texts. I get 5-10 variations
| of "Hey", "How are you?" a week. No provided names, just social
| engineering attempts if I were to reply.
| cellis wrote:
| I get 5 - 10 "Your <Amazon|Paypal|Google|> account was
| suspended...". I haven't tried to see what their followup is
| for phishing.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Funny you mention it. Last couple of months I've gone from
| getting a handful of "account suspended" SMS phishes a year
| to getting a handful a week. I assumed it was something
| that broke at AT&T; never considered it might be a global
| economics driven phenomenon.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| They stopped calling you and started calling me. You're welcome
| ;-). I get 5-10 a day now, up significantly in the last couple
| years.
| petronio wrote:
| I've had tremendous success ending them for me. My main
| number is with a VOIP provider and I set up the IVR to say
| "Please dial 1 to continue the call" and wait for it. No spam
| calls have gotten through since then.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I haven't gotten any for years, because I block all calls
| that come from any number that isn't already in my phone
| book. They go straight to voice mail, where only a small
| percentage even leave a message.
| testTED wrote:
| For anyone reading: what would your top dollar be for a phone
| number that hasn't received spam calls for 3, 5, or maybe 8
| years?
| xsmasher wrote:
| I turned on "silence unknown callers" for a month or two and
| that seemed to get my number off of the hot list.
| drusepth wrote:
| I haven't answered my phone except for family members for
| coming on 3-4 years now and still get 3-4 spam voicemails a
| day. That number goes way up when I start screening the
| calls though, so maybe there is something to answering vs
| not.
| 13of40 wrote:
| A little town I know has maintained their antique telephone
| exchange for going on 40 years, and one of the features is
| that they have a block of numbers that lead to all the
| error messages. (541-447-0054 for example) For a while I
| redirected my phone number to one of their error messages,
| and now I rarely get robocalls, because the spammers
| presumably blacklisted me.
| jzig wrote:
| The trick is to pick up and immediately mute your phone.
| They will hang up and eventually flag the number as
| inactive or unscammable (like maybe it's a machine picking
| up). If you don't answer, they can call back later. If you
| pick up and say something, then they know there is a human
| behind the number and that it is actively used.
| snarfy wrote:
| Change your voicemail prompt to "We're sorry, the number
| cannot be completed as dialed..."
| dboreham wrote:
| I haven't answered the phone for non-family callers in 20
| years. They still call several times a day (or their Perl
| scripts do).
| richardw wrote:
| That sounds like a hell hole. I'd throw my sim away.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I set my voicemail to be 2 minutes long (the max AT&T
| allows). It's just me telling jokes I found on the internet
| so it isn't terrible but man it's effective. I still get
| the spam calls but now I don't get a little voicemail I
| need to delete.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Omg, I was remembering Lenny [0], the incredible automated
| trolling machine.
|
| Turns out that he/it still works and there's a phone number
| that you can call -- or rather forward/3-way-call spammers
| to!! It's 347-514-7296. You can hear past recordings here
| [1].
|
| I wish there was a way to pay for this incredible service,
| and can't wait to start using it!
|
| [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3b7na/the-story-of-
| lenny-th...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@ToaoDotNet/videos
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| You can also self-host it:
| https://github.com/sladesys/LennyTroll
| [deleted]
| croo wrote:
| I didn't know FAANG got a new name.
| imhoguy wrote:
| close to GAANG /s
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I hope they give them a good reference.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Bill was extremely self-motivated and thrived working in a
| cross matrix organization. He consistently met quarterly
| revenue targets, even while helping to onboard and train junior
| extortionists.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I wonder if they are hiring though
| richardw wrote:
| Nice try, FBI
| pixl97 wrote:
| I wonder if/how much this has to do with the situation Russia is
| in?
|
| A number of sanctions has made Russian money harder to move
| around, likely making it more difficult to pay said hackers.
| Couple that with crypto falling apart, the entire ransomeware
| thing is not near as profitable as it used to be.
|
| Then we have a large amount of cyber attacks focused on Ukraine
| that appear to be occurring at a military level. Its it possible
| the people that were busy spamming the world at one point are now
| caught up in this war and not working on external money making
| endevors?
| thricegreat wrote:
| I also enjoy getting on the Internet and making stuff up.
| sophacles wrote:
| Which part do you think is made up? Everything I read in
| there tracks with things I've read and seen.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| There are plenty of crypto assets that hold their value and
| wont be frozen
|
| The ones remaining have withstood the heaviest stress test
| across all asset classes, increasing the confidence in them
|
| The price declines and high profile implosions are really
| just tip of the iceberg in the topic of "crypto" and
| largely a distraction
| kleer001 wrote:
| > crypto falling apart
|
| Citation please
| Laaas wrote:
| Markets aren't looking good, but I don't think that affects
| ransomware. They don't hodl.
| xch wrote:
| Stable coins?
| amrb wrote:
| Well I feel foolish, saying being a white hat was not where the
| money is :P
| klyrs wrote:
| Here's hoping they undercut their employers by offering victims a
| reduced fee... or I guess if they were interested in ethics they
| could blow the whistle.
| munk-a wrote:
| It would be hilarious if the hacker hired by a ransomware group
| extorted the ransomware group by threatening to publicly
| release a master key. Probably a dumb idea because of the lead-
| pipe department but still hilariously ironic.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| This is why a lot of criminal enterprises don't uh, go with
| traditional severance packages and instead take the term
| literally.
|
| Your former employees are a liability legally and in
| business.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Somewhere there's an ethically bankrupt entrepreneur thinking
| "how can I disrupt this industry?".
| tempodox wrote:
| Or they could get swept up by newcomers taking advantage of the
| layoff spree. At a minimum they'd save training costs for their
| new employees.
| bhaney wrote:
| Truly no one is safe from the layoffs
| jmclnx wrote:
| Interesting, it seems to be for ransomware people.
|
| But based on just the title alone, I need to ask:
|
| "What is the package ? Do you get to choose the color of your
| cement galoshes ?"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_shoes
| IshKebab wrote:
| Ha, good one! [1]
|
| But presumably they aren't really at risk of being exposed by
| these guys. [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People
| ourmandave wrote:
| It would warm my heart if these pos criminals getting laid off
| turned in their former pos employers.
| WalterSear wrote:
| And lose their references and severance? Never!
| 1-6 wrote:
| Plot twist: Hacker groups were secretly funded by security firms.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| More like the other way around, I think.
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Bet you they got better severance packages than in Big Tech.
| textadventure wrote:
| These folks put the organized in crime.
| dylan604 wrote:
| not sure i'd want to have to meet my shop steward in that
| organization though
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Don 't kid yourself. It's not that organized._
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZplCtamjCs
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I hope severance is uh... not literal
| Kye wrote:
| It's perfectly safe.
| dylan604 wrote:
| maybe they'll get a new neck tie.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_necktie
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Maybe some jewelry instead
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing
| dylan604 wrote:
| and environmentally unfriendly to boot
| Panoramix wrote:
| NSFL... I wish I wouldn't have read that
| dhosek wrote:
| Clearly you weren't around in the 80s
| dhosek wrote:
| (On a vaguely connected note, the guy who DJ'd my wedding
| had a squealer's scar. Lot of outfit guys still around in
| Chicago, although most of them are not so active
| anymore.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm honestly some what surprised that reading about this is
| that disturbing. In a world where Saw 18 is being made, and
| all of the other gore trash that get lapped up the
| description of a Colombian necktie just seems tame to me.
| Who says people don't get desensitized again?
| boredumb wrote:
| Today is a sad day for hackerinos. I take full responsibility for
| these layoffs, we recruited far too many folks during the
| pandemic.
| bink wrote:
| Back in the day we used to refer to unskilled hackers as
| "rodents".
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(page generated 2023-02-24 23:00 UTC)