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These stories often have a part in them that makes me think about how it's somehow surreal that there's some person who goes to work in the morning and does som
by thenoblesunfish 5y ago
These stories often have a part in them that makes me think about how it's somehow surreal that there's some person who goes to work in the morning and does something that looks and feels almost exactly like what most of us here do all day, except that the whole thing is part of an (explicitly) parasitic criminal enterprise.
- wheybags 5y ago> Last week, security firm Emsisoft warned that this feature is often buggy and could lead to situations where the ransomware permanently destroys the victim’s files. The Babuk Locker team responded a few days later in a hacking forum post that they fixed this bug. Basically "thanks for the report, should be fixed now". Such a normal workflow
- btown 5y ago"We take any bug reports related to the integrity of our users' files very seriously."
- tiahura 5y agoAnyone know the forum?
- nvr219 5y agoI thought hacker news was the forum! That's why it's called hacker right?
- walrus01 5y ago"It's not a ransomware service, it's a free surprise off-site backup package!"
- jacquesm 5y agoMost if not all ransomware is 'on site'.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sixothree 5y agoLike the election interference. I keep imagining a small company of 50 employees punching in their time clock, grabbing coffee, then dedicating the rest of their day to ruining the elections of another country.
- midhhhthrow 5y agoKeep in mind this happens from both sides
- Pfhreak 5y agoBoth sides? What do you mean 'both'? Presumably there are considerably more than two sides -- I'd expect that many countries are interfering in many other countries elections.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- st_goliath 5y agoI think this train of thought might be headed towards what Hannah Arendt described as the "banality of evil"[1]. An average person with a mundane office job that happens to be for e.g. a certain government agency (to stay with the example), indirectly causing all kinds of mayhem elsewhere that is largely beyond their comprehension, simply because it's all neatly abstracted away from them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil#The_Banality_of_Evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil#The_Banality_...
- ahelwer 5y agoOh yes, this is a rich area for writers. There's also the famous quote from Gravity's Rainbow: "A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it." (please don't try to read that wretched book on the strength of this single quote)
- neatze 5y agoAt least on wallstreet, early on I noticed, sometimes people simply lose awareness (social interaction play's critical role) and end up doing illegal things, without knowing it, some end up in jail. I think if person ends up in amoral/illegal group, eventually he will end up doing amoral/illegal/unethical things, there is no guard except to avoid such groups proactively.
- splithalf 5y agoMindgeek?
- 55555 5y agoThere are better examples out there than porn companies. And mindgeek is probably the porn company which monetizes the highest amount of their traffic through legitimate offers (paysites) instead of straight-up scams.
- splithalf 5y agoFair enough. They’re the first to pop in my head, perhaps that says more about me than their relative success as the best of the not quite the worst.
- pessimizer 5y agoMindgeek is no worse than any other sleazy rollup.
- Quarrelsome 5y agoIts a bit of a stretch but I think there's a bit of distance in the idea that criminal gangs are a bit like corporations for people whose parents didn't support them through college.
- colechristensen 5y agoReally more like small nation like entities. They provide services, welfare, have taxes, rules on the use of violence, solve disputes, have wars... and occasionally overrun the area government and actually run things. Organized crime gets to levels where it is essentially a competing government with an equally competitive consent of the governed.
- curuinor 5y agoThere's seldom such a thing as a nation-state that didn't start from organized crime. America started off as a smuggler gang called the Sons of Liberty, for example. That's why they have to be paranoid about gangs: they're embryonic states
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Cerium 5y agoThere are plenty of parasitic enterprises that are only non-criminal due to lobbyists.
- thenoblesunfish 5y agoIndeed - that's why I went back and added "(explicitly)" to my comment at the last moment before posting it :D
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThat's exactly why I don't want to work for the government. Sure, the pay may be good but you're stealing money from honest people.
- KittenInABox 5y agoI don't know. A social worker processing disability claims from what I understand isn't being paid well and I don't think could be described as stealing anything, if anything they give more than they get.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoMaybe not directly, but you're contributing to an entity which takes money from people forcefully, pay themselves and spend/redistributes the rest. The government violates the non aggression principle every day.
- chasd00 5y ago> Sure, the pay may be good but you're stealing money from honest people. not really. I wouldn't work for a government because the pay actually sucks and everyone on the other side hates you on a deep and personal level.
- baron_harkonnen 5y agoEvery B2C startup I have ever worked at has basically put a non-trivial component of their "product" efforts into finding some clever way to screw over customers and feel good about it at the same time. I've had YC startup teams describe fairly horrific ways of monetizing user data with a gleeful smile on their face ("It is really in the user's best interest!") I've listened to interviews with phone scammers before and basically their worldview is that they're ripping off some first-world asshole who would be just as happy to destroy the scammers own country if it could make the cost of consumer goods slightly lower. I suspect working for a ransomware company would at least mean you don't have to pretend the awful things you are doing are for the greater good, and I suspect also contains a bit of the phone scammer view that the people you are attacking are ultimately your enemy as well. It's far more surreal when I've had to check into work, plan all day how to rip-off or exploit users without losing them, and then be cheerful about what a great customer focused team we are.
- dmos62 5y ago> It's far more surreal when I've had to check into work, plan all day how to rip-off or exploit users without losing them, and then be cheerful about what a great customer focused team we are. That hits home. I remember an interview with a ransomware-as-a-service business owner. He was pretty upfront with having grown up in severe poverty and being empathically impaired. Somehow when a greedy person is honest about it it makes it better for me. I feel like I know what to expect of him. It's the self-labeled good people who think that means justify the ends that make my alarm bells ring.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoA friend of mine has had mental issues. He called a Psychiatrist. The guy said he needed a referral from a Psychologist. My friend a few grand on pretty useless talk meetings, but got his referral. Gets his coveted time slot with the doctor. The doctor tells him today's fee is $450.00. Then $200 per month if I write a script. The guy knew he was short on funds. My friend paid, and walked away. I didn't give him advice other than thing will get better. (I look back on the biggest scammers, and most wore ties, and made their money legally.
- sneak 5y agoYeah, and then there are the ones who aren't in uniform.
- tarsinge 5y agoSometime it's possible for me to at least understand the rationalization they must be going through (e.g. "stealing from rich people is okay they still have plenty, while I have nothing and was born poor", "Not cool but they will get past it and maybe I'm doing them a favor teaching them a life lesson, look at that security if it's not me it will be someone else", ...). It's both reassuring because it shows that in the majority of the time people still have a conscience, and frightening because sometimes there are no rationalization possible and it's purely a sociopathic/evil enterprise.
- 8note 5y agoFor a bunch of scams and the like, you could also go with "westerners got rich by pillaging and colonizing my country; this is just recapturing a piece of what they've stolen"
- spoonjim 5y agoSure, look them up on LinkedIn at Purdue Pharmaceuticals, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, you’ll find hundreds of thousands of them.
- Dolores12 5y agoThey distinguish between humans and enterprises. They may not want to scam people, because it may ruin their karma, but there is nothing wrong to mess with companies, after all it's just a cost of doing business for them. And if you look even deeper we always had such parasitic criminal enterprises that use IP laws to ransom others.
- gentleman11 5y agoIt’s a business. This happens because people keep paying the hackers. If federal law prevented you from being able to give into blackmail demands like this, it would happen 90% less often
- NotSammyHagar 5y agoIsn't the payment extortion? Like if you put a lock on their front door (even electronic) that prevented you from using it.
- joe_the_user 5y ago...there's some person who goes to work in the morning and does something that looks and feels almost exactly like what most of us here do all day... For a moment, I thought you were talking about the police informants themselves. Not that I'm fond of cybercriminals but it's somewhat ironic to see one sort of infiltration of an enterprise (say, informants at a drug dealing operation) threatened by another sort of infiltration of an enterprise (criminals spear fishing the police). Not all police informant program are problematic but plenty are imo and moreover, the need for police informants more or less comes from things like the drug war, which allow permanent criminal enterprises which need to be put permanently under siege.
- slim 5y agoI voted you up because I thought you were talking about police informants
- interestica 5y agoWell, Netflix does need a replacement for "The Office". (And true-crime docs do well too...)
- kinkora 5y agoFunny, I had the same thought when I was in my teens and couldn't ever imagined it until Simpsons did an episode [1] on this where Homer got his dream job at Globex and the CEO/Company is the dream boss - provided a fully paid for house, flexible hours, great pay, beautiful company town, easy going colleagues, CEO that trusts you, etc. It was only halfway through the episode you realise that Hank Scorpio is the stereotypical james bond villian and everyone working for him (including homer) was helping him in his diabolical schemes! But you wouldn't know it if Homer didn't re-sign from his job while Hank was battling Bond. :) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ew78KThLOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ew78KThLOY
- freebuju 5y agoI remember vividly HN cheering attempts to doxx Parler users. Some misguided members of the public even volunteered info to LE agencies. This is what happens when people feel and consequently think they can and ought to have a right to rat out other fellow citizens. I don't see the difference here.