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The Cyber Privateer Code
- nosmokewhereiam 3y agoThis is from 2013, but it's becoming ever-relevant even 10 years later.
- dredmorbius 3y agoMentioned in a recent HN comment here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37573658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37573658> (I stumbled across this submission whilst checking to see if I could submit it myself ;-)
- bediger4000 3y agoAre there any cyber privateers? Sounds like a fun job.
- jdougan 3y agoDo they have a shanty?
- dredmorbius 3y agoOne of the key challenges for cybersecurity incidents is that attributing responsibility is at best challenging. A true agent of chaos could provoke cyberwar between two or more other parties through attacks which are made to look as if they originated from those other players. State actors themselves have used similar techniques, see the FBI's operation HOODWINK: <https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink/cointel-pro-hoodwink-part-01-of-01/view https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/hoodwink/cointel-pro-hoodw...>. In the case of state actors or near state actors (think Russia's Internet Research Agency, various Chinese APTs, or even individual companies such as the NSO Group, Cellebrite, FinFisher, Blue Coat, Hacking Team, CyberPoint, L3 Technologies, and Verint), this is somewhat mooted as impunity may provide protection and the overt flagrance of actions may itself be a dimension of the attack, signalling "we can act at will without consequence". There might also be risks in tangling with large organised crime groups. That said, vigilante justice does have a broad appeal, and makes for a popular trope in fiction.