Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

https://www.reuters.com/legal/former-wsj-reporter-says-law-firm-used-indian-hackers-sabotage-his-career-2022-10-15/

by re_re • 4 years ago

266 143 4 years ago

reuters.com

neonate• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/YegWz

pempem3• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I understand the importance of these hackers being Indian as opposed as from any other region?

ganoushoreilly• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/YegWz

They're accusing a specific group of for hire hackers (BellTroX and CyberRoot) in Delhi.

edge17• 4 years ago

My guess is it has to do with Reuters editorial positioning on what's going on with Ukraine and Russia. I agree though, I don't see the relevance.

SynAck6• 4 years ago

I get your point, but I'm assuming it's more about the fact that it's relatively cheap labour and difficult to investigate.

WFHRenaissance• 4 years ago

1. Foreign hacking groups are often beyond the reach of Western law enforcement. If a domestic threat had been to blame here, there would be legal/financial recourse for damage done. That's not the case here. Implicit in this article is the report of a new kind of warfare for which many Americans have no good defense against.

2. Standard editorial racism a la "The Oriental Threat".

greggsy2• 4 years ago

I don’t think number 2 is at play here - the use of Indian hackers-for-hire has been topical in the cyber security industry recently.

4oo4• 4 years ago

Is that also why this is a civil suit and not criminal charges under the CFAA?

fareesh8• 4 years ago

Indians will read this and not once think of racism

Reminds me of the "voter ID is racist" argument

InCityDreams• 4 years ago

'Cus they were from India?

pempem3• 4 years ago

Haha, yes ofc. It was a tremendously minor part of the article seemingly and yet made it to the headline

jotm• 4 years ago

Law firm being cheap? Or Indians being dangerous, I guess...

duxup• 4 years ago

Seems relevant to the difficulty in investigating and getting any sort of justice.

greggsy2• 4 years ago

Incidents and stories related to Indian hackers-for-hire have been rising in the past couple of years. A few companies have built a workable model out of it. It’s relevant context from the cyber security industry perspective, tangentially related in this case.

puchatek• 4 years ago

Maybe you missed this sentence while reading the article?

"Solomon’s suit is the latest in a series of legal actions that follows Reuters’ reporting about hired hackers operating out of India."

pempem3• 4 years ago

I did, thanks.

Since I missed that sentence it seemed odd compared to hackers out of Romania or anywhere else.

rosnd• 4 years ago

It's mostly India where these hackers operate like real companies with websites, offices, bank accounts, etc...

BellTroX is well known and the Indian government seems to approve of their activities.

sandGorgon• 4 years ago

US and India have very enforceable bilateral cybercrime treaties. And it is very well enforced on both sides.

The article makes it seem that India as a whole is operating in some North Korea-ish way.

A US citizen can well complain to CERT-IN (https://www.cert-in.org.in/) for any reported cybercrime with proper documents and it will be treated as an enforceable crime.

In fact, quite funny considering the US Chambers of Commerce have filed an appeal with CERT-IN that the compliance requirements are very stringent (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/cert-in...)

JumpCrisscross3• 4 years ago

US and India have very enforceable bilateral cybercrime treaties. And it is very well enforced on both sides

Is this documented? If true, I suspect the image of Indian criminals being beyond the reach of the law stems from the spam call problem.

rndgermandude• 4 years ago

And it is very well enforced on both sides.

That guy or gal calling your grandparents about that "fixing that virus" or "refunding that amazon purchase" begs to differ...

joshxyz• 4 years ago

to me it's not racist, it just tells me more how competitive indians are when it comes to the tech industry.

during our college days our profs literalt recommended studying online resources in youtube made by indians, because they got better coverage than most of our curriculum. we laugh at their accent but we owe them a lot.

MikePlacid• 4 years ago

More important than a nationality of the hackers (to me at least) is the personality of the payer for services. It’s clearly mentioned in the article:

Solomon and Azima allege that Dechert undertook the hack-and-leak operation in the interest of its client, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi, ruler of the Middle Eastern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah.

What kind of gun was used in a killing is much less important than who paid for the killing, no?

P5fRxh5kUvp2th9• 4 years ago

Where they not hackers from india?

nier• 4 years ago

It surprised me to read that reporters for the Wall Street Journal communicate with their sources via email. That’s careless.

bredren• 4 years ago

Reporters don’t always get to pick and enforce the medium of communication with sources.

1letterunixname• 4 years ago

securedrop, pastebin GPG communiques from coffee shop WiFi + VPN, i2p, or something with a buffer between them and their sources. Perhaps include journalism security hygiene similar to foreign intelligence HUMINT and compartmentalization. Journalists have to realize they don't know their adversaries and should "fail-safe" to assume they include state actors and megacorps with unlimited resources. To not do so is to recklessly underestimate the threat.

iinnPP• 4 years ago

Or just join the dark side as many have.

the_optimist• 4 years ago

Maybe not careless, but not a good convention. Incidentally, securedrop is set up only to communicate with specific journalistic organizations. I'd be very hesitant to send information to a journalistic org without an understanding of who's involved. In no way have the vast majority of journalistic orgs established the trust necessary to receive leaks:

https://securedrop.org/directory/

swayvil3• 4 years ago

This is an angle of the uneven distribution of wealth that you seldom hear about. As long as there are rich and poor people, a rich person can hire a poor person to do basically anything.

Overriding legality, decency, safety. Because the poor person just needs the money that bad.

So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children. Crazy horrible stuff that no sane person would do. Because they need the money.

And the rich guy is untouched.

So, to a significant degree, as long as there is rich and poor, there is no law or morality. It reduces society to a dog-pit.

redanddead• 4 years ago

Yeah and the problem is getting worse. sometimes it seems that even institutions are trying to maximize human pain.

I thought of writing an economics book about this phenomenon.

I have no idea how we can fix this problem and hope someone else can chime in

ssss11• 4 years ago

Individuals need better morals imo. The corporate entries of this works however do everything for the benefit of the share holder which isn’t always the right moral thing.

permo-w3• 4 years ago

the solutions are there, we implemented them in the post-war era, and they worked, massively reducing inequality until about the early to mid-1970s, where due to a number of reasons, lots of Western economies slowed down, especially the UK and the US, and the free-market Milton-Friedman-inspired right got into power and more or less has been since then. their policies creating overall growth, yes, but at the expense of wage growth and (after an initial bump from selling off public property) living standards.

as a related aside, if someone ever tells you that taxes are at an all-time high so we must reduce them, take a look at the top marginal tax rates in the UK and US in the mid-60s. or corp tax back then

the way to actually solve these problems was told to us by Keynes. the problem is that the political will is just not there. that's where we need a solution. how do you circumvent the capital-holding elite [to use a meaningless word]?

epicureanideal• 4 years ago

I assume this has more to do with absolute poverty than relative poverty. If a person is starving they’ll do almost anything to eat. If they’re merely relatively poor, having an old car instead of a new one, a small house instead of a large house, it’s unlikely they’d go to extremes.

swayvil3• 4 years ago

Don't diminish it by choosing an innocuous characterization. You see the range of it as clearly as the rest of us.

PuppyTailWags• 4 years ago

Relative poverty is also involved imo. Many people would go to extremes to ensure their children and their loved ones are guaranteed brighter economic futures. Life insurance companies wouldn't both explicitly exclude suicide and also do investigation to ensure a death wasn't suicide if it people weren't willing to literally die to ensure a brighter economic future for their dependents.

Hell, I live very comfortably, am not at risk of homelessness or starvation. But there is a lot I would do for money that guarantees the best start in life for my children, the best end of life (medical care, treatments, etc) for my parents.

seibelj3• 4 years ago

An underappreciated negative aspect of equality is total lack of enthusiasm and incentive.

As inequality is a guarantee - no two people are alike in any aspect and neither are their abilities as an employee - mandating (either by gun or union contract) lockstep equality in payments and job security, the highest performers are demoralized and put in the bare minimum or quit (if they can). The result is the ever-increasing shitty quality of the firm and its behavior. For modern examples see the NHS (bleeding doctors and nurses to the private sector) and American public schools in inner cities (highest global costs per student yet abysmal results).

There are valid criticisms about inequality but the pros far out way the cons.

dmix• 4 years ago

I find that most people arguing for top-down redistribution don't seem to care about if it makes everyone poorer as long as "equality for everyone" is the modus operandi. They see it as a moral imperative, the measurable outcomes and realities of the economic systems always get second rate treatment.

It's always much, much easier to argue for 'fairness' and to rail against the rich... than it is to be realistic and accept that there will be very visible downsides but that alternatives are much worse in practice.

Ditto with free speech, censorship is almost always a greater evil, with small exceptions, but when you try to defend it they try to pretend you only care about nazis/far-right. Sometimes doing the right thing is not easy and yes - it requires plenty of effort to weed out the assholes and wrong-doers (which the courts are doing now by punishing the law firms), but it's worth it in the end.

And you don't have to tolerate the bad guys just because you didn't compromise societies freedoms and wealth to prevent them from existing in the first place. There's more ways to stop it than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

another_story• 4 years ago

This is mostly a strawman, since I don't see almost anyone arguing for complete equality of pay, status or position, merely that a handful of people shouldn't be able to accumulate the wealth of small nations on the back of others.

In countries in Europe, and places in Asia, there are plenty of examples where there is less inequality and the students perform better.

ok_dad2• 4 years ago

Sounds to me like we should eliminate the idea that high performance and achievement should be rewarded with wealth or being raised above others. Perhaps it would be better if people learned from a young age that achievement is its own reward? Are we such animals that we need special treats in order to do the right thing? I think it’s a childish attitude that if you don’t get more cookies than someone else that you’ll throw down your work and have a tantrum.

lupire2• 4 years ago

You are overlooking the "extreme" part of "extreme inequality"

Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today.

permo-w3• 4 years ago

this is a very salient way of explaining the need for wealth redistribution in society. this doesn't necessarily mean communism or socialism, but it should mean more Keynesian economics. high taxes on the rich - including rich corporations - and strong public spending in the right areas: education, small businesses, healthcare, and safety nets so people feel like they can take risks without having the fear of becoming homeless

jasonwatkinspdx• 4 years ago

Yeah, one of my big shifts politically as an adult was debunking more naive libertarian views I held when younger.

I think an honest reading of post ww2 history shows you need both a healthy private and public sector. There's arguments about exactly where to draw the line, but evidence is countries prosper with 1/4 to 1/2 of their economy being redistributed through the public sector. Where to draw the line within that window is more a matter of what society you want than a pure economic question.

A key detail is that you need functional institutions, and those take generations to build.

tpmx• 4 years ago

... Or murdering people. ...

Oh come on. Is HN suddenly r/antiwork?

I'm pretty sure conspiracy to commit murder is illegal in whatever your locale is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)

saagarjha• 4 years ago

So is selling children. Doesn’t mean you can’t buy these services.

swayvil3• 4 years ago

The money is a big enticement for many prospective soldiers. Joining the military is often sold as a way to escape poverty.

manholio• 4 years ago

It doesn't matter it's illegal, it can happen and people get away with it, and the fact that it can happen has deep reaching chilling effects even when it does not.

Look at the case of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist killed by two idiots who got paid 150.000€. The killer brothers are in jail and the rich asshole who ordered the killing is free. The fact that such a thing can happen in an EU country means that every shady business man can threaten and silence a journalist, not by killing them, just by hinting it could happen, and you will never learn anything about such cases.

Aunche2• 4 years ago

So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children.

Yet, despite all of this, these people are living longer, healthier, more educated, and less violent lives. A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today, and they wouldn't be any more altruistic. The difference in our society is that a greedy asshole who wants to outsource a jobs to a developing country will accidentally give the residents of this country the means to buy antibiotics.

anemoiac3• 4 years ago

A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today

Are you sure? Doesn't culture impact human behavior? Won't a society that encourages getting ahead at all costs produce a different social environment (with its own distinct behavioral incentives) than one with alternative priorities?

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

One thing that I should point out, is that he is not going after the WSJ, for any impropriety in his firing. They are really the ones that damaged his career.

So I suspect that there is more to this story than is apparent.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

I believe... In the USA you cannot sue your employer for firing you unless it's for membership of a protected class or whistleblowing. If your employer wants to fire you because it's Thursday or they're just having a bad day or they don't like something you wrote in an email, tough.

collegeburner• 4 years ago

so you're talking about at-will employment and it's generally the rule in America. however there are some states that have a good faith rule where you can't terminate a employee for malice. here's a map of which states are which: https://www.paycor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Employment...

i believe WSJ employs in NY state so this doesn't apply.

peyton• 4 years ago

No, employment law is much more complicated than that.

xyzzyz• 4 years ago

Every single person is a member of a protected class. Men are just as much a protected class as women are, and whites are just as much a protected class as blacks are. At least, this is what the law says, because I don’t think that all of these classes are actually equally protected by law in practice.

harles• 4 years ago

From what I can tell, there’s not necessarily more. It’s a clear conflict of interest to do business with a source for a story. Doesn’t sound illegal, but certainly gives the appearance of bias.

lupire2• 4 years ago

Reuters didn't say he did any business with the source, just accepting a gift ride on a yacht.

ghaff• 4 years ago

Publications like the Wall Street Journal have stricter ethical rules than apply in a lot of other situations. Accepting a "yacht ride" would be OK under some circumstances but possibly not in this case--and at least suggesting an openness to business deals could well cross the line as well.

tedunangst• 4 years ago

Or he believes he was justifiably fired, but would have been able to get another job had the emails not been made public. The Journal is not interfering in his future prospects.

abirch• 4 years ago

With emails being so important to careers and reputations, why don't people use 1) encryption 2) Microsoft or Google to host their emails?

balderdash• 4 years ago

How do you figure? The WSJ didn’t initiate or take part in the hacking scheme. They fired an employee that appeared to be engaged in impropriety / not meeting the organizations ethical standards.

It’s like if someone broke into you house and found letters to a lover and published them, and your partner then divorced you, would you blame your partner or the person that broke into your house?

I am curious why he is not naming the Emerati prince that hired the law firm.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

Fair point.

I am curious why he is not naming the Emerati prince that hired the law firm.

I suspect that he doesn't have enough evidence to prove it, or he doesn't want to poke the bear, because the Prince wasn't really after him; it was just collateral damage.

rchaud3• 4 years ago

It seems to me that his beef is not with the WSJ because he was aware of the possible consequences regarding the potential conflict of interest.

WSJ is entitled to fire someone if they have verifiable evidence supporting that decision. If the evidence was illegally obtained....well, it would be an trial admissibility issue, but that wouldn't apply to a work/employment matter.

frognumber• 4 years ago

Employment is generally at-will. Employers can and do fire for a broad range of reasons, including suspicion without evidence.

9 times out of 10, in case of improprieties, a person is fired, and no further action is taken. In most cases, there is no upside to prosecution, and a lot of potential downside. In every legal case I've been involved with, there were deep improprieties, such as fabrication of evidence. If you're right, that's no guarantee of winning a case, and in most cases, both sides come out scarred and tarnished.

The legal system is random, and a high risk for everyone.

mrfumier• 4 years ago

If this "journalist" consider emails to be a safe way to communicate, then he deserves to be fired.

ackbar03• 4 years ago

There's actually quite a large Indian hacker community on platforms like hackerone, and when you look at their Twitter profiles, it seems like quite a lot of them are from these remote village type places, which I think is fascinating. This is the first time I've read about mercenary hacker for hire groups from India but I guess it's not surprising.

px43• 4 years ago

I think it's covered in the Dark Basin episode of Darknet Diaries, but India apparently has a reputation for especially aggressive private investigators, who were historically used to dig up dirt on families before committing to marriage pacts, but in the modern era are used regularly for PR and corporate blackmail. Apparently this practice is ingrained enough into the culture that digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts.

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/79/

https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massiv...

badRNG• 4 years ago

It's interesting, because India is also a hub for these "hacker scams" where so-called hackers on Whatsapp will promise to change your grade, see if your partner is cheating, or get you a pay raise and then run off with your money. I wonder how one is able to tell the difference between actual hacking services and scams claiming to offer the same.

hutzlibu• 4 years ago

"digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts."

Well, digging up dirt is also legal in the west, the question is what "any means necessary" is. I cannot believe that it is legal to hack someone for example.

bink• 4 years ago

There are some good hackers in India, no doubt. But having managed a few bug bounty programs, the majority of submissions from that part of the world are spam. People run vulnerability scanners, count on ignorance on behalf of the company triage teams, or just plain count on being able to badger someone into paying small amounts.

ChaitanyaSai• 4 years ago

That's interesting. Which country would you say you see/saw the highest signal to noise from?

sitkack• 4 years ago

If true, all the lawyers involved run the very high risk of getting disbarred for life.

_448• 4 years ago

"Indian hackers"...sorry but being an Indian, this sounds bit odd. India is not able to even defend itself from hacking attacks. That is the state of India when it comes to hacking skill-sets. So the words "Indian" and "hackers" does not blend together very well. Just sayin.

awillen• 4 years ago

It's a whole lot harder to defend yourself from hacking attacks than to hack. The US government has been hacked as of a couple of years ago, and you better believe they can hack you.

rchaud3• 4 years ago

Why put "Indian hackers" in the headline when the story is about the WSJ reporter, the Iranian business deal and the UAE Sheikh that hired the law firm to orchestrate the hack?

Was the Jamal Kashoggi story about NSO's Pegasus (Israeli-made), or the risks reporters face when covering powerful individuals that operate in the shadows of spying and information warfare?

la64710• 4 years ago

Another click bait by HN to attract anti Indian haters. Because just saying mercenary was not enough. Media including HN continue to profile issues around race or ethnicity instead of action because that way they sell more . Is it too hard to imagine ther are good and bad people in every country and what matters is their action and not their fucking culture or ethnicity?? It is not but media will not do it for their own vested interest.

Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

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