Suggestion: Don't Name Your Illegal Computer Spying Business 'Hackers Are Us'

from the just-a-tip dept

Thu, Apr 26th 2007 3:23pm — Mike Masnick

While everyone has different ways of going about marketing various businesses, you would think that if you're involved in something illegal, you wouldn't refer to your organization in a way that reveals the illegality of what you're doing. Apparently, a private detective firm in the UK had a separate group which they proudly named "Hackers Are Us," which was making quite a bit of money by helping people get info from the computers' of others. There's no real mystery (and no real "hacking") in how they did so. They just sent an email and used some social engineering to convince people to click on the attachment, which loaded a keylogger. Pretty straightforward. Of course, the group is now in court trying to defend these actions -- but the use of the name probably doesn't help.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

13 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Tarky7, 26 Apr 2007 @ 3:36pm

1st !
that firm was probably owned by some cops !

reminiscent of out current head cop, Mr. Gonzales.

Pigs on the Web !
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ehrichweiss, 26 Apr 2007 @ 3:48pm

had to be careful myself..
I own/run a business that is named in that type of manner but it's legit; we do security audits and then teach people how to avoid such a situation. Not-so-strangely pretty regularly I get some twerp emailing me to ask if he can hire us to break into some website for them, and most of them can't spell, or read for that matter since it states clearly in our FAQ that security audits are performed legally.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sea Man, 26 Apr 2007 @ 3:51pm

thinning the herd
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joe Smith, 26 Apr 2007 @ 6:19pm

Dogs
It reminds me of the guy who named his pit bull "Jaws" - the name did not help when the dog bit the neighbor.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
rEdEyEz, 26 Apr 2007 @ 6:30pm

...now I know, who woulda thunk it?
I always wondered why the bill I submitted before congress, entitled " 'House of Representatives' to change name to 'Douchebags R Us' " was voted down.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Apr 2007 @ 7:13pm

Re: ...now I know, who woulda thunk it?
hahahahaha

phunny cuz itz tru yo
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Apr 2007 @ 8:20pm

Hey, at least they were honest. LMAO
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wolferz (profile), 26 Apr 2007 @ 10:07pm

hacking is not illegal
First and foremost, hacking does include social engineering. In fact that is a massive percentage of how most hacks are preformed.

It seems the poster here has fallen into the same habit that the media has. The habit of thinking of hackers as simply people who make viruses, used obscure security flaws to access restricted data, and cause mayhem for amusement.

Hacking is not limited or restricted to computers or even electronics. Hacking simply put is the act of finding ways around the intended functionality of an item in order to achieve something not normally possible with it. This could be getting an apache web server to spit out the contents of the server root folder or it could be getting the security dude at a companies front desk to hand out information about the system that allows you to compromise it.

Further more not all hacks are illegal as not all hacks involve gaining access to restricted information.

In short I have two major issues with the post. The idea that hacking is inherently illegal, and the idea that hacking is restricted entirely to technical endeavors.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chris, 26 Apr 2007 @ 10:11pm

good ole lawyers
If this company was smart, they would have only taken on clients who owned the property being "hacked." In the case of the banker it's more than likely he owned, or partially owned, the telephones and computers that are in question. In which case he gave consent to the company to do whatever they pleased to his possessions. If such were the case I 'd fail to see how anything but being a bad spouse was committed.

If they did however invade another persons computer and start monitoring it without prior consent, well I'm sure they'd bring up some other court ruling pointing out that by opening and clicking whatever was necessary to install the malicious software in the first place, although perhaps done with complete ignorance, was indeed consensual agreement. Considering the guy’s a “banking heir” I’m going to bet he can afford the legal fees to defeat what meager taxes can do.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Apr 2007 @ 10:31pm

Socially engineered hacking is the easiest hack ever, remember sub7? It was so easy, you pretend to be the opposite sex of your target and message them showing interest. Like when they say "I'm into cars." you pretend to be estatic like, "OMG I LOVE HOT CARS. I have this awesome car screensaver, want it?

Now assuming they dont have virus protection, the server will be running once they open the file. Now you need their IP address. Easy. "Hey, nothing happened." Oh really, here's where I downloaded it from, (link here) Now it's not really a link its your IP address and you should be running a IP grabber. And thats it. Open sub7, enter IP address and connect.

Of course these days things are harder with computers being behind routers and firewalls. The above example was good about 5 years ago and I haven't checked to see if the program has been updated to work around it.

sub7 was the most popular back in the day. It really gave you full control. My buddies and I used to load it on the computers in the lab and prank everyone during classs since we were always there early. We'd do stupid shit like open drives, flip their screens upsidedownbackwards, make porno pop up. It was hilarious. We'd even record sleazy AIM convos, copy them, and throw em around the halls before the lunch bell. Good times.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike4, 27 Apr 2007 @ 9:18am

Re: hacking is not illegal
Wolferz, are you new to techdirt? Most of us who come here are either hackers ourselves or have done some sort of hacking. You're argument is absolutely correct and I'm sure most of us would argue with you, but it doesn't apply to this story. The hackers in this story were clearly using their powers for evil.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike4, 27 Apr 2007 @ 9:19am

Re: hacking is not illegal
*edit:
"I'm sure most of us would argue with you" was supposed to read "I'm sure most of us would agree with you." Sorry for the confusion.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kyros, 2 May 2007 @ 6:53pm

Wolforz, as mike4 said(or meant at least), your right, but, in this case, usually when you hire a firm, your hiring them to be coders, not engineers of the social branch.
I do tend to think that anybody stupid enough to use questionable legal methods with such an obvious name (l33t@hackers_r_us.co.uk) should be jailed though..

(side note- whats with the non-capitalizing n00bs on the thread? The word "hacker" attract them all from gizoogle?)
[ link to this | view in thread ]