I was a hacker for 30 years. These are the scariest things I saw on the dark web

The dark web is a lawless land where hackers run wild in the shadow of the internet, but one of its regular visitors has pulled the lid off this mysterious society.

Speaking anonymously Shamean unethical “black hat” turned “white hat” hacker bound by a moral code, explained how bad actors use ransomware for big payouts or “to just watch the world burn.”

These attacks are carried out through ransomware, which hackers use to steal data and demand tens of millions of dollars to return the treasure.

“I’ve seen hospitals being encrypted and people being given a choice: do I pay to decrypt the data or do I risk lives?” said the man, donning a mask to hide his identity.

The video comes as FBI-led international law enforcement agencies seized a sprawling dark web marketplace popular with cybercriminals, where stolen passwords were sold for as little as $1 each.

The hacker cyber bazaar, known as Genesis Market, was seized in a multinational crackdown dubbed “Operation Cookie Monster,” after the site specialized in stolen digital fingerprints, also known as cookies.

The interview was conducted in 2021, but the video recently resurfaced as a reminder that there is a dark world of humans whose sole purpose is to wreak havoc over the internet.

The white hat said he’s now using his skills for good, tracking down criminals online and looking for vulnerabilities in systems to fix – not exploit.

“If I want to gain access to a secure company, I don’t kick in the door,” he said at the beginning of the interview.

“I’d target people I know who have access, who I know bring personal devices into a building or do things in addition to the sensitive stuff, and I’d work my way up.”

The first ransomware attack was written in 1989 by Joseph Popp and targeted the healthcare sector.

The attack, dubbed AIDS Trojan, was carried out by Popp who handed out 20,000 infected disks to attendees of the World Health Organization’s AIDS conference.

The discs read “AIDS Information – Introductory Diskettes.”

When the floppy was downloaded to a computer, a large image appeared on the screen stating that the software would “affect other programs.” You will owe PC Cyborg Corporation damages and damages, if any, and your microcomputer will cease to function normally.”

The program would count the number of times the computer had started up and once it reached 90 it would hide the folders and encrypt or lock the names of the files on the C drive.

To regain access, users had to send $189 to PC Cyborg Corporation at a PO box in Panama.

Ransomware has since evolved so that a hacker doesn’t have to leave their home – anything can be done on the dark web.

“Back in the day, if a country wanted to disrupt a country the size of the United States, you needed millions and millions of dollars in investment to do anything,” the man told Vice.

“Nowadays you only need a few thousand dollars and a laptop and some smart hackers to write some code and send something.”

A black hat hacker is a person who is not bound by any code of ethics, breaks laws, and usually carries out hacks for their own purposes.

Kevin Mitnick is considered “the most famous hacker in the world” for his attack on 40 major companies, including IBM, Nokia and Motorola, in 1995.

He stole computer codes, estimated by some to cost nearly $330 million, and spent five years in prison.

Upon his release in 2000, Mitnick said he was “reformed” and now lives as a white hat — an ethical security hacker.

The man who spoke to Vice claimed to do this type of work.

“I once thought of myself as a black hat and turned into a white hat,” said the man, whose long gray beard spilled out from under the mask.

“White hats are usually hackers who are bound by a code of ethics, who try to do things to improve the public interest, and who are bound by the law.”

But his previous escapades brought him right into the middle of the dark web’s devious behavior.

He explained that while major countries like Russia and China are typically mentioned in ransomware attacks, “every country has a reason to weaponize these types of attacks.”

And it’s the smaller countries that fly under the radar that take full advantage of it.

He claimed that every Western country has turned to the dark web in search of help from the “community.”

It has also been revealed that even top officials do not understand which systems are most vulnerable and ‘painful’ when they are encrypted by hackers.

This became apparent during the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021, which was orchestrated by the DarkSide hacking group and crippled the entire system.

The attack stopped 2.5 million barrels of fuel a day along the line that runs from Texas to New Jersey.

Officials labeled it the most disruptive cyberattack on US energy infrastructure in history.

The FBI named DarkSide behind the attack. Colonial reportedly gave in to the hacker’s demands and paid a $5 million ransom in exchange for a decryption key to restore server access.

The white hat hacker touched on the Initial Access Broker Market, which are threat actors that sell cybercriminals access to corporate networks.

For an average price of about $2,800, these so-called initial access brokers (IABs) sold stolen VPN and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) account credentials and other credentials that criminals could use to break into the networks of more than 2,300 organizations across the globe. worldwide. world, without sweating,’ Read dark reports.

Since the Vice video, the Initial Access Broker Market has boomed.

Cybersecurity researchers reported 2,348 instances of IAB sales activity between H2 2021 and H1 2022. The number of brokers also grew from 262 to 380.

Sensitive data from approximately 2,886 companies was published on ransomware leak sites during the reporting period, an increase of 22 percent from the previous year. InfoSecurity Magazine reports.

The FBI is not blind to the illegal activities, but it is struggling to eliminate major players.

The agency is now looking for operators and users of the sites.

“We’re not just trying to attack the supply side, but we’re also attacking the demand side with the users,” a senior FBI official said this month of the agency’s dismantling of Genesis Market, a major online criminal marketplace.

“There are consequences if you start using these kinds of sites for this kind of activity.”

According to the FBI, Genesis Market provided access to data stolen from more than 1.5 million compromised computers worldwide, containing more than 80 million account access data.

The stolen data includes passwords for services such as online banking, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal and Netflix, as well as digital fingerprints that criminals can misuse to evade online security checks by counterfeiting the victim’s device.

In coordinated raids around the world, more than 200 searches were carried out and about 120 people were arrested, including 24 arrests in and around the British town of Grimsby, British law enforcement officials said.

A senior FBI official told DailyMail.com that suspects have also been arrested in the US in connection with the arrest, but did not provide details on the number of arrests or charges.