Hackers for hire? Hacker’s List – for those with no ethics or espionage skills by Lisa Vaas.
From the post:
Need to break the law, but lack the technology chops to do it yourself?
Now, as they say, there’s an app for that.
More precisely, there’s a market for it, launched in November, called Hacker’s List.
As of Monday morning, the site was down, either because it was mobbed by every tech journalist on the planet, or because a whole lot of people really, really want to do things like break into their lovers’ Facebook and Gmail accounts to sniff out cheaters.
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Lisa confirms that the site is real and gives some of the listed jobs (far more job offers than job takers) and then concludes:
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It’s just plain dismaying that spying on others, ruining their credibility, gaining unfair competitive advantage and even cracking a bank’s database could be so casually listed, as if any one of them were postings for a lost cat or a request for help in cleaning out the basement.This is one of the few times when I’ve wished for a news story to turn out to be a prank.
Unfortunately, given even the briefest scan of Naked Security headlines concerning spyware or data breaches, it very likely is quite real.
My first thought when I read Lisa’s account was the arrest of a Georgia resident for hiring a “hit man” to kill his wife. Turns out the “hit man” was an uncover police officer. At least in Georgia, most of the “hit men” you hear about on the news are uncover police officers. So, caution is advised when undertaking work from an anonymous source. Assuming reasonable site security, they are in far less danger than you are. Yes?
My second thought was that I don’t share Lisa’s dismay over:
spying on others, ruining their credibility, gaining unfair competitive advantage and even cracking a bank’s database….
Not that I am advocating you should do any of those things, but the United States government and other governments around the world do that sort of thing every day.
Do you effectively oppose those things by having “ethics?”
I would be real careful before putting the “ethics” card into play. It may very well be played to your disadvantage.