We live in some pretty weird times. Now you can make a killing by hacking famous politicians’ court documents and holding them hostage. It’s happening to former President Donald Trump right now.
A hacker group claims that it has managed to get its digital hands on Trump’s court documents and is threatening to release them unless someone pays a ransom. The original deadline was last Saturday, but then the group changed it to Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.
However, the deadline came and went without the release of any documents and there was no public notice of any ransom payment. As of now, there has also been no mention of how much money the group asked for. Does anyone else think this smells just a tiny bit fishy?
Here’s more from Business Insider:
The group — led by a hacker using the pseudonym LockBitSupp — appeared to become operational again over the weekend after a February 20 law-enforcement raid. A group of agencies, including the FBI and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, took down 34 of its servers and changed its website to a series of messages bragging about the law-enforcement operation. The same day, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment accusing two Russian nationals of being involved in the group’s hacking operations.
By Saturday, LockBit was back.
On a new website, the group posted a message claiming it had backup copies of documents taken from the Fulton County government’s website. It also renewed its ransom demands.
The post claimed that the FBI acted quickly because the leak of documents in Trump’s criminal case could affect the 2024 presidential election — although court documents show that the FBI’s investigation into LockBit and coordination with international law-enforcement agencies has been ongoing for years. It characterized LockBit’s relationship with the FBI as a sort of romantic rivalry and promised that the group would hack more government websites in the future.
“Personally I will vote for Trump because the situation on the border with Mexico is some kind of nightmare, Biden should retire, he is a puppet,” the message read.
Either these guys are some seriously dedicated con artists or they are for real. Bizarre things happen on such a regular basis these days that anything is possible. Given their track record and history, I lean toward them being the real deal.
And it seems that LockBit isn’t just targeting the Fulton County government. The hackers asked for ransom from 11 different entities aside from Fulton County. Over two decades, the group has hit over 2,000 victims and managed to pull in a staggering $120 million in ransom according to the Justice Department.
Some of the big targets LockBit has hit include the UK’s National Health Service, Royal Mail, Boeing, and even the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. It takes some serious intestinal fortitude to pull this kind of thing with China. It’s surprising that they’ve managed to succeed so many times over.
The group doesn’t always conduct hacks itself, according to law-enforcement agencies. It operates on a service model, in which it develops sophisticated ransomware hacking tools and leases them out to other hackers to deploy against targets, taking a cut of the ransom.
It’s not clear which other organizations may be working with LockBit on the Fulton County hack. LockBit has claimed to be “completely apolitical” in the past, Oz Alashe, the CEO and founder of the cybersecurity firm CybSafe, said. But it is also deeply involved in the Russian cybercrime scene, Krebs said. Because it works with so many different affiliates, its motives are hard to discern, Alashe told Business Insider.
“Even if one could discern the organization’s motives outside of the obvious financial one, the same cannot be said for all its partners and affiliates,” Alashe remarked.
Alashe stated that we shouldn’t take the whole praise for Trump and slight for Biden too literally.
“It’s always difficult to discern the meaning of messages like the one published by LockBit on Saturday,” he explained. “Whether the declaration of support for Trump is genuine, posturing aimed at taunting what they see as ‘strong competitors and the FBI,’ or even an attempt to grab headlines, we don’t know.”
At this point, it’s not clear whether or not the documents LockBit has in its possession are already part of the public record or not. However, George Chidi, an independent journalist who is based in Atlanta revealed that after taking a look at a sampling of files LockBit has published, they do include some sealed court records in other cases.
At a press conference on February 20, Robb Pitts, the Fulton County commission chair, said no ransom was paid.
“We did not pay, nor did anyone pay on our behalf,” Pitts said during the briefing.
In Saturday’s message, LockBit said its “partner” was in “negotiations” over the ransom, but they had “stalled.” Pitts didn’t respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
This is part of living in such a heavily technological era. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if more details emerge later on.