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Hacking for hire has emerged as a major cybersecurity threat in the last 15 months, with some criminal groups offering ransomware and phishing as services, according to a new report from ENISA, the European Union’s cybersecurity agency.
Hacker-for-hire groups cater their services to governments but also to businesses and individuals and operate legally in their countries of origin, the report said. “The clients of these companies pay them mostly to conduct cyber espionage operations, get access to advanced offensive cyber capabilities and enjoy plausible deniability,” the authors wrote.
There’s been a “bit of a Cambrian explosion” of hacking-for-hire activity in the past 18 months, said Mario Santana, security fellow with cybersecurity vendor Appgate Threat Advisory Services. Appgate has seen gangs and other criminals diversify into cybersecurity to supplement other income, he told the Washington Examiner.
“Hackers for hire allow these sorts of actors to outsource the technical aspect of the cyberoperation while allowing them to leverage their own specializations, like general money-laundering, mules to withdraw money from...