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Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

reuters.com

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Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#111

Post by anemoiac »

Aunche wrote: post #67
swayvil wrote: post #20

This is an angle of the uneven distribution of wealth that you seldom hear about. As long as there are rich and poor people, a rich person can hire a poor person to do basically anything. Overriding legality, decency, safety. Because the poor person just needs the money that bad. So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children. Crazy horr…

>So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children. Yet, despite all of this, these people are living longer, healthier, more educated, and less violent lives. A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today, and they wouldn't be any more altruistic. The difference in our society is that a gree…

> A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today

Are you sure? Doesn't culture impact human behavior? Won't a society that encourages getting ahead at all costs produce a different social environment (with its own distinct behavioral incentives) than one with alternative priorities?

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#112

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

balderdash wrote: post #109
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

One thing that I should point out, is that he is not going after the WSJ, for any impropriety in his firing. They are really the ones that damaged his career. So I suspect that there is more to this story than is apparent.

How do you figure? The WSJ didn’t initiate or take part in the hacking scheme. They fired an employee that appeared to be engaged in impropriety / not meeting the organizations ethical standards. It’s like if someone broke into you house and found letters to a lover and published them, and your partner then divorced you, would you blame your partner or the person that broke into your house? I am curious why he is not…

Fair point.

> I am curious why he is not naming the Emerati prince that hired the law firm.

I suspect that he doesn't have enough evidence to prove it, or he doesn't want to poke the bear, because the Prince wasn't really after him; it was just collateral damage.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#113

Post by Aunche »

anemoiac wrote: post #111
Aunche wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children. Yet, despite all of this, these people are living longer, healthier, more educated, and less violent lives. A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today, and they wouldn't be any more altruistic. The difference in our society is that a gree…

> A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today Are you sure? Doesn't culture impact human behavior? Won't a society that encourages getting ahead at all costs produce a different social environment (with its own distinct behavioral incentives) than one with alternative priorities?

>Won't a society that encourages getting ahead at all costs

First of all, this is a anticapitalist meme that has no basis in reality. In American Factory, you can argue that the Chinese workers are encouraged to "get ahead at all costs". They likely share the same work ethic as Americans 100 years ago when they were similarly blase about safety, but this certainly isn't the case today. Today, we use marathon as a verb describing passively consuming media, and we glorify inactivity (FIRE, rest and vest, Office Space, etc) and these attitudes are unique to recent decades. We still celebrate hard work to a certain extent, but that's nothing new.

As far as cultural impact goes, your best case scenario is that people are more altruistic towards their in-group. Norway is renowned for it's redistribution of wealth, yet they're only .07% of the world's population and their sovereign wealth fund alone holds 1.4% of the the world's stocks. This is great for their citizens, but they aren't so keen on redistributing that wealth with Muslim immigrants and their children.

When you look at countries that are actively hostile to private wealth creation, you'll notice that they're all incredibly corrupt. This tells me that at least amongst the elite, they're just as greedy their counterparts in capitalist nations. The difference is that their economic model incentivizes them to chase zero-sum political power, rather than produce something of value.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#114

Post by ChaitanyaSai »

bink wrote: post #81
ackbar03 wrote: post #69

There's actually quite a large Indian hacker community on platforms like hackerone, and when you look at their Twitter profiles, it seems like quite a lot of them are from these remote village type places, which I think is fascinating. This is the first time I've read about mercenary hacker for hire groups from India but I guess it's not surprising.

There are some good hackers in India, no doubt. But having managed a few bug bounty programs, the majority of submissions from that part of the world are spam. People run vulnerability scanners, count on ignorance on behalf of the company triage teams, or just plain count on being able to badger someone into paying small amounts.

That's interesting. Which country would you say you see/saw the highest signal to noise from?

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#115

Post by rchaud »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

One thing that I should point out, is that he is not going after the WSJ, for any impropriety in his firing. They are really the ones that damaged his career. So I suspect that there is more to this story than is apparent.

It seems to me that his beef is not with the WSJ because he was aware of the possible consequences regarding the potential conflict of interest.

WSJ is entitled to fire someone if they have verifiable evidence supporting that decision. If the evidence was illegally obtained....well, it would be an trial admissibility issue, but that wouldn't apply to a work/employment matter.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#116

Post by rchaud »

Why put "Indian hackers" in the headline when the story is about the WSJ reporter, the Iranian business deal and the UAE Sheikh that hired the law firm to orchestrate the hack?

Was the Jamal Kashoggi story about NSO's Pegasus (Israeli-made), or the risks reporters face when covering powerful individuals that operate in the shadows of spying and information warfare?

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#117

Post by calgoo »

rprwhite wrote: post #110
badRNG wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting, because India is also a hub for these "hacker scams" where so-called hackers on Whatsapp will promise to change your grade, see if your partner is cheating, or get you a pay raise and then run off with your money. I wonder how one is able to tell the difference between actual hacking services and scams claiming to offer the same.

This seems bizarre to me. Under what context would would it be legitimate for any of those things to occur? A pay raise maybe. But, why would someone (crucial part, here, being someone you don’t know) be negotiating it for you?

I think they are saying they will hack your company and change it, not that they talk to your boss.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#118

Post by jstarfish »

greggsy wrote: post #14
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Foreign hacking groups are often beyond the reach of Western law enforcement. If a domestic threat had been to blame here, there would be legal/financial recourse for damage done. That's not the case here. Implicit in this article is the report of a new kind of warfare for which many Americans have no good defense against. 2. Standard editorial racism a la "The Oriental Threat".

I don’t think number 2 is at play here - the use of Indian hackers-for-hire has been topical in the cyber security industry recently.

...and before that, it was synonymous with tech support scams and outsourcing fraud for decades.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#119

Post by alex_smart »

fareesh wrote: post #95
watwut wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition of racism that includes nationality is not "broader". It is the definition of racism. It is also very common form of racism worldwide.

The only prominent definition one could cite which includes national origin is the one used by the United Nations Popular dictionaries (Webster/Oxford) don't include national origin

"Indian" is not just an national identity but also an ethnic one. A person of Indian origin born in America or the UK is still very easily identifiable and is identified by their Indian identity.

The usage of the word "racism" to include xenophobia is common enough in a casual context that I cannot believe that you are simply not aware of that usage. By choosing to argue over the semantics of the word racism over usage you probably already are familiar with, you are diverting attention from what really matters here: that said racism or xenophobia exists and negatively affects real human beings.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#120

Post by alex_smart »

fareesh wrote: post #84
cuteboy19 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No i too was confused why indian needed mentioning

- Because Indian in this context is not a reference to the ethnicity but of location - i.e. it's not the DNA of the people that is Indian, it's the borders in which they are physically present while hacking. Many are unaware that India has a lot of phenotype diversity in its 1 billion people. There are dark skinned people in the south, light skinned people in the north, and almond shape eyed people in the east. Merel…

This is a comment from this thread itself:

"I think it's covered in the Dark Basin episode of Darknet Diaries, but India apparently has a reputation for especially aggressive private investigators, who were historically used to dig up dirt on families before committing to marriage pacts, but in the modern era are used regularly for PR and corporate blackmail. Apparently this practice is ingrained enough into the culture that digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts."

Please tell me more about how India can ever be used purely as a location.

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