The Secret Service Tried to Catch a Hacker With a Malware Booby-Trap

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqz54/secret-service-network-investigative-technique-ransomware

By Joseph Cox
Vice.com
July 10, 2020

A Seattle Police Department officer tried to unmask a ransomware attacker by 
deploying his own hack, according to newly unsealed court records.

Although in this case the officer's attempt didn't work, the news shows that 
the use of so-called network investigative techniques (NITs)—the U.S. 
government's general term for hacking tools deployed by law enforcement—is not 
limited to the FBI. Here, the Seattle Police Department official was working in 
their capacity as a Task Force Officer for the U.S. Secret Service.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the program on extremism at George Washington 
University, discovered and shared the court docket with Motherboard.

In 2016 the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) Jail in Des Moines, Washington 
found ransomware on its computer network, according to the warrant application 
written by Chris Hansen, the Seattle Police Department detective and Secret 
Service Task Force Officer. Ransomware is a type of malware that generally 
encrypts files on a target's system and then demands a bounty payment in 
cryptocurrency to unlock them. In some cases, ransomware attackers will offer 
to unlock a limited number of victim's files to prove they do have the 
capability to recover the data.

[...]

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