In a shocking turn of events that would have been seemingly impossible to foresee in any sane universe, a number of people who employed the services of a hacker-for-hire service have had their personal details leaked online.
The site in question, Hacker’s List, launched late last year out of the United States, connecting clients with hackers, and offering the guarantee that “only you and your hacker will know the details of your project.”
Needless to say, that wasn’t strictly true, and per reports in Fairfax, information about hundreds of people who used the service, incluing several dozen Australians, is freely available online.
Computer scientist Jonathan Mayer conducted an investigation into Hacker’s List using a simple web crawler to scan publicly available information, and then assembled it into a Google document.
He noted that the most commonly requested hacks were for Facebook and Google accounts, usually for business or romantic reasons, or simply to gain access to hacked and locked accounts.
Students looking to hack into their schools’ computer systems to change their grades were also common, and as Mayer notes, not all projects requested were completed, but of those that were, most “appear to be criminal.”
The document lists just over 60 clients from Australia. One of these apparently contacted the service to gain access to a business rival’s database, while another requested access to her partner’s WhatsApp to discover if he was cheating.
Another, a prospective uni student, sought a “semi-unethical hacker” to change his results, boosting his ATAR score in order to gain admission to a business course at the University of Western Australia.
Per Fairfax’s report, NSW Police’s Fraud & Cybercrime Squad have said that any crimes reported to them in relation to the leaked information will be investigated.
