My terrifying deep dive into one of Russia's largest hacking forums
[Kip Currier: I had a similar reaction to the author of this article when I attended a truly eye-opening 4/20/18 American Bar Association (ABA) IP Law Conference presentation, "DarkNet: Enter at Your Own Risk. Inside the Digital Underworld". One of the presenters, Krista Valenzuela with the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell in West Trenton, New Jersey, did a live foray into the Dark Web. The scope of illicit activities and goods witnessed in just that brief demo was staggering and evoked a feeling that scenes of "black market" contraband and "bad actors" endemic to dystopian sci-fi fare like Blade Runner 2049 and Netflix's Altered Carbon are already part of the present-day real-world.]
"It’s fascinating to see how this community works together to take down “western” systems and derive chaos and profit from it. Typically, hackers in first-world countries are terrified to work together due to the multiplicative risk of a group being caught. In Russia, however, the authorities don’t seem to care that these hackers are wreaking havoc on the west. They are left to their own devices, and most users on this forum have been regular members for over six years.
A lot of the information on this forum is incredibly worrying, even if a lot of it is harmless 15-year-olds trying to be edgy and hack their friend’s phones. In any case, it’s important to know these communities exist. The dark underbelly of the internet isn’t going anywhere."
