In recent years , it ’s becomealarmingly routinefor law enforcement agencies to subpoena technical school platforms for user data — a practice that some critic see as an invasiveprivacy violation . Criminals are taking notation , and now they ’re doing it too .
security measures blogger Brian Krebsreportsthat hacker have been hijacking law enforcement electronic mail accounts and using them to pass on phony data demands to technical school party . The ploy has been working — and hoodwinked firms have been handing over treasure trove of exploiter data to crooks by accident .
Krebs details a recent incident in which cybercriminals took over the electronic mail account of an nameless constabulary enforcement agency . The hacker then used the account to submit a data postulation to chat platform Discord , asking for data on an 18 - year - older substance abuser from Indiana . Discord fall for it and forked over the data .
Photo: Frederic Genest / EyeEm (Getty Images)
“ This tactic poses a substantial threat across the technical school industry , ” a Discord example told Gizmodo .
Discord confirmed that the company had mistakenly provided datum to a “ malicious role player ” using a copper ’s compromise email account :
“ We can confirm that Discord received request from a lawful constabulary enforcement domain and comply with the petition in accord with our policy . We verify these requests by chink that they add up from a genuine source , and did so in this instance . While our check process confirmed that the law enforcement account itself was lawful , we later learn that it had been compromised by a malicious histrion . We have since conducted an investigation into this illegal activity and notified practice of law enforcement about the compromised email accounting . ”
The mode that criminals have managed to get aside with this modern effort is by train vantage of a special sort of governing subpoena , foretell an Emergency Data Request , or EDR . Such subpoena are meant lodge in life or end scenario where entropy is needed like a shot and the wait of judicature commendation would lead to grave consequence . As such , EDRs do not require the distinctive inner review that companies are supposed to carry out with normal information requests . Mark Rasch , a former Justice Department prosecutor , state Krebsthat an EDR amounted to an “ emergency outgrowth , almost like you see on Law & Order , where they say they need certain data immediately ” and tech companies lean to dutifully respond .
Krebs reports that compromise cop email accounts are oftentimes put up for sale on the Dark Web . A hacker source secernate Krebs that it has become progressively typical for cybercriminals to use EDR requests to collar datum to commit “ haunt , hacking , harassing and publicly humiliating ” campaigns against their victims .
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