If you are Good, you can even join them.
Cyber snoops launch recruitment drive
Posted Mon Aug 2, 2010 4:00pm
A secretive and elite United States cyber team that has tracked
criminals on the internet for more than 10 years has used this
year's DefCon hackers conference to recruit new members.
The chief of the normally secretive team, Chet Uber, described
Vigilant as a cyber "A-Team", taking on terrorists, drug cartels,
mobsters and other enemies on the internet.
"We do things the government can't," Mr Uber said.
"This was never supposed to have been a public thing."
Vigilant is an alliance of slightly more than 600 volunteers and
its secret ranks reportedly include chiefs of technology at top
firms and former high-ranking US cyber spies.
The group scours internet traffic for clues about online
attacks, terrorists, cartels and other targets rated as priorities
by members of the democratically run private organisation.
Vigilant also claimed to have "collection officers" in 22
countries that gather intelligence or coordinate networks in
person.
"We go into bars, look for lists of bad actors, get tips from
people," Mr Uber said.
"But a significant amount of our intelligence comes from our
monitoring the internet.
"We are looking at everything on websites, and websites are
public."
Mr Uber says the team shares significant findings with US spy
agencies and is so respected by leading members of the hacker
community that he was invited to DefCon to recruit new talent.
He says Vigilant came up from underground after 14 years of
operation in a drive to be at "full capacity" by adding 1,750
"vetted volunteers" by the year 2012.
"We are good people not out to hurt anybody," Mr Uber said.
"Our one oath is to defend the US Constitution against all
enemies foreign and domestic."
Anything that can be looked at legally on the internet is fair
game for Vigilant, with email and encrypted transactions such as
online shopping off limits.
Mr Uber says his team uncovered evidence of fraud in the latest
presidential election in Iran and has been testing a way for people
to slip information out of countries with oppressive regimes.
He says the information obtained was given to US officials.
"They expected fraud but they didn't expect the wholesale fraud
that we passed along," he said.
The holy grail for Vigilant is finding out who is behind cyber
attacks.
Inability to figure out who launches online assaults routinely
leaves companies or governments without targets to fire back
at.
"This is a completely unsolved problem," Mr Uber said.
"We've probably been working on it as long as the government
has." - AFP