Criminals Keep Hacking Themselves, Letting Researchers Unmask Them

· Sep 19, 2024 at 9:00 AM

Infostealer malware is often hidden in pirated or cracked software, and hackers then post the harvested credentials and other data online. Criminals have been infected too.

Criminals Keep Hacking Themselves, Letting Researchers Unmask Them — Image: Jared Brashier/Unsplash.

404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Become a paid subscriber here for access to all of our articles ad-free and bonus content.

Cybersecurity researchers are increasingly unmasking or finding new information on suspected criminals from a rich and unlikely source: the tsunami of compromised credentials, browser profiles, and other system information available on Telegram. In other words, criminals are accidentally hacking themselves, perhaps by downloading cracked software laden with malware, which is then exposing their identities to researchers, and potentially law enforcement too.