Hackers change course amid Covid, turn tutors online

The 21-lesson course is simply called ‘Hacking for Beginners’. It covers cracking passwords, breaking into devices and networks, vulnerability detection and, the most important part in Covid times, social engineering. The post, from April 17, is on a public group on Facebook, like hundreds of others that have come up in the past month — offering to teach hacking to people stuck at home due to the lockdown.
Hacking groups usually deal in stolen credit card information and account passwords. The data is used to make purchases or buy online gift cards. The products “bought” with these are resold at much lower prices, in a second round of fraud known as carding. An iPhone Pro Max worth over Rs 1 lakh would go for Rs 30,000, an iPhone XR worth around Rs 50,000 for Rs 15,000. Things are done fast. The owner can’t catch up. With the lockdown, this model of crime lost its appeal. The products couldn’t be delivered. So hackers and carders changed course. They turned into tutors.
“Don’t waste your time playing games and watching movies. It’s time to learn something which gives you benefit … Start your hacking career from our channel,” goes a post on a Facebook group. A man from UP offered “professional WiFi hacking course for 299 rupees” on another group. A Telegram group member offered a “coronavirus discount” and said, “Let’s make more money while (we) stay indoors.” The supply has been in response to a steadily growing demand. In India, search interest (a relative index) in “hacking” went from 50 in the third week of March to 100 by mid-April, seeing a sharp spike after the lockdown.
Videos follow the same pattern — about 400 “hacking tutorial” videos have been posted on YouTube last month. Most of those asking for lessons want to make money and many want to stalk one personal account.
On Wednesday, TOI flagged nine public hacking groups that Facebook took down by Thursday. “Hacking, phishing and other fraudulent activities are forbidden on Facebook, and we will take swift action when we identify accounts engaging in these behaviors,” a Facebook spokesperson told TOI.
YouTube has similar guidelines. “Under our policies, we remove content promoting dangerous or illegal activities,” a YouTube spokesperson told TOI. But the videos and groups are hydra-like — they just keep coming up.