Ft5 Dec 2023 06:02
As cyber attacks escalate, companies are increasingly turning to lawyers to help them trace stolen money, negotiate with hackers and, in some cases, take attackers to court to recover stolen funds.
From phishing scams to trading breaches, attacks involving cryptocurrency are rising. The value of illicit cryptocurrency transactions, including scams and ransomware, rose to $20.6bn in 2022, up from $18.1bn a year earlier, according to a report by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform.
Now, cyber crime specialists at law firms are being called on to play an intermediary role — part negotiator and part forensic investigator — to help minimise damages while also finding ways to prevent hackers from succeeding in their attacks.
Companies face multiple challenges, as the international nature of hacking makes it difficult to investigate attacks and trace stolen funds. Syndicates based in, and sponsored by, hostile states — such as the North Korea-inked Lazarus Group — have been among the most prolific cryptocurrency hackers.
But, in November 2022, US law firm King & Spalding helped Google score a legal victory against the Russian operators of a botnet known as Glupteba. They used it to steal login and account information to commit crimes, including theft and fraud, and to use other people’s computers to illicitly mine cryptocurrency.
In a New York lawsuit, Dmitry Starovikov and Alexander Filippov were named along with 15 other unidentified individuals as controlling the botnet. According to the court ruling, Glupteba was notable for its “technical sophistication” and leveraged blockchain technology to protect itself from disruption. It used a network of private computers infected with malware to aid numerous criminal schemes, including selling credit card details for fraudulent purchases.
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