State-backed hackers around the world are increasingly using tools provided by their government to conduct hacking in their off-time, according a national security official at the Justice Department.
“I think we are seeing the blended threat now,” John Carlin, the head of DOJ’s national security division, said on Tuesday. “That means actors that might act on behalf of a group, but are also doing it for their own profit for criminal means. They might do hacktivism, and at the same time, they might do some legitimate activity.”
“It may be someone, in terms of a blended threat, where it’s a state actor, but not state action … be it in Russia, or China, or other countries, someone who has access to those tools, their day job and the use of them is something different, and then for their own personal profit, they use those tools corruptly during nighttime hours to do a hack,” Carlin added.
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He added that more than one group associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had been identified as engaging in the same kind of off-hour hacking. He also said that delineating when hackers are acting on their own was becoming increasingly difficult.
“You can figure out who did it … Disaggregating why they did it is going to be a growing challenge,” Carlin said.
