Epic Games Hackers Say They Faked the Whole Thing | Hacker News Reader

Epic Games Hackers Say They Faked the Whole Thing

thegamer.com

57 pointscroes22 comments

"In reality, we are not a ransomware-as-a-service, but professional fraudsters."

And they say there is no honor among thieves

So surprising...

Their approach was quite unique, though. It surprises me how hackers trust each other enough to send money without proof, especially in an environment where you're expected not to trust anybody.

The only alternative I can think of is to use escrow, which probably isn’t attractive for illegal activities and still requires trust.

I recently read a book [0] that goes into that and how--much like biological parasitism--sometimes you have frauds upon frauds.

[0] Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of Our World

Escrow was pretty popular on Raidforums, high reputation forum users would not only escrow transactions directly but also do things like pseudo-publicly validate or invalidate claims by checking a sellers data or tools against their own collections (presumably the benefits of being a professional hacker escrow and seeing lots of data).

You can use 2 of 3 multi-signatures to reduce trust requirements.

It’s just not a lot of money in most cases. Often in the hundred to few thousand range. And there is usually a data sample, such as the schema and the first 100 rows, or a demo. Of course, those aren’t strict guarantees but it does make faking it all more difficult.

It's not their money.

In hacker world, the liability is distributed just like in corporations

the person hacking data isn’t usually the person turning that into money, the person turning it into money isn’t the person doing identify fraud, or breaking into users bank accounts etc

But whoever takes on the most liability stands to make the most money

But whoever trades the liability only gets a little bit

You can probably do like a thousand transactions where the first part of the database is a freebie. Almost no trust needed.

I.e. pay for the first part to get the 2nd, and so on.

> Mogilevich says that it sold this material to eight buyers

Who are these buyers? Do they have criminal intent, or are they professional security conducting an investigation? Obviously the whole thing is just the word of someone who is either a hacker or a fraudster. I just like the idea of a half dozen government agencies buying any hacks they can find online.

> I just like the idea of a half dozen government agencies buying any hacks they can find online.

Well, if you know you know.

>I just like the idea of a half dozen government agencies buying any hacks they can find online.

Nice way to commit suicide by a shotgun buckshot in the back.

Who's to say, maybe these claims are also fake.

Well this is a new twist on our post-truth reality...

When did we go from pre- to post- truth, when monkeys evolved speech / Eve took a bite from the apple and picked up the concept of lying?

Biblical metaphor maybe Pilate "what is truth?"

For me, post truth is the belief that truth and lying don't exist or that the truth is less important than the belief. That's different from intentional and willed lying to get an end. They don't believe they are lying.

I once had a colleague who told me in very serious terms "the truth doesn't matter" in relation to his and many others shared perceptions of a political issue. I rapidly disengaged from working with him. It is deeply scary.

"I once had a colleague who told me in very serious terms "the truth doesn't matter" in relation to his and many others shared perceptions of a political issue."

It is rare, that you find someone to be so honest and conscious about it, but I found that most who are engaged with politics share that sentiment. The own side is right and the other side is wrong, just by general principle, not because of facts.

Doublethink is what Orwell called it. Being able to believe something, while rationally (potentiall) knowing it is wrong.

To be charitable he may have said it as a defence when challenged by an argument but he was serious. He might have been cornered and as a type of ego protection attacked Truth rather than admit psychological harm. I doubt he would state this view often and calmly in normal day to day living. Also to be charitable while many others would share the concern with shared issues I would think most would think of it as a traditional exchange of political beliefs and approaches rather than against objective reality itself.

It's worth considering that you might not have understood his argument. I had a friend who often had this issue, where if we started discussing something, they'd just endlessly pester me with "but why?" and then declare an "ego protection" when I inevitably said something that could be construed as rejecting reality even if that wasn't what the point was, and they weren't doing this maliciously, they just genuinely thought this way.

Eg if the discussion were about Spotify opposing Apple's exploitative fees, and my position were that it doesn't matter that Spotify is just supporting that position for the money, as long as it's aligned with consumer interests. They might've managed to pester me into saying "the truth doesn't matter" and declared that to be a fault in my position, even though that's a perfectly valid argument in this context.

> I once had a colleague who told me in very serious terms "the truth doesn't matter" in relation to his and many others shared perceptions of a political issue. I rapidly disengaged from working with him. It is deeply scary.

How many political topics can you think of that really are based on fact though? At the end of the day, don't they all boil down to a combination of opinion, personal preference, and morals?

Reminds me of the Mona Lisa heist. Pretend to steal the famous painting, then sell counterfeits.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/538216/art-heist-stolen-...

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