In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking
Source: New York Times
In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking
By ANDREW E. KRAMER and ANDREW HIGGINS AUG. 16, 2017
KIEV, Ukraine The hacker, known only by his online alias Profexer, kept a low profile. He wrote computer code alone in an apartment and quietly sold his handiwork on the anonymous portion of the internet known as the Dark Web. Last winter, he suddenly went dark entirely.
Profexers posts, already accessible only to a small band of fellow hackers and cybercriminals looking for software tips, blinked out in January just days after American intelligence agencies publicly identified a program he had written as one tool used in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
But while Profexers online persona vanished, a flesh-and-blood person has emerged: a fearful man who the Ukrainian police said turned himself in early this year, and has now become a witness for the F.B.I.
I dont know what will happen, he wrote in one of his last messages posted on a restricted-access website before going to the police. It wont be pleasant. But Im still alive.
It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the D.N.C. hack and the heated debate it has stirred. The Ukrainian police declined to divulge the mans name or other details, other than that he is living in Ukraine and has not been arrested.
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Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-malware-hacking-witness.html