This is such a confusing and poorly written article, I don't even know where to start.
"The cybersecurity firm then alerted LabMD it had been hacked. Tiversa offered it emergency "incident response" cybersecurity services. After the lab refused the offer, Tiversa threatened to tip off federal regulators about the "data breach."
When LabMD still refused, Tiversa let the Federal Trade Commission know about the "hack.""
Not an expert, but this is the first time I've heard people trying to out companies with bad ops sec to the FTC?? Can someone explain how or why this is legal?
Then it gets really weird:
"The FTC went after the lab, giving the company a choice: sign a consent decree (basically a plea deal which means years of audits and a nasty public statement) or fight in court. The CEO of LabMD, Michael Daugherty, chose to fight, because a plea deal would have tarnished his reputation and killed the business anyway, he said."
So basically the government can force a business to close down if they don't comply with years of oversight and negative public comments? Somehow this seems really sketchy.
The article basically concludes Tiversa has done this multiple times to other companies as well. I guess this means in order to make a bunch of money I can start a private security company, hire some hackers and then extort money from businesses if they don't hire me and then turn them over to the FTC, who in turn, makes them go out of business?
If this is the case, this is pretty fucking scary.
The article makes it sound like Tiversa hacked LabMD deliberately in order to blackmail them. While that is possible, the article doesn't mention how, and it doesn't mention that the files were supposedly found on LimeWire. Terrible journalism.
"The cybersecurity firm then alerted LabMD it had been hacked. Tiversa offered it emergency "incident response" cybersecurity services. After the lab refused the offer, Tiversa threatened to tip off federal regulators about the "data breach."
When LabMD still refused, Tiversa let the Federal Trade Commission know about the "hack.""
Not an expert, but this is the first time I've heard people trying to out companies with bad ops sec to the FTC?? Can someone explain how or why this is legal?
Then it gets really weird:
"The FTC went after the lab, giving the company a choice: sign a consent decree (basically a plea deal which means years of audits and a nasty public statement) or fight in court. The CEO of LabMD, Michael Daugherty, chose to fight, because a plea deal would have tarnished his reputation and killed the business anyway, he said."
So basically the government can force a business to close down if they don't comply with years of oversight and negative public comments? Somehow this seems really sketchy.
The article basically concludes Tiversa has done this multiple times to other companies as well. I guess this means in order to make a bunch of money I can start a private security company, hire some hackers and then extort money from businesses if they don't hire me and then turn them over to the FTC, who in turn, makes them go out of business?
If this is the case, this is pretty fucking scary.