A Seattle Police Department officer tried to unmask a ransomware attacker by deploying his own hack, according to newly unsealed court records.
Although in this case the officer’s attempt didn’t work, the news shows that the use of so-called network investigative techniques (NITs)—the U.S. government’s general term for hacking tools deployed by law enforcement—is not limited to the FBI. Here, the Seattle Police Department official was working in their capacity as a Task Force Officer for the U.S. Secret Service.
Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, discovered and shared the court docket with Motherboard.