The ‘groundbreaking’ case of the cyber experts who allegedly broke bad and worked with criminals | CNN Politics

US companies in the retail, hospitality and medical sectors trusted Angelo Martino to negotiate with hackers who were trying to extort them. Instead, he made the extortion worse, federal prosecutors allege. Martino allegedly accumulated at least $10 million in assets, including a luxury fishing boat and two properties, as he worked as a ransomware negotiator — one of the most sensitive jobs in cybersecurity. He also gave a major cybercriminal gang information about his clients’ negotiating positions in order to “maximize” the ransom payments and then take his own cut of them, according to federal prosecutors. The case is “groundbreaking” because it raises tough questions for the cybersecurity industry about who is being paid to protect ransomware victims, a senior Justice Department official who oversaw the case told CNN. It is also causing a reckoning among security firms that have to deal with the seedy underworld of ransom negotiations. Ransomware attacks, which lock a computer so the attacker can demand payment, have cost the US economy billions of dollars and shut down critical services. The threat has spawned a lucrative industry of cybersecurity providers who neg