As attacks rise, these security experts are hunting cybercriminals

Cybersecurity expert Tyler Robinson was in an online forum, watching when a hacker bragged about selling the data of 700 million LinkedIn users just days ago. This is the story of people who build false identities to hunt cyber criminals, screen to screen. “Real trust within these groups can take a very long time, depending on the level of access and information provided to you, you’re probably not going to do that within a year or even two years,” says Tyler Robinson, CEO, and founder of Dark Element. “Many of our personas have been cultivated and curated over the last five to 10 years.” Even though the private sector owns and operates nearly 90% of critical U.S. infrastructure, things like pipelines and cell phone towers, American companies don’t rely on the government for protection — they go to people like Robinson, who maintains dozens of personas. “It does take a lot of backstories where we are providing dogs, pictures of food, different work-related topics, as well as the technical topics. You have credit cards, you’ve got cell phone numbers you have to maintain,” Robinson says. The more detailed the persona, the better. “When we have major efforts that we’re going at, we do use a…
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