Hiring Hackers Just Got A Whole Lot Easier

Think your significant other is cheating on you? Don’t want your parents to know you actually flunked English? There’s a hacker waiting for you.

Got an itch to crack computer codes and be a cyber pirate on the seven seas of the Internet? They’ll hire you.

Hacker’s List is one of the latest sites advertising the cottage industry of small-scale hacking, where hackers can anonymously bid for client projects valued at anywhere between $100 and $5,000 for a single job. Similar to how freelance websites like Elance handle client services, the money trail is transparent to users. Payments are processed in-house, with certain fees applied, and when a job officially begins, the agreed payment is held in escrow until the job is completed to the customer’s satisfaction, providing a strong measure of safety and trust in an often frigid freelance-client relationship. On the banking side, to avoid running afoul with the law or individual banks, the transactions are listed as “CCS” payments.

So far, the website has had a slow start. Only 40 hackers have registered for the site, and only 844 jobs have been posted. Most of the time, the jobs are small-scale hacks like changing school grades or snooping around people’s Gmail and Facebook accounts, possibly due to the questionable legal and ethical nature of the website.

The founders try to rectify concerns over breaking the law by making new hires sign a 10-page terms and agreements letter promising not to do anything illegal or malicious while affiliated with the site. Even still, concerns have been raised that this is effectively “lowering the barriers to entry” for online, according to Thomas G. A. Brown, a senior managing director with FTI Consulting. Other analysts such as Yalkin Demirkaya, president of the private investigation company Cyber Diligence, believe that if the hacks are small in value and scale, they may still be illegal, but won’t be seen as a priority for law enforcement officials.

Even still, the ability to anonymously pay and hold money in escrow accounts has made it easier to make online payments for shady activity. How far it will go will be something to focus on in the future — especially for law enforcement.