A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has asked the U.S. government to ban several hack-for-hire firms — companies that carry out cyberattacks on behalf of paying clients. The lawmakers accuse the firms of targeting Americans and abusing foreign courts to silence U.S. reporting on their activities.
Democratic senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Republican congressman Pat Harrigan, on Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, urging him to add three Indian companies to the department’s economic sanctions “entity list.”
The list effectively bars U.S. businesses from transacting with a named entity, with the aim of restricting the companies from accessing critical technology needed to function, including software licenses and cloud infrastructure.
In the letter sent to Lutnick and shared with TechCrunch, the lawmakers say BellTroX, CyberRoot, and Sunkissed Organic Farms (which previously operated under its former name, Appin) have for more than a decade conducted cyberattacks and targeted espionage against Americans, business owners, and their lawyers, to “manipulate ongoing litigation.”
The lawmakers say that these mercenary hacking companies have stolen data from thousands of Americans, and accuse the hackers of an “aggressive censorship campaign” to suppress public awareness of their alleged activities.
