Hackers—hope to defect to Russia? Don’t Google “defecting to Russia.”
To the casual observer, cybercriminals can look like swashbuckling geniuses. They possess technical skills formidable enough to penetrate the networks of the biggest companies on the planet. They cover their tracks using technology that is arcane to most people—VPNs, encrypted chat apps, onion routing, aliases in dark web forums. They talk trash, extorting corporate ransoms in cryptocurrency, and they aim high, not flinching even at the prospect of stealing data on US presidential candidates.