Or what could be worse? What happens when the secret service show up at your door?
First do not panic – ask for a badge. you are entitled to see their official badge!
What does it look like (how do you know it is legitimate)?
Above image is from the website https://www.secretservice.gov/about/history/badges
The badge is from a history of secret service badges site – this one was introduced in 2003.
The secret service does look into some cyber attacks it depends on what else the attack may touch. I have heard of companies or individuals being contacted by the secret service and saying: “You have been hacked”
Once you have been hacked. You have to fix the wrongs, reinstall from ‘good’ backups and or reinstall operating systems.
This of course means one should have a good backup in the first place. Having a full backup may not be wise because you may capture all the bad code as well. It may be better to save all the files and data that are important to you and your business.
After reinstalling the operating system now setup a backup schedule for your files. There are even companies that focus on these kinds of things if you do not want to think about it too much.
Then reinstall all the patches (updates). This is because when reinstalling to factory specs many times that will consist of not installing any newer updates. What I am saying here this process takes time.
From the day you got notified of a hack in your network (by a physical contact – secret service) , notice i did not say ‘potential hack’ since if the secret service is making a physical appearance this is likely a certainty.
I will leave you now to implore you to act before a hack – not after. And with that remember that AI will be used against us (like this story from theHackerNews where it is not ChatGPT but cybercrime generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool dubbed FraudGPT is sold on various dark web marketplaces!!
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