Former WSJ Reporter Says Law Firm Used Indian Hackers To Sabotage His Career

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A former Wall Street Journal reporter is accusing a major U.S. law firm of having used mercenary hackers to oust him from his job and ruin his reputation. In a lawsuit filed late Friday, Jay Solomon, the Journal's former chief foreign correspondent, said Philadelphia-based Dechert LLP worked with hackers from India to steal emails between him and one of his key sources, Iranian American aviation executive Farhad Azima. Solomon said the messages, which showed Azima floating the idea of the two of them going into business together, were put into a dossier and circulated in a successful effort to get him fired. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, said Dechert "wrongfully disclosed this dossier first to Mr. Solomon's employer, the Wall Street Journal, at its Washington DC bureau, and then to other media outlets in an attempt to malign and discredit him." It said the campaign "effectively caused Mr. Solomon to be blackballed by the journalistic and publishing community." Dechert said in an email that it disputed the claim and would fight it in court. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions related to hired hackers operating out of India, notes Reuters. "In June, Reuters reported on the activities of several hack-for-hire shops, including Delhi area-companies BellTroX and CyberRoot, that were involved in a decade-long series of espionage campaigns targeting thousands of people, including more than 1,000 lawyers at 108 different law firms." Solomon said in a statement Saturday that the hack-and-leak he suffered was an example of "a trend that's becoming a great threat to journalism and media, as digital surveillance and hacking technologies become more sophisticated and pervasive. This is a major threat to the freedom of the press."

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