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RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#141

Post by ajhurliman »

meowface wrote: post #127
PheonixPharts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people tend not to be the brightest. If they were, they'd generally find legitimate employment, A bit of survivorship bias at work here. Criminal activity is more so a function of risk tolerance than intelligence. However getting caught is certainly a function of intelligence. So your impression is that most criminals you read about being apprehended are people that seem to make many stupid mistakes. But this…

You're absolutely right that there is a lot of survivorship bias here. But I think even when controlling for that, my hypothesis is still likely true.

I’m not sure it would still be true. Your hypothesis that smart people can still make good money without unnecessarily doing illegal things sounds logical, but people with high risk tolerance sometimes do things simply _because_ they’re high risk.

The book “The Mastermind” was about a guy who operated a nearly legal business that broke open the telemedicine industry, only to use the proceeds to fund wet works, piracy (not digital, like actually killing people and taking over vessels) and general shady stuff.

I think if you get a person who is motivated by money and power to a certain degree, they may actually prefer illegal business because there won’t be as much competition.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#142

Post by octoberfranklin »

Gollapalli wrote: post #137
Firehawke wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, absolutely this. There's a bias towards the low end of the skill/intelligence curve as those guys get caught doing really stupid shit and end up in the news as a result. I was looking over Wikipedia articles on software piracy groups of the 1980s/90s the other day and it was really interesting how many of them died to either a blatantly stupid move on the part of one of their members/leadership resulting in the…

We had one running for president just a couple years back. Sadly, I don't like him much, nor do many from his home state. But it's kind of cool that he went from hacker to political candidate.

Isn't he running for governor there now?

People might like him better if he didn't keep making 180-degree changes to his stance on major constitutional questions.

Whichever side of that issue you find yourself on, it's disturbing how easily he could his tune.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#143

Post by legalcorrection »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #78
meowface wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the following paragraph: >“In an attempt to retrieve his items, Coelho called the lead FBI case agent on or around August 2, 2018, and used the email address unrivalled@pm.me to email the agent,” the government’s affidavit states. Investigators found this same address was used to register rf.ws and raid.lol, which Omnipotent announced on the forum would serve as alternative domain names for RaidForums…

> These people tend not to be the brightest. If they were, they'd generally find legitimate employment, A bit of survivorship bias at work here. Criminal activity is more so a function of risk tolerance than intelligence. However getting caught is certainly a function of intelligence. So your impression is that most criminals you read about being apprehended are people that seem to make many stupid mistakes. But this…

There’s millions of high iq poor people who would very much like to not be poor. Intelligence helps you to achieve financial success, but a bunch of other personality traits are also important.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#144

Post by afpx »

legalcorrection wrote: post #143
PheonixPharts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people tend not to be the brightest. If they were, they'd generally find legitimate employment, A bit of survivorship bias at work here. Criminal activity is more so a function of risk tolerance than intelligence. However getting caught is certainly a function of intelligence. So your impression is that most criminals you read about being apprehended are people that seem to make many stupid mistakes. But this…

There’s millions of high iq poor people who would very much like to not be poor. Intelligence helps you to achieve financial success, but a bunch of other personality traits are also important.

Like 60% of my (inner city) gifted class, who never graduated high school.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#145

Post by 4043D »

meowface wrote: post #3
jacquesm wrote: post #2

"Coelho landed on the radar of U.S. authorities in June 2018, when he tried to enter the United States at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The government obtained a warrant to search the electronic devices Coelho had in his luggage and found text messages, files and emails showing he was the RaidForums administrator Omnipotent." Not really the sharpest knife in the drawer, to do things like th…

Not to mention the following paragraph: >“In an attempt to retrieve his items, Coelho called the lead FBI case agent on or around August 2, 2018, and used the email address unrivalled@pm.me to email the agent,” the government’s affidavit states. Investigators found this same address was used to register rf.ws and raid.lol, which Omnipotent announced on the forum would serve as alternative domain names for RaidForums…

having the ability to get an infosec job isnt = intelligence. tbh most of the people ive met in the last 5 years who were working corprate infosec / cyber are not particularly skilled or creative just good at filling out reports doing the greyface suit thing.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#146

Post by icambron »

meowface wrote: post #3
jacquesm wrote: post #2

"Coelho landed on the radar of U.S. authorities in June 2018, when he tried to enter the United States at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The government obtained a warrant to search the electronic devices Coelho had in his luggage and found text messages, files and emails showing he was the RaidForums administrator Omnipotent." Not really the sharpest knife in the drawer, to do things like th…

Not to mention the following paragraph: >“In an attempt to retrieve his items, Coelho called the lead FBI case agent on or around August 2, 2018, and used the email address unrivalled@pm.me to email the agent,” the government’s affidavit states. Investigators found this same address was used to register rf.ws and raid.lol, which Omnipotent announced on the forum would serve as alternative domain names for RaidForums…

I don’t exactly disagree with this point, but in mitigation, being constantly vigilant must be exhausting, and even bright people with strong executive function are going to slip up once in a while. It’s just too hard to keep your guard up 100% or the time.

Most deceptions, even comically absurd ones like “dude who has two families in different cities” do not require perfect vigilance, whereas running a cybercrime forum does. I bet success at this stuff comes from having an unusually fastidious personality more than anything else.

While you’d think bright people would be smart enough to recognize these risks and the comparatively safe, lucrative alternatives available to them, I know plenty of genuinely bright people who’ve made systematically poor decisions about how to run their lives or who have personality defects that otherwise impair their ability to succeed. And that’s even despite my social circles being heavily weighted toward people who went to good universities and hold down good jobs.

I’m sure that the ability to make sound, rational, forward-thinking life choices is correlated with intelligence, but I’m not sure how strongly.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#147

Post by sweetbitter »

baby wrote: post #135
sweetbitter wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only that hard if the person in question is dumb enough to be using a pseudonym instead of opting for anonymity, since having a name opens up your attack surface and chance to fail. Hosting a site or some kind of infrastructure that you have to actively interface with also counts towards this.

Anonimity is more than just using a pseudonym.

No you don't seem to understand. I am saying that using a pseudonym is NOT helpful to anonymity. It only hurts your anonymity to use any common set of characteristics, like a name, timezone, linguistic quirks, etc. I am saying that even using a name like we do here on HN is bad for someone who is trying to be anonymous, because it ties multiple actions together under a particular identity, and could easily expose more attack surface than necessary, allowing adversaries to target you.

Anyway, yes, I know there is more to it- considering who your adversary is, the limitations of your tools, and what configurations of tools are required to raise the cost of retroactive deanonymization above the capacity of your adversary. Every adversary that exists can be outwitted with some effort, if we're talking in terms of the internet and not physical security. Then there's the can of worm that is security. . .

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#149

Post by zionic »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

"Coelho landed on the radar of U.S. authorities in June 2018, when he tried to enter the United States at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. The government obtained a warrant to search the electronic devices Coelho had in his luggage and found text messages, files and emails showing he was the RaidForums administrator Omnipotent." Not really the sharpest knife in the drawer, to do things like th…

> Not really the sharpest knife in the drawer

Not uncommon with these types. Some former lulzsec dude got into EVE then very publicly threatened my corp with hacking/claimed he’d hacked us. Of course, he was on some kind of probation IRL that banned him even using computers/the internet. Our IT lead called the FBI and he got picked up again.

Re: RaidForums gets raided, alleged admin arrested

#150

Post by zionic »

joe_the_user wrote: post #138
paulpauper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really. unless it involves contraband, terrorism, or kid porn, the feds will not care that much. they will get to it eventually but it is not a top priority. Also they need many years to built an airtight case.

This is pure speculation but if I were the Feds, I'd let insecure, incompetently run forums to keep operating and shut down any secure, tightly run forums. The insecure forum can simply be hacked and basically become honeypots.

That’s freenet in a nutshell
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