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Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

abc.net.au

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Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#101

Post by WalterBright »

spoonjim wrote: post #89
WalterBright wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is entitled (in the US) to due process and a lawyer to defend them. There is nothing unethical or immoral about it. It's a fundamental right .

Again, ethics are a matter of opinion, laws are a matter of fact. Yes, in the US you have the legal right to an attorney. Whether that attorney is behaving ethically depends on the attorney’s behavior and the person making the judgment on the ethics. You and I don’t have to have the same opinion on what’s ethical. We can each advocate for our own ideas of ethics to be codified into policy.

What happens when you are accused of a heinous crime, the evidence points at you, and yet you are innocent?

I bet you change your mind about the ethics of having a lawyer represent you.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#102

Post by ganzuul »

nucleardog wrote: post #77
nexuist wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not already operating under the assumption that TLAs have full access to your entire online history, there's really no point in trying to start now. Use secure apps like Signal to hide your information from hackers, thieves, and generic script kiddies, not to hide from national security agencies. Especially when said agency can send a van to your house to take all your digital equipment (fully legally if ba…

For a slightly humorous take on this, James Mickens' paper _This World of Ours_[0] is enjoyable: > In the real world, threat models are much simpler (see Figure 1). Basically, you’re either dealing with Mossad or not-Mossad. If your adversary is not-Mossad, then you’ll probably be fine if you pick a good password and don’t respond to emails from ChEaPestPAiNPi11s@virus-basket.biz.ru. If your adversary is the Mossad,…

This is pretty much my understanding too. We have not progressed one iota in civilization and everything comes down to torture and murder when the going gets tough.

My only hope for a future for humankind lies with this socialist software ideal I have been musing about...

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#103

Post by bloqs »

From the Vice Motherboard article: https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/akgkwj/operation-trojan-...

"This data comprises the encrypted messages of all of the users of Anoms with a few exceptions (e.g., the messages of approximately 15 Anom users in the U.S. sent to any other Anom device are not reviewed by the FBI),"

Any ideas as to why?

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#104

Post by viraptor »

dt3ft wrote: post #47
iJohnDoe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not funny. Pretty much worse fucking case scenario. Imagine Signal, Telegram, or any other app that touts themselves as a secure app is really just the creation of the FBI, NSA, CIA, and NRO. Remember, yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s reality.

Food for thought: Telegram estimated costs for 2021 based on 675 million monthly active users (MAU) are $220 Million. Yet, the app is somehow free to use. Where does the money to cover the costs come from?

At least the story of them being dodgy (in terms of origin/funding) and playing up encryption which is not enabled by default is pretty well documented by now. I get that people really like the UX of the app, but I wish more of them approached Telegram with "Russian gov has access to my unencrypted messages, but maybe the encrypted ones too" mindset.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#105

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bloqs wrote: post #103

From the Vice Motherboard article: https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/akgkwj/operation-trojan-... "This data comprises the encrypted messages of all of the users of Anoms with a few exceptions (e.g., the messages of approximately 15 Anom users in the U.S. sent to any other Anom device are not reviewed by the FBI)," Any ideas as to why?

Maybe undercover agents? Diplomats?

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#106

Post by JumpCrisscross »

simondotau wrote: post #71
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone find it funny that each criminal group could have been better off relying on a "kid who knows computers" level of expertise and bog standard devices running open source software which at least wouldn't be trivially systematically turned against them all at once quite so easily Tradeoffs. Traditional tradecraft would inhibit such discovery methods. But it's slow and expensive. Your competitors would outmaneuv…

Nothing wrong with inhibiting growth in return for long term stability. Does it matter if your competition is more daring—if they aren't going to last very long? If anything, they might serve as a useful distraction.

> Nothing wrong with inhibiting growth in return for long term stability

For long-term plans to pay off, they must survive a series of short terms. Criminal gangs and dictators don’t ignore the long term because they’re stupid. They ignore them because they must. A drug gang practicing classical tradecraft would be decimated by one coördinating electronically. The latter will be caught faster. But a series of short-term motivated actors is the equilibrium state of illicit and physical trading systems.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#107

Post by Cthulhu_ »

RachelF wrote: post #37
flashman wrote: post #31

As to how the FBI got access to the messages, Vice says[1] after Vincent Ramos of Phantom Secure was arrested in 2018, a confidential human source offered Anom, which the source was developing, to the FBI (probably in exchange for immunity or a reduced sentence, in my opinion). The source then seeded Anom phones to his existing distributors as a replacement for Phantom Secure phones, and from their they made their wa…

Makes you wonder how many commercial VPN services are just FBI honeypots?

I'm confident the big ones like Nord are just that. And even if they're not, they can just be taken over or backdoored - nobody will ever be the wiser.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#108

Post by ungamedplayer »

lmm wrote: post #79
nexuist wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your hardware has backdoors, so does your OS, and encryption clients None of these were exploited to retrieve this data, and the third party app that was installed was not intended to encrypt conversations given that it was a honeypot. > popular apps This was a small app unknown by anyone outside of criminal orgs. It had no "legitimate" non-criminal users. > especially in the US The app was deployed in Australia. >…

Agree with most of what you said but: > > especially in the US > The app was deployed in Australia. Australia has an even worse equivalent of US National Security Letters, allowing individual workers to be compelled to plant backdoors etc..

Not without notice of the company, and not for wide spreaed distribution, ie targeted enforcement.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#109

Post by intricatedetail »

> and seized more than 3,000 kilograms of drugs and $45 million in cash and assets.

Excuse me, but I can't stop laughing. Three years effort to catch a small fish and they sell it as if they got bust of the century.

Why don't they investigate politicians that facilitate prohibition and enable these gangs to work in the first place?

Police can't see they run fool's errands.

Re: Australian Federal Police and FBI nab underworld figures using encrypted app

#110

Post by walrus01 »

deadalus wrote: post #93
RachelF wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes you wonder how many commercial VPN services are just FBI honeypots?

This is exactly why I tend to use VPNs from country's with which the US is not in good terms with : Russia, Iran, Belarus, China

If I was a US intelligence agency I would specifically establish colocation presences with ISPs in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, china, etc, on commercial ISP terms, and admin the servers remotely to set them up as a commercial vpn service. There's plenty of datacenter operators in Russia that will take your money.
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