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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

#151

Post by stef25 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #9

Does 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.

Protip to the cartels - pay top dollar to some world class engineers to setup a dark web market and you'll make buckets.

Most if not all markets until now have been run by geeks with limited knowledge and skills, wading in to the criminal underworld and inevitably making rookie mistakes.

Both Ross and the guy in Bangkok had their personal emails tied to the markets. Some kids running a big market from Germany connected to the server on their mom's wifi. The list goes on.

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

#152

Post by dash2 »

cromka wrote: post #70

What we've learned is only what was in Austrlia's piece of the cake, given they started their day already. New Zeland had theirs already, too. I imagine thousands of arrests are still happening worldwide and several press conferences are going to be held today. Looking at the seal of the operation ( https://www.anom.io/trojan_shield_seal.jpg ), following countries participated in the operation: Canada, Australia, US,…

Hee hee! The parent domain now has a useful form for criminals to turn themselves in with: https://www.anom.io/

"To determine if your account is associated with an ongoing investigation, please enter any device details below:"

and then it asks for your username, country and IMEI....

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

#153

Post by ajdlinux »

lmm wrote: post #145
ungamedplayer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Not without notice of the company Oh? The reports I read were that they could compel an individual to do something and not tell their employer.

The reports you read were likely based on commentary from techies who have no understanding about law, plus a handful of lawyers involved with digital rights organisations that have an incentive to play up the significance of the legislation a bit / talk about worst-case scenarios, worst possible interpretations of a dangerous law and the broadest possible interpretation of who constitutes a "designated communications provider". The government has stated that's not how they interpret the legislation, as the service provider will be the employer not the employee, and I don't think government lawyers are in the habit of arguing that the government _doesn't_ have power to do something.

I'm as suspicious about the Assistance and Access Bill as anyone, but the "telling an employee to implement a backdoor without telling their employer" is really a red herring and I don't know why the Australian tech community was so keen to go along with that.

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

#154

Post by usrusr »

WJW wrote: post #129
pelasaco wrote: post #82

Nice one, but i guess if this whole operation was still a secret, we could pull this trick over and over again? Now will be hard to disguise an app like that. Probably the next season of the "StartUp" TV series

This is already the third or fourth such app that was either infiltrated by the police, taken over by the police or outright constructed by them. Criminals have a vested interest in getting access to encrypted communications and they know that all of the common phone OSes and chat apps are compromised, so they will be looking to join such secure networks. This need for security is what makes the continued use of thes…

My impression is that in all those cases the root weakness was that those criminals liked to feel sophisticated, "in the know". So those special apps (special, from our perspective, as in euphemism for birth defect) could spread by fashion. The smalltimes like to imitate the big ones while the big ones try to stay ahead of the curve, eager to pick up anything new from upstarts before they become big.

It might be my Hollywood education speaking, but criminal networks are supposed to lean strongly on status and respect (how could they not, given the absence of law enforcement which makes trust the only option) and this makes them vulnerable to fashion as a malware vector.

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

#155

Post by adriancr »

stef25 wrote: post #151
michaelmrose wrote: post #9

Does 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.

Protip to the cartels - pay top dollar to some world class engineers to setup a dark web market and you'll make buckets. Most if not all markets until now have been run by geeks with limited knowledge and skills, wading in to the criminal underworld and inevitably making rookie mistakes. Both Ross and the guy in Bangkok had their personal emails tied to the markets. Some kids running a big market from Germany connect…

Setting up a dark web market is something most people would want to get anywhere close to...

Imagine being responsible for facilitating murder-for-hire, sex trafficking and so on...

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

#156

Post by stef25 »

senectus1 wrote: post #4
na85 wrote: post #2

Text of TFA uses the term "infiltrating" in lieu of "cracking". Not that I necessarily expect Reuters to keep their infosec terminology straight but I wonder if this was a novel hack or if was a simple matter of a judicial gag order, seizing the developer's account and then pushing out a malicious update that enabled MITM or something.

from what I understand they developed the app themselves... marketed and pushed the app to certain "dark markets" and let them use the apps and devices as if they were secure. they were in fact real time monitoring every transaction. amazing really. and pretty funny if you asked me :-P

If I present some device to my local street dealer and tell him to "use this it's secure I swear" he'll probably punch me cause he suspects a trap.

Amazing that these "world class" criminals fall for this stuff.

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

#157

Post by Zenst »

femto wrote: post #43

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is covering it in more detail than the Reuters article, including some of the mechanics of how it was pulled off: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/fbi-afp-underworld-cr... Apparently it revolved around duping Hakan Ayik, one of Australia's most wanted drug dealers now operating as an international kingpin from Turkey, to trust the app and recommend it to his associates. I…

You have to respect this type of policing approach, the ironey is just delicious when you consider: 1) They socialy engineered their target just like scammers would 2) They got the target to install and trust some 3rd party app they supplied 3) Then the victim pyramid pushed the scam app onto others.

We often read (1) and (2) all the time with various scams from call centres, now the law has used that approach against a criminal and taken it too another level.

I have a lot of respect for this approach against such criminals on many levels.

But one take away from all this - IT security is often limited by humans and this highlights that perfectly. Just nice too read about criminals falling foul to the law who have taken one of their play-books and used it against them. Sure makes a change from reading about some old person loosing all their savings as somebody convinced them to install some random app just because they said they was from the bank/Microsoft etc.

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

#158

Post by rbobby »

I find this a bit concerning. Catching bad guys is all well and good but I wonder whether the various governments are overreaching.

Selling a bugged phone to a known criminal is likely fine (cite: The Wire).

But is it acceptable to sell a bugged phone to unknown/unidentified/random people and then use the phone's communications to determine if the owner is a crook and the owner's identity? The sole basis of suspicions seems to be "bought phone", or maybe "bought phone using bitcoin", or even "bought phone on TOR using bitcoin".

It will be interesting to see how many of these cases hold up in court.

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

#159

Post by Zenst »

Santosh83 wrote: post #7

The lesson here is complete trust in modern computing platforms is misplaced and impossible. Your hardware has backdoors, so does your OS, and encryption clients. In addition, popular apps, especially in the US, can always be commandeered by 3-letter agencies. You're only anonymous as long as you're not actively targetted, despite using "secure" apps and stuff like Tor, which media makes it seem are unbreakable.

>The lesson here is complete trust in modern computing platforms is misplaced and impossible

For me the lesson here is the same old lesson - Your security is only as good as the humans that interact with it.

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

#160

Post by stef25 »

jakub_g wrote: post #52
dt3ft wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

$220M is not pocket money, but Durov's net worth is apparently $17.2B, so he could afford it for a few more years https://www.forbes.com/profile/pavel-durov/

He was listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2021, with a net worth of $17.2 billion. His fortune is largely driven by his ownership of Telegram

- Wikipedia.

So billions from Telegram, a free app. What am I missing?

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