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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

#271

Post by devilbunny »

cdogl wrote: post #32
cylde_frog wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about this too. What sort of people do international criminal organisations hire to manage their info-sec? A criminal that became a computer expert or a computer expert that became a criminal?

I suspect that people don't fall into such neat categories. You could pose a similar question re: lawyers whose bread and butter is protecting and representing people associated with organised crime (the kind of individuals represented by Maury from The Wire or Neil Mink from The Sopranos). Are they lawyers who developed a slippery version of ethics & morality, or people with loose ethical standards who entered law?…

Or, as the line from Breaking Bad went - you don't need a criminal lawyer. You need a criminal lawyer.

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

#272

Post by gpm »

rbobby wrote: post #158

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 suspicion…

I haven't read the court documents, but this seems theoretically solvable by just only accessing the backdoor on any particular phone once you've seen it send an incriminating message to a phone you are already accessing (and getting judges to sign off on warrants for it, paperwork is probably a nightmare).

You start with the head honchos phone, someone texts him about a drug shipment, so you get a warrant to access the backdoor on that phone as well, and so on.

As long as there aren't isolated cells, you get every cell phone. Since you're relying on the head honcho to push the phones, there probably aren't isolated cells.

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

#273

Post by astura »

rbobby wrote: post #158

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 suspicion…

These phones weren't "normal" in a way that non-criminal would just happen to buy/use - all of their functionality was stripped out except the ANOM app which was disguised as a calculator app and you needed to input a code to access it.

I'd also assume they don't just take orders from anyone, I'd imagine you'd need a referral.

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

#274

Post by varispeed »

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,…

> I expect this to be bigger than Panama Papers. Way bigger. I expect a few prominent politicians to be soon either arrested or "convinced" to step down.

I highly doubt it. The main drug operations run with state approval. If anything this was just an attempt to either clean the country from competition or just keep law enforcement busy. If you read the reports, what they have collected, this is nothing if you compare what kind of volumes are being moved every day.

For example, in the UK alone it is estimated that yearly volume of illegal cannabis sales is in the region of 6 billion of pounds and the haul of entire operation was like how much, a 100 million?

What it is going to achieve is a slight vacuum, new youth "get rich quick type" will take place and resume operations.

If this wasn't announced in the media, I doubt drug consumers would have ever noticed something happened. If someone is using illegal market, they have plenty of alternative contacts if their main dealer goes bust.

Also these things are already included in the pricing, so this will be just written off as cost of doing business.

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

#275

Post by dolmen »

simondotau wrote: post #174
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-t…

I can't help but imagine that what you're describing are the criminal gangs we know about; the ones which are well documented. If there are criminal gangs which we don't know about, that aren’t well documented, perhaps they're better at maintaining long term stability.

Criminal gangs that authorities don't know about are the ones that don't do significant activities.

Any criminal activities needs customers and so communicate about its activities.

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

#276

Post by michaelmrose »

Chris2048 wrote: post #189
adriancr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't care. Anyone who buys diamonds has blood on their hands too.

I think there is a material difference between buying a diamond and directly facilitating the activities of the drug cartels. In theory everyone buys things that are made by people in shitty conditions because there isn't much direct visibility on the front end as to what kind of nastiness happened elsewhere in the supply chain.

If you want that to change you have to make it illegal to do business with such folks not hope consumers fix it for you via the magic of the market.

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

#277

Post by bostonsre »

stef25 wrote: post #147
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…

So they got to this most wanted man and instead of arresting him they fed him an app to help catch all his buddies while at the same time put a target on his back? Pretty daring move.

It seems like kind of an evil move for law enforcement to put a target on his back like that. But I assume all of the bad guys knew which guy was pushing the phones, so he was probably going to be a target no matter what.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

donalhunt wrote: post #161
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,…

Europol press conference is available for playback now at https://youtu.be/e443mE8l-_0 There is another press conference at 09:00 PDT too (FBI I believe). Side note: Scotland is recognised separately from the UK in the list of participating countries. ;)

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by Scoundreller »

varispeed wrote: post #274
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,…

> I expect this to be bigger than Panama Papers. Way bigger. I expect a few prominent politicians to be soon either arrested or "convinced" to step down. I highly doubt it. The main drug operations run with state approval. If anything this was just an attempt to either clean the country from competition or just keep law enforcement busy. If you read the reports, what they have collected, this is nothing if you compar…

In other words, police and customs forces never bother to measure their “success” (seizures) in percent.

If they did, they’d get defunded. We’d get more off the streets by just buying it.

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