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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

#311

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

acoard wrote: post #265
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, especially with the "coerciable locals", other than trying to say China and Russia have "zero rule of law".

His point is that foreign states could blackmail you or exert pressure in other ways, even if they aren't gonna extradite and throw you in jail following due process. Thus, Russia/China would have "coercible locals" in western countries.

In the US a "coercible local" is given a far less scary descriptor of confidential informant, or state's evidence. There are far more of those than there are "coerced locals" in the service of Russia or China.

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

#312

Post by cromka »

vkou wrote: post #283
Scoundreller wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you put a bounty on dead rats, you don't get a reduction in the amount of rats in your town. What you do get is people breeding rats, to turn in for the bounty. Drug markets will operate with similar incentives. If you want to kill the drug trade, what the government needs to do is to start selling drugs. When drugs are cheap, violence and interest in the drug trade plummets. Nobody wants to go to jail over thei…

> When you put a bounty on dead rats, you don't get a reduction in the amount of rats in your town. What you do get is people breeding rats, to turn in for the bounty.

The "Cobra effect".

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

#313

Post by janmo »

Scoundreller wrote: post #290
janmo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps if the WLAN module was not disabled they could have used the mac addresses of the WLAN router. But that's a good question.

Jokes on you, my WLAN MAC is B00B1E55:B00B1E55:B00B1E55:B00B1E55 and yours should be too.

This doesn't help a lot if you have a neighbor WLAN in reach. They would just used that one to locate you.

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

#314

Post by cronix »

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. ;)

The first 14:30 of that video has no audio and basically B-roll footage. I'm sure a lot of people wont watch the whole thing and miss the actual conference.

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

#316

Post by stef25 »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #241
stef25 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don't know how Ross and other dark web folks were caught, despite all the official stories. We know what the FBI _tells_ us was the security issue. However, the Snowden doc's reveal that they are instructed to construct other legitimate stories for how to implicate a criminal after the have compromised him in order to not reveal their tactics. The exact term they used in the docs escapes my memory, but we only kno…

Ross did post on shroomery and stackoverflow with identifiable information ... In the case of the former it was clearly linked to the site. And those posts are still up.

The guy in Bangkok had his personal email in reply-to headers of the the "welcome" emails being sent out. If that wasn't true, everyone who received the mail could have proven that.

Parallel reconstruction may have been a occurred, it's true we won't know.

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

#317

Post by jliptzin »

koheripbal wrote: post #301
bart_spoon wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black markets exist and are extensive for products that are available through legal means.

To a much lesser extent though. I cannot think of any time I've used a black market for something that was otherwise available on the regular market. It's not common, and not very profitable.

Also has anyone ever been shot or had their arm chopped off with a chainsaw over cigarette smuggling to avoid sales tax?

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

#318

Post by asimpletune »

sorbits wrote: post #306
asimpletune wrote: post #296

This is how police should get around the problems presented with encryption. This is real policing. The PR barrage and faux posturing by the FBI to weaken encryption has always seemed like just lazy policing to me. If anything, the hacking attacks on industrial centers has better illustrated than anything why encryption is necessary, and this new triumph has demonstrated that police can continue to function, even thr…

> This is how police should get around the problems presented with encryption. By adding a backdoor to E2E encryption? That is pretty much what they have been asking for :) Amazing that criminals still pick some unknown device over an existing solution with a proven track record. This is not the first time something like this has happened: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_…

tl;dr hacking is allowed, abusing gov't authority to compel is cheating.

I don't think it's really the same as "what they were asking for" at all.

a.) they didn't compel a company to secretly do it for them

b.) the back door is targeted, I.e. not mass surveillance

As far as I understand, they did the work themselves (modified android OS), and their methods were targeted. A "bad guy" could only get this special, hacked phone, from other "bad guys". This wasn't the same thing as, sending a mole to get work at Cisco and install an undetectable zero-day in all communication infrastructure switches world-wide. And it's definitely a far cry from forcing apple to make a modified iOS on their behalf.

No, they pretty much did what hackers do, and as far as I'm concerned, that's fair game.

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

#319

Post by worik »

Zenst wrote: post #209
foobar1962 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They got the target to install and trust some 3rd party app I just heard on the radio (I’m an Aussie) that it’s not a phone app, it’s some kind if dedicated device that doesn’t do sms, mail or voice, only encrypted messages (that the law enforcement had the keys to).

Oh that's even more delicious - it's like a modern version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes story or the drug dealers new phone in this instance - That the dealer was sold on the aspect that it would be invisible to the law. It just get's better and better.

It was much more than drug dealers.

Generally drug dealers are servants of their community, providing goods and services to people in a collegial manner.

These were viscous, murderous, gangsters. Their greed and hubris bought them down as much as cleaver policing. Which is not to minimise the cleverness of the coppers, very cleaver, very smart. Get these parasites out of our communities.

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

#320

Post by worik »

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. ;)

Scotland has a separate police force.
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