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How the Secret Service Busted ShadowCrew

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the breakin-the-law-breakin-the-law dept.

plover writes "In the story Hacker Hunters, BusinessWeek Online documents how the Secret Service turned a member of the ShadowCrew and was able to arrest dozens of the members of the phishing ring. From the article: 'Law enforcement officials are often loath to reveal details of their operations, but the Secret Service and Justice Dept. wanted to publicize a still-rare victory. So they agreed to reveal the inner dynamics of their cat-and-mouse chase to BusinessWeek. The case provides a window into the arcane culture of cybercriminals and the methods of their pursuers. ' "

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wasn't that here before? by DustyShadow · · Score: 4, Informative

    yes it was: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/22/172 2243&from=rss

  2. Re:Why doesn't this make sense? by Cruciform · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're a tough guy, silence is street cred.

    If you're a computer criminal, silence is 2 extra years in the slammer with your new boyfriend if you're convicted.

    No wonder they spill the beans.

  3. This isn't a very good version of the story by illumin8 · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA: For months, agents had been watching their every move through a clandestine gateway into their Web site, shadowcrew.com.

    I read a much more interesting version of this story somewhere else. I can't find the link right now, but it explained more fully how they really caught them. This sentence above just glosses over it.

    Apparently, they did this:

    They got to one of the members of shadowcrew and convinced them to work with them. This guy then proceeded to go onto the shadowcrew IRC channel and told everyone that he had setup a new encrypted gateway VPN type channel that would allow them to connect to the shadowcrew servers in a "more secure" fashion. He convinced everyone to go through this proxy. Little did they know, the proxy was actually an FBI server that was monitoring and recording all traffic that passed through it.

    This just goes to show, no matter how smart you are, the best hacks are social engineering hacks, not technical.

    They should have been smart and used Tor instead, then they probably wouldn't have been caught.

    I'm glad they got caught though. These guys were losers of the worst kind.

    --
    "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon