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How the Secret Service Busted ShadowCrew
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. ' "
Now I haven't RTFA completely yet, but I have just one question.
Why would somebody in a phishing group give out their information to fellow members? This kind of thing seems to happen so often, you'd think that there would at least be a layer of secrecy between the members, just in the case somebody is going to rat on them.
but it is too easy anymore to question why authorities give us this information
Actually, if you've ever met anyone in counter intelligence, or their bretheren in law enforcement that deal with these somewhat less tangible threats, being able to crow about a successful bust is a rare thing. Most of the time these guys have to go home every day without even being able to talk about what they do all day, even when they've really mopped up after a particularly unpleasant character or group. They can talk to each other, but they really feel (correctly, I think) that without coverage of some of their more high profile victories, that people will either not get what they do, or (worse) dream up versions of what they do, mostly based on X-Files re-runs.
Certainly there are always going to be political components to public releases of this sort of thing. But by that I mean "political" in the sense of "making sure that people appreciate you." Not partisan politics, per se, just run of the mill See, I'm Valuable spin. No different than what happens in every office/school/church/family every day. The real accomplishments of a lot of the stealthier intel and defense people are simply never going to make the news, and it's a great frustration to the people that work in those fields. A lot of them quit and go back to the private sector just so they feel they can breathe a little. Of course, anyone in the R&D lab of a private company is going to feel the same way about drug research or battery engineering.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Nothing like sensational journalism:
A huge map of the U.S., spread across 12 digital screens, gave them a view of their prey, from Arizona to New Jersey.
Yes, they were "prey" and the Secret Service were eagles flying high in the air to protect freedom. Give me a fucking break. But of course this wasn't just a single sentence to get the readers interested, nope, the entire "article" is full of this crap:
The target: the ShadowCrew, a gang whose members were schooled in identity theft, bank account pillage, and the fencing of ill-gotten wares on the Web, police say.
Yes, they have a hackers college where professors teach their students how to be thieves. Oh wait, no they don't...
At 9 p.m., Nagel, the Secret Service's assistant director for investigations, issued the "go" order. Agents armed with Sig-Sauer 229 pistols and MP5 semi-automatic machine guns swooped in, aided by local cops and international police.
Ahh, the freedom eagle reference again... Swooping down on their "prey".
There's a new breed of crime-fighter prowling cyberspace: the hacker hunters.
Yes more predator/prey relationships. No, sorry.
This was not a movie, it should not be written as if it were, and it should not be written to give any ideas to other people who might want to make it into a movie. It was a typical "wait it out and arrest" type operation. There was nothing that was any more exciting about this than any other operation. Of course the media has to make it out to be more than it is to gain the attention of readers.
Stick to the facts and cut out the crap. Thanks for the dupe.
It's cute how there are so many dupes of messages saying that the article is a dupe.
Here's the thing - if it's a dupe, do you REALLY need to say that it is? If so, why? Moral superiority? Some sort of misplaced dedication? Ego trip?
Come on - as with listservs, when someone asks how to unsub, just send a message offline and leave it be. There's no need to launch into a tirade saying how slashdot has gone down hill, etc, etc.
Come on, people - this is a nice sandbox. Let's all place nice.
(I'm not suggesting the parent isn't playing nice, but he was the second "this story is a dupe.")
FBI relying on the cooperation of arbitrary(?) choosen commertial anti-virus developer and implicitly promoting them doesn't sound right. It's as if FBI subcontracted part of their work to private secutity company to break some crime ring. It should be other way around. FBI should have experts of such quality that anti-virus companies would ask them for advice.