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. ' "

Comments

Re:Why doesn't this make sense?

[rikkards]

Easy. There is no honor among theives.

I read the dead tree version on Tuesday and was not that impressed. There was no technical merit in how they caught them (except for the tap) basically they got an informer on the inside and got a tap on their website.

Re:At what cost?

[ScentCone]

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.