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The Strange Disappearance of Dancho Danchev
rudy_wayne writes "ZDNet is reporting that Zero Day blogger and malware researcher Dancho Danchev has gone missing since August of last year. Dancho, who was relentless in his pursuit of cyber-criminals, last blogged here on August 18. His personal blog has not been updated since September 11, 2010. 'At ZDNet, we made multiple attempts to contact him, to no avail. Telephone numbers are going to Bulgarian language voicemails and our attempts to reach him via a snail mail address also came up empty. Just recently, a trusted member of the malware research community reached out to us to say he had received a troubling letter from Dancho on September 9, 2010, about the threat of persecution in Bulgaria.'"
Those guys don't normally disappear their enemies, bombs are more their style.
Everyone knows that disappearances only matter if the subject is an attractive, young, blond, female. Preferably from at least an upper middle class background.
Speaking of tin foil hats, let me point out that his last post was on the 9th anniversary of 9/11. Coincidence, gentlemen? I think not. For me personally, the scariest thing is seeing my /. nick subtly hidden in my very own post.
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It's Bulgaria -- it's *extremely* rare, almost unheard of, for the police to be able to keep anybody in jail for longer than 72 hours, especially for a non-violent crime accusation. I haven't seen anything in the Bulgarian news about this guy either -- and there would be, given that again, this is Bulgaria and you can't keep anything quiet. The fact that officials there are corrupt does not mean that everyone doesn't know who is corrupt in exactly what way...
Not exactly. It's eastern Europe. It's corrupt as hell and cybercrime is a big business. Who's to say that the authorities aren't being bribed to go after this guy? It could well be paranoid ranting, but this guy is in a pretty shitty country where the cops are far, far more corrupt than the ones in the western world.
It's easy to tell scary tales for foreign countries, but I'm here in Bulgaria and I can tell you that it's actually a normal country. We do have a higher rate of corruption, that is insufficient to outright claim cops acting autonomously disappear people on a regular basis in here.
Some things in Danchev's email don't compute for me. He says he's prosecuted for his clearly pro-western bias. Ever since the USSR collapse, this country has had a pro-western bias itself. We're in NATO and EU for crying out loud. The fixtures photos are unfortunately not a very clear message of what he intended. Surely if he wanted to show us bugs he'd take more specific photos.
Either ZDNet has decided to withhold some of the information they have, which is understandable, or Danchev was under stress when sending these emails, which is very likely to be assumed. Unfortunately the reason for this stress may range as wildly as from a governmental hunt to possible mental issues.
If he ever stepped on someone's interests, I doubt it'd be the government as a whole, more a specific organized group that was hurt by his work or has been "asking" persistently for his "help". Which doesn't match his description of the events.
So we're left speculating or mocking the guy, or insulting his country, with a clue on what's going on. Sometimes, if you have nothing to say, it's best to say nothing.
... this really does sound like a case of paranoid schizophrenia. The business with the photo of the lighting transformer pretty much proves it. :(
Frankly, he'd have been better off being clubbed by mobsters and stuffed into the trunk of a car. I hope they find him before he does serious harm to himself or anyone else.
Well it might not be. I recently came home from a hacker conference where we discussed the relative merits of using puts("Hello Word!!!\n"); against printf ("Hello World!!!\n"); and how both are open to attacks from malware juggernauts. Upon returning home I noticed THIS installed on my roof. It's damn lucky I have a keen eye for subtle details or I could have been another victim of malware overlords bugging my house. These people have power beyond your understanding.
He seems to have been active on his twitter until the 20th of October:
http://twitter.com/danchodanchev
thus invalidating the September 9's menace hypothesis.
He may simply have found a new job, and lost interest in updating his blog, or he may be paranoid and is hiding himself, by stopping all his online activities.
Using Twitter is not really the best way to stay discreet and anonymous.
Swedish girls.
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...but this guy is in a pretty shitty country where the cops are far, far more corrupt than the ones in the western world.
Clearly you've never visited the city of New Orleans or the state of Illinois.
I tend to mod things appropriately. If it's funny, I mod it as such. If it's not informative, I don't mod it as informative.
If being funny were meant to affect karma, it would.
I like to reward folks for being funny.
While that's very considerate of you, a funny post marked as 'Informative' is more than likely to get subsequently modded down; messages with comedic substance tend to come across as wholly incorrect assertions when read from sources being represented as useful information.
My brother spent two years in Bulgaria. He met a lot of good folks and had many good things to say about the place, but he wasn't shy about pointing out outright government corruption from top to bottom. Some states in eastern Europe faired better than others when the USSR collapsed, but organized crime is still pretty rampant even in the better-off states.
Clearly you've never visited the city of New Orleans or the state of Illinois.
We here in the US don't claim them anymore. New Orleans is now part of Hatti, and most of Illinois is a micronation.
I am Bulgarian and I pretty much think he is a nut job. First of all I had a long history working with Bulgarian ISPs and Bulgarian authorities and I have never heard of him. His linkedin profile is outright ridiculous. What is shown on the pictures is a lamp transformer and bad wiring for in-cupboard bathroom spotlight lamps. Looking at his pictures I would say he has a crazy look. I read his self-proclaimed security researches and I find nothing interesting in them.
The only possible explanation I have is that he tried to brag his work and abilities in some bar in front of people who actually understand these matters and they devastated him. Ralising this he just tried to put some story to get away semi decently, and then he found something better to do.
Why, is he gay?
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Impossible! On the night in question, the devil was with me. We were in a painting class at the local community college.
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No, I think it's because a missing Bulgarian malware researcher is supposed to make us all solemn.
Considering the players who have been getting in the malware business lately, I'm surprised there're not more missing malware researchers.
I hope this guy is all right, though. There are some rough people in that game, and Bulgaria is a place (yes, I've been) where people have been going missing for a long time. May he only be on a five-day bender or something as innocent. We live in a world where doing something decent can sometimes bring unwanted attention of unpleasant people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's not the criminal malware folks that are the really dangerous ones. It's the state-sponsored ones.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I live just an ICBM's throw away from the Everglades,
What a coincidence, so do I!
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This is slashdot, they tell the same scary stories about he US, UK and recently even Sweden.
Ah, yes, Sweden, where shoplifting is referred to as "rape of inventory," wire fraud is defined as "rape of database," armed robbers are charged with "rape of wallet," and jaywalking is known as "rape of traffic."
Kinda reminds me of the kier/cha0 story which you can read here - Quite scary stuff. There are other events like this out there as well involving organised criminals kidnapping people who started investigating their links with malware and botnets.
And you can be arrested for being a dickhead unless you wear a condom as a hat.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I have to agree with ya Pope and lets be honest folks, people are killed every single day for a hell of a lot less money than what a botnet herder gets. And with the guy being in Bulgaria? Well it ain't really that far from there to botnet central AKA Russia. It would be like me being within an easy drive of the Mexican border and stirring up shit for the narcos. Would anybody be surprised if I just "went missing"?
So while I truly hope as you do he is just tying one on somewhere from what I've seen most folks just don't generally walk away from their life, certainly not for 5+ months. And if this guy was big into cyber crimefighting I doubt that theory even more, as it takes some dedication to do that kind of thing successfully and those with that skill set usually don't just "walk away" from it all.
And what are the odds that if he was snatched they would EVER find anything? Europe is a hell of a big place, I'm sure there are plenty of places to lose someone forever that wouldn't leave a trace, just as there is a rumor here a local snitch that "went missing" a couple of years back got "done a Fargo" (chipper shredder) right into the local river after costing one person too many serious money on a methlab getting busted. And from what I understand a good botnet can make as much money as a methlab and is certainly less risky.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
C'mon, you know they're a myth. Why do people keep repeating that lame nonsense over and over?
Because it makes a good story. You know, like dragons kidnapping princesses, or the liberal media persecuting Republicans.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
If being funny were meant to affect karma, it would.
And in fact, it used to. That it no longer does is another one of /.'s unfortunate regressions. Another one being that it used to allow non-Latin1 characters in comments (e.g., Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and others). Just because CmdrTaco decides to change something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. The ability to post comments with arbitrary characters was removed due to abuse of Unicode control characters; the proper solution would've been to filter only the control characters, rather than to filter out 99% of the characters.
I don't know what the reasoning was behind the removal of Funny's karma bonus, but I suspect that the reasoning wasn't very sound.
I've met him - he's a nice guy and pretty with it. Other smart people I know value his opinions as well. I think your message says more about your insecurities and abilities than it does about Dancho to be honest. BTW, you cannot evaluate "crazy" by looking at still photos.
Indeed, which is why you look to see if it's already been moderated funny. If it hasn't you moderate it 'funny', if it has you moderate it 'underrated', giving karma without changing the way the post is described.
FGD 135
Oh, wait, that one's true; drawn "child pornography" *is* illegal here. I believe it was the current Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask who had gotten into her head that it's drawings of real, live people. Someone needs to speak up against that besides the PP, who it seems have been semi-discredited in the local media recently. Another fun thing she's done was suggest openly that men suspected of visiting a prostitute should get letters home in some jarring colour so the whole family can berate them for their shame.
Maybe she's good at her job, just a bit impulsive?
Emotions! In your brain!
(which is exactly why funny isn't a karma modifier; it's too easy and doesn't contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way).
Do what I do and mod them underrated, then. Someone else will mod it Funny if it's funny.
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yah, I did. But Bismarck to Mexico is downhill, so it's faster and easier.
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