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French Hacker Arrested After Bragging On TV
Orome1 writes "A French hacker has effectually tied a noose around his own neck when he bragged about hacking into the systems of a big government contractor on national TV. He participated in a television program called Further investigation, and he said — and demonstrated — that he has gained access to computers belonging to the French Army and Thales Group, a French company that provides information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, and security markets. He was arrested 6 days after the program was aired. The police discovered on his computer a great number of compromised credit card and bank account data."
soon as you get away with it enough you get complacent and let your guard down, thinking you are better than other criminals
It seems unrelated - he was treated as an anonymous source by the television programme, according to TFA. I can't see how the french police could have gotten anything out of that. They probably followed the money trail somehow since he was using stolen credit card data. And good riddance too, anyone using stolen credit cards is no better than a pickpocket no matter how they go about it.
Emotions! In your brain!
soon as you get away with it enough you get complacent and let your guard down, thinking you are better than other criminals
Being a loud mouth idiot does not happen to everyone. Being a criminal does not happen to everyone.
This guy was on the wrong TV show. He should have been on "World's Dumbest Criminals"
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Surprisingly, a good rule of thumb for any criminal is to stay clear of any cardinal sin.
Lust - don't let your dick make any decisions for you
Greed - know when to stop
Sloth - go the extra mile or else it might bite you
Wrath - like lust, an emotion that can negatively influence your judgment
Pride - the best criminal and the perfect crime is the one nobody knows about, and overconfidence leads to errors.
Gluttony - excessive consumption raises suspicions
Envy - don't try to outdo someone else. He is known for a reason.
Stunning police work took 6 days to arrest him...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
A certain proportion of hackers are so practised because they were raised by a computer, and as such are quite attention-seeking.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
It was probably the chain of command: nobody decides anything at the lower level especially if it means to do some work, so someone has to decide to do something high up, and then lunch time takes most of the day to get the memo all the way down. The decision to investigate probably came from Thales, not the army or police. I'm from France btw. Last year my brother had rare industrial equipment stollen, we found the guy on local craigslist style ad (picture of said equipment in a kid room), gave the police name, and address of the thief. They did not lift a finger while acknowledging he was indeed the culprit.
But yeah, unfortunately, experience tells me you are probably right being sarcastic.
France is particularly draconian about encryption. I'm not sure what their exact legal situation is.. in the UK you can be jailed for not giving up your encryption keys on demand, so you have to weigh up the sentence for that versus what you'd get for the crimes they'd convict you for if you did.
It appears that anything above 40-bit keys is illegal in France unless you use key escrow.
His downfall was actually a mistake by the production team.
Before emission they were masking his face and changing his voice, but during one sot where they filmed his screen while he ran a file browser on his PC, there was a directory name visible where information about his real name or "handle" could be seen.
This was quickly fixed in the version that was put on the internet but it was too late, the companies he bragged about having hacked filed a suit and the police came storming through his door and confiscated all hit stuff.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Actually in France its the other way round (guilty until proven innocent), Napoleonic code
There is a huge difference between smart and wise.
There is a huge difference between smart and good.
There is a very small difference between wise and good.
Our society values smart.
P.S. Considering that this is an article about France, I'd say our American society, but a lot of our American values came from France, too. Very few participants in the French Revolution, for example, were wise. Many (such as Dr. Guillotine) were smart. Nope -- our entire society values smart. Not very wise, if you ask me.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
He fell victim to social engineering.
This attack is called 'Ego Entrapment', where the victim's ego causes his head to swell beyond the coverage supplied by his tin foil hat, allowing exposure not sufficiently protected by his prerequisite paranoia.