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Anonymous Posts Audio of Intercepted FBI Conference Call
DrDevil writes "A member of the computer hacking group Anonymous has hacked into a telephone conference between the FBI and Scotland Yard (London Police) and posted it on the internet. The Daily Telegraph has a comprehensive article on the hack. The audio of the call can be heard here." Reader eldavojohn snips as well from the AP's story as carried by Google: "Those on the call talk about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis — two British suspects linked to Anonymous — and discuss details of the evidence gathered against other suspects."
If Anonymous can listen to FBI calls then they'll certainly know when the FBI will be coming to kick down their door.
This will really piss off the FBI and it will be the political motivation for the FBI to pull out all the stops to find members of Anonymous.
If the government can listen to our calls (without a warrant) then why can't we listen to theirs?
After all, if what amounts to a few script-kiddies can get this deep into confidential material, how much more material can a determined, knowledgeable, and well-funded adversary get?
Based on the vague discussion details and how the FBI sent out an email with the conference call number and password, it sounds more likely to be a setup by the FBI to lure Anon into the call so they could glean more location data off of them.
Nah. Never expect cleverness where carelessness would as easily explain how it was achieved.
Some agent has been found and his mailbox is regularly visited for content of interest. Use some better security, send out a honeypot once in a while and see who connects, etc. This is a lesson for FBI and Scotland Yard not to take their security for granted. Could have been worse.
I'm certain anyone else who was privy to these conference calls is highly annoyed at the exposure, which will result in some changes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They're the worst type of vigilantes, who in their own minds are drunk with power. They're the internet equivalent of a mob of Molotov-cocktail tossing anarchists who burn things down because it's fun to do. They rationalize their behavior any way they can
The problem is this same statement pretty well applies to the FBI and CIA and insert Gov agency here since 9/11.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Well, if the FBI and the Yard does not have anything to hide, then why are they so upset about being listened in on? They LOVE to live in a surveillance society so much that they're the primary force in bringing it to be!
You should ALWAYS listen to what the police say.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Believe it or not, there are shades of grey between "I don't want 4chan dabbling in national security" and "I am a genocidal totalitarian".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's sure as hell not mightier than the public, though.
As long as double cheeseburgers are 99 cents, I don't think most of the public can be motivated to do much of anything.
It is poor tradecraft to reveal an adversary's weakness if you plan to continue to exploit it.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
No.
They are moral, legal and operational equivalents of Inspector Javert.
But they are on track to reach STASI equivalency, in th coming decade.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Or, it's brilliant.
Let's say Anon managed to through some one-time gap (ie a sympathetic insider, perhaps) managed to get the login details to this one conference. It's meaningless, because they can't repeat the success.
However, if they leak it:
- heads roll at the FBI
- everyone's walking on eggshells because of management fury
- everyone's required to use full-secure protocols and resources for the stupidest trivial conversations
- FBI still doesn't know who leaked it, so begins witchhunt which consumes resources, and makes everyone nervous.
I think it's probably a one-off, parlayed into a fairly clever bit of system-attack.
You know, like a single coordinated unrepeatable multiplane hijacking could theoretically cause an entire country to be consumed by paroxysms of paranoia for more than a decade, leading to absurd legislation, efficiency costs for hundreds of millions of people, as well as actual TRILLIONS of dollars of waste.
Right?
-Styopa