How FBI Informant Sabu Helped Anonymous Hack Brazil

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes 'A year after leaked files exposed the National Security Agency's efforts to spy on citizens and companies in Brazil, previously unpublished chat logs obtained by Motherboard reveal that while under the FBI's supervision, Hector Xavier Monsegur, widely known by his online persona, "Sabu," facilitated attacks that affected Brazilian websites.The operation raises questions about how the FBI uses global Internet vulnerabilities during cybercrime investigations, how it works with informants, and how it shares information with other police and intelligence agencies.

After his arrest in mid-2011, Monsegur continued to organize cyber attacks while working for the FBI. According to documents and interviews, Monsegur passed targets and exploits to hackers to disrupt government and corporate servers in Brazil and several other countries. Details about his work as a federal informant have been kept mostly secret, aired only in closed-door hearings and in redacted documents that include chat logs between Monsegur and other hackers. The chat logs remain under seal due to a protective order upheld in court, but in April, they and other court documents were obtained by journalists at Motherboard and the Daily Dot.'

Comments

Snitch

[Anonymous Coward]

Someday someone will get him back just for the lulz

So Anonymous were useful idiots for the FBI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Anonymous as a by-proxy hacking tool. Brilliant! I'm surprised the NSA hasn't...

oh crap

That's how they did it!

[dave562]

Recently there was an article about how the FBI was having problems recruiting competent IT talent due to their zero tolerance policy with marijuana.

Apparently that problem has been solved. All they really need to do is arrest the people who have the skills that they need, and then coerce them into doing the work that needs to be done.

We all know that the prison system is often tapped as a source of unskilled and low skilled labor. Obviously this is just taking that model to a new level. What's next? Mass incarceration of bitTorrent users who will then be forced into the life of skript kiddies in exchange for money on the books at the Club Fed commissary?

Re:That's how they did it!

[AHuxley]

Re All they really need to do is arrest the people who have the skills that they need, and then coerce them into doing the work that needs to be done.
That method of enter and turn into gov informants worked well for the labor movement, woman rights, law reform, peace activists, anti nuclear protesters, animal rights, tax reform, far left, far right, 3rd party, faith based groups.
The methods are usually the same - join the gov backed NGO and do useless busy work, tax free with a nice wage, car and hand out/sell glossy safe material to people while asking for support.
Start a group and find your 5th or 8th supporter an informant or gov official reporting on you. With federal funding they can become part of the group for years, decades, working their way up, even taking over the group. At a state, city, local level, funding might be tight and they have to induce action that can be used in court at a much more rapid rate.
Mass incarceration was considered by East Germany - the costs of keeping the vast numbers in clothing, feeding them, guarding the location, ensuring the relatives understood the nature of the arrest - it all becomes very expensive and complex. Better just to flood any movement with informants from younger to retired and see what they bring back using charm, skills or the life experience to fit in.
The contact can be positive - first name, an offer to chat, a coffee, no more loans, no tax, spending money, that car, holiday for doing what interests you. Just making notes, recording, getting up to admin level pw, suggesting the next 'protest'... bringing a new face in.
The contact can be negative - you have to work fast or you get the concurrent and consecutive criminal sentences.

Re:That's how they did it!

[TubeSteak]

From here, the sequence of events is relatively undisputed. With Hammond equipped and as FBI agents reportedly watched on, AntiSec began plundering Stratforâ(TM)s financial information and personal records. Monsegur convinced Hammond and others to unknowingly transfer âoemultiple gigabytes of confidential dataâ to one of the FBIâ(TM)s servers. That included the roughly 60,000 credit card numbers and records for Stratfor customers that Hammond was ultimately charged with stealing.

This is going to piss off a lot of very powerful people who were on that customer & credit card list.

Re:That's how they did it!

[fnj]

They solved the problem by lowering their standards and just hiring drug addicts outright.

It is spectacularly ignorant to refer to marijuana users as "drug addicts".

Re:That's how they did it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently that problem has been solved. All they really need to do is arrest the people who have the skills that they need, and then coerce them into doing the work that needs to be done.

It's worse than that.

In the name of counterterrorism, the FBI scouts around for a radicalized lone-wolf guy, giving him a fake bomb plot, a fake partner, and a fake bomb, and arresting him when he pulls the trigger on the fake bomb.

And you know, sometimes that strikes me as unconscionable; I mean, he's got the motive, but would the guy have ever tried to harm someone (even with a fake bomb) if he hadn't been given the means and opportunity by the FBI? But I can understand the practice. It's not entrapment, and it's a legitimate part of what we call "good old-fashioned policework."

But this isn't the cybersecurity equivalent of giving flight training and bombmaking lessons to wannabe terrorists and arresting them before the fake plot gets anywhere near the point of harming them. This is the cybersecurity of giving flight training and bombmaking lessons to real terrorists and then letting them execute the plan with real airplanes, real bombs, and real victims before making the arrest.

It is utterly unconscionable, and it makes the FBI responsible for the damage their hired/duped criminals do. That the harm is financial, and that it is inflicted upon the innocent by means of a keyboard rather than a bomb, makes the FBI's actions here no less unconscionable.

I am embarassed for this country, and feel pity for its citizens.

Re:That's how they did it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spectacularly ignorant to ignore the fact that marijuana is addictive, and this has been established for a number of years now. Here's an excerpt from a peer-reviewed journal making this point:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2797098/

"Although some people question the concept of marijuana dependence or addiction, diagnostic, epidemiological, laboratory, and clinical studies clearly indicate that the condition exists, is important, and causes harm"

There exists a great body of articles that have scientifically proven the harm marijuana does. Correspondingly there are no scientific articles that conclusively invalidate any of these findings, and there are a small body of articles that have found legitimate uses for marijuana in an extraordinarily limited scope, findings which in _no way_ support recreational use outside of individuals with very specific medical conditions.

I encourage you to educate yourself. You should look into the effects marijuana has on psychosis, schizophrenia, worsening depression, paranoia, impacting motivation, and altering the density of grey matter in the brain. If you are a Reddit user, please read /r/leaves and look at how real people desperately struggle to quit using marijuana, with effects persisting for months or years.

I always invite people who support marijuana use to educate themselves, because misinformation is the cornerstone of the drug legalization policy. Go find that information for yourself, I promise you'll find the results aren't what drug users and drug advocacy groups like NORML claim it to be.

Re:That's how they did it!

[s.petry]

Well spoken. I was honestly about to type up very similar in a Car analogy (not joking) instead of an airplane. That people don't understand how this is worse than just simple "coercion" is baffling. This is much worse than coercion, because the FBI watched as real crimes occurred. Crimes that the US claimed were an act of war to be more precise.

The whole point of defending citizens and preventing crimes has been thrown out of the window for some reason, and very few seem to be paying attention.

As a secondary example, if the police arrest a drug dealer they _can_ legally allow them to turn over higher level players in exchange for pleas. They can not legally allow the suspect back on the streets and supervise their drug sales while they wait for a rival dealer to show up. The police in that case, and the FBI in TFA, are behaving criminally and should be charged as criminals.

Feel free to debate me regarding my opinion, but please save the fallacy responses (like the appeals to emotion I can already see coming).

Re: That's how they did it!

[tom's a-cold]

You can only say that all things can be addictive if your definition of additctiveness is stretched to the point of meaninglessness. A more sensible definition is that, unless there are physical withdrawal symptoms, it's not an addictive substance. It can still be possible to be a compulsive user of non-addictive substances, just like you can be a compulsive watcher of TV or a compulsive eater of grapefruit. But those things are just metaphorically "addictive."

Attacking GOVERMENT servers under FBI guidance???

[aod7br]

Attacking GOVERMENT servers under FBI guidance??? WTF is an internal north american police agency doing messing with brazilian goverment sites?? Omg, long time I dont care to login in slashdot to post something, but here it is:
VA SE FUDER US goverment
Fucking with my country supporting a military coup and keeping those murderers in power for 30 years wasnt enough? You are trying AGAIN to undermine a democratic goverment just because we have a non automatic alignment policy with the US on foreign affairs? Just because we supported democraticaly ELECTED Chaves and others in south america? All american authorities should be considered persona non grata in Brazil, and ALL US goverment agents related to FBI and NSA should be imediately ARRESTED in brazillian soil. I am tired of american goverment double face with friendly nations

Act of war

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that hacking is considered an act of war, did the FBI just help wage war against another nation? Shouldn't they need someone to give them the ok before they go around the world causing trouble for everyone but the people they were supposed to catch?

Up next: H&HS take over prison executions

[pla]

Seriously, WTF, US government agencies? Did I miss the announcement of "opposite decade"?

We have the DoJ obstructing justice by intentionally destroying evidence;
we have the BATF running guns to Mexican cartels;
we have ICE taking captured illegals out of local police custody and setting them loose on the streets;
we have the NSA spying on the single target off limits to them, with a true patriot under asylum in fucking Russia for pointing that out...

And now we have the FBI coordinating cyberattacks on the government of another country?

Can we just stop pretending, and admit the government has absolutely no interest whatsoever in obeying the will of We The People?

Re:Attacking GOVERMENT servers under FBI guidance?

[rtb61]

I will add a minor correction for you, It is always important to recognise the reality of what is going on. Simply blaming the government of the US, is not really accurate, that aligns too much of the fault to the bulk of the citizens of US (although they are most definitely partially to blame). You need to call it the Corporate States of America. Basically the US government and it's Agencies corruptly taken over to further the interests of psychopathic US corporate executives not just US corporations but Multi-National Corporations (so not even just Americans).

Your war is not really with the US government at all, just with the Corporations that run it and those psychopathic corporate executives and the major investors who run those corporations. So cut of the head of the snake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... and the problem will go away. Don't blame or fight the puppet, the US government and it's agencies, get rid of the puppet masters examples like the Koch(head) Boys, and the problem will go away as the bulk of US citizens regain control of their own government. Help them, save you, from themselves.

Re:Attacking GOVERMENT servers under FBI guidance?

[s.petry]

I agree with your points, but will add that there were a few other motives. One I believe is a bigger target than Brazil.

1. Anonymous was a pain in the ass to corrupt US corporations and Government agencies. If you remember, US sites were being hacked and defaced for the same exact reasons claimed for defacing Brazilian sites. Anonymous was leaking classified documents implicating US agencies of war crimes and corruption, civil rights violations against OWS and other activist groups. In other words, a primary motive was attacking anonymous members to slow down their campaign in the US. IMHO "Sabu" is full of shit in his exit statement from the courts. Anonymous was the primary target because they are a threat to the corrupt insiders in the US.

2. Fuck with non-US aligned countries. Brazil was a target, but so was Syria, Pakistan, Iran, and Nigeria. Turkey and Pakistan are mentioned, but I'm guessing those were real targets of anonymous because they are corrupt and not a traditionally vocal allies of the US. Interestingly "US" is omitted from this information but was the reason they arrested Sabu to begin with. That they could fuck with so many countries was a huge side effect of number 1, but not the primary motive. Notice after all of these arrests, Anonymous greatly reduces the attacks against US companies and Government agencies. Notice too that the vocal allies of the US are omitted from these attacks (UK, Germany, France, Spain, etc...).

3. As someone else mentioned, including Sabu in his exit statement, this a case of the FBI trying to make themselves look good. I come to that conclusion because there are exactly 2 very brief mentions in TFA about the legality of the FBIs actions and neither are direct.

Re:Up next: H&HS take over prison executions

[Opportunist]

Never forget: September 11th.

Yes, 1973. What did you expect?

Attacking GOVERMENT servers under FBI guidance???

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Brazilian.

Just MHO. Though I mostly agree with OP, "support" is too strong a word in the present case. We acknowledge a democratically elected Politician (the late Chaves). I've never heard any praise to him in Brazil; exactly the opposite, at least some of us think the King of Spain was right to say "Why don't you shut up?" to him. We have high regards for all our neighbors -- and Venezuela is an important one. We're trying to rid the neighborhood from external dividing influences, better to make a continent of equals, where union is put at service of all democracies.

The USA must grow up and learn that the "big stick" idea, while great throughout the Cold War, is a liability nowadays. You don't sit to do peace talks or hope to have a participating voice in a meeting if your first act is to carefully put a revolver on the table. People stand up, move to another room and let you and your gun alone talking to the walls.

Also, putting the blame on corporations -- while possibly accurate -- leads to nowhere, because nobody has the power (or should have) to somehow control or influence other countries' citizens or companies. Which means: either you control your own country or nobody will do it for you. If you can't, things are FUBAR and we'll have a rogue nation without government to make things even worse.

Brazil certainly is no model of organization, our flag notwithstanding, but the recent news about some intelligence departments going wild and the paranoia of some governments regarding information issues are a threat to everyone's liberties all over the world.

You really should have a Friendship Secretary/Minister. Having solely military ones will not lead you to better relationships. You should have someone to tell you how such spying is bad for yourselves.