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The Mob's IT Department
An anonymous reader writes: An article at Bloomberg relates the story of two IT professionals who reluctantly teamed up with an organized criminal network in building a sophisticated drug smuggling operation. "[The criminals were] clever, recruiting Van De Moere and Maertens the way a spymaster develops a double agent. By the time they understood what they were involved in, they were already implicated." The pair were threatened, and afraid to go to the police. They were asked to help with deploying malware and building "pwnies" — small computers capable of intercepting network traffic that could be disguised as power strips and routers. In 2012, authorities lucked into some evidence that led them to investigate the operation. "Technicians found a bunch of surveillance devices on [the network of large shipping company MSC]. There were two pwnies and a number of Wi-Fi keyloggers—small devices installed in USB ports of computers to record keystrokes—that the hackers were using as backups to the pwnies. MSC hired a private investigator, who called PricewaterhouseCoopers' digital forensics team, which learned that computer hackers were intercepting network traffic to steal PIN codes and hijack MSC's containers."
It should have been: "OMG!!!! pwnies!!!"
Most likely they assumed, as most companies these days erroneously do, that their entire internal network is 'secure' and thus does not need encryption. Besides these dedicated devices, most corporate networks don't protect much against visiting and malware infested laptops. Even if they are aware of the chance of someone bringing a virus from home, they rather turn to device 'access controls' and trusting the device to self-report over securing the internal systems.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I heard they'll make you an offer you can't refuse.
These two were making €12,000 and €20,000 per month, before their involvement with the criminal element. One of them was seeking start up capital for a business venture and allowed himself to get roped in that way. If you give them the benefit of the doubt the best you can say about them is they were naive. In the worst reading they were greedy and willfully complicit. I suspect reality falls between those two extremes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Now, at my new job, I get to experience the joys of a locked down laptop that requires an RSA secrurid to log into the network, web is locked down, and no read/write access on the usb ports.
Just as an FYI, if a company is going to restrict local I/O resources to and from a computer, then using a computer is the wrong tool; they should be using thin-clients to a terminal server of some sort.
Life is not for the lazy.
No, I live in Chicago.
Seriously though, growing up on Taylor Street in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, we all knew who the mob guys were, and many of them were part of our extended families. I used to go fetch cigars for the old men who sat in front of the social club drinking espresso and they'd give me dollar bills and sage life advice. The barber and the tailor at Taylor and Loomis were both bookies.
Actually, in the case of the Chicago mob, they didn't destroy trust in those institutions, they replaced trust in those institutions for people who were blocked from having access to them. Today, if you want to get a bet down, you just have to go online or buy a lottery scratch-off ticket. Back then, you had to go see the barber. If you needed a loan, you saw the loan shark (who actually charged less interest than today's payday loan joints). If you needed the pothole in your street fixed, you went to talk to the precinct captain (who could be found putting down a bet with the barber or drinking espresso at the social club).
So see, the mob didn't destroy trust in normal functioning institutions of society, it created trust in people where the institutions of society didn't function properly.
Today, those old mob guys are almost all dead, and their kids went to med school or law school and are living out in the suburbs or on the North Side. All the mob's wealth has been laundered through the "normal functioning institutions of society" and their kids and grandkids are paragons of those functioning institutions. The mob here has always been the way immigrant populations assimilate. Do you think the fortunes of any of the great families in the US were built very differently? From Rockefeller to Kennedy to Romney, the fortunes are always built on something a little sleazy.
This all may be different where you are. This story happens to be about "the mob" in Belgium, which I can't even imagine. Maybe they control the black market waffles or something.
You are welcome on my lawn.