Google Has Notified At Least Dozens of People Targeted by Secret FBI Investigation (vice.com)

At least dozens of people have received an email from Google informing them that the internet giant responded to a request from the FBI demanding the release of user data, news outlet Motherboard reported Tuesday, citing several people who claimed to have received the email. The email did not specify whether Google released the requested data to the FBI. From the report: The unusual notice appears to be related to the case of Colton Grubbs, one of the creators of LuminosityLink, a $40 remote access tool (or RAT), that was marketed to hack and control computers remotely. Grubs pleaded guilty last year to creating and distributing the hacking tool to hundreds of people. Several people on Reddit, Twitter, and on HackForums, a popular forum where criminals and cybersecurity enthusiast discuss and sometimes share hacking tools, reported receiving the email. [...] The email included a legal process number. When Motherboard searched for it within PACER, the US government's database for court cases documents, it showed that it was part of a case that's still under seal.

Comments

Re:"Smart move?"

[Bobrick]

If only there was an article that could answer that question, maybe accessible through an hyperlink of some sorts...

Re:Was the tool itself malicious?

[ramriot]

And even if the tool is evil incarnate, that does not mean possession of it is a crime. Many security researches possess much worse items for the purpose of reverse engineering the hacks so that systems can be patched against the exploits contained. If the FBI perseus litigation against such people I can see no way it would not blow up in their face.

Probably part of the SCO-IBM case

[jfdavis668]

It will never end.

Re: "Smart move?"

[guruevi]

Remember when Obama did. Rules have changed since Nixon.

I'll Play Devil's Court Appointed Attourney

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the FBI wasn't researching users of hacking tools, then they'd be wasting your tax dollars, eh?

I write crypto and have to email nsa.gov & BIS every time I update my tool. It's a violation of export regulations not to. That puts you on the radar... if you do this kind of thing, just know you're being surveiled. If you publish tools for hacking and they include capabilities not disclosed to the proper authorities, it deserves investigation. The goal is so that if the feds come across encrypted traffic or some exploit they have a library to compare against so they can begin cracking it -- perhaps even contact the authors of said software to enlist their help.

Imagine if it had been some Nazi Cyber-Terrorist that hacked the US power grid instead of the more negotiable Chinese government? Imagine such a hack had used an unknown remote access toolkit, and that a subsequent great recession COULD have been prevented if the toolkit had been known about in advance. Would you rather NSA / FBI / etc. do their job? Or instead sit back with hands tied so you could blame them for "incompetence" after some great cyber-terror core infrastructure attack?

To be perfectly clear, we live in a realm ruled by Hydraulic Despotism. This means cities and states are unsustainable without external power, food, etc. resource. Only ignorant plebs dispute the fact that this control of resource supply and artificial scarcity is why we don't live in barbarism and constant war. However this means the system we live in is incredibly vulnerable. A city can't rebel because you can cut off their fuel, power, food, etc. and they'll fall into zombie-apocalypse mode. However, this means that our system is fragile, and you folks don't know the Herculean efforts carried out in secret to ensure some home-grown lone-wolf rogue Nazi Cyber Terrorist doesn't destroy your world.

TL;DR: The Eye of Sauron is upon you when you don a ring of power, even if it's just a clever way to get CPU ring zero...

Re:I'll Play Devil's Court Appointed Attourney

[HeckRuler]

That's actually a well reasoned stance. Up to the 2nd to last paragraph. Then it veers off into pointless philosophy. Rebelling city-states? Really? Get off it dude. Anyway, yes, our society is fragile and the ease of wounding it is WAY easier than protecting it. Stick to that part and you're golden.

But yes, I want the FBI to do their job. I really DO want them to catch the bad guys. All my bitching and moaning about warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance, parallel construction, bullshit about "metadata", kangaroo FISA courts, and practically anything the CIA does is rooted in preserving the system of checks and balances that give us rights as citizens. If the cops go get a real warrant, I'm perfectly fine with them pulling out the stops and violating the fuck out of Capone's and Osama's privacy. The CIA shouldn't be operating within US borders and I'm not so sure anything they do within other nation's legal systems are all that "legal" and they've got a bad track-record of doing "good". So I'm up in the air on whether I want the CIA doing their job. It's fundamentally hard to know. And that all by itself is grounds to be skeptic.

This story, if anything, is a sign that the system works. They had a gag on Google. Then it was removed. Then Google informed people. Because while the cops enjoy operating in secret while investigating people, there's a perfectly legit use-case for purchasing this stuff. Least we want any network engineering to be thought-crime. And so off came the gag. That probably cost Google some coin just getting the lawyers to walk through all that paperwork. Good on them. And good on the courts for actually letting the gag come off. And good on the FBI for (presumably) getting an warrant and gag in the first place as they ought to do. So while it might all sound scary... the system works. And we should celebrate that.

Re:Was the tool itself malicious?

[Narcocide]

I think that depending on how it was marketed, buying one can constitute probable cause.

Remote Access Tool

[PPH]

For sale? How could this be a problem when this is actually built into Windows?*

*As anyone who has ever received a bogus tech support call and then dutifully executed the commands dictated to them by 'Microsoft support'. And then had their system pwned.

Re:Was the tool itself malicious?

[Jahoda]

And even if the tool is evil incarnate, that does not mean possession of it is a crime.

Tell you what. Carry around a set of lock picks with you and see what happens if you get noticed by the police. Be sure to have this quote printed out for them.

Re: "Smart move?"

[HeckRuler]

You and everyone else need to read up on The White House Plumbers.