• mlg@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Reminds me of the lulzsec leader dude who exposed himself by logging into IRC once without tor on.

    Then he folded instantly and became an informant for the FBI to stay out of jail lol.

    In the end its really about tradeoffs. You can’t be an expert in everything so you need a team if you want to do anything big, but Cyber criminals are still criminals. They don’t trust each other which is what ultimately leads to their downfall even if they do all the implementation and tech part right.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Some German guy got got for logging into IRC via encrypted wifi, the cops did some war driving and correlated timing of traffic spikes with IRC messages until they had a profile with better hit probability than a DNA match.

      The best thing about that? They didn’t even need a search warrant as our genius was broadcasting the side-channel to the whole neighbourhood.

      • psmgx@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        7 months ago

        Timing attacks work, but if they’re running those then they have a pretty good idea as to both sides of the convo.

        Put another way, if they’ve got to that point your opsec has already failed.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          Well without that they would’ve needed probably months correlating things like “goes to bed at X o clock” with those chat logs. For a whole neighbourhood to then get a search warrant with that. Which of course is not above the capabilities of a state actor but depending on how big a fish he was they might not have bothered spending the resources. Being able to pin-point a house in maybe a day when all you have is a municipality is a whole different ballpark.