Does this go to show that authorities needing backdoors to everything in order to do their jobs is actually kind of nonsense?
The article is exaggerating the guy’s setup way too much. Opsec doesn’t end at the application level… The OS (the most popular being in bed with US), ISP, tor nodes, Honeypot VPNs, so on and so on could leave a trail.
Using telegram public groups and obfuscating a calculator as a password protection layer is hillbilly level of security.
And i’m glad these fuckos don’t have the knowledge to go beyond App developers marketing.
Goes beyond the OSI model, too. Someone has to pay for that VPN, and there has to be an entry point to getting BTC, using a 2nd hand laptop where they can prove you bought it off of someone off of Craigslist, etc.
Mullvad let’s you write down an account number on a piece of paper and mail it in with cash and they’ll activate it.
Heard about a guy doing insane opsec when selling on the dark web (darknet diaries podcast).
In the end he got busted because a trusted member if his operation got lazy and ignored his rules
Edit: This guy was essentially
Leeching internet via a directional antenna from a neighbour that was significantly away
Not allowing any visitor in with a cell. You had to keep it outside
All drug related actions are done in a cleaned down room.
Tripple sealing dark marketplace orders, wiping everything down with corrosive fluids to destroy any sort of dna material
Not going to the same post office in (I believe 6 months) and only sending of 3-6 shipments at once
I hope I got it correctly. Please go listen to the episode: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/132/
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.
That’s sounds mostly correct.
His relative also admitted their involvement and flipped on him which destroyed the narrow avenue he had to throw out the original evidence for the warrant.
Of course we only ever hear the cases of people who get caught. If he relative hadn’t gotten lazy he may never have been caught.
The lesson there is not to involve other people.
