Evo Terra

The Largest Ever Criminal Backdoor: Meet Dark Wire One of my favouriate films when I was younger was The Sting, and where scammers manage to create “the wire” scam and set up a phoney betting shop in order to trick a criminal into making a bet that they will lose. Well, if you replace a phoney betting shop with encrypted phones, you have the largest sting ever conducted: The Dark Wire. Encryption can be used for great benefits to our society. It basically secures our Internet, and where our connections are secure for snooping and where we can trust the sites we connect to. But, it can be used for bad things and by bad people. And, so, law enforcement has always had a problem with encryption, especially in detecting the passing of messages from criminals. So imagine if law enforcement agencies could actually listen to virtually every single message that drug trafficking and money laundering gangs send. Well, it actually happened with the cracking of encrypted phones, and outlined in a new book — Dark Wire. It all started with the arrest of a drug trafficker and in gaining access to his Phantom Secure Blackberry device. The company who ran the Phantom Secure service not only encrypted messages with their own encryption key, but could remotely wipe it. At the time, these phones were used by many gangs around the world including the Sinaloa drug cartel. When seized, law enforcement agents immediately enclosed the device in a Faraday bag so that it could not receive a remote wipe of the phone. Unbelievably, the drug trafficker had not changed the default password on the phone, so the law enforcement agents instantly gained access to a treasure trove of information on his activities and contacts. In 2016, the FBI eventually arrested the CEO of Phantom Secure — Vince Ramos — and who then pleaded guilty to the active selling of encrypted phones to criminal gangs, and typically used for drug trafficking. Over $80m was eventually sized from the company. Basically, Phantom Secure integrated Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) into the BlackBerry Messenger service which ran on BlackBerry devices (and which were extremely popular at the time). They also disabled the microphone, camera and GPS features, and where messages were routed into specialised servers in countries that were difficult for law enforcement to gain access to. While it is not illegal to sell encrypted phones, prosecutors were able to show that the company actively supported the sales of the devices to criminal gangs. The FBI were then able to take over Phantom Secure’s servers and which caused a wave of their customers— over 7,000 at the time — to move to the Sky Global platform on Android. Sky Global provided Sky ECC service for encrypted messages on modified Nokia, Google, Apple and Blackberry phones. The ECC part of the name came from the usage of Elliptic-Curve Cryptography. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVmqVZTj

59

4 Comments

My newest article on my publishing Substack shows authors how to get a strong start at gathering reviews from your release team and through pro reviewing sites. https://lnkd.in/gF7dA_7r

4

When a writer decides to self-publish, how do they choose a platform? There are many factors to weigh. This episode covers what you need to think about, and I share my favorite platform for new indie authors. Also, there is premium content available for my Substack members with a worksheet to help you process through it all. https://lnkd.in/giqnbhAE

1

I'll be at Podcast Movement this week. So will my guest on this week's show, Todd Cochrane from Blubrry Podcasting by RawVoice who launched the Thrive Bundle, tools to help podcasters with their workflow. In this episode we discussed the potential of AI-powered tools and services in the podcasting industry. (Nasturally, highlighting the benefits of Blubrry's Thrive Bundle. We also talked about the current state and future trajectory of podcasting, focusing on disclosure, discovery, and monetization; as well as the challenges of relying solely on Google for discoverability, the increasing cost of podcasting due to the shift towards video content, and the importance of building a strong network through word-of-mouth and listener engagement. https://bit.ly/4fRIl8J

8

Oh, the confounding comma! Although comma rules are numerous, complicated, and come with many exceptions, they also remind us of why editors are so important! https://zurl.co/aqU3 #Comma #Writing #Editing #Grammar #CopyEditing #Punctuation #RightTouchEditing

31

2 Comments