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Bulgarian Security/Cybercrime Researcher Missing For Months

from the uh-oh dept

Fri, Jan 14th 2011 4:31pm — Mike Masnick

This one's a bit scary. Security and cybercrime researcher Dancho Danchev, who has blogged about organized crime and online terrorist activities, has apparently been missing since September. ZDNet, where he sometimes blogged, has published a notice asking for help tracking him down, and publishing an email he sent shortly before he disappeared. That email included photos of a device he found planted in his bathroom, that he believed was from Bulgarian intelligence services. ZDnet has been trying to reach him for months -- and recently received information from a source in Bulgaria that Danchev is alive "but he's in a lot of trouble."

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Filed Under: bulgaria, crime, cybersecurity, dancho danchev, security

5 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jan 2011 @ 5:06pm

Devices
The device in the first photo appears to be a power transformer for low-voltage lighting. The bottom photo looks like the view of the top of some low-voltage lights installed in an overhead ledge of some sort. The installation looks kind of sloppy, but I really don't see anything odd there.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jan 2011 @ 10:36pm

he won't be found
he won't be found in bulgaria nor alive me thinks.

might be the start of a trend....
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another ac, 15 Jan 2011 @ 1:32am

Re: Devices
This looks exactly like my bathroom mirror. There is a board above the mirror with some holes on it for lamps, and a shoddy transformer setup. I think he "have seen things".
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velox (profile), 18 Jan 2011 @ 9:45pm

Update 17 Jan
Bulgarian website reports Danchev has been in a psychiatric hospital for the past month. A convenient way to discredit him, no doubt.
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hannah, 4 Aug 2011 @ 1:08am

comment
Just because that object in the mirror isn't a device it does not mean that he was not tapped/ followed/ his emails/ phones hacked etc. It does not mean he was of course, either.

And just because he is in a psychiatric unit it does not mean that someone is trying to discredit him. It could be that he started seeing things and went in there himself or started seeing things and his GP sent him in for treatment.

When you are digging for information about things such as organised crime or online terrorist activities, and are reporting on these things, you know you are reporting things that hurt lots of people's interest. People running organised crime and online crime are usually powerful and are used to underhand methods.

Just look at the number of people who disappear, or get killed for politically/ economically motivated reasons and the killers and never found/ brought to justice.

When you are dealing with these things as a journalist, it can get too much and get convinced that you have hurt som many people's interest that they are out to get you.

Which may or may not be true but in that situation it's difficult to tell.

In any case if he is scared he should stop digging up all this information. I understand the importance of investigative journalism it's just that these methods rarely achieve "justice" and are dangerous to get involved in.
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