Yes, Federal Agents Can Identify Anonymous Tor Users, Because Most People Don't Know How To Be Anonymous

from the well,-duh dept

For many, many years now, we keep hearing law enforcement whine about the "threats" of anonymity and how people would be able to get away with all sorts of criminal activity if they weren't given the ability to track, monitor and tap pretty much every communications technology that has come along. A decade ago the fear was that free and open WiFi was going to be a major boon to criminals who could use it "with no trace." As we pointed out, however, nothing about using an anonymous connection like that means you won't get caught, because criminals have to do a lot of things, many of which will expose them in other ways, without having to tap and track every technological interaction. What's known as good old-fashioned detective work can often track down criminals who used tools to be anonymous -- and for years, we've pointed out many, many, many examples of this.

More recently, law enforcement's concern has been about Tor (which is slightly ironic, given that Tor was created and funded by the US government). The Snowden revelations have shown that, try as they might, the NSA has not had much luck in compromising Tor, and Snowden himself has noted that properly used encryption mostly works.

A recent Wall Street Journal article notes that law enforcement is slowly realizing that perhaps Tor isn't a parade of horribles that must be encumbered with backdoors for wiretapping... after realizing that most criminals more or less reveal themselves by doing something stupid along the way anyway.

But officials are becoming more confident that Tor's shield of anonymity isn't impenetrable.

"There's not a magic way to trace people [through Tor], so we typically capitalize on human error, looking for whatever clues people leave in their wake," said James Kilpatrick, one of the HSI agents who is part of Operation Round Table, a continuing investigation into a Tor-based child-pornography site that has so far resulted in 25 arrests and the identification of more than 250 victims, all children.

This is a good thing. We should want law enforcement to be able to track down criminals -- and it's good to see that they're figuring out ways to do so. But it's important that they should need to do so via basic detective work, rather than by compromising important technology, creating security flaws and opening up all sorts of dangerous unintended consequences.

As with all kinds of new technologies, anonymizing technologies seem to create something of a moral panic among law enforcement types, who then insist those technologies need to be "broken" and backdoored or else criminals could somehow get away with everything. But that's silly. Sooner or later most criminals do other things that reveal who they are, opening them up to investigation and potential indictment, arrest, trial etc.

One hopes that as this realization becomes more widespread, law enforcement and intelligence agencies will finally pull back from constantly trying to expand wiretapping laws that will break important innovations and technologies, but perhaps that's being too optimistic.

Filed Under: anonymity, criminals, detective work, tor

Dumb Criminal Promises To Shoot Someone For 100 Retweets, Is Promptly Arrested

from the how's-your-foot-feel? dept

We've seen dumb criminals do a lot of dumb things with the technology on their fingertips, always resulting in their prompt arrest, because that's how things turn out for dumb criminals. Whether it's sharing the police Facebook post seeking their arrest or college kids celebrating their illegal behavior online, the idea is that for the nefarious criminal, over-sharing can get you into lots of trouble.

But for the idiot criminal who wants to set the record for being the biggest assbag, I'll simply point to Dakkari Dijon McAnuff, who was angry enough at apparently being named after a condiment that he sent out the following tweet:

I'll give you three guesses what happened next, but you'll only need one.

Dakkari Dijon McAnuff, of Los Angeles, was booked Wednesday on suspicion of making criminal threats, police said. He remained in jail in lieu of $50,000 bail. The investigation began Wednesday morning when LAPD officers were notified about a photo on Twitter. The photo shows a rifle pointed at a Los Angeles street with the caption "100 [retweets] and I'll shoot someone walking."

I have to say, even though you'll often find me wandering the halls of my workplace muttering under my breath about the ridiculous over-prosecution and punishment in our legal system, $50k bail seems a bit light to me. Perhaps McAnuff was joking, except that his joke wasn't funny, it was a promise to harm people. Perhaps he thought people would realize it was an air rifle (as police later determined) and not a hunting rifle, except that really doesn't make any damned difference. And, to my mind, the kind of person who would send this out for any reason whatsoever isn't the kind of person I trust getting back out on the street without a severely taught lesson applied to him.

Here's to you spending some time in jail, Mr. McAnuff. I want you to think real hard about what you've done, now.

Filed Under: criminals, self-incrimination

Google Is Your Friend, Unless You're A Dumb Criminal; Then It's Your Downfall

from the search-sentence-terms dept

One of the common aspects of most of the stories about dumb criminals we cover here is how they use some aspect of technology to do something tangentially stupid. Recall, for instance, the stupid fraternity that somehow thought they'd get away with going Heisenberg on their Facebook page, or when a young woman robbed a bank and then bragged about it on YouTube. But what if you had on your hands a criminal so dumb that they weren't sure exactly what would happen once they had attempted their criminal-y exploits? Well, what is your first step these days if you want to get an answer to something?

Meet Sarah McLoud, Robert Owens, and Daniel Murphy of Boston, a group of not particularly intelligent bank robbers. These three were apparently dissatisfied with the heroin ring they were allegedly running, so they decided to rob a bank. But they didn't know how to successfully rob a bank, evidenced further by the ease with which they were caught.

Narcotics detectives who viewed surveillance footage believed they recognized McLoud, a suspect in the ongoing investigation of a heroin ring based at 51 Torrey St., just around the corner from the bank, police said. Owens was also a suspect in that investigation. Police found McLoud and Owens at the Torrey Street address shortly after 4 p.m. and arrested them, according to the statement. Police did not disclose the arrests until Monday. Officers then secured a search warrant for McCloud’s room at Torrey Street and found the clothing she wore during the robbery, the stolen cash, and “a significant quantity of heroin packaged for sale,” police said.

Fine, so we have a drug dealing trio that apparently went to the Superman School Of Hiding In Plain Sight when it comes to concealing their identities. And, sure, perhaps keeping all of that sweet china white and the clothes they robbed the bank in out and available for police to find was stupid. But how about an extra bit of stupidity candy to really wrap this all up? Remember the question I asked you above? What would you do if you wanted to rob a bank but didn't know much about robbing banks? You already know where this is going, don't you?

Officers also found a computer recently used to search the phrases, “What happens if you rob a bank,” “What happens if you rob a house,” “What happens if you rob a drug dealer,” and “If you’re going to rob a bank,” police said.

Ah, delightful, because apparently all the copies of Robbing Banks For Dummies at the local library had already been checked out. So here's a note to my idiotic criminal friends: burn your clothes, hide your heroin, and at least clear your search history from your browser after you carry out your nefarious misdeeds. Otherwise, you just look lazy.

Filed Under: criminals, search

Thief Steals Church Computer, Calls Church's Security Company So He Can Watch Porn

from the the-porn-identity dept

It's been several weeks, so it must be time for another story of another dumb criminal. Past iterations have included murder-conspiring butt-dialers, bank robbers bragging on YouTube, and criminals taunting law enforcement on social media. However, what has been lacking in all of these stories is the real central component of the internet, that which makes it tick: porn.

We can now rectify that omission, thanks to a God-fearing parishioner from Oklahoma who stole a computer from his church and was perhaps as surprised as he was frustrated when he couldn't watch some good old-fashioned meat-pounding on it.

An Oklahoma church employee called in a theft to cops, saying whoever stole a computer from the establishment probably attended the church or was familiar with it, because there were no signs of a break-in. He was right, but the suspect wasn't caught while say, Googling during services. A company that had monitoring software on the computer alerted the church that someone kept trying to look up pornography on the missing computer.

Stealing a church computer to watch pornography? It's almost enough to make one believe all is lost with the world. But never fear, this episode ends in a much more stupid fashion than suggested above. The church had a contract with an IT security firm, which monitored use of the machine and blocked inappropriate websites. Still, simply knowing what kind of porn someone is into isn't enough to identify them (thankfully), so police weren't able to do much with the information.

Fortunately, our idiot thief was feeling as helpful as he was horny.

Police couldn't really make a bust until said suspect contacted the software company itself, asking it to take down the monitoring software, ostensibly because he didn't want anyone watching while he surfed for porn. Police arrested the man, saying he denied taking the computer despite the fact that it was allegedly found in his home, but that he later confessed.

Here's a tip for all you cathedral criminals out there: wiping a computer back to factory settings is way easier than explaining exactly how stupid you'd have to be to call the IT security company whose software is on the computer you stole just so you could wank off to material you could probably just as easily get on your phone.

Filed Under: computers, criminals, porn

Worst Woman In The World Burns Dog Alive, Is Caught After Bragging About It On Facebook

from the i-hate-you dept

Normally when we write up posts discussing idiot criminals and their internet exploits, they're a bit of levity in an otherwise maddening world. Whether they're taunting law enformcement or posting pictures of the meals they're eating with the feds, their stupidity is typically enjoyable. This is not one of those stories. Instead, this is a story about a stupid criminal who may well be the worst woman currently in existence.

Adrienne Martin was apparently taking care of her sister-in-law's dog. Claiming the dog had acted aggressively, she chained the animal in the backyard and lit it on fire. The dog died shortly after it was found and taken to a stray rescue. Then Martin did what any psychopath would do: bragged about it on Facebook.

Martin, who has been charged with felony animal abuse, reportedly said on Facebook, “I’m on killa mode… kill dogs… today. I mean what I say and I say what I mean… all dogs don’t go to heaven.”


Martin is the kind of person that makes people hope there's a Hell to which she may eventually retire. The cruelty is obviously astounding as is her depraved commentary on her social media page. Thankfully, those investigating her crime were tipped to her comments and she's been arrested and charged with two felonies.

So, while I typically mock dumb criminals for posting about their exploits, I want to thank Ms. Martin for doing so in this case. Any action that expedites the stripping of your freedom is good in my book.

Filed Under: criminals, dogs, social media

Woman Who Bragged That She Was 'The Queen Of Tax Fraud' On Facebook Gets 21 Years In Jail

from the seriously,-stop-breeding dept

The stupid never seems to stop when it comes to dumb criminals. Whether it's accidentally dialing 911 during their murder-plotting or jumping on YouTube to make sure grandma knows what a great little bank-robber you are, there's just something about these criminals that make them go internet stupid. How else could you explain when these guys bilk money out of companies and governments, then jump on Twitter to taunt the authorities? Criminals, by and large, are stupid.

"Go in after them? No, no, we just wait outside until they come stumbling out looking for a bathroom."
Image source: CC BY 2.0

Well, let's put another one up on our wall of jack-ass-ery, shall we? Meet Rashia Wilson of Tampa, Florida. Rashia is the self-proclaimed "queen of IRS tax fraud." And she self-proclaimed this everywhere, including on her very personal Facebook page which had her very verifiable name splashed all over it. And, I have to admit, Rashia was very good at IRS tax fraud.

Prosecutors have said Wilson was among the most brazen thieves to commit identity theft tax refund fraud in Tampa. In 2011, she boasted to be Tampa's "queen of IRS tax fraud" in a Facebook post while stealing as much as $20 million, according to court documents.

A prosecutor said Wilson used the money stolen from taxpayers for "personal greed and glorification." Wilson bought a $90,000 car and a $30,000 birthday party for her 1-year-old daughter with the money, according to court documents.

See? Really good. What she was less good at was keeping that hidden. After brazenly posting about how awesome at crime she was on Facebook, the authorities came more quickly than...no, you know what? I'm not going to make that joke. They just got her, okay?

In any case, faced with 22 years in the clink, Rashia pleaded guilty and then wrote the court an apology letter and begged for leniency. The judge obliged, knocking a whole year off and saddling her with a measly 21 years in the federal pen. Nicely done, Rashia Wilson! Enjoy your stay!

Filed Under: bragging, criminals, irs, rashia wilson, social media, tax fraud

DailyDirt: ATMs Are Ripe For Picking...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thieves are getting more clever about stealing money from ATMs. It used to be that people mostly just had to worry about getting robbed while getting cash at an ATM. In 1998, Joseph Zingher, a Chicago businessman, even patented a "reverse PIN system" called SafetyPIN that would alert police when a cardholder at an ATM entered their PIN in reverse. The idea was that if someone was being forced to withdraw money at an ATM, they could silently alert the police with this "panic code." Unfortunately for Zingher, he was never able to convince the banking industry to adopt his SafetyPIN system. Now, people have to worry about ATM card skimming and other high-tech theft methods. Here are a few examples of some recent ATM theft methods.

• Like something out of the movie Ocean's Eleven, cybercriminals working with "cashing crews" in more than two dozen countries managed to steal $45 million from thousands of ATMs in just a few hours. First, the hackers raised the withdrawal limits on several prepaid debit card accounts, then the account information was distributed and encoded onto magnetic-stripe cards. In NYC alone, a team of 8 people withdrew $2.4 million from a few thousand ATMs. [url]
• Thieves glued the cancel button on several ATMs in Spokane, WA. Their hope was that a customer would make a mistake or try to cancel a transaction, and then realize they can't because the cancel button is stuck. If the customer left in frustration, the thieves could unglue the button and then steal the bank card or continue the transaction. [url]
• A hacker serving a five-year sentence in Romania has invented a device that prevents ATM skimming thefts. The add-on device rotates ATM cards so that skimming devices (as they're currently designed) can't read them. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: atm, crime, criminals, fraud, robbery, schemes, skimming, theft, urban legend

Criminal Nabbed By His Own Food Porn

from the steak-in-the-game dept

We've covered the trespasses of stupid criminals here before. Bank robbers who brag about their actions on YouTube, for instance. Or thieves on the lam uploading pictures containing their whereabouts to social media sites. It seems at times that these guys and gals are just trying to get caught. But that's certainly not always the case. Take the following story, which I have to believe is the internet-y-ist dumb criminal story yet.

It begins with Troy Maye, who is accused of grabbing identifying info on people and then attempting to sell the identities off to bidders. The IRS was tracking Maye and his girlfriend, but they didn't have either of their real names, since they were at least smart enough to give aliases. So the IRS engaged a confidential informant, who sat down to eat with them at a restaurant in Florida.

They came up on the IRS radar after the couple met an informant at — no joke — YOLO Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Maye told the informant his name was Troy and that he had stolen 700,000 identities, but the IRS could not yet crack the thief of identities' identity.

I have no idea what kind of food is served at YOLO Restaurant, but you kind of have to assume everything on the menu has a 50/50 shot of killing you, right? Maybe it's nothing but puffer fish and uncooked chicken with a side of ebola? Regardless, the IRS still wasn't able to get names on the two, so the informant was sent to have another meal with the two criminals, this time upping the classiness of the operation by going to a Morton's Steakhouse. While there, Maye provided the informant with a thumb drive that contained a bunch of identities, which were promptly turned over to the IRS. Investigators were then able to pull Maye's name from metadata on the drive. From there, the IRS did what any federal agency would do:

IRS Agent Louis Babino then headed to Google and located Maye’s Instagram page, which contained a profile photo of Maye. When shown the profile photo, the CW confirmed that Maye (seen at right) was the man with whom he dined at Morton’s.

Well, sure, Agent Babino, but how can you be really sure this was your guy?

A further review of Maye’s Instagram page, Babino noted, revealed “a photo of a steak and macaroni and cheese meal containing the caption ‘Morton’s.’” The image--uploaded on January 7 at 11:24 PM--“appears to coincide” with the CW’s meeting at Morton’s, added Babino.

Yup, this guy food-porned his way into being arrested. The Instagram photo is reportedly being entered into evidence in the case, so one hopes the juicy steak and the creamy mac and cheese was really, really worth all the trouble Maye is now in. Once again, if you're a criminal, online narcicism is probably something you'd do best to avoid.

Filed Under: criminals, food photos, instagram

Police Search For Mugger For 3 Weeks, Internet Finds Him In An Hour

from the thank-you,-internetz dept

We've discussed before the ways law enforcement groups use social media. Frankly, the general theme tends to be that they aren't very good at internetting. Whether it's mocking invasive vaginal searches or catfishing music fans with well-tread tropes, it seems the wider internet plays the web game better than the LEOs. All the while, you occasionally will hear someone in law enforcement decrying how awful the internet is and even sometimes attempting to shut down certain sites. Yet, despite being so under-appreciated, the wider internet sure does love to show how good they are at catching suspected criminals.

That capability was on full display in the case of a mugging in New York City, where police had been searching for a suspect for three weeks before "deputizing" the internet, which identified him in an hour. Within an hour of Gawker posting the video of the crime on the site, a helpful commenter linked to a Facebook page that appeared to show the suspect wearing the same clothes in photos taken mere hours prior to the crime.

The link led to the Facebook page of 21-year-old Aidan Folan, who had photos of him taken hours before the robbery. According to Gawker, the photos revealed the same sweatshirt the mugger wore in the video — with large fraternity letters on front. Commenters on the New York's Daily Intelligencer site, which also posted the video, also linked back to Folan.

Folan has since been arrested and charged with robbery and assault.

Internet 1, stupid frat boy crimes 0. But the larger point is that, far from the crime-inducing cesspool claimed by some LEOs, the internet is a tool they should be using. Many LEOs recognize that, utilizing social media to put together suspect timelines, but the aggregate of the public internet is also a tool to catch violent criminals.

Social media acts as a timeline of people's lives — accounts of their activities. And now they are playing significant roles in helping to solve crimes — most notably exposing the Steubenville rape case back in January.

It's worth noting that there's a difference between having the public help law enforcement find suspects and LEOs keeping watch over social media. The lesson here is that the it's not all or nothing with law enforcement and the internet. You can get the help you need without invading the public's lives.

Filed Under: criminals, internet

Just Cause 2 Developer On Why It Won't Utilize DRM: 'It Treats Our Fans Like Criminals'

from the a-refreshing-blast-of-honesty-and-common-sense dept

Well, we've certainly heard plenty about DRM and shoehorned-in multiplayer recently, what with EA's recent Hindenburgish SimCity "launch." As was detailed all over the web, the only people hurt by these "features" were paying customers, many of whom spent $50-60 for a server Roulette wheel that limited users to one spin every half hour.

Many developers are concerned with piracy and have made the mistake of crippling their software with DRM that punishes paying users disproportionately while affecting pirates hardly at all. At best, these efforts result in a Pyrrhic tie, damaging the developers' relationships with their customers while having a negligible effect on infringement.

Fortunately, some developers would rather not sacrifice their customers' happiness in order to briefly irritate a few pirates. Avalanche Studios, the developer behind Just Cause 2, is one of these forward-thinking developers. In an interview with Gaming Bolt, founder Cristofer Sundberg had this to say about DRM.

"DRM solutions which limit the game experience should not exist. That's my honest opinion...

They make us look greedy, which we are not. It treats our fans like criminals, which they are not. With that said, I think that we deserve getting paid for years of hard work and I think piracy is hurting our ability to make great games."

However you may feel about his statement on piracy, there's no arguing with the fact that he's unwilling to put anti-piracy efforts ahead of providing Avalanche's customers with a great experience. He also parts ways with EA (among others) on another aspect of piracy prevention, one that's almost always presented as a "feature," rather than just another limitation on the end user.

He is also against adding multiplayer component to a game to prevent the game from being traded.

He uses his own game as an example. Just Cause 2 is rarely sighted in used game stores simply because the players who purchased it years ago are still playing it. There's no (native) multiplayer in Just Cause 2 (excluding an awesome PC-only mod), but that has done nothing to diminish its popularity). As Sundberg sees it, throwing multiplayer options in for their own sake (or as a form of DRM/resale prevention) weakens the original product.

"Nobody wins in the end; the developer can't make the great experience that they want to, the publisher doesn't get its money back and the consumer is disappointed. I am convinced that this mentality contributes to the downfall of the industry."

So, either Sundberg is crazy or he's actually paying attention to the gaming community. At times, it almost seems as though certain companies think their customers are the last people they should listen to -- a very strange position for entities in the business of selling things. Hopefully, more will realize the damage they're doing far outweighs the nominal gains and DRM will become an exception rather than the rule for AAA developers.

Filed Under: criminals, drm, just cause 2, video games
Companies: avalanche 2