Bogus Security Company Can't Take Criticism, Issues Bogus DMCA Takedowns, Creates Sockpuppet Accounts

from the not-how-it's-done dept

A few weeks ago, Brian Krebs published a fantastic article entitled how not to start an encryption company, which detailed the rather questionable claims of a company called Secure Channels Inc (SCI). The post is long and detailed and suggests strongly that (1) SCI was selling snake oil pretending to be an "unbreakable" security solution and (2) that its top execs had pretty thin skins (and in the case of the CEO, a criminal record for running an investment ponzi scheme). The company also set up a bullshit "unwinnable" hacking challenge, and then openly mocked people who criticized it.

Now enter Asher Langton, who has an uncanny ability to spot all sorts of scams (he was the one who initially tipped me off to the Walter O'Brien scam, for example). He seems to especially excel at calling out bullshit security products and companies. He's spent the past few weeks tweeting up a storm showing just how bogus Secure Channels is -- including revealing that they're just rebranding someone else's free app. He also noted that the company appeared to be (not very subtly) astroturfing its own reviews, noting that the reviews came from execs at the company:

Oh, and keep up the great astroturfing. Very subtle. @SecureChannels @RichardBlech @ThefoodFriends pic.twitter.com/zgJM7uEJIr

— Asher Langton (@AsherLangton) September 4, 2015

He also noticed that a "study" released by the company was almost entirely plagiarized from other sources.

So, uh, how did SCI respond? Let's just say not well. As detailed by Adam Steinbaugh at Popehat, a bunch of anonymous Twitter accounts magically appeared attempting to attack Langton, claiming that he was violating various computer crime and copyright laws. The accounts ridiculously argued that by posting screenshots of Secure Channel's source code, he was violating various statutes, including copyright law. This is wrong. Very wrong. Laughably wrong. In one of the screenshots posted by one of these "anonymous" accounts, other browser tabs were left visible -- and you'll notice the other two tabs. You'll note Asher's tweet, but also a primer on "computer crime laws" and a "how to take screenshots" tab (apparently it didn't include a lesson on cropping). Oh, but more important, this tweet from a supposedly anonymous Twitter user also showed that the person taking the screenshot is logged in from a different account, that just happens to be the account of... SCI's director of Marketing Deirdre Murphy. It even uses the same photo. This same Deirdre Murphy, back in Krebs' original article, used Twitter to attack another well recognized security expert who had been mocking SCI's claims:

James said he let it go when SCI refused to talk seriously about sharing its cryptography solution, only to hear again this past weekend from SCI’s director of marketing Deirdre “Dee” Murphy on Twitter that his dismissal of their challenge proved he was “obsolete.” Murphy later deleted the tweets, but some of them are saved here.

Right. It's entirely possible that Murphy is not behind the anonymous accounts, but she's pretty clearly connected to the screenshots that showed up on those anonymous accounts -- so even if it's not her directly... it seems likely that she's associated with whoever is doing the posting.

Oh, and then it gets worse. Right about the time Steinbaugh's article was published, someone claiming to be SecureChannels' CEO Richard Blech, sent Twitter a DMCA notice over some of Langton's tweets -- and Twitter took them down: Twitter did this despite the fact that the DMCA claim itself was pretty clearly invalid. As summarized by Steinbaugh:

About an hour and a half after this post went live, SecureChannels CEO Richard Blech (or someone claiming to be him) sent a DMCA notice to Twitter for two of Langton's tweets, complaining that they consisted of "employee pics, company and personnel, posts copyright material, hacks products and posts copyright code from products, using trademarks, targeted harassment, slander to destroy commerce." As for the description of the "original work," Blech blathered: "Cracked an app and placed code online, uses trademarked logos to attack company."

This is a censorious abuse of copyright law to suppress criticism. It is, in essence, an attempt to use copyright law for everything except copyright. That SecureChannels would use copyright law to shield criticism on the basis that its trademarks are being used and because of "slander" is, well, hysterical. This is not a company interested in permitting people to criticize it.

A little while ago, I tweeted about how ridiculous it was that Twitter's legal team would go forward with the takedown on an obviously bogus takedown notice, and within 10 minutes, I was told by someone on Twitter's legal team that the notice had been reviewed and the posts had been restored.

Either way, for a company bragging that its "security" solution is "unhackable" -- you'd think the company would be more open to actual criticism. Instead, it seems to spend an inordinate amount of time attacking critics and abusing the law to try to silence them. Odd.

Filed Under: asher langton, attacks, bogus, copyright, deirdre murphy, dmca, richard blech, security, takedowns
Companies: sci, secure channel