With the FBI v Apple court case dominating the headlines, grabbing all of the attention many people are unaware that the FBI is involved in a myriad of other court cases at the moment. One such case involves the defendants of sting operation involving a deep web site known as “playpen” – dubbed as the largest known source of child pornography on the internet. Last January 137 individuals were arrested in conclusion of this operation. Just as a federal court ordered Apple to reveal its encryption code last month, a separate court has now ordered the FBI to reveal the source code used in the Playpen hacks.
Though the FBI was successful in taking down the web site and tracking its users, the methodology used to do so has since raised serious moral and ethical red flags. Last January AnonHQ published an article citing how “federal prosecutors admitted to defense attorneys that the site distributed more than 23,000 sexually explicit images and videos of children. Some of those could be downloaded directly from the government’s computers.”– breaking federal laws in the process. The article posed the question “is illegally distributing 23,000 videos and images worth the capture of 137 people? Should the FBI officials who shared these images, in doing so breaking federal law, also be charged with a crime?” Full Article: http://anonhq.com/fbi-illegally-shared-child-pornography-to-catch-criminals-should-they-go-to-prison-as-well/
To update the situation no one in the FBI is going to jail for this, but the agency does find itself in hot water -on the defense in court attempting to justify its actions. Defendants in the playpen hack have filed a counter suit against the FBI for breaches of federal law administered when targeting suspects. Lawyers representing the defendants are demanding that the FBI hand over everything used to exploit, hack, trace and ultimately catch users during the Playpen operation. Lawyers are citing that this is essential/necessary for the courts to make an informed decision on whether the FBI operated beyond the scope of their authority when making these arrests. If the FBI is found to have operated outside the parameters as they were explained to the judge, the 137 defendants may have grounds to walk free.
Just as Apple once did the FBI is now trying to fight this ruling and along side the US Department of Justice, as of 3-20-2016, have filed a motion asking Judge Robert J. Bryan to “reconsider” his original ruling. The document alleges that revealing the methodology used to make arrests is “not necessary” for the defense.” Going on to add that the “discovery of the ‘exploit’ would do nothing to help him (defendant) determine if the government exceeded the scope of the warrant because it would explain how the NIT was deployed to Michaud’s (defendant’s) computer, not what it did once deployed.“
The FBI has not actually introduced any new evidence for the Judge to overturn his original ruling, they have simply amped up the political pressure with the involvement of the US Department of Justice. It remains to be seen if the judge will reconsider and how this case progresses from this point in time.
This article (Karma: In Ironic Twist of Events Court Orders FBI To Hand Over Tor Exploit Source Code Used in Federal Hacks) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article using a creative commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ. Join the conversations at www.anonboards.com
It’s simple. They simply use a memory exploit to gain the password to connect with. Then, they can crash they link and pretend to be you. They also use man-in-the-middle attacks to authenticate both systems while just listening in. There are plenty of easy methods used!