I really enjoyed this blog post for some reason - I think the frank dissection of how the whole plot was hatched was really interesting.
The main takeaway for me is how worrying the chosen attack vector was, and what it says about the state of the USA. Think about it - the most effective way to remotely cripple someone you hate is to turn the USA's ridiculous drug enforcement apparatus on them. It's not a bomb or insults, or any kind of direct or overt physical harm, it's simply mailing them a narcotic and tipping off the police.
What if this guy hadn't been monitoring things? He could very well have been in a nasty, highly stressful, possibly career ending situation simply due to America's stance on drug enforcement.
I also feel somehow guilty now, because I enjoyed that article too much..
That's crazy how much more power and impact a scene member can have on the life of someone. And it's so easy to do that..
Reminds me to a situation I was in: While coding during midnight and while important political and prominent people came to town, I felt some weird vibrations on my window. After touching it, it felt like something was making it vibrate very strong. Then came the shock, when I saw a drone targeting my window, unaware of it being armed or not.. I hid and waited until it moved to scan other buildings.
unfortunately I didn't make a photo, but it had a large triangular red thing on it's nose (infrared?) and was able to stay at one position.
I imagined that they could have thought that this is the highest building and having a perfect view to the scene from that window, it would be a preferred sniper position. But ordering heroin to a whitehat and spoofing calls from the neighbours to police..wow..
Getting threatened by the Government for whatever reason is seriously no more fun.
Field report #XJ-175882: Citizen responded fearfully to standard passive investigation. Suspect hid on sight of overseer. Further investigative action recommended.
I really, really wish you'd gotten a picture of the drone, because with just your description this would be too easy to chalk up to a psychotic episode. No offense intended.
I regret that I wasn't more prepared and don't know how to describe the situation. One isn't prepared with drones appearing from nowhere and watching your home, you know. Imagine you see a car approaching you fast, everyone seeing you would think "jump or run to the side, now", but when it happens to yourself in a moment you weren't ready, then you just freeze.
I haven't seen it first, but felt the vibration and after touching the window for about 10seconds I was sure that this wasn't my neighbours music or something else. It was weird because I didn't hear such deep sound before, it wasn't very loud, but had a very low frequency, I guess that's why the window vibrated so strong. One could feel the pressure or tingling on the skin.
Then it came into eyesight, I don't know if it switched that red triangle shaped thing on, or if I saw it after starting to look for something that could make such strong vibrations. Everybody would look for a car parking there with loud music, so did I. But I didn't see it, so I looked up.
The thing I focused my eyes on first was to see, if there is some movement below it, like rockets, lights or anything, I was really afraid of what would happen next. I couldn't run away, it was just there. After starting to realize the situation that I was in, I hid at the side of that small room, but could still see how it stood there in the air. After some time, it flew higher and increased it's speed, without the red triangle shaped thing in sight, it was hard to make out. The first thing I did, was to call mum and ask, if she's ok.
Summing it up: It had some kind of engine that allowed it to stand still in the air and move to different directions, it was gray or dark, not sure. The engine wasn't loud enough to get aware of it from a distance, but when "near" you could feel very strong vibrations. It could accelerate pretty fast. It had no flashing lights, but it looked like there was something moving below it, I couldn''t make out what it was. I don't remember the shape good enough, sorry. A prominent thing was the large triangle shaped red thing on the front of it. Could it be infrared? Isn't infrared invisible to the human eye and why was that so prominently visible then?
An infrared light for active infrared illumination could appear dark red, but probably wouldn't on a military drone. It would probably filter out all visible frequencies.
Thanks for your account, these things will show up again if they are actively used. There's no question that such an aircraft could be built, I've been thinking about it myself. (Strong aviation interest).
That would be really cool, if you can build something like that!
I'm really interested in your findings, would you drop me a line on torchat (see profile) in case you know more about it?
For me the two big takeaways are the cop who wanted to unplug from Google. This is likely to be a fairly sizeable minority of the world who used to know how it all worked - and just cannot be bothered to learn the new rules.
I am not sure if that's a good or a bad thing - if grandpa is not online can be do video calls to the grandkids ?
The second is of course - I do not monitor these boards and of course the next attempt will not be public. Not sure how to react if a dozen baggies got delivered. Hand it over to the cops I guess.
It is the makings of an interesting real life DDoS attack on politicians for example
This is likely to be a fairly sizeable minority of the world who used to know how it all worked - and just cannot be bothered to learn the new rules.
I am not sure if that's a good or a bad thing - if grandpa is not online can be do video calls to the grandkids ?
People have been reacting this way since computers were first sold to the public: They bitched and moaned until the last possible moment, but they are all using word processors and have iphones now. There will be no exodus.
Blind mules are a huge problem in Mexico, where they are unwittingly used to courier drugs over the border. Most end up in prison and have to prove their innocence via public campaigns.
Oddly enough, it can work, if handled correctly. Opening the baggie was a bad move however, and if he didn't have a contact with the cops already, they may take it as intent.
I think that depends a lot on the time it takes you to call the cops and say someone just delivered 12 baggies vs flushing them down the loo as they kick in the door
He has publicly outed many "cyber-criminals" on his blog and typically provides plenty of proof to back up his assertions. These criminals, of course, don't really like that.
I understand his motive for publishing details of things like this that are directed at him but it makes me wonder if another criminal reading it won't try to "one-up" the previous guy.
And that's really worrying. For me, it makes various threats and other cyber bullying look like a game. 'I wish you get cancer' yeah whatever f-off kid.
But this one can easily ruin someones life. Or at least give enough stress to shorten it for a while. Not even talking about legal expenses to prove it's not yours. I mean... Police finds reasonable amount of Class A drugs at your place. 'it's not my' 'yeah right, everyone says that'.
I always get a kick out of Krebs' relationship with the thesaurus.
"Miscreants"
"goons"
"fraudsters"
Seriously, 'goons'? What is this, an Archie comic?
But, yes, fascinating article, nonetheless. I dislike the man for reasons difficult to articulate, but there is no arguing with a story like this. Great read.
How could Krebs protect himself, if someone ordered contract killers from the silkroad? I do hope that he get's some bodyguards, I never knew that infosec was a life-threatening job. I wish that it at least pays off for him, because it's surely a hard situation for his family. I couldn't take a breath, if I knew that my brother or sister was in danger.
I think these criminals should be very thankful to have Kreb alive and not in jail, because a) they win more market, by getting rid of other criminals b) they learn howto he doxxed the other criminals and can protect themselves better.
Maybe one of you has ideas on howto protect against that, then pleaes tell us
That's one side of writing that blog post, but on the other side, if someone were to simply try this scheme again, but on a forum Krebs doesn't monitor, or more secretly, this particular blog post with a date will help his defence to show they tried this before.
(At least that would seem to make sense to me, but I am not familiar with US regulations and when it comes to drugs they can apparently be .. somewhat counterintuitive)
But yeah he is playing a dangerous game, and I think he is well aware of that.
Also, I wonder, he must be monitoring at least tens of underground-forums or so, that must take a sizeable chunk out of his day? Especially depending on how fluent his Russian is. I hope he has an intern or something to help him out scanning those boards.
The main takeaway for me is how worrying the chosen attack vector was, and what it says about the state of the USA. Think about it - the most effective way to remotely cripple someone you hate is to turn the USA's ridiculous drug enforcement apparatus on them. It's not a bomb or insults, or any kind of direct or overt physical harm, it's simply mailing them a narcotic and tipping off the police.
What if this guy hadn't been monitoring things? He could very well have been in a nasty, highly stressful, possibly career ending situation simply due to America's stance on drug enforcement.