Terrible tales of opsec oversights: How cybercrooks get themselves caught

They say that success breeds complacency, and complacency leads to failure. For cybercriminals, taking too many shortcuts when it comes to opsec delivers a little more than that.  In these cases, failure might mean the criminal doesn't get access to the server with the most valuable data to copy, or fails to trick any of the …

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

"examination of an opened latop at his residence ... Cazes died while in custody"

Note to self: don't live in Thailand and be a cybercriminal. In the UK, you usually just fall down the stairs in the police station.

[wolfetone]

Or a hotel window if you're Russian.

[Bitsminer]

I thought the Russian's were more prone to suicide using a pistol.

They'd shoot themselves in the back of the head. Twice, just to be sure.

[mirachu]

Nah, the standard way to get rid of troublesome people in Russia is for them to fall out of a window. By accident.

[Pascal Monett]

It's a shame

It's a shame that France doesn't have the prison colony of Guyane anymore.

I'd send all of those assholes there without a second thought.

[K555]

Missing my favourite one...

I like the one where the chap that was hacking / defacing sites put up a cropped picture of his girlfriend holding a sign about 'being p4wned' to brag.

It still had the GPS metadata embedded....

https://www.theregister.com/2012/04/13/fbi_track_anon_from_iphone_photo/

[Dizzy Dwarf]

"They say that success breeds complacency, and complacency leads to failure"

Failure leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger, anger leads to the dark web side.

[DS999]

We can laugh

But they have to NEVER slip up. Not once, not when they're tired, not when they're distracted, not when they're angry, not when they're bored.

If it was the old days and they had to slip up when someone was watching then they'd have to slip up a lot unless they were under 24x7 surveillance like a mob boss. But with tools that scan mass amounts of online activity, financial transactions, and so forth it is as if they are being watched 24x7. It would be stressful having to always keep your security precautions in mind for every action you take, I wonder if some of them almost felt a sense of relief when the Feds swooped in on them?

The ones who don't get caught are probably not the ones who are super careful, but the ones who leave very little digital footprint at all. They don't frequent darkweb forums to boast about their wins, when they launder their ill gotten gains they do it in big chunks so they rarely have to and can devote absolute attention to detail in covering their tracks, and probably aren't living the high life driving fancy cars and spending money as fast as they make it so they don't stick out as much in their 'real world' persona.

[David 132]

Re: We can laugh

Careless/dumb criminals get caught.

Smart criminals get elected.

[DS999]

Re: We can laugh

No Trump is proof you can be a dumb criminal and get away with it if you have the courts in your pocket.

[Claptrap314]

It's not just "them"

The same thing can more-or-less be said about each of us. There is no way to know which web site has been waterholed, which of our users or coworkers followed the wrong link, or created an account which collected just a bit more personal data than they were capable of protecting.

The Evil bit is set on EVERY packet. Don't ever forget that.

[Claptrap314]

Don't call it "failure"

call it "free room and board for a stretch"

[teknopaul]

Ulbricht

Trump's pardon of Ulbricht is just nuts. He was found guilty of attempting to murder people.

I don't believe in life in prisonment ever. But that's for professional parole agents to work out.

Trump seems to have done it simply because he likes evil. He sides with the bad guy because he is one. And has no shame.

[Kurgan]

Re: Ulbricht

Probably Ulbricht has information than can be useful to Trump or that can harm Trump.

So they made a deal, simple as that. Ulbricht is free and Trump is happy.

I just hope Ulbricht will betray Trump and fuck him, but I doubt it will happen because it's quite clear that in the US everyone is very afraid of Trump, exactly like in NK everyone is very afraid of Kim, and in Russia of Putin, in China of Xi, etc.

Trump has really surged to "Dear Leader" level of control over the whole US.