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two paragraphs down: >In many instances, my call would come in just minutes or hours before an unauthorized payroll batch was processed by the victim company’s
by mzs 7y ago
two paragraphs down:
>In many instances, my call would come in just minutes or hours before an unauthorized payroll batch was processed by the victim company’s bank, and some of those notifications prevented what otherwise would have been enormous losses — often several times the amount of the organization’s normal weekly payroll. At some point I stopped counting how many tens of thousands of dollars those calls saved victims, but over several years it was probably in the millions.
Because Mr. Krebs was doing so with good effect and as a private individual he did not face the legal firewalls in place to prevent LEOs taking such actions for corrupt or ill intent or blow investigations.
- panarky 7y ago> Each of these mule recruitment sites had the same security weakness: Anyone could register, and after logging in any user could view messages sent to and from all other users simply by changing a number in the browser’s address bar. As a result, it was trivial to automate the retrieval of messages sent to every money mule registered across dozens of these fake company sites. Law enforcement already masquerades online as underage girls and boys, potential terrorists searching for bomb-making materials, etc. What "legal firewalls" would prevent them from walking a URL to see what companies are about to get robbed? And forget about law enforcement, why wouldn't banks and payroll services do the same thing to protect their customers? It's beyond ridiculous that our only line of defense is Brian Krebs.
- mzs 7y ago> What "legal firewalls" would prevent them from walking a URL to see what companies are about to get robbed? None there, but the moment they have a bank freeze a company's account…
- joe_the_user 7y agoKrebs didn't freeze any business' account and any FBI agent doing similar work to Krebs would not have had to either. Apparently, the companies themselves called their banks to prevent the transactions. Banks do engage in effort to protect their customers and already flag questionable actions.
- mzs 7y agoContacting the company is strongly discouraged as well and for good reasons: * You do not want to create an environment where some enjoy the protection of the FBI and others do not. * You do not want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation or later trial.
- celticninja 7y agoThat's bullshit. The police will often contact organisations in these situations.
- judge2020 7y agoI imagine the criminal org. could perform a transaction with one of their own shell corporations every so often to see if the FBI are on to them.
- joe_the_user 7y agoThe thing about the situation actually described was everything happened on a fairly large scale but it was far from given - a lot of transactions failed for various reasons not necessarily implying the FBI was making a systematic effort to stop them. Indeed, Krebs was making a systematically effort to stop them and they just kept going.
- munk-a 7y agoThat'll still hurt the margins - a lot of these cyber crimes are only cost effective at scale and only hitting a few people successfully can deter folks to easier revenue streams - they care about margins as much as anyone else.
- panarky 7y agoI'm curious what you think the margin is for this endeavor. Is it like the food wholesale business which retains a 2% net margin after all expenses? Or is it like Google with net margins of 18% or thereabouts? Costs consist of writing and updating the malware itself, maintaining C&C servers and hiring mules to cash out the proceeds with an 8% commission. Maybe there are kickbacks to government authorities, though I understand kickbacks are often payments in kind, by sharing exploits with intelligence agencies.
- hinkley 7y agoIf one had watched too many Hollywood movies (where single points of failure are exploited ruthlessly by the Bad Guys), one might conclude that Krebs is far better off if more people are involved in this project, and that he should delegate at his earliest possible convenience (and maybe this is it?)
- graylights 7y agoThe messages are private communications, would probably require a warrant.
- joe_the_user 7y agoBecause Mr. Krebs was doing so with good effect and as a private individual he did not face the legal firewalls in place to prevent LEOs taking such actions for corrupt or ill intent or blow investigations. I would be interested in what legal firewalls in particular exist - anyone have references? My own guess would be that "don't blow the investigation" would be the catch-all phrase used to explain this situation (even if there is not investigation at time X). It seems as if the institutional mandate of law enforcement is 99% catch criminals, 1% stop crimes without catching criminals. So no one wants to be tasked in efforts to merely stop a theft and not catch a thief. This seems much in line with the push to "get tools to catch bad guys" by weakening encryption, even if said weakening would result in many more crimes.