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Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers
- alecdibble 15y agoThe section on the feud between Anonymous and Los Zetas was fascinating. It's very interesting that Anonymous has that kind of leverage against such seemingly powerful people.
- FreakLegion 15y agoNo part of that story has ever been corroborated. Barrett Brown isn't exactly a trustworthy source.
- huherto 15y agoI don't think Anonymous has any leverage against the Zetas. I don't even think the Zetas know or care about Anonymous.
- brianbreslin 15y agoI was told by some Mexicans that the cartel is already employing (as in paying salaries to) numerous hackers and IT professionals. They have very high level of banking access and technology that rivals government spy agencies. Unlimited funds will do that for you though.
- kevinchen 15y agoThat seems to make more sense than kidnappings. If kidnapped hackers have the expertise to break into things and the Internet connection to do it, they'd be able to send messages and get help.
- vibrunazo 15y ago> technology that rivals government spy agencies From my personal experience, that's saying they have bored inexperienced coders, who use outdated tools and techniques that any CS sophomore would laugh at. And are much more worried about working the internal politics to get promoted. Than to get any actual work done. I bet mexican hackers are better than that.
- jamesfrank 15y ago> From my personal experience... I'm just curious - are you implying that you've personally encountered this sort of thing at government spy agencies or just that much of the government seems to have these characteristics?
- coopdog 15y agoKidnap is funny though, they could kidnap someone and say comply with everything we tell you. If either you or your family leave our control (they could be in separate places) or signal for help we will kill you both. The only escape would be to perfectly synchronize it. Would work especially well if two or more kidnapped hackers were forced to monitor each other, adding a prisoner's dilemma to the mix. If one failed to catch the other's escape he/she and their family would be killed. So it isn't impossible to enslave security professionals.
- gcb 15y agoBut that's a new thing for they to waste time on. Why not just doing what they do usually and move on to other important drug business stuff?
- unimpressive 15y ago>Would work especially well if two or more kidnapped hackers were forced to monitor each other, adding a prisoner's dilemma to the mix. If one failed to catch the other's escape he/she and their family would be killed. And you just described what would be an amazing cyberpunk novel. Two security professionals both try to escape and prevent the other from escaping at the same time. If done right it could quickly become the best kind of thriller; the one where you're actually speculating as to what happens next.
- neilk 15y agoIt's not a prisoner's dilemma; if they are monitoring each other, they can communicate. This will rapidly break down into a mutual win. But maybe that's your third act right there.
- huherto 15y agoMexican hacker here. I haven't heard anything related to that.
- malandrew 15y agoWere I an activist involved with this, I think that providing a "dead man's switch as a service" could be quite useful. Were I to engage in risky journalism, while living in close proximity to these gang wars, I'd want a way to spill additional information to the media were I to go missing.
- kingpharoah 15y agoHN readers around the world should be able to do something to take heat off the Mexican people.
- user2459 15y agoEvents like this are the main reason why The War on Drugs™ is so dangerous for everybody. It's not the drugs or gangs killing gangs. It's the gangsters that live through it sitting on piles of money who now have the resources to expand into crimes that take more than a gun, friends with guns, and some luck. Because of the prohibition they can now hire hackers to commit crimes for them in any place in the world. It's going to get harder to implicate them in crimes, and yet easier for them to make money off them. Possibly the worst part is that this happened to us(and is still affecting us) in almost exact detail during the prohibition of the 20s and yet we continue to shrug our shoulders and keep giving them more money.
- vibrunazo 15y ago> we continue to shrug our shoulders and keep giving them more money. Aren't the ones shrugging their shoulders (who are for the war on drugs), and the ones giving them money (who buy drugs), two completely separate and opposite groups? Don't look at me, I don't belong to neither. But that sentence sounds like an over-simplification of a complex problem.
- lucisferre 15y agoIronically its your's that is the real oversimplification. Fortunately that wasn't the view taken when they finally ended prohibition. It's pretty well known that you dont get far treating the symptoms.
- Taft 15y agoThe correct lesson to learn here is "markets amass when there's demand," or, more simply put, "people will always buy their drugs."
- paulhauggis 15y agounfortunately, legalizing drugs isn't going to solve anything. Gangsters will still have piles of money because they will now have a legal business. The real problem is police/government corruption. It's the reason they were allowed to get this powerful in the first place.
- shareme 15y agoWhat is sad is that US citizens do not understand that this un-civil war has been going on for the past 30 years and we as US citizens have done nothing that has a statistical impact of reversing the damage. Instead we invade Iraq and Afghanistan based on the political connections of a former Haliburton employee and stockholder. And if we do not wake up soon.. WWII will be on our doorstep.
- bjg 15y agoWWIII?
- Akram 15y agoSword Fish
- armandososa 15y agoI've thought about it too. You guys catch Saddam and Osama, why can't you launch some drones and put a missile trough capo's asses? I guess our lives and peace are not worth the intervention.
- dagw 15y agoCan you imagine the magnitude of the political shit storm on both sides of the border the first time a US drone operating in Mexican airspace with the blessing of the Mexican government blows up a few Mexican kids?
- yummyfajitas 15y agoAnd unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, Mexico actually matters to the US. They are our #3 trading partner (Canada and China are #1 and #2), even ignoring trade in labor (and trade in drugs). Messing that up would be foolish.
- sunraa 15y agoUse of drones the U.S. is a done deal courtesy of the recently passed aviation bill. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/house-approves-aviation-funds-for-4-years.html?scp=5&sq=aviation%20bill&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/house-approves-aviation...
- dannyobrien 15y agoThere's nothing in this article to confirm that headline, apart from the sentence "Recent claims that computer programmers are being forcibly recruited by Mexican drug gangs, if true, suggest that these groups are acquiring the ability to reap the potential profits of cyber-crime", which has no citation. I'd be very interested to hear of corroborated incidences of such kidnapping or recruitment occurring. I was in Sinaloa, Mexico this month actively looking for such evidence as part of my work. There's some indication that the cartel have reasonable IT infrastructure (which isn't surprising, given their size), and some growing involvement in physical piracy (counterfeit items in markets have to be marked with a cartel symbol, which is purchasable). But I've yet to see strong evidence that they are involved in "cybercrime" in any organized fashion. They certainly take discussion forum flamewars pretty seriously though: http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/03/online-news-sites-as-battleground-for-mexican-drug.php http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/03/online-news-sites-as-bat...
- sebastianavina 15y agoFrom what I understand, drug cartels need software for running their bussiness, and because they can't take a call to SAP and have a representative build a custom solution, they just kidnap programmers, extortion them and make them build the software they need for bookeping and all the stuff made by computers on this days.
- zby 15y agoSlave is not a good worker - with tedious manual tasks you can force someone and measure his performance - but I cannot imagine how this could work efficiently for any professional work.
- einhverfr 15y agoWhy don't they use open source accounting software? I am sure we could recommend a few packages ;-)
- adambyrtek 15y agoThis doesn't seem very convincing. Simply paying programmers lots of money would be a simpler and more effective solution. They could certainly afford that, and bookkeeping is too critical to their business to risk. Would you suggest that they kidnap lawyers and doctors as well?
- hef19898 15y agoSounds too much like Password: Swordfish 2.0 to me. Unfortunately I can't access the article right now. For me, one thin gis sure, the cartels aren't stupid. At least the leaders and the heads, that is. Don't judge the organization by the goons welding guns and that get killed. They are running a multi-billion dollar business, and I'm pretty sure that they know that forced labour only gets you so far in anything more important than packaging (even thats not sure, given the budget they have and mexican salaries). So I think they are rather hiring the best IT-guys they can get along with the best intel-guys they can get. These hackers may not be of the "don't be evil"-type, what after the cartels aren't in that kind of business neither.
- hef19898 15y agoI'm quite new to HN, so I have a question. Was anything wrong on my comment that I'm the only one to get down voted on this topic? I'm not going to bitch around due to that, don't get me wrong, I only want to understand why, tht's all. :-)
- dagw 15y agoRandom downvotes are a fact of life on HN, if for no other reason than the close proximity of the vote buttons (I know I've accidentally down-voted more than a couple of stories over the years). These things tend to correct themselves if you're patient and wait a few hours.
- hef19898 15y agoAh, that could be a reason. Again, no offense taken, I just wondered. There is no other thing like randomness to add some salt to life!
- Symmetry 15y agoGiven how often it is that the first vote on a good comment is a downvote, I can't help but wonder if there are people who deliberately downvote good comments so their comments rise higher.
- 15y ago
- ernirulez 15y agoThis is a very good opportunity for governments to make public opinion even worse against hackers and therefore make new laws to control us even more. That will be very easy for them: Hackers -> Help drug gangs -> Hackers = Criminals
- trotsky 15y agobullshit