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> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal soci
by culi 2y ago
> the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration
To be honest, this is my first time hearing about The Com. Does anyone have any more reading on this? You'd think they'd use something more secure than Discord (which has 0 encryption) and Telegram which doesn't have encryption by default and whose gov't backdoor is basically an open secret[0]
[0] https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/ https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/
- p3rls 2y agoWhen I was a teen these types hung out on IRC and even AOL in chatrooms like "progs" to trade credit card numbers. Young people and operational security doesn't exist.
- tjpnz 2y ago>Young people and operational security doesn't exist. If I had PII in the systems they have access to I would be concerned. How long until someone gets spear phished or malware is installed on their presumably non-compliant systems? There's a reason why big corps spend significantly on security training for new grads.
- edm0nd 2y agopr island and pr warez I miss 1IM punting so much and being able to use Gothic Nightmares and FiReTooLz
- p3rls 2y agoYeah it was all fun and games until someone pulls an AOL staff account on ya, looks up your address and proto-swats your home address
- throwawayqqq11 2y agoIt is all fun and games until you think about not only the victims but the possible harm done. Even a loss of a small amount of money can be life changing. Swatting is just something the morally impaired can relate to better.
- p3rls 2y agoOf course, though I got swatted for defacing another group's page and not stealing credit cards. And honestly I never even used my card stash anyway and I had thousands and thousands-- not because I'm a good person or whatever but because I was paranoid after that. The rush of building a duplicate of LOVE@AOL and then trawling my way through chatrooms and building my email list "Someone liked you, sign into your premium love@AOL account to see who" was too exhilirating to give up for 13-year-old me even if I was essentially tag-and-release phishing.
- edm0nd 2y agoI remember using spizzam2k and spamming out millions of InstaKiss phishing emails. We used to phish OH accounts and <M>< master accounts to get free internet or scroll from the OH accounts. AOL was so awesome and where I met friends I still keep in contact with today. Also taught me how to program.
- BryantD 2y agoI recommend Marc-André Argentino's research on the Com; he's a conspiracy researcher who got his PhD on QAnon. He leans left, if that's a factor for you. His general overview: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/ https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/ That piece doesn't get specific at all about Com activities but be aware that some of the manifestos and other material he discusses is quite disturbing.
- gyudin 2y agoHe cites same journalist Krebs that has no cybersecurity background. Even Marc-André Argentino himself is a master of arts in theology and not a real cybersecurity specialist.
- BryantD 2y agoNah, he has a PhD from Concordia’s individualized program, supervised by professors from both Theological Studies and Information System Engineering. But it’s true that he’s not coming at this from a cybersecurity perspective, he’s an extremism researcher. I wouldn’t rely on him to evaluate how good someone is at exploits and so on. I do respect his research skills and his ability to evaluate weird cult manifestos.
- sangnoir 2y agoWhat degree does one need to earn first in order to be a "cyber security specialist"?
- wholinator2 2y agoThis coming from Gyudin, who cites no credentials and is not a real journalism specialist. See? Real easy to discredit someone by credentialism. Instead, you can read his article and take apart his points, since you're unsatisfied by his interpretation
- BlueTemplar 2y agoWell, those are some highly disturbing social dynamics... (nothing new I guess, just superchaged by the latest technics ?)
- burkaman 2y agoKrebs has written other articles about it: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-harm-groups-and-the-com/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...
- gyudin 2y agoYes and he’s literally just a journalist with no real cybersecurity background
- orwin 2y agoWell to be fair, a lot of people who fancy themselves as a part of the Com don't have any either. A lot of them are skiddies posers. Quite the cringe crowd tbh, or maybe I just found a particularly young group.
- throwaway2037 2y agoMost journalists don't have a background in X when they are reporting upon X. This is normal. That said, he is very open that he does not have a cybersecurity background (trained engineer), but he does rely heavily upon a network of experts. Again, a reporter working on a story about geopolitics is unlikely to have past experience as a high ranking gov't official in state dept/foreign ministry, but will rely heavily upon a network of experts. Do you have any specific concerns about this?
- Thorrez 2y agoHe learned Russian to infiltrate Russian hacker forums. That shows he's dedicated to learning.
- throwaway2037 2y ago[L]earned Russian: Woah, is this really true? Russian is a very difficult language to learn if you are not from former USSR, nor a Slavic language speaker. (I was told that the grammar is very complex.) I tried to Google about it, but I could not find anything. Can you share some sources? I am curious to learn more!
- caust1c 2y agoDiscord is very popular with skiddies and real criminal organizations alike. It's got pretty basic KYC controls in place, meaning essentially anyone with just an email can sign up. It can be accessed from behind VPNs without any issues, so effectively it doesn't matter that it's not e2e encrypted. I feel that discord the company probably let's it slide because: 1. Moderation at scale is incredibly difficult. 2. They work with law enforcement agencies to execute warrants and subpoenas.
- immibis 2y agoAre you sure about Discord? I've tried creating a Discord account from a VPN, and it always demands my phone number.
- culi 2y agoI've been mistakenly banned from Discord before and I know from experience that pretty much any low level mod has a complete and readibly accessible history of all of my posts across all servers complete with timestamps and IP addresses I'm also pretty sure phone number are required for sign up I think your second point is the more likely explanation. Any other platform that would've hosted this many communities dedicated to drugs, cybercrime, etc would definitely have faced serious legal challenges. It seems much more likely that feds find it a useful platform to keep around
- throw101010 2y agoA mobile phone number is required for certain Discord servers (a setting available to the admins) but not for sign-up (maybe if you are using an IP in a suspicious/VPN range they force it now?). Otherwise they only require a valid email. For Telegram though there isn't really a way around it, a phone is required. There is/was a way to buy some TON crypto token instead to avoid this verification but it became prohibitively too expensive.
- torginus 2y agoI still don't get how Discord can be secure - I suspect it can't. Just the fact that the forums are persistent, and controlled by a third party, and the client is closed source means people on there can be compromised at any point incredibly easily, VPN or not. Just something as simple as using a cookie or local storage can leave permanent traces behind so all the access can be easily correllated. I'm not even sure if serious infosec measures exist to stop this, and if they do, someone is bound to slip up and they need to do it just once, and expose the whole chatroom. I'm not a hacker but this sounds like failing Opsec 101, and people getting by just with sheer luck.
- ketlag 2y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/09/09/social-media-bullied-teen-found-fame-among-child-predators-worldwide/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/09/09/soc..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/12/10/discord-suicide-764-hervey/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/12/10/dis..., https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/764-predator-discord-telegram/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
- impulser_ 2y agoThe Com is just a general term for crime communities on the Internet. Its not a specific group. The Com includes groups that commit crimes stretching from cybercrime to literally the worst crimes you can think of and the vast majority of this is done on Discord and Telegram. You can go down a really dark rabbit hole if you really dig deep into some of these groups within The Com. This is where the worst of the worst spend all their time.
- torben-friis 2y agoTo what degree is this common knowledge? After 20 years of being highly online I'm surprised to be so blindsided. Not that I work in security or anything.
- jrexilius 2y agoMe to. I suspect its a combination of demographics and sub culture thing (I'm old, and out of the loop on a lot of pop culture and sub-variants). I have noticed a very high degree of nihilism and a sort of "morals are just a role you play in a game" kinda mentality with the younger crowd that looks and acts _very_ different to past generations though..
- throw101010 2y agoPlato allegedly said it better than you thoudands of years ago... and if you are "old", maybe he was talking about you? ;) > What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them? All of this to say that generations judging each other are rarely objective and very prone to both confirmation bias and broad generalization. But if are going to generalize, how about this, transgression is part of a healthy growth for most young people (we all test limits by crossing lines one time or an other, some more than others), and most old people (conveniently) forget that they were doing exactly the same with the tools they had at the time. Let's take a step back and appreciate that societies around the world tend to become less violent and less criminal... when these trends might reverse we can start talking again about the decadence of young people and it's consequences.
- leftcenterright 2y agoRead about it from Europol: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-enforcement-targets-online-cult-communities-dedicated-to-extremely-violent-child-abuse https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-... > Violent online groups are targeting and manipulating vulnerable children and young people across widely accessible online platforms. There are multiple groups, associations and evolving subgroups that make up the online network known as The Com – short for community. The Com is a virtual community of groups and individuals who conduct illicit activities that glorify serious violence, cruelty, and gore. > Elements of The Com network are known to have extreme ideological views and victimise children, coercing them to commit violent acts. Predators groom their victims through different methods – one approach is establishing friendships based on trust or romantic relationships. Another technique involves the use of power or coercive tactics with one goal – taking control over the victims, while getting them to engage in serious violence, self-harm, or other gruesome. It’s a vicious cycle - the predators in this network influence children or young people into conducting acts that increasingly shame, incriminate, or isolate them, this in turn makes them more vulnerable to further exploitation.
- throwaway290 2y agoAlso discussed in https://cyberscoop.com/the-com-764-cybercrime-violent-crime-fbi-intellignce-report/ https://cyberscoop.com/the-com-764-cybercrime-violent-crime-... > The child sextortion group 764 and the global collective of loosely associated groups known as “The Com” are using tools and techniques normally used for financially motivated cybercrime tactics — such as SIM swapping, IP grabbing and social engineering — to commit violent crimes, according to exclusive law enforcement and intelligence reports reviewed by CyberScoop. > The reports offer insight into the underbelly of the global network, showing how they are using traditional cybercriminal tools to identify, target, groom, extort, and cause physical and psychological harm to victims as young as 10. They were shared with police nationwide and in some cases, with foreign-allied governments.