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How the FBI found Miss Teen USA’s webcam spy
- dpweb 13y agoall these guys thinking connecting to a no logging proxy will protect them. logs show kid connected to vpn and show vpn connected to victim. another evil genius not so genius.
- pyre 13y agoThe no-logging VPN was a dead-ended according to the article. His 'sin' was that all of the RATs were connecting back to him directly (via the no-ip dynamic DNS).
- njharman 13y agoMalware was connecting back to an ip, at a household with multiple people. It's hard to arrest an ip. The logs at his university confirmed that he and not anyone else at his household connected to VPN.
- pyre 13y agoOnce they had it traced to his household, it was pretty much game over though. Even if they didn't have technical means to determine which family member was using it, I'm sure they could find others. Using just the information that he used VPN Product A, and the extortionist used VPN Product A doesn't mean anything without other information, and they wouldn't have even found the information that he connected to VPN Product A without having a reason to look into him specifically (vs. any other customer of VPN Product A).
- jcromartie 13y agoA VPN with no logs will certainly protect you, because there is no way to (logically) connect the machines that connect in to the VPN to activity coming out from the VPN.
- smackfu 13y ago>logs show kid connected to vpn and show vpn connected to victim That only works if you know who the kid is to start with.
- jgrahamc 13y agoThe question to ask yourself when reading this article is... "Why the hell is there a Miss Teen USA competition?"
- DanBC 13y agoThe competitors of Miss Tween, Miss Pre-Teen, and Little Miss America need a competition to move into? Child beauty pageants is a reasonable amount of money. $20bn according to WP. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_beauty_pageant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_beauty_pageant)
- spongle 13y agoEven if ethically dubious... There are far worst things happening in the UK though. It's becoming a career decision to neglect your children so you can claim special needs status and therefore disability benefit (and celebrity status on FaceBook amongst peers).
- untog 13y agoI don't really see how that's similar in any way at all, and it seems like you're trying to inject a pet hate into the conversation.
- alan_cx 13y agoOh dear...
- DanBC 13y ago> It's becoming a career decision to neglect your children so you can claim special needs status and therefore disability benefit (and celebrity status on FaceBook amongst peers). This is a hateful stigmatising lie.
- vdm 13y agoCitation needed.
- Ecio78 13y agoTwo considerations: 1) a real genius, using VPN for sending email and then using his own IP for remote back connection from the infected clients 2) why FBI went to FB to search for his name and check who he is, when they could use the dyn-dns logs (or even just do a lookup on the current-at-that-time IP) and ask his ISP who was using that IP address?
- mikegioia 13y agoI can't believe this idiot was sending the data back to a .no-ip.org domain. Aside from the fact that he did some pretty awful stuff to a lot of girls and deserves to be jailed, how could you be so proficient in web camera hacking, frequent so many hacking forums, and still not know to send the data back to a domain that can't be linked DIRECTLY to your home machine?
- dalore 13y agoHe isn't proficient in web camera hacking. He managed to install someone else's tool on someone else's computer. He didn't write the RAT I bet. There isn't much hacking in this story at all, the guy just got lucky that he managed to get Miss Teen USA's computer.
- JonSkeptic 13y agoSeeing how it turned out, I'd say he was rather unlucky that he got Miss Teen USA's computer. Little bastard could use some jail time.
- FireBeyond 13y agoAdmittedly, this article changed my understanding - for better or worse I confess my first thoughts in hearing all this was that it was someone she was "sexting" with, he discovered the competition aspect, blackmailed... and the whole "webcam hacked" was the excuse.
- r4pha 13y agoNothing technically relevant here. Just your regular not-so-clever asshole behind a computer.
- chiph 13y agoWhy are the camera lights controlled by software? I would rather they come on when the camera gets powered up, ie. controlled by hardware.
- jgrahamc 13y agoI would like that too, but my solution is to not trust the camera and have a sticker over it which I can remove when I want. There work well because they have a sticky portion and a part that has no adhesive: http://www.post-it.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Post_It/Global/Products/Product-Catalog/~/Post-it-Flags-Value-Pack-Primary-Colors-1-in-and-1-2-in-wide-240-Pk-BONUS?N=4327+3294647218&rt=rud http://www.post-it.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Post_It/Global/Pr... The view from my camera with the sticker on is: http://i.imgur.com/y0OKxqO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/y0OKxqO.jpg
- jcromartie 13y agoAt least on MacBook Pro computers, you can use a thin magnetic strip to cover the camera. My friend was making these by hand, and never got around to the kickstarter :)
- addandsubtract 13y agoAFAIK, MacBook cameras can't be used without the light turning on. [0] [0] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26590/are-there-privacy-concerns-with-the-built-in-isight-camera-and-led-indicator http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26590/are-there-pri...
- mattcanhack 13y agoI also do this except I'm using a bandaid, it works well and is good conversation starter.
- euroclydon 13y agoMy solution is to be a moderately unattractive male with facial hair, lead a boring life, and keep my clothes on when in front of my computer (although the later is probably a mitigating factor).
- jcromartie 13y agoIt's interesting to note that at least one school system itself has surreptitiously installed this kind of thing on laptops given to students, with the express purpose of monitoring them at home. A student was punished for behavior at home which was only detected by the secret image capture software installed. So why don't all embedded cameras have hardware indicator lights that can't be disabled?
- pilom 13y agoDidn't that student sue his school and get a settlement for a whole lot of money? I know that doesn't mean there aren't more of these cases but its still illegal.
- Nursie 13y agoIt's hard to describe the contempt I feel for ratters. I hope the guy gets a nice long jail sentence.
- DanBC 13y agoCoercing an under 18 year old (and knowing she was under 18) into providing nude photographs against her will should be prison time. It's cases like this - where people are rightly disgusted and horrified - that make other cases seem really baffling. (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/webcam-scandal-resurfaces/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/webcam-scandal-resu...) > A suburban Philadelphia school district embroiled in a webcam spy scandal was hit Tuesday with new allegations that a student-issued laptop secretly recorded more than 8,000 images. > The latest accusations, which were said to occur during a six-month period ending September 2008, has left the high school student “shocked, humiliated and severely emotionally distressed,” (.pdf) according to a federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages. > As part of an FBI investigation and a lawsuit brought by a different student, a judge had contacted the boy’s parents informing him of the breach, and invited them to view the pictures. The youth’s parents were shown 4,404 webcam photographs and 3,978 screenshots captured with the Lower Merion School District–issued MacBook. Who the hell thought that could ever possibly be a good idea?
- jcromartie 13y agoSchool districts have an enormous sense of entitlement. These are the same people who put zero tolerance disciplinary policies in place.
- StavrosK 13y agoDoesn't this count as possession/production of child pornography, under current laws?
- sequoia 13y agoMy take away from this article is teach your children about digital security and always keep webcams covered or hardware disabled.* There will always be people willing to do this and it will probably continue to be technically feasible for the foreseeable future (if not "as long as we continue using computers) so preventing it at the demand side isn't realistic. Children/teens are apparently being digitally raped (I think this is a reasonable description of blackmailing/coercing a teen into doing "what I tell you" over webcam)... it baffles me that we place so low a value on the sort of computer literacy that could prevent this. Hopefully cases like this will cause enough outrage to give hardware producers the kick int he ass they need to fix this issue & alert parents & others to this issue. * Why the hell don't cameras & mics have hardware switches to turn them off?? Wifi hardware switches are common on laptops now, why doesn't this basic defense covering an obvious, proven attack vector exist??
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- BoxTop 13y agoWhat VPN provider this he use?
- ianstallings 13y agoSummary: Well, he was an idiot.
- od2m 13y agoThis was the easiest way this guy could figure out to see naked women on the internet.