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A Warning: Do not turn in illegal files you found to the police.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ddinh 13y agoHere's the original post, in case the 4chan thread gets deleted: A few months ago I posted here looking for help with a SD card I found while renovating a school. It was hidden in a wall outlet, and had several files with names on them, and obviously was a bunch of encrypted containers. Well, I managed to brute force one of them and inside was more containers, but a month ago I managed to open another and this time there was videos and pictures, stuff that made me go to the cops right away. So I turned over everything to them and told them all I knew, and that's when the bullshit began. Right from the start the police thought I had something to do with it. They took every device in my home that could store data, my phone, my laptops and computers, my PS3, even all my USB drives and camera. They questioned my family and went to my job and harassed everyone that I had any contact with, Right now I still haven't gotten any of my property back, and my friends and family think I am a creep. I am writing this to give a warning to everyone that works with IT if they end up in a situation like me. Don't go to the authorities, don't try and do the right thing, don't say a fucking thing just destroy what you found and move on. Trying to be a good person is just going to fuck your life over
- ars 13y agoDoesn't sound real to me. He brute forced two encrypted containers? Who does that for an SD card you find? And hidden in a wall outlet? Really? Someone just walks around carrying a screwdriver for opening wall outlets, and hopes not to get shocked? There are far easier places to hide things. And cops questioning family and job contacts for this? Sorry, but I don't believe a word of it.
- smtddr 13y ago>> He brute forced two encrypted containers? Who does that for an SD card you find? I would _totally_ do that for any encrypted files that came into my possession via an apparently discarded device. My curiosity would be through the roof. Of course, if I found illegal stuff... I'd burn the medium, throw the medium into the ocean, throw the ocean into the sun, and throw the sun into the moon.
- prawn 13y agoCuriosity would lead to someone doing that. The encryption would either magnify the curiosity or push them on that detective slant.
- trekky1700 13y agoIt sounds like the type of story you'd tell to try to stop people from doing the right thing in situations like this.
- scarmig 13y agoMy reaction too: it's just baiting the rabble. Though if you do ever happen to come across an SD card filled with encrypted child pornography, personally decrypting it and turning it in to the police is probably not the brightest course of action.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoWho is rabble? I suspect you're not part of it? And how would you know it's CP before you decrypted it? > not the brightest course of action. Sounds like victim blaming to me.
- scarmig 13y agoSince I read the story and posted a comment about it... yeah, I suppose I am part of the baited rabble =) It would be victim blaming if I thought he were actually a real person, but the latter part was entirely a well-intentioned tip to any person who actually finds himself in a similar situation. At least talk to a lawyer before traipsing into someplace dangerous like the police office.
- PavlovsCat 13y agoSo you don't think this really happened, but agree that it could plausibly happen, and give advice similar to the OP.. doesn't that make the question wether this actually happened a bit moot? IMHO it's not stupid to go to the cops with evidence of wrongdoing, at worst it's being naive and trusting... at best it's simply doing the correct thing without delay. How would anyone know otherwise, without such "rabble rousing" anecdotes, or first-hand experience? What really is stupid are such reactions of police. We shouldn't seek to teach people to mistrust the police, that is just a crappy short-term workaround; we should teach the police to be worthy of trust. Don't ask me how, it's just when I'm roused I get these big ideas :)
- kevingadd 13y agoA hidden SD card containing encrypted archives could be lots of things. It's like a puzzle. I'm sure it made him curious. Why would you assume the contents are illegal? I wouldn't. To me the op is no different from people who participate in ARGs. Only in this case, the prize at the end of the game was a ruined life. If the police behavior sounds implausible, you haven't read any stories about similar cases.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago> To me the op is no different from people who participate in ARGs. Except, you know, the game part of ar_G_. Real life is not a video game. If you live as if it is, something bad is probably going to happen to you eventually. Brute forcing something that doesn't belong to you is not just bad form, it's stupid, and depending on what it happens to be, possibly illegal. Does that make the police harassing him OK? Perhaps not. Is any part of this story even true? Also perhaps not.
- kevingadd 13y agoMany ARGs intentionally attempt to seem as real as possible, which is part of the appeal. There have been examples in the past where this has caused problems for people (the ill-fated game Majestic being one example). Contrived cryptography/hacking puzzles also show up as hiring screens, etc. My point is that his mindset is essentially the same: He ran across an intriguing puzzle and tried to solve it.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoOK. He should solve the meta-puzzle first. "What is this likely to be, and in what proportion of possible worlds is the outcome of knowing the answer to that question good for me."
- kevingadd 13y agoI agree. A lot of problems that afflict innocent people in our society can be chalked up to not doing that kind of higher-level thinking - what would be a person's possible motives for setting up this scenario? What are the potential consequences? Am I risking my finances, health, or livelihood by getting involved?
- naiyt 13y agoYou really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and lie? As for the "hidden in a wall outlet", I don't know why that sounds outlandish to you. I've worked in construction, and had to remove wall outlets all the time...never once got shocked. Plus, Walter White did it so it's got to be a logical and prudent thing to do. Right?
- swayvil 13y agoHe was renovating a school, thus he was carrying around a screwdriver (and probably lots of other tools) and possibly popping off outlet plates left and right (in preparation for, say, painting the walls). If I found an sd card with encrypted files I'd be curious as hell. Maybe the guy who hid it got the idea from Breaking Bad.
- gexla 13y agoWith bitcoin recently hitting 1200. I'm trying to bruteforce every encrypted storage device I come across. ;) Well, assuming that I have some sort of reasonably good setup where I'm not having to spend all my time doing it.
- Jayschwa 13y agoThe story seems suspect to me. He brute-forced encrypted containers?
- xSwag 13y agoYes, most likely the password used a common word or something else similar susceptible to being brute-forced.
- pudquick 13y agoUnlikely that it was something decent like Truecrypt volumes and more likely nested encrypted zips/RARs. Since the vast majority of these are encrypted with a simple text passcode, dictionary attacks are pretty routine against them. http://home.schmorp.de/marc/fcrackzip.html http://home.schmorp.de/marc/fcrackzip.html http://rarcrack.sourceforge.net http://rarcrack.sourceforge.net (as two examples)
- hackinthebochs 13y agoExactly. No one nests truecrypt but people do nest zips because the filenames are still visible with the older zip "encryption" format.
- praxulus 13y agoAre Truecrypt volumes with similarly bad passwords any harder to crack?
- randyrand 13y agoNo. Good passwords are paramount.
- asdfs 13y agoHere's an archive link, as that thread will presumably 404 pretty quickly: http://rbt.asia/g/thread/S38432928 http://rbt.asia/g/thread/S38432928
- acheron 13y agoThe police are not your friends. Sorry this guy had to learn that in a hard way. (Though apparently they have not yet shot his dog [1], so I guess he's gotten off easy so far.) [1] http://www.theagitator.com/?s=puppycide http://www.theagitator.com/?s=puppycide
- phaed 13y agoIndeed, calling the cops for any reason whatsoever will get you a good 30% chance you will be harassed, put in jail, or killed in the process. Don't do it.
- alayne 13y agoWhat's the source of your 30% statistic?
- trekky1700 13y agoTheir own research, he called the police three times to see the response he would get, and the third time they came to his house and found nothing amiss, they arrested him. jokes
- phaed 13y agoPersonal experience.
- streetnigga 13y agoCitation needed.
- streetnigga 13y agoThe police are not just my friends, they are my neighbors, my family. While much of my life is illicit I do not falter in my resolution of trying to work things out proper with the police. Even if the overall result is a detriment to myself.
- streetnigga 13y ago
- badalyan 13y agoNot that I don't believe it could be true, but are we really supposed to trust a 4chan post?
- pmiller2 13y agoIt doesn't much matter if it's really true or not. The real question is whether it's plausible or not. And, it is.
- joshmaker 13y ago>It doesn't much matter if it's really true or not. The real question is whether it's plausible or not. God lord, is that really the standard we want to use for any news source (even social news aggregation, such as Hacker News)? I may be lying but I'm lying well so that's basically as good as the truth?
- aroman 13y agoIt's not about news, it's about a discussion. 4chan isn't a news bulletin. It's a discussion board.
- joshmaker 13y agoTruth matters in discussions as well as the news. If we can't bring fact and reason to discourse, what's the point? Also, I'd hope the Hacker News community has at least a slightly higher standard for itself than 4Chan.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoWhether or not this story actually happened is irrelevant as there's nothing any of us can do to help the situation. It is however useful as a jumping off point for discussion and to come to a consensus about what we should do in a similar scenario.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
- ScottBurson 13y agoThis tale is all too believable. I wish I lived in a world where the police had the common sense to ask themselves, Why would the person who collected this material bring it to us? It makes no sense whatsoever that he would. Anyway, independent of the truth of the anecdote, the advice seems sound. Why risk it?
- ars 13y ago> Why risk it? Because depending on exactly what is on that card there may be a child in real pain? Maybe it's old photos, but if it's recent stuff you can actually help someone.
- phaed 13y agoChance of you being jailed for it: above average. Chance that anyone will be helped by you turning it in: far below average. Take your chances, if you dare. Doing anything to cover yourself, such as sending it to the cops through the mail anonymously will further raise the chances that the cops will try to pin it on you.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoThe police should think about what kind of precedent they are setting when they go after reporters of this stuff.
- gexla 13y agoI would think that if you were to find something that you really think needs to be investigated, then it would be best to send it to experts on the subject rather than people who have no idea how to deal with it. The experts would have the training, funding and experience to properly deal with this. This would be especially critical if the material required fast action. ETA: It seems to me that if someone were to bring in this material, then investigating the "messenger" would be a waste of time. The information you need is largely in the images. I imagine the first priority (other than decryption) would be to run the images against a national database. If there are images which aren't in the database, then you have new victims which may need immediate help. Then investigate the images for anything which would put a time and a place on the images. Investigating the person who turns these in seems like it would be quite a ways down the list.
- pmiller2 13y agoThe first thing this person should have done if he/she wanted to actually help the victims was go to his/her own lawyer for advice. Barring that, the advice in the 4chan thread to destroy it is probably best for him (sadly).
- prawn 13y agoHe could've tried to deliver it anonymously? I wonder if touching it (and potentially leaving DNA) was risky?
- robryan 13y agoWhat possible motive would he have to turn it in if he had anything to do with it?
- leap 13y agoPlease do not post anything ever again from 4chan. Most posts there are nothing but lunatic and juvenile.
- samweinberg 13y agoI agree with you, but not for those reasons. 4chan threads expire. It's best to link to a backup or screenshot.
- legreenname 13y agoAgreed Separate work and leisure. Do not hold company meetings in a strip club. Do not link 4chan on hackernews.
- delucain 13y agoWhat really amazes me is how many people on that thread were asking for a copy.
- pretense 13y agoIt's almost like HN has no understanding of how trolling on 4chan works.
- dlsx 13y ago>It's an unbelievable story. Keep telling yourself that.
- ivanca 13y agoRemember people, don't talk with the police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
- streetnigga 13y agoEngage the police, they are your neighbors.
- moocowduckquack 13y agopeople pay too much attention to hats
- streetnigga 13y agoConfession: I cannot remember names. But I will remember actions of a person. I've had more non-hatted folks fuck me over than the other. Again just a single source of stats. Nothing to draw from.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoIn my experience the people who have fucked me over the most have been mean bastards who like fucking people over. Some of them have worn hats, but most of them didn't and some of the folk in hats have also helped me out and I suspect most of the mean bastards in hats were mean before they even got the hat and there are a fair amount of mean bastards wondering about anyway.
- maxvu 13y agoI think a major qualifier for that video is "if you're suspect of a crime". In the post, our main character claims to not have expected to come under suspicion.
- aeturnum 13y agoI am not an expert, but the speaker in the video is very clear that you should avoid speaking to the police under all circumstances. It does not matter if they tell you that you're a suspect or not. He gives an example of a colleague asking if he should speak to the police when he is not a suspect and his advice is, "no!"
- AmVess 13y agoThis is very possible. However, you can do both the right thing as well as protecting yourself by providing the evidence to the police in an anonymous fashion.
- aqme28 13y agoUnless you do a bad job staying anonymous. If they find out it was you it's even more suspect.
- gst 13y agoSo how would you provide it in an anonymous fashion? Send it via mail, with your fingerprints and DNA on it? Or try to electronically transmit it via Tor or something, and if you mess up get jailed for electronically submitting such information.
- ihsw 13y agoHalf of the evidence is the location of the SD card, and concealing your presence in that location would be extremely difficult.
- OnionChamp 13y agoPeople are saying it's doubtful that he'd be able to brute-force two encrypted containers, but it's not. Most people use bad passphrases, because most password advice is terrible ("use a line from a poem but change some letters to numbers"), and because entropy is actually pretty difficult concept to understand and explain.
- drakaal 13y agoBeen there. Done that. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/25000 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/25000
- kevingadd 13y agoThis mindset, along with the police behavior that motivates it, will eventually turn the US into a mind-your-own-business country, where crimes can happen in broad daylight and people get in trouble while passersby do nothing. We've seen a similar culture in action in news stories from China. The net result: cops' job gets harder, and they only have themselves to blame for alienating the people who should be their allies. At least maximum employment will be guaranteed for them.
- fastball 13y agoThe US is historically a mind-your-own-business country. See pre-WWII isolationism and the time before the Truman doctrine.
- waps 13y agoSo is Europe currently. Link is 404'ing now.
- asdf1234 13y ago> where crimes can happen in broad daylight and people get in trouble while passersby do nothing There are plenty of places in the U.S. where this has been the case for decades.
- dsrguru 13y agoNot at all like the situation in China. In the U.S., if you're in a neighborhood with a large organized crime presence, passers-by will often refuse to testify, but what the parent is talking about in China today and the U.S. in this hypothetical future is different. In China, there is a recent history or at least public perception of victims falsely accusing good samaritan helpers of being the perpetrators in order to sue someone, even if they can't catch the perpetrator. The parent is saying that the U.S. could become the same way, except with would-be good samaritans/crime reporters not being afraid of the victims but of the police.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kayoone 13y agoThe big question to me is why in the world would someone producing that kind of material hide it in a public place like that? I also cant believe so many 4chan retards suggest he should have just burnt it and go on with his life. There might still be kids suffering at the moment or in the future in relation to this, so how can one possibly ignore it ? That feeling of not having atleast tried something to help would haunt me.
- dlsx 13y agoI think you are missing the point. Which is that there is risk involved in a situation where not only should there be no risk, but this guy should be praised for his honesty. The justice system, and the police bureaucracy is working against it's citizens. Something it was designed against from it's inception, so the only fucking reason things are the way they are is corruption and greed. Maybe a privatized prison industry isn't a good idea. Maybe, the bureaucracy is the problem, and that is the issue you should be concerned with.
- john2x 13y agoWould going to a local newspaper help in this situation?
- chasing 13y agoLet me tell you a similar story: So this one time there was this one guy who was just, like, totally minding his own business and the police just arrested him. Therefore the United States is a police state and you should never ever talk with cops for any reason whatsoever.
- fiatmoney 13y agoAre you under the impression that this does not happen?
- chasing 13y agoI'm under the impression that this 4chan anecdote is lacking a ton of detail that would be needed to understand the story. Including, perhaps, the police perspective about why he was arrested. "I was arrested for no reason. Fuck the police!" is a non-story.
- glenra 13y agoWait, why WOULDN'T he expect to be arrested? Possession of CP is illegal. He went into a police station in possession of CP. Therefore, he is a lawbreaker. Simple as that. Yes, it's stupid...but these laws ARE stupid. You'd be in the exact same situation walking into the police station with a bag of cocaine or a sawed-off shotgun. They don't HAVE to bring charges and might choose not to, but that choice is at their discretion. No?
- jzwinck 13y agoIt happened to me: http://gothamist.com/2011/08/08/video_hikers_arrested_for_not_showi.php http://gothamist.com/2011/08/08/video_hikers_arrested_for_no...
- chasing 13y agoMy point exactly: Here's a story with some actual detail.
- 13y ago
- sillysaurus2 13y agoWhy are we so quick to believe OP's story at face value? There could be factors which led the police to investigate; factors which OP chose not to disclose. There is, generally, no way to "brute force" an encrypted container containing child pornography for the simple reason that no one who respects the gravity of the situation would dare choose a password less than 8 characters. Even 8 a-z characters requires (26^8)/2==104.4 billion attempts to bruteforce on average, which is high. Real passwords are likely longer. I realize how flimsy this argument is. They could've chosen a dictionary word as their password, which could indeed be brute forced. All I'm encouraging is for people to think. Turning in evidence of child pornography is the only way that child pornographers will be caught. Having the reaction of "don't go to authorities" will yield a worse society. Is our attitude really to be "fuck society, I'm looking out for myself"?
- yeukhon 13y agoI choose to be on the "dark side" which the majority of the comments here disagree with me. If a police pull you over, don't look for verbal fight. Yes, you should ask "wassup, officer, what's the matter?". But don't start saying "I want a lawyer" if this is some speeding ticket or some ID check. Doing so is stupid - you are wasting police force patrolling. We got a lot of knockout game assault lately. I want more police patrolling. More. Be clever. Just turn on video recorder on your cell phone and walk to the police. If you feel uncomfortable and you feel harassed, sure, use your right and tell the police you want a lawyer. People have always distrust the authority, but ironically they always want more protections. I have dealt with quite a few police officers in my life and I find all of them friendly and reasonable. Just remain clam. Guys have pressures too - getting yell at and middle finger at every single fucking day on the street, worrying the next big time crime comes up at their face and die while enforcing law. Yes, there are some assholes among the polices, but the majority are just everyone else's friend and family. We have assholes in IT, in fire fighters, in the army, in the government, in schools, in everywhere. Whatever reason is behind this "unreasonable searches", let the story reveal on the news then. Let a general attorney get involved. On the other hands, I think it is reasonable for a police to actually ask to check if the contents have been wiped out or not. If you were told X person has decrypted the card and played the videos, you as the state probably want to ensure this content has not been saved in any more device. Yes, sounds stupid, but I think that's reasonable. Think about this - a child was raped and a cracker hacked into X's computer and distributed this file - is that bad? I am not saying the whole questioning family and friend is reasonable, I am not a law enforcer, but the other parts still seem reasonable. -- EDIT -- I actually was a whistleblower myself once. I did the same thing the OP did. I turned in a child pornography evidence. Well, a bunch of people did because this was distributed online. At the time I was just a high school kid and I was managing a popular discussion forum. It was reported by some members on our forum and as a manager I decided to turn this over to the Taiwanese police by pointing them where this source was discovered. I submitted anonymously, however. I still encourage people to be a whistleblower / be a good citizen / good person at some point. We need to arrest these horrible assholes.
- lopatin 13y agoQuestion, kind of relevant to the topic of talking to police: I heard that a cop can only search your car if there is a crime being committed. Say you admit to speeding. Then you admitted to police that you committed a crime. Does that mean that the cop can search your car now?
- mdisraeli 13y agoAs the poster on 4chan concludes, you may not want to speak to the police about such things. However, not doing so could potentially result in accusations of knowing but not reporting a crime, or worse - destruction of evidence. I suspect there's no winning here, sadly :( What follows is my initial thoughts off the top of my head as to how I might attempt to mitigate any accusations. This is not legal advice. Firstly, if it looks to have been deliberately concealed, contact your building's security and/or the police (non-emergency). Don't touch it yourself at all. I cannot stress this enough. When contacting the police, ask them for instructions on what you should do, and get a name. If you can't stay at the scene until someone arrives, just tell them as much. You should be given a reference number and can update them if you need to be relived by someone. Odds are, an unknown concealed item that is not likely to be an explosive or drugs is probably of little interest to your typical cop, and (sadly?) they will never get around to looking at it. There might be some legitimate reasons to investigate further, for example with respect to an organisation's security. If you are in a large organisation, escalate the matter upwards and touch nothing, no matter how tempting. For many good reasons, security/fraud investigations often are on a strict need-to-know basis. Get the appropriate person to contact the police and take their guidance. Let's assume for the purpose of this post that you are the right person, and there is no existing investigation which this may relate to. Your natural curiosity should be ignored, however, unless you have a genuine concern of data exfiltration or other potentially malicious activities. But who I am kidding, of course you do, most organisations do! Now you need to make sure you can preserve as much evidence as possible, perform a detailed investigation, but all the time protect yourself from both legal and technical risks. What follows assumes high risk. Do your own judgement on the risks involved and if the steps below mitigate them adequately (they are probably over the top, this is not a bad thing). Assume that before and after each of these there is a "Listen to the police and/or your legal team". 1. Photograph in situ first, ideally with some means to date the photograph. If possible, get a second person involved. If the area is covered by CCTV, get the footage pulled for cross-referencing. Photographs are useful for the higher resolution details. 1a. Record everything on video. 2. Speaking of CCTV, you'll want to get someone to look at the tapes. This is left as an exercise for the reader, especially the bit about making it not soul-destroying manual observation. This point also covers all the non-technical but essential things like "who had access to this area", "do we stock that type of device", etc. Never forget that the old-fashioned non-technical questions can often give the best answers. 2. Use gloves and carefully remove the device. Take note of the environment it was in, with special interest for clues as to how long it has been there. Examine briefly for any markings. Place immediately into clear plastic bag, marking it with a description of the contents and ideally adding tamper seals. Clear plastic bag means you can verify the device hasn't changed. When not performing investigatory work, the bag should be locked in a dedicated place for evidential material. 3. Establish an air-gapped secure system to perform analysis on. Assume that malware will be present and that you will want to be able to detect and analyse it. Ideally have an investigations laboratory to add physical controls around the air-gap. 4. Establish a log book. Record the date, time, action taken, and tamper seal codes before and after. There will be more things you will wish to record, of course - this is only a rough guide. 5. Acquire a write-block device. These are utterly essential for any form of forensic investigation, and typically block at (what courts consider to be) hardware-level any modification to the device. 6. Attach the device to your air-gapped system using the write-blocker. At this point, the air-gapped system is dirty and will need to be forensically wiped/destroyed once you are finished. 7. Using Encase, similar forensic tools, or failing that GNU dd_rescue, image the device. Never, ever, work off the original device. The police and/or auditors may want to take their own copy, this is normal. 8. With respect to the log book, treat this image like the original device. This log book is what you use to back up "I was performing a security investigation". This includes any automated testing or password cracking you attempt. 9. If your organisation handles classified information, it goes without saying that identifying if any is present is your top priority - no matter what the implications that then has 10. Limit who gets to actually view the data on the device to an absolute minimum. You don't know what's there, it could be personal HR information or finances, or that hush-hush restructuring project. The fewer eyes the better. Ideally this should be someone trained in forensic examination and with a high enough clearance to view any potential contents. 11. Know when to give up. Seriously, you could spend years diving into the contents of a 64GB device, and never actually get anything useful. 12. Ask a legal person about how long to retain the device for once you've finished. 13. Assuming you have identified that the contents need further examination, look into eDiscovery tools like Symantec Clearwell, and visualisation tools like the excellent Gephi. Perform technical wizardry rather than wading through a hundred thousand files manually. You're reading hacker news, remember! ;) 14. Assuming that the police have been involved, update them. However if it really is an unknown item and there is otherwise little that is suspicious, they probably won't be that interested and/or will close the call silently. Apparently I Am Not A Lawyer, And I Repeatedly Assert This Fact. I work in IT Security, and have been involved in quite a few investigations or varying types. Due to their nature, we knew the source of the data on most occasions, so many of the above steps were unnecessary. I'd rather suggest too many protective controls than too few - safer if I know I'm not a lawyer!
- amerika_blog 13y agoRobert Putnam concluded that the less a society has in common in terms of background, culture, heritage and values, the more alienated it becomes: http://boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_d... Soon we're going to be a society where no one trusts anyone else, and thus it will be better to ignore the CP flowing around instead of getting involved. Reminds me of the mentality they have in third world countries about the local gangster warlords. Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing.
- KyeRussell 13y agomirror: https://archive.installgentoo.net/g/thread/38432928 https://archive.installgentoo.net/g/thread/38432928
- kevinchen 13y agoOriginal link is broken now and neither Google nor the Internet Archive have caches. Anyone happen to have a copy?