Submitted 2 months ago by some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to technology@lemmy.world
This whole thing is horrifying, but the last paragraph is especially disturbing:
Since Herrera himself has a young daughter, and since there are “six children living within his fourplex alone” on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the government has asked a judge not to release Herrera on bail before his trial.
Even more disturbing is it said he was also producing content.
The Ars article seems to suggest that they were able to crack his phones pretty easily. I don’t see anything about a computer.
Although it doesn’t appear he was actually using any encryption apps to store material; rather, he used a fake calculator app as password protection. Obviously not the brightest bulb in the drawer.
The material was allegedly stored behind password protection on his phone(s) but also on Mega and on Telegram, where Herrera is said to have “created his own public Telegram group to store his CSAM.” He also joined “multiple CSAM-related Enigma groups” and frequented dark websites with taglines like “The Only Child Porn Site you need!”
My guess would honestly be Telegram. For starters, they aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default, you have to turn it on. The only end-to-end encryption that Telegram offers is their “secret chats” which are only available between two users. Groups are not encrypted.
So telegram’s delusional propaganda did something good for once?
The Ars article seems to suggest that they were able to crack his phones pretty easily
Android uses data at rest encryption, which isn’t really useful without a lockscreen PIN/password since data gets decrypted after you unlock your screen the first time after each boot
Although it doesn’t appear he was actually using any encryption apps to store material; rather, he used a fake calculator app as password protection. Obviously not the brightest bulb in the drawer.
Agreed, he probably felt safe enough “hiding” the files. Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, which is great because fuck this guy
I honestly don’t think he really had any opsec apart from those few applications, look at what tools he was using, what a joke. Fake calculator app to store files are great to protect from your parents, not the FBI.
He was clearly using Android and I bet he was using the stock rom, kyc sim card, and not even a vpn behind tor.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy and relieved he was caught, but if he had done serious research and did a better opsec, it wouldn’t have been so easy for the authorities to get him
actually using a vpn with tor is not a good idea: support.torproject.org/faq/faq-5/
Phones are horseshit for OPSec. Every darknet admin and their dog know that.
It seems irrelevant whether this person is using encrypted channels. If they distributed material and leaked any identifying info (e.g. IP address), then it would be trivial for investigators or CIs to track them down.
Likely, data may have been encrypted but he may have leaked compromising metadata. Even more likely it was bad operation security linking a personal identity to his anonymous persona.
I’m always thankful for incompetent criminals.
Thankfully it seems pretty unrealistic that someone addicted to CSAM would maintain perfect OpSec over a lifetime of abuse.
In the list of apps he was using I don’t see any mention of a VPN. How much you want to bet he raw dogged it with encrypted apps over the clearnet so it was trivial to leak his real IP address
He posted the AI filth to a “public server”, so I’m willing to bet his plan was just full of holes. I don’t mind pedos getting taken down, buy I do mind encrypted software being owned by the government - any government.
It sounds like he created material, not only AI but actual children then distributed it. The tools to track down the creators of CASM is only getting better.
A single legal image of any of those children posted to social media is going to allow algorithms to make the match and its routine detective work from there.
It only takes one child to talk. No amount of encryption is going to stop that.
i watched some documatnary about hackers, and usually, they catch them because they talk way to mouch about themselves.
This dude wasn’t a hacker by any stretch
All this is obvious.
Since nobody pressures Signal and Wire in Europe, it really seems to me that the pressure is mostly applied to those who do have the ability to spy upon their users.
That would be too optimistic about humanity, but maybe not. What if.
France has recently started going after people who organize demonstrations.
They have had zero problems getting big social media and even Discord to give up information about people.
But some chat apps were save from the governments, so why do you think the Telegram CEO was arrested?
Recently? Maybe i’m wrong, but i remember a 2 years old news telling that france was pursuing allowing the police to spy on rioter’s phones… I remember it was not long after the “end” of the yellow jacket’s riots, so maybe it’s even older.
Dysthopic vibes.
Telegram is not safe from governments. Maybe safe from Western ones.
It does not have E2EE for most things. Which means TG users are not safe from TG owners, and TG owners are not safe from those who are the force behind them.
Maybe it’s Israel, maybe it’s Russia, Durov’s female friend was spotted in Baku in a “cyber-security” center operated by Israelis, so maybe Azerbaijan. Maybe I don’t know.
You don’t have to know which exactly force that is. All you have to know is how TG works.
people who organize demonstrations
… can use Signal. Its usability has improved a lot since I last tried using it. I’ve just moved half of our family chats there, another half is waiting till a bit later, because they are on another continent. It’s as convenient as WhatsApp.
I assume he was arrested because he is a russian asset.
its way more likely that your mom searched for cancer related information on google. and you are connected to your mom, so you get ads as well.
I get the feeling this thing, I mean, the add targeting is far stronger in the USA (maybe also in europe) than in the rest of the world. My “add targeting” is idiotic. I once was in brazil (argentinian here!). And got adds in portuguese for a year or so. I was a month planning on buying a computer, with all that that involves (google searchs, looking for prices on internet) and i never got an add until i actually bought everything, then it was 2 months of adds recommending me to buy the exact same components i already bought.
As today, half of my adds are in german. Jokes on them, i use them to learn.
Prison is too good for anyone who keeps child sex abuse images.
So what do you recommend, Siberia?
That’s a good idea.
WHO is downvoting you???
People like me, who are against the death penalty on principle. (or even more “creative” forms of punishment people like to come up with in these cases).
No, prison is where this guy belongs. For as long as necessary.
Maybe you should read up on how child abusers are treated in prison.
saw a headline the other day about the gov’t tracking people on tor using Google ads
I’m still not entirely convinced that tor is as protected as people think it is.
There’s only something like 6,000 exit nodes. It really wouldn’t be that much money for the government to run thousands of them. If you monitor enough exit nodes and enough relays, you can start to statistically tie connections back together with timing analysis.
I don’t know this to be the case for sure but I can’t imagine the government hasn’t pushed towards breaking the security and identifiability of the tor network
If you read a lot of news, it’s really clear Tor isn’t protecting anyone from the FBI. It’s about as effective as using limewire at this point. Which also, the reporting makes it pretty clear it’s not effective to hide criminal acts in the least. But it’s pretty great abusers think it’s effective so they get caught.
I2P has more protection against this kind of analysis.
It would be more effective if you spread the load between the 5+ eyes instead.
It’s not as protected as people think it is. This has popped up on headlines for years. It helps, but if someone really wants to find you on there, they can. It’s just not as easy.
Can you share the source
sure
www.cnet.com/news/privacy/nsa-tracks-google-ads-to-find-tor-users/
Lots of conjecture in the comments about how he got caught. Too bad nobody read the article.
Web-based generative AI tools/chatbots
…
he created fake AI CSAM—but using imagery of real kids.
All the privacy apps in the world won’t save you if you’re uploading pics to a cloud service.
And…that’s still not how he got caught. He hit a child porn honey pot and they got his IP.
I would have assumed all his AI work was local on his own server.
It is also because of people like him that laws like Going Dark become plausible to the eyes of the politicians and the masses
Dumb people deserve to be in jail.
Counterpoint: Those who produce and collect CP deserve to be in jail
I mean, you are right, but I don’t buy that the solution is mass government surveillance.
It’s all publicly approved backdoors until feds are planting child abuse imagery on your PC because you spoke out against them in the wring venue. No one will believe you when they do. Currently you can’t trust articles like this, maybe the dude was actually hurting kids. Maybe the feds just needed a win. You won’t ever know, and neither will I so long as the same ideology is in control. Now watch them turn every single kid in the pics into a sex offender because the fed believes if you were raped, you WILL rape someone in the future. But by all means keep enjoying their rage bait.
Are you ok?
Are you a dumbass?
Damn, thats weird. Are you mentally ill or st?
Well, this person (according to their post history) has schizophrenia, but this could kinda be real and probably also happned, if not recently, probably sometime in history. Of course the stereotype about rape victims actually exists.
the fool! you can’t use ROT-104 encryption against 4 cores!
a heavy vehicle driver for the US military
That’s an odd way to describe a soldier.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. There are plenty of military contractors out there, and a driver is the kind of position you would expect to be likely contracted out. That in no way makes one a soldier.
Plenty of contracting orgs do driving for the military. You don’t need a soldier, you need a trucker, so why use soldiers?
Lol, I still don’t know why people like CSAM :v
Milf porn is where it’s at. Speaking of which, I think I’m going to go jqck off to a cory chase video
Hi, Ted!
Have you heard about this game though? You won’t last one minute…
Lol, it’s a mental illness.
shamrockpreacher5@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Fuck this human
Tldr; Asshole used encrypted everything and Tor to create and spread csam. Government isn’t disclosing how they caught him
Wilzax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If you distribute encrypted materials you also need to distribute a means of decryption. I’m willing to bet a honeypot was used to trick him into distributing his csam right to the government hinself.
shamrockpreacher5@reddthat.com 2 months ago
True. Or it could have been a backdoor in his phone, or the full running browser in his sim card, or the backdoor into his CPU chips… Maybe they do old fashioned police work for these cases and only use the pegasus spyware for others?
Pretty silly to do anything illegal on a computer when we know how flawed they are, imo
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Neither Tor nor end-to-end encrypted messengers will cover the endpoints. It’s likely that they caught him using good old fashioned detective work.
Vilian@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Tor was created by NSA, half of Tor servers are run by NSA, not that secure
mkwt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well it probably wasn’t a Vic Mackey-style rubber hose attack, because it sounds like this chump is getting hauled into court.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Please don’t talk about child predators, and use the term “back door” in the same sentence. It ain’t right…
CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world 2 months ago
He didn’t use encrypted everything. He had a public telegram group chat in which he stored a lot of his material. Which, as many people in the comments on the article pointed out, is not encrypted, but is presented by telegram as if it is. That’s likely how they caught him.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
To be clear, it’s encrypted*.
Sneptaur@pawb.social 2 months ago
They got it by running a honeypot exit node like they always do
brezel@piefed.social 2 months ago
my guess is that a large number of tor exit nodes is run by government agencies.
orcrist@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Certainly some are. How many is an entertaining question.
Wildly_Utilize@infosec.pub 2 months ago
.onions: am i a joke to you?
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s better they don’t disclose it and catch more people doing the same.
I’m all for transparency but if that means less caught child molesters, I’m ok with a little obfuscation, even from the fucking pigs.