El Chapo's Encryption Defeated by Turning His IT Consultant
Full article216 words · extracted from schneier.com · click to collapse
Impressive police work:
In a daring move that placed his life in danger, the I.T. consultant eventually gave the F.B.I. his system’s secret encryption keys in 2011 after he had moved the network’s servers from Canada to the Netherlands during what he told the cartel’s leaders was a routine upgrade.
A Dutch article says that it’s a BlackBerry system.
El Chapo had his IT person install “…spyware called FlexiSPY on the ‘special phones’ he had given to his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, as well as to two of his lovers, including one who was a former Mexican lawmaker.” That same software was used by the FBI when his IT person turned over the keys. Yet again we learn the lesson that a backdoor can be used against you.
And it doesn’t have to be with the IT person’s permission. A good intelligence agency can use the IT person’s authorizations without his knowledge or consent. This is why the NSA hunts sysadmins.
Slashdot thread. Hacker News thread. Boing Boing post.
EDITED TO ADD (2/12): Good information here.
Tags: backdoors, courts, drug trade, encryption, FBI, insiders, keys
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/01/el_chapos_encry.html