Mexican drug cartel hacker spied on FBI official's phone to track and kill informants, report says:
In 2018, a hacker hired by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel run by the infamous kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán spied on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City with the goal of identifying "people of interest" for the cartel to target and kill, according to a new U.S. government watchdog report.
[...] The hacker "offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices," and was able to observe people going in and out of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico's capital, according to the report, including the FBI assistant legal attaché, a federal agent who works overseas along with local law enforcement authorities.
Somehow — the report does not detail exactly how — the hacker was "able to use" the official's mobile phone number to "obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with" the official's phone.
According to the FBI, the hacker also accessed Mexico City's camera system to follow the attaché through the city and "identify people" who the attaché met with, read the report.
"According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses," the report added.
[...] For years, Mexico has been at the bleeding edge of surveillance and hacking capabilities, on both sides of the drug war.
On the side of the law, for more than a decade now, multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies in Mexico have spent millions of dollars to use spyware made by Hacking Team and later NSO Group to go after cartels, as well as activists and journalists.
On the criminal side, the Sinaloa cartel used encrypted phones, which are specially crafted devices designed to minimize the risk of surveillance by stripping it of core functionalities and by adding encrypted communications technologies.
According to a Vice News investigation, Mexican cartels were tapping security software used by local government agencies "to locate and disappear rivals and hide their crimes."
Earlier in 2015, Motherboard reported that local cartels employed "a hacker brigade" to build and manage their own communications networks. Later in 2017, Motherboard revealed that a hacker working for the Sinaloa cartel helped authorities track down and arrest the elusive cartel's lieutenant, Dámaso López Núñez. The hacker had originally been hired by the cartel in 2014 to try to hack into the high-security Altiplano Federal Penitentiary, where El Chapo was being held at the time.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Username on Wednesday July 02, @01:40PM (5 children)
They have access to all that stuff. Guy was either one, or was somehow involved in the survalence system.
I'm ok with survalence as long as everyone has equal access to it. So there's no illusion of privacy, and no entity has the leverage.
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Wednesday July 02, @02:33PM (1 child)
The cartels run their own network.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Wednesday July 02, @04:38PM
They dig enough tunnels, why not run some cables through it. Probably have an entire underground city full of molemen too.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday July 02, @08:17PM (1 child)
I'm ok with survalence as long as everyone has equal access to it.
You're not female then?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday July 02, @09:26PM
Don't shame her for being exhibitionist.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday July 03, @04:36AM
It doesn't require LE access. 20+ years ago mafia groups in NY knew phone and pager numbers for the FBI agents who were after them, and had no problems monitoring their whereabouts and intercepting their comms, and none of it required LE access.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday July 02, @06:28PM (7 children)
At some point its cheaper to legalize than to fix all the possible security holes.
Take all the money out of it, on both sides, and all the problems just blow away in the wind...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday July 02, @08:16PM (1 child)
And lives would be saved. How many decades has this "war on drugs" been waged? How many lives would have been saved? How many people would have been spared jail? How much tax revenue would have been collected? How much public money would have been saved? How many better health outcomes would there have been?
But We Must Be Tough On Things.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, @09:05PM
Do you not understand that prohibition is a business? The law is written to benefit a specific group of people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @01:33AM (4 children)
I can't help but believe the Central World Bank is behind this for the purpose of getting us to take out more loans to finance the bickering. The whole world is in debt to those who just issue money from a limitless pool of funds whose monopoly on money printing is protected by law by participating nations.
Iran, North Korea, and Cuba are the sole remaining holdouts that haven't drank the debt-based kool-aid yet. Run the math. The Central Bank will end up with legal ownership of the planet via the use of usury as we relentlessly "extend the debt ceiling" to pay for it all.
What we buy ain't ours! It belongs to the ones who are drafting our money into existence, then charging interest on it!
Rothschild Central Banks
https://theeventchronicle.com/only-three-countries-left-without-a-rothschild-central-bank/ [theeventchronicle.com]
I remember reading this somewhere...
You can vote yourself into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out…
We have sold ourselves into debt slavery, but the trap has not slammed shut until the whole world is in. The governments of the whole planet ( except three ) are in on this...doing the same damned thing my ancestors did...selling ourselves ( and our land/resources to the devil ( money ) for a temporary fix ). This is not a recent phenomenon ... It's been going on for centuries, slowly but surely transferring legal ownership of the entire planet to one ruling family. The "nice guys" will finish in debt bondage, while they serve the greedy ones who study "how to compel others to kiss their a**" rather than do stuff like building infrastructure. Why do you think there is such a concerted effort for gun control?
We have become a society of haves and have-nots. A politically connected person becomes a $420K+bennies city manager... ( Just happened here ) while the people without backing from those with ability to tax and borrow make about a tenth of that. An entity owning rental housing gets write-offs for maintenance, "depreciation", and "management expenses", whereas a homeowner does not. To me, this is just the haves using legislators to craft tax law in their favor to increase profitability of hoarding properties by shifting tax burdens to individual families who are trying to keep the hands of the haves out of their house.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday July 03, @04:07AM (3 children)
You had me to this point. All three of the above countries have heavy dependence on China and Russia just to function. So even if we make the unwarranted assumption that the above countries haven't "drank the kool-aid", they're beholden to countries which have!
If you're serious about looking for such non-kool-aid countries, look for the low debt fraction and high GDP ones like the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, or South Korea. There's plenty [wikipedia.org] if you look.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @05:53AM (2 children)
Oh yes, there are other nations who mind their pocketbook as they do not provide "the world reserve currency". America has become like a HOA (HomeOwners Association ) president, a "Karen" who derives pleasure with having authority over others, and loves to meddle in the affairs of others, shielded from physical or financial pushback.
The USA seems to be enjoying the benefit of the bankers as they apparently are allowing us almost free reign to borrow from the banking family to give to someone else.
Meanwhile, the debt balances soar as we find ourselves printing more and more funds to cover even the debt service we have accumulated.
The big nations are drowning in kool-aid. We are being played off each other to keep digging ourselves into debt deeper and deeper. The Scandinavian countries are simply not playing this expensive game. Yet. They may be forced into it any time the banker boys want to stir the pot, but for now, concentrate the forced defensive expenditures on the nonconformists until they are economically forced into those loans.
We will all become indebted entities. All legal.
Whether this will be good or bad, I do not know, but I get the strong idea that I had better get used to having a master. ( We already do ). And have all the 'rights' of a lawnmower.
What makes this a special hell for me as I see it coming, yet powerless to stop it, all I can do is try not to take the Mark of the Beast until Nature runs its course and removes me from the arena.
I know how the "nice guy finishes last" paradigm works. Others not "nice" will simply take until they have it all, then simply dispose of the now useless garbage. This same thing has been playing out in all of human history. It's a comfortable life for a very few, for a while It's a subservient existence for the rest.
We ( USA) have already destroyed that which had brought us up, squandering our inheritance, and deep in debt.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday July 03, @08:08AM (1 child)
I've modded you insightful - and although what you say is accurate it is also incredibly depressing.
Non-usians are just watching in amazement and wondering whether Americans realise what is being done in their name. We have had almost 6 months of banner waving and not much else.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @10:57AM
Thanks... This American knows full good and well what kind of mess his leadership is signing him up for.
This American is also quite depressed that he seems to be in a small minority among his peers.
Yes, incredibly depressing, but I am trained in math and fault diagnoses...and I have been presented with a whopper.
My own models tell me I am living on borrowed time.
If it wasn't for the banks using us to foment Russian and Chinese loans to foment/counter US involvements, we would have collapsed under our own debt. But we do run the Killing Machine and take orders, so we provide the useful service of providing armed interventions to initiate/maintain borrowing/spending sprees around the world in the name of defense. I think the biggest stunt is keeping us all ignorant of those who stir up all this misery , so they don't become the genocide target. Keep us all quarreling amongst ourselves and "selling our souls" to finance our quarrels. Don't we see it's just all just a numbers game and the bankers just keep score? I am being played a fool and I know it.
I post AC as some of my friends will recognize me and quote me on how I see this situation... and I don't see rosy in it. I see a bunch of greedy one-percenter globalists selling off America for personal power positions in the New World Order, to which all of us will be subject.
There are very few people I can even discuss this with.
Most give more attention to a ball game. Bread and Circuses. Oh well, the Roman Empire fell too. The same way. We've had our 250 years ( Isn't that about the average lifetime of an empire throughout human history? )
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=average+lifetime+of+an+empire [duckduckgo.com]
Hate to see it go...but we've seen better days. Each go-round, we have more and more technology - and with nukes, we can make one helluva mess. We seem hell-bent to squander our remaining fossil fuels in pursuit on frivolous activities. We have become an infestation of rats...what we don't consume, we make a big mess with our trash and think Nature is gonna clean it up. Capitalism gone batshit-crazy.