Anonymous eavesdrops FBI conference call, posts audio online

[Shawn Knight]

The hactivist group Anonymous claims to have intercepted and recorded a conference call between the FBI and the British police cybercrime division Scotland Yard that took place on January 17. Anon has since released an audio recording of the roughly 15-minute long conversation online.

The first six minutes of the conversation consists of banter between parties on the call. After that, however, the two groups begin discussing a hacker plot called “Project Mayhem” which, as ironic as it is, is a strategy for bringing down Anonymous. The only problem is that members of Anonymous were eavesdropping the whole time.

The two groups specifically discuss setting back arrests of members known as “Kayla” and “Tee-flow”, getting Ryan Cleary’s indecent images which were found by the USAF who examined his hard drive and 15-year-old “Tehwongz” who claims to have hacked 32,000 Steam user names and logins along with credit card details. Tehwongz is described as “a pain in the bum” and the face behind CSL Sec (Can’t Stop Laughing Security).

It appears that Anonymous was able to gain access to the conference call via an email that was intercepted from an FBI agent that was intended for international law enforcement agencies. The email reportedly contained a phone number and password for accessing the call.

FBI spokesperson Tim Flannelly told FoxNews.com that the information was illegally obtained and a criminal investigation is underway. An FBI source further tells the news site that no classified information was made available on the call and that unsecured phones aren’t used when dealing with sensitive information.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/47315-anonymous-eavesdrops-fbi-conference-call-posts-audio-online.html

 

[princeton]

An FBI source further tells the news site that no classified information was made available on the call and that unsecured phones aren?t used when dealing with sensitive information.

I'm still astounded that you ever use unsecured phones regardless of what is being discussed. You're the FBI for god's sake.

 

[amstech]

The FBI isn't even an american organization anyways.
Same for the CIA and NASA.

 

[Rick]

amstech said:
The FBI isn't even an american organization anyways.
Same for the CIA and NASA.

Please elaborate.

 

[Mindwraith]

Rick said:

amstech said:
The FBI isn't even an american organization anyways.
Same for the CIA and NASA.

Please elaborate.

Please don't encourage the conspiracy theorists. It's like asking Grandpa Simpson a question..

 

[R3DP3NGUIN]

amstech said:
The FBI isn't even an american organization anyways.
Same for the CIA and NASA.

Yeah you dont want to disrupt the closed-minded from their daily Fox news stories.

 

[Tygerstrike]

I wonder if ANON realizes that the email was prolly leaked just to get them interested in the call and feed them false information. Im almost 150% sure that after the last round of ANON attacks on the DoJ, the FBI prolly imbeded some type of program that will send them info from whomever recieved that email. Wouldnt it be a crazy form of justice if that ended up being the case lol.

 

[3DCGMODELER]

Tygerstrike said:
I wonder if ANON realizes that the email was prolly leaked just to get them interested in the call and feed them false information. Im almost 150% sure that after the last round of ANON attacks on the DoJ, the FBI prolly imbeded some type of program that will send them info from whomever recieved that email. Wouldnt it be a crazy form of justice if that ended up being the case lol.

I really doubt it..........

Anon knows what he doing,

Great job Anon, 2 thumbs up for yas..

 

[tengeta]

Why the hell do agencies and the military continue to use public networks? They would have a lot less leaks if they had their own proprietary network (which South Korea's military actually does).

 

[SumthinSacred]

I'm all for hacktivists, but there has to be a limit.

 

[Guest]

Un F'in believable! Why don't they just hire the 15 year old, they talk about in the call to help with their security issues, err lack of security issues I mean.

 

[Guest]

OL, i'm a terrorist according to FBI.

i used to travel to a city with decent internet speed, 73 kilometers away.

i have 2 cellphones, a nokia 5320xm and nokia 7210, with 5 pre-paid sim cards to use.

i usually delete all cookies/histories manually, set ie and other browsers to empty cache upon browser exit, and use private browsing (aka incognito mode) when i became aware of this browser feature.

and yeah, i am a terrorist because i surf the net (read: pron) almost anonymously and i don't browse the net when someboy is looking at my shoulders.

 

[yRaz]

Guest said:
Un F'in believable! Why don't they just hire the 15 year old, they talk about in the call to help with their security issues, err lack of security issues I mean.

I think many of the security issues with all businesses have to do with a lot of what's wrong in the IT industry. They higher managers that have no idea about technology and the IT staff never get what they need to do their properly job. Then, when they are under equipped to do their jobs, stuff like this gets out and someone gets fired.

 

[hitech0101]

FBI should use other phones or some proxies but then they would be terrorists.

 

[Guest]

You can be a r/l tough guy but digitally people who aren't physically tough and hard as nails. This is pretty common knowledge. Really some people learn the hard way.

 

[gwailo247]

Directors of FBI, etc, don't set up these things themselves. They have assistants who do this stuff, ones who probably understand IT, and are versed in FBI protocols regarding security on conversations.

Its not like there is some 70 year old man fumbling about with Go2Meeting settings on his desktop.

Anytime you send out a *mass e-mail* with what I am assuming is a single password, then lets get real, this conversation was not going to be all that secure. As tygerstrike pointed out, all this might mean is that the FBI now knows that anon was tapping a weak leak in their organization, and they're just going to boost up security.

A gaffe like this is not something that gets swept up under the rug in the gov't. A report has to be written, protocols suggested to avoid it, etc. In the long run this means that they will increase their security, and not make stupid mistakes like this anymore.

Human beings make mistakes, but all the times we see news articles about how stupid the CIA or FBI is, we forget that for the past 70 odd years they were relatively successful keeping very many foreign nations very well funded espionage forces at bay. Yeah, they do stupid stuff from time to time, but you have to at least consider that a lot of these public mistakes they make could be deliberate, or leaked deliberately for some purpose.