Australian Police 'hacks' TOR child abuse site.

[killcomic]

Argos, a special task force of the Queensland state police in Australia created to combat child exploitation, has been reported to have "hacked" a number of members of 'The Love Zone', a dark web child abuse ring, including 30 US citizens who's IP addresses have been handed to the FBI.

 

After Queensland police arrested the site's owner, Shannon McCoole, Argos they continued to run the site for months, this allowed them to uncover member's IP addresses.

There's not much info on how they did this, but court documents indicated they had a video file coded to bypass TOR and connect to an external IP through the user's normal network connection.

Then it was just a matter of collating the IP addresses and getting arrest warrants.

 

This operation did not involve the Australian Federal Police.

 

The way in which Argos has conducted the investigation has raised a few eyebrows and some have questioned the legality and ethics of hacking.

On the other hand, pedos. So yeah.

 

Source (Motherboard): https://motherboard.vice.com/read/australian-authorities-hacked-computers-in-the-us

[Tech_Dreamer]

Nice, Plus come on Aussie , You should look into abuse of military candidates with this intensity as well happening in your own soil, You peeps are literally avoiding that issue even when it was exposed & debated most of em were quiet

[SammoFS]

Lmao I'm Australian. And to be honest, You're kind of right (Tech_Dreamer) I just looked that up. Channel 7 and Channel 9 News never said anything about this on the news. And the Channel 10 Talk show never did either. All they brought up was the Facility in the Northern Territory Where they were tear gassing kids etc. This all sickens me But. I think Australia Is still better than Gun Violence. I don't mean to be harsh to all the shit that's Going down in the U.S But It's just got out of Hand.

[killcomic]

NVM- double post.

[killcomic]

6 minutes ago, Rika Shiguma said:

 Channel 7 and Channel 9 News never said anything about this on the news.

Channel 9 and Channel 7 news, for people who think celebrity gossip is real news.

[AresKrieger]

Ah so they circumnavigated tor rather than actually hacking, hence the ""

[killcomic]

Just now, AresKrieger said:

Ah so they circumnavigated tor rather than actually hacking, hence the ""

Yeah, some lawyer, somewhere, has a very broad definition of hacking.

[KuJoe]

Nothing new here, various US agencies have exploited TOR to get hundreds of convictions over the past year or so.

 

EDIT: https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/24/fbi-moves-to-keep-its-tor-hacking-tool-secret/

[killcomic]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Nothing new here, various US agencies have exploited TOR to get hundreds of convictions over the past year or so.

 

EDIT: https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/24/fbi-moves-to-keep-its-tor-hacking-tool-secret/

What makes it weird is that this was not done by federal police. It was state police who conducted the operation.

[KuJoe]

Just now, killcomic said:

What makes it weird is that this was not done by federal police. It was state police who conducted the operation.

Why is that weird? I don't know anything about Australia but are the state police that horrible at their job or are they known for being incompetent?

[killcomic]

4 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Why is that weird? I don't know anything about Australia but are the state police that horrible at their job or are they known for being incompetent?

Neither.

Usually this kind of operations, which involves individuals overseas, gets conducted by federal police.

Nothing stopping state police from conducting this type of investigations, it's just that it would be more common to see this from federal police.

[KuJoe]

Just now, killcomic said:

Neither.

Usually this kind of operations, which involves individuals overseas, gets conducted by federal police.

Nothing stopping state police from conducting this type of investigations, it's just that it would be more common to see this from federal police.

Oh, so you're saying it weird that they carried out the operation and not that they exploited the TOR network. That makes more sense.

[killcomic]

Just now, KuJoe said:

Oh, so you're saying it weird that they carried out the operation and not that they exploited the TOR network. That makes more sense.

Yup.

I guess that since they started the investigation to nab the Australian site owner in Queensland, they kept the momentum and decided to widen the investigation to users.

[BOT Edward]

So essentially all they did was modify the code behind a video file to run some malware that tried to access an external site I presume that they administer (this way they can check connection logs /etc.).

 

Effective to those that aren't as clued on to tech but for those running mroe advanced firewalls and consistently monitor their network traffic before allowing any inbound OR outbound connections, will still get away with it. these are the sorts of people who are typically taking every precaution possible because they are the ones distributing it. that's who they should be targeting as a priority IMO.

 

 

Im all for white-hat hacking though 

[killcomic]

35 minutes ago, BOT Edward said:

So essentially all they did was modify the code behind a video file to run some malware that tried to access an external site I presume that they administer (this way they can check connection logs /etc.).

 

Effective to those that aren't as clued on to tech but for those running mroe advanced firewalls and consistently monitor their network traffic before allowing any inbound OR outbound connections, will still get away with it. these are the sorts of people who are typically taking every precaution possible because they are the ones distributing it. that's who they should be targeting as a priority IMO.

 

 

Im all for white-hat hacking though 

Well, to be fair, they did take down the site owner. Also, to have access to the site, members had to post 'content' at least once a month,  so they did take down people distributing.

 

Don't forget that most people have very little idea how to hide themselves successfully, even those involved in these type of things.

Heck, I don't think I could hide myself either if someone really wanted to find me, and I've been playing with computers for over 30 years!

[LAwLz]

In before like half of the UK government gets arrested. 

Oh who am I kidding. They are too rich and powerful to get arrested. 

[killcomic]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

In before like half of the UK government gets arrested. 

Oh who am I kidding. They are too rich and powerful to get arrested. 

Judge: "You're accused of possession and distribution of child pornography, how do you plead?"

Rich person: "My daddy has a Porsche... and an island in the Pacific. "

Judge: "I find the defendant, not guilty!"

Rich person: "Nanny would be proud!"

[ThinkWithPortals]

Excellent. Prosecution of child predators is always a good thing...