El Chapo drug cartel reportedly tracked and killed informants by hacking an FBI cellphone

The Mexican Sinaloa cartel employed a hacker to trace and surveil the FBI, then used that data to intimidate and even kill witnesses in opposition to drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in line with a Justice Department report noticed by Ars Technica. The hacker used comparatively subtle information assortment methods and weaknesses within the FBI’s cybersecurity to determine the witnesses, the report states.

In keeping with the extremely redacted report, which is predicated partly on testimony from an “particular person linked to the cartel,” the hacker supplied gang leaders “a menu of providers associated to to exploiting cell phones and different digital units.”

The hacker “noticed individuals going out and in of the US Embassy in Mexico Metropolis” and recognized individuals of curiosity, together with the FBI’s Assistant Authorized Attache (ALAT). They used the ALAT’s cell phone quantity to “acquire calls made and obtained, in addition to geolocation information related to the [attache’s] cellphone.” The hacker additionally used Mexico Metropolis’s digital camera system to comply with the ALAT across the metropolis and determine individuals they met with. “In keeping with the case agent, the cartel used that data to intimidate and, in some cases, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the report states.

The precise technical strategies are redacted however the report explains that the hacker used “ubiquitous technical surveillance” (UTS) to spy on the FBI, which was investigating and ultimately convicted Guzmán. The report defines UTS because the “widespread assortment of knowledge and utility of analytic methodologies for the aim of connecting individuals to issues, occasions or places.” In different phrases, the cartel used among the FBI’s personal strategies in opposition to it.

The report stated that the latest availability of business instruments that enable UTS is an “existential” menace. It cited different examples together with using bank card transaction reviews broadly obtainable from information brokers together with mobile phone name logs.

The FBI’s response to the UTS menace was “disjointed and inconsistent,” in line with the Justice Division, and countermeasures instated in 2022 had been “insufficient” and missing in “long-term imaginative and prescient.” It really useful (amongst different issues) that the company incorporate all UTS vulnerabilities into its remaining mitigation plan, determine key officers licensed to execute the technique, set up a line of authority for responding to UTS-related incidents and guarantee ongoing coaching on UTS methods.