FBI Raids Texas ISP For Anonymous DDoS Info

jcombel writes with this link to The Smoking Gun, which says "As part of an international criminal probe into computer attacks launched this month against perceived corporate enemies of WikiLeaks, the FBI has raided a Texas business and seized a computer server that investigators believe was used to launch a massive electronic attack on PayPal." Computerworld has a story, as well.

Idiots

[Mad-Mage1]

It was a bloody IRC server that's all. It was used by LOIC to get targets, etc...

I'm sure they were scraping and recording all of the chat logs from each IRC channel that was used, and THOSE logs are the ones with the money info, like who was participating, or at least their IP at the time. Snatching the IRC servers themselves is relatively useless.

Re:Idiots

[devxo]

I haven't been to their network, but somehow I think it's one of those ircd's that hide user ip. Since they snatched the irc servers, they also got the masking keys and can now unmask all the ip's. Without getting the servers it wouldn't had been possible. Besides, there's probably more info and evidence on the servers.

Re:Idiots

[Kagato]

I have to disagree about the taps.

I've worked in VERY large national ISPs and local ISPs. At the large ISPs we dealt with dozens of warrants daily. If need be engineering would work with them as a partner to get what they needed. We were also allowed to push back if the warrant wasn't in order.

At the small ISP the FBI would just show up and seize stuff. Often before hand they would call peers and dig up background information on the employees and owners. When dealing with small ISPs the FBI starts with the assumption that the company is in on it. You'll enjoy a reputation tarnished in the local community and threats of having all your equipment seized (putting you out of business).

Re:A few mistakes...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's usual government tactics mixed with incompetence, i.e. raid as many people as possible, with warrants that are based on wrong information. Most cops don't know what they are doing in regards to IT or knowingly use bad information to get warrants. Hundreds and thousands of raids look great in press releases and there are no consequences for doing a shitty/fraudulent job. They simply hide the fact that a tiny, tiny percentage of those raids actually result in convictions. The vast majority of cases are discontinued due to lack of evidence or because people get lawyers who tear the crap cops did to shreds.

A great example is operation "Himmel" in Germany. Literally 1000s of raids all across Germany were started because some server contained child pornography and logs appeared to indicate LOTS of downloads. Turns out the majority of images were neither CP nor illegal. People ended up getting their homes raided by police because they only loaded a few thumbnails; not even full images. In the end not a single case out of these 1000s ended up in court. Yet police and politicians considered the operation to be a success and used it to inflate their case numbers to prove how important new internet laws are.

It's not about convictions, it's about publicity for politicians and creating FUD for agencies.