In 2018, a hacker employed by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel run by the notorious kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán spied on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico Metropolis with the purpose of figuring out “individuals of curiosity” for the cartel to focus on and kill, in line with a brand new U.S. authorities watchdog report.
On Friday, the Division of Justice’s Workplace of the Inspector Basic revealed the incident in a printed report auditing the FBI’s efforts to counter surveillance with the purpose of defending “its workers, investigations, and operations.”
The report mentioned the 2018 incident occurred whereas the FBI was engaged on the investigation that will ultimately result in the arrest of El Chapo. On the time, in line with the report, somebody related to his cartel tipped off the FBI that the prison group had employed a hacker.
The hacker “provided a menu of companies associated to exploiting cellphones and different digital units,” and was capable of observe individuals going out and in of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico’s capital, in line with the report, together with the FBI assistant authorized attaché, a federal agent who works abroad together with native legislation enforcement authorities.
In some way — the report doesn’t element precisely how — the hacker was “in a position to make use of” the official’s cell phone quantity to “acquire calls made and obtained, in addition to geolocation information, related to” the official’s telephone.
In response to the FBI, the hacker additionally accessed Mexico Metropolis’s digicam system to observe the attaché by means of the town and “establish individuals” who the attaché met with, learn the report.
“In response to the case agent, the cartel used that info to intimidate and, in some cases, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the report added.
When reached for remark, the FBI referred inquiries to the Division of Justice, which didn’t reply to a request for remark.
For years, Mexico has been on the bleeding fringe of surveillance and hacking capabilities, on either side of the drug battle.
On the facet of the legislation, for greater than a decade now, a number of native and federal legislation enforcement businesses in Mexico have spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} to make use of adware made by Hacking Staff and later NSO Group to go after cartels, in addition to activists and journalists.
On the prison facet, the Sinaloa cartel used encrypted telephones, that are specifically crafted units designed to attenuate the danger of surveillance by stripping it of core functionalities and by including encrypted communications applied sciences.
In response to a Vice Information investigation, Mexican cartels had been tapping security software program utilized by native authorities businesses “to find and disappear rivals and conceal their crimes.”
Earlier in 2015, Motherboard reported that native cartels employed “a hacker brigade” to construct and handle their very own communications networks. Later in 2017, Motherboard revealed {that a} hacker working for the Sinaloa cartel helped authorities observe down and arrest the elusive cartel’s lieutenant, Dámaso López Núñez. The hacker had initially been employed by the cartel in 2014 to attempt to hack into the high-security Altiplano Federal Penitentiary, the place El Chapo was being held on the time.
