The LA Instances reported this week that Los Angeles man Hao Kuo “David” Chi pled responsible to 4 federal felonies associated to his efforts to steal and share on-line nude pictures of younger ladies. Chi collected greater than 620,000 personal images and 9,000 movies from an undetermined variety of victims throughout the US, most of whom had been younger and feminine.
“A minimum of 306” victims
Chi’s plea settlement with federal prosecutors in Tampa, Florida, acknowledged “not less than 306” victims. This quantity could also be significantly smaller than the true whole, because the FBI discovered that about 4,700 out of 500,000 emails in two of Chi’s Gmail accounts—backupagenticloud and applebackupicloud at Gmail—contained iCloud credentials that Chi tricked his victims into offering.
In accordance with Chi, he chosen roughly 200 of those victims based mostly on on-line requests. Chi marketed his iCloud break-in “companies” beneath the nom de guerre icloudripper4you. His “prospects” would establish an iCloud account for assault, after which Chi would use his sketchily named Gmail accounts to contact the sufferer, impersonating an Apple service consultant.
If the sufferer fell for Chi’s spearphishing try, Chi would then use the sufferer’s personal iCloud credentials to log in to the service and save their images and movies to Dropbox—adopted by offering the Dropbox hyperlink to his prospects and/or conspirators.
In accordance with court docket paperwork, Chi organized and saved the stolen media for his personal and unnamed conspirators’ private use, in addition to offering them to icloudripper4you “prospects.” The phishing ring used an offshore-hosted encrypted e mail service to speak anonymously—”I do not even know who was concerned,” Chi advised the LA Instances. The ring referred to nude images and movies discovered within the stolen accounts as “wins,” which they shared with each other.
FBI Agent Anthony Bossone advised the court docket that Chi’s Dropbox account contained roughly 620,000 images and 9,000 movies, organized partially by the presence or lack of “wins” inside them.
An unsophisticated operation
Regardless of Chi’s use of “bulletproof” offshore encrypted e mail, his operation seems to have been fairly unsophisticated—he relied on his victims’ willingness to half with their iCloud credentials over e mail, and his scheme unraveled due extra to 1 sufferer’s fame than to any daring technical scheme.
In early 2018, considered one of Chi’s victims—an unnamed public determine in Tampa, the place the court docket case was ultimately held—found their very own nudes on pornographic web sites, courtesy of a California firm that focuses on eradicating superstar images from the Web. The nude pictures had been initially saved on an iPhone, from which they had been backed as much as iCloud.
As soon as this sufferer complained to regulation enforcement, Chi’s scheme unraveled simply—he had logged in to his sufferer’s iCloud account instantly from his own residence in La Puente, California. By the point the FBI bought a search warrant and raided his home in Might, the brokers already had a transparent image of Chi’s schemes because of data subpoenaed from Dropbox, Google, Apple, Fb, and Constitution Communications.
On August 5, Chi pled responsible to 1 depend of conspiracy and three counts of gaining unauthorized entry to a protected laptop. He faces as much as 5 years in jail for every cost however will nearly definitely obtain far lower than that due each to sentencing tips and guilty-plea negotiations.
Keep sharp on the market
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We have obfuscated the Fb account that posted the hyperlink to “Steve,” because it seems to have been compromised with out its proprietor’s information.
Jim Salter -
“Hacker Steve” lives on Instagram, the place he supplies “no free service” makes an attempt to interrupt into accounts on social media platforms. The account has been energetic since July.
Jim Salter -
“Hacker Steve’s” Instagram posts make it clear that LOVINT is completely honest sport for his “prospects” to pursue.
Jim Salter -
Even when this explicit “Steve” goes down, there are a lot extra accessible—and so they aren’t troublesome to seek out.
Jim Salter
It is unlucky that Apple by no means observed a single man accessing hundreds of iCloud accounts, apparently instantly from a single residential IP deal with and on a service that doesn’t use carrier-grade NAT. Nevertheless, it is price noting that Chi’s predation—and that of many, many different phishers—relied completely on his victims’ gullibility.
That is vital as a result of Chi himself is extra symptom than illness, representing solely the tip of an unlimited iceberg. It is not troublesome to seek out “companies” like Chi’s on any social media platform—in some instances, whether or not you’d wish to or not.
Fb just lately locked my very own profile for no obvious motive two days in a row. On the second day, a random, presumably compromised Fb account promoted the companies of “Steve” on Instagram, “100% certain and assured” to “assist get well my account.” Following the Instagram hyperlink in a throwaway digital machine led me to “the_dark_hacker_unlock”—and companies that appear clearly geared toward attackers, not victims.
Regardless of reporting each the Fb remark and the Instagram account it promoted, each accounts are nonetheless on-line—together with many, many others identical to them.
