Anonymous hacker caught by photo taken on his iphone

Moebius

Well-Known Member
hacker1.jpg


These bodacious boobs led FBI agents straight to the door of hacker Higinio O. Ochoa III, charged with hacking into U.S. law enforcement agency sites. How'd they catch him? Ochoa is allegedly a member of hacking group CabinCr3w and posted a tweet leading his followers to a website with "pilfered information from various law enforcement agency websites." On the site was this picture, with the sign "PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w <3 u BiTch's!" embedded with iPhone GPS info that led agents to the woman's home where the pic was taken. FBI agents concluded that the boobs in the photo were Ochoa's girlfriend's -- tying him to the hacking crimes. Ochoa is out on $50,000 bail.

http://now.msn.com/now/0413-hacker-boobs-captured.aspx
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Nice to see that America's Finest are keeping abreast of the latest developments. Talk about "phone tips". cn
 

Moebius

Well-Known Member
The bit that got me was the iphoneGPS ratted him out. Anyone posting pics here with iphones should take heed.

How easy would it be to write a program that could search a website and bring up any pic with GPS embedded data? And possibly, a law enforcement agency could flag up pics only in their jurisdiction.

Maybe not just law enforcement too, possibly criminals looking to rob peoples crops.
 

RyanTheRhino

Well-Known Member
The bit that got me was the iphoneGPS ratted him out. Anyone posting pics here with iphones should take heed.

How easy would it be to write a program that could search a website and bring up any pic with GPS embedded data? And possibly, a law enforcement agency could flag up pics only in their jurisdiction.

Maybe not just law enforcement too, possibly criminals looking to rob peoples crops.

they would have to ask apple for the encryption code but i bet that would not be hard.

you can always just save pictures a paint documents and it erases those .
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
The bit that got me was the iphoneGPS ratted him out. Anyone posting pics here with iphones should take heed.

How easy would it be to write a program that could search a website and bring up any pic with GPS embedded data? And possibly, a law enforcement agency could flag up pics only in their jurisdiction.

Maybe not just law enforcement too, possibly criminals looking to rob peoples crops.
Well said, Moebius. I have a somewhat obsolete standalone digital camera that I use exclusively for documentation. "Civilian" photos I take with my "ordinary" camera. As far as how easy ... ? Imo all it takes is brute force, and with today's machines that's pretty cheap. i expect this to be an exponentially popular law enforcement and general espionage tool. cn
 

KushXOJ

Well-Known Member
"excuse me mam , I'm going to need you to take off that shirt and let those things hang for evidence purposes." *squeezes boob* " my investigation is done here"
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
"excuse me mam , I'm going to need you to take off that shirt and let those things hang for evidence purposes." *squeezes boob* " my investigation is done here"
A *proper* investigator finds an excuse for some full-body action ... "we found crack!" cn
 

curious2garden

Well-Known Mod
Staff member
.........snip.......... Ochoa is allegedly a member of hacking group CabinCr3w ......snip..... embedded with iPhone GPS info ...snip.....
So let's get this straight. A dreaded hacker that doesn't know to remove the meta/exif data off his iphone images? Yeah right, they sure don't make hackers like they used to.
 

MacGuyver4.2.0

Well-Known Member
So let's get this straight. A dreaded hacker that doesn't know to remove the meta/exif data off his iphone images? Yeah right, they sure don't make hackers like they used to.
My thoughts exactly. These guys supposedly know about back doors and routines 'that don't exist', yet didn't bother to remove EXIF data?

Well, my other thought was ARACK...It's not just a country! :)
 

Moebius

Well-Known Member
So let's get this straight. A dreaded hacker that doesn't know to remove the meta/exif data off his iphone images? Yeah right, they sure don't make hackers like they used to.
Exactly, he slipped up or had a brain fart. Judging by some of the comments Ive read today in the newbie section, this site is bulging under the weight of all its GPS metadata.

I suspect that a cheapo laptop and a mobile app could pull all this data, a bonafide programmer could tell us if this is possible.
 

Moebius

Well-Known Member
exifdata.com



:)[/FONT][/COLOR]
OK ... Its so easy there's an online app doing it ..... Is it possible that theyre doing this already but dont want to expose their methods. Instead, obtaining warrants for other reasons like smells escaping.

Im not much for conspiracy theories but its strange if government agencies dont do this.
 

MacGuyver4.2.0

Well-Known Member
You don't 'need' a mobile app, but if you can only take pictures with your phones camera... that just sucks. Better pictures are taken with better cameras and you can even 'set' the GPS EXIF tag to 'embed' or 'not to embed' (alot of smarter phones do also). So, clearly, the hacker was either ignorant to this fact that the EXIF data was there or was lazy. Any photo editing software (even the cheap $20-30$ range) can easily convert pictures from one format to another and strip all EXIF tags out.

And Moebius, you seem to key in on a lot of 'legal topics' on this site and just joined in March. By your comment on "this site is bulging under the weight of all its GPS metadata", how or why would one want to 'pull' all of this data?
Your wording sounds to me like something someone from Law Enforcement might say...accidentally. Of course if- this 'site is buldging with metadata' that's exactly what LEO would want to try and locate people.

A different response might have been:

'Wouldn't it BE GREAT if the RIU websites upload code 'screened' pictures as people try to upload them here and looked for EXIF data? (BTW I know this can be done. Potroast- PM me on this) That way, a popup could alert the user trying to upload the picture to the dangers of posting pictures like that. This would STOP or greatly reduce the numbers of people uploading pictures and possibly incriminating themselves (or others).
 

Moebius

Well-Known Member
You don't 'need' a mobile app, but if you can only take pictures with your phones camera... that just sucks. Better pictures are taken with better cameras and you can even 'set' the GPS EXIF tag to 'embed' or 'not to embed' (alot of smarter phones do also). So, clearly, the hacker was either ignorant to this fact that the EXIF data was there or was lazy. Any photo editing software (even the cheap $20-30$ range) can easily convert pictures from one format to another and strip all EXIF tags out.

And Moebius, you seem to key in on a lot of 'legal topics' on this site and just joined in March. By your comment on "this site is bulging under the weight of all its GPS metadata", how or why would one want to 'pull' all of this data?
Your wording sounds to me like something someone from Law Enforcement might say...accidentally. Of course if- this 'site is buldging with metadata' that's exactly what LEO would want to try and locate people.

A different response might have been:

'Wouldn't it BE GREAT if the RIU websites upload code 'screened' pictures as people try to upload them here and looked for EXIF data? (BTW I know this can be done. Potroast- PM me on this) That way, a popup could alert the user trying to upload the picture to the dangers of posting pictures like that. This would STOP or greatly reduce the numbers of people uploading pictures and possibly incriminating themselves (or others).
You've got me Sherlock, I'm currently working with the FBI chatting to people online so I can report my findings to my superiors. They won't be please I've been uncovered.
 

Moebius

Well-Known Member
reverse psychology dose not work online :bigjoint:
No, I'm straight up. Now you don't believe me when I tell you Ive been made. Whats a cop to do?

edit:
It does seem strange though that somebody would draw attention to themselves to someone they felt was a cop.
 

MacGuyver4.2.0

Well-Known Member
Stranger still- You did not respond to the other points in my post, only that I commented that your comment sounded like it was "something Law Enforcement might say...accidentally."

And I AM actually drawing attention to this thread on purpose so the MOD will check it out. ;) A MOD will see the comment I made about improving the website with that little bit of code I suggested and maybe even implement it. This improves the website by elimnating EXIF data from future (or even existing) pictures making RIU users safer AND denying the pigs any further data to work with. Phew! I didn't know I could do all that with just one comment!
 
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