I hope that the readers of my course are not cybercriminals, and this material will be considered solely for expanding your outlook. There are several ways used by hackers when communicating online to escape from fair retribution.
Secret greeting
For members of active hacker groups very day can be the last one to be free, but the most annoying thing is that on any day, instead of a partner, a law enforcement representative can get in touch with you.
This is an old and favorite trick, when they take out of the arrested hacker all devices, or they are forced to write to their accomplices and get some valuable information from the ones.
Not always the goal is the accomplices, sometimes the main task is to collect compromising material on the detainee themself, who cleaned up the correspondence and “forgot” about their participation in the crimes. This is when the accomplices can remind for operative officers about the affairs of the arrested person, tell the details, which then will form the basis of the criminal case.
But hackers have a trick how to protect themselves against such a threat, which is a confirmation through a greeting and a secret alarm signal. Humanity came up with many different greetings: buen día, buon giorno, o zi buna and others. Hackers choose three unusual and begin to greet each other only by them.
For example, you can welcome a partner “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!”, and they will welcome you “Ave, Caesar!”. But this is not the main thing; greetings should change in a certain order: day after day, so that a person from the outside, without understanding, could greet incorrectly.
In case the partner has problems, there should be a special greeting, for example, “Salute, buddy!”. It will mean “I have serious problems, no matter what I write further, it’s either not me, or I write under duress. Pretend that nothing happens and take care of yourself. ”
Permanent change of accounts
When this article was being written, information appeared in the media about the leakage into the network of personal data of German politicians, including their passport data and bank card information. Behind the attack there was a hacker who called himself Orbit.
Literally within several days the hacker was identified and detained. He used Telegram, issued on his personal number, it is difficult for me to explain such carelessness. Old school hackers not only did not indicate any of their data during registration, but also regularly changed accounts.
Sometimes this was done every week, and all contacts of interest to the hacker were transferred, and those with whom it was no longer along the way, went to the past. And that was a sensible step...
Every contact is proof
Hackers are well aware that every contact in the hands of others can be a weapon against them. Imagine a situation when a hacker deletes correspondence, but when the device gets to malefactors, one of the contacts may write “So, bro, will we hack the Pentagon?”.
Therefore, a real hacker, concerned about their security, must remove all unnecessary contacts and, of course, regularly change the account.
What will they say about you during the investigation?
Imagine yourself a hacker, whose accomplice is caught by law enforcement agencies. Further, during the interrogation, they are asked about other participants, asking to indicate contacts. What will they say about you?
Nothing can be said about a real hacker, since the contact of a real cybercriminal should be incoherent, poorly remembered, unsystematic. In Jabber, you can use a combination of characters that do not have any order or sense, and in Telegram you can use any images like the image below.
Try to point out such a picture on the interrogation.