There’s something about the good old boys at eEye security that always keeps us on the Grey Hat security scene on our toes laughing at the poor idiotic souls who purchase eEye products. For those who aren’t familiar with eEye, we implore you to take a look at their “Chief Hacking Officer” otherwise known as Marc Maiffret. They may want to look into his ties to Khalid Ibrahim of the Harkat-Ul-Ansar terrorist group.
Most are wondering who, or who cares, but for American companies who have employees responsible for purchasing eEye products who are reading this, Harkat-Ul-Ansar is a known terrorist group according to the United States government. Ibrahim, is connected to the original World Trade Center bombings and is said to have cooperated with the FBI in ratting on other terrorists no-gooders. So what was Marc Maiffret then known as Chameleon (previously known as sn1per) of the moronic hacking group Masters of Downloading (not to be confused with Mark Abene’s MOD) doing taking money from a terrorist? According to Marc, he was “at the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Now common sense and logic shows the argument of “wrong place wrong time” but how could one have been at the wrong place, accepting money from the wrong people at the wrong time? I mean Marc, you were cashing a check. It didn’t slip into your pocket, it didn’t magically appear in your pocket. Now one could allude to this notion of Marc being innocent by saying something like; “Maiffret was caught up in a sweep of an area” That might have worked but he was trying to cash a check from a known terrorist who was trying to buy satellite images.
Carrying on, everyone who took computer security seriously at the time began distancing themselves from Marc, he was kicked out of the security group rhino9 and it is likely he became an informant along with the guys at Attrition.org (we will elaborate on this in another posting.) For a little bit of “true” underground hacking history, the kind of stuff you won’t see anywhere out of fear of federal intervention on behalf of “cooperating witnesses/snitches”, let’s give a brief explanation of what had been happening in the late 90’s through early 2000 when Janet Reno was in office. The government was closing in on idiots (hackers), and turning them into snitches, nothing more and nothing less. One could have beautified this comment, but that is the bottom line clean cut truth of the matter.
Now let’s take a simple step back for a moment to ask oneself, has there ever been a time when someone’s house or business was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the person left untouched without being arrested? Do the simple mathematics here. Supposing two federal agents visited you, they would need a court order, they would need gas to get to your home, they would need substantial information, etc.. How much do you think it would cost? Let’s factor the salaries only. For whom shall we start with? The judge who gave permission to whom ever issued the warrant, the agents’ supervisor? There is a lengthy process the federal agents had to go through, or at least there was at that time, when an agent had to go through to knock on someone’s door. In any case, if they were there, they were there to arrest you period. So why wasn’t he charged Sherlock? Why should he be charged with anything, it was a simple mistake the feds made right? Wait, they just came under suspicion and let them go because they had nothing! If you believe this, I have a Bridge for sale.
So the remaining question is; Does Marc and company have a backdoor in its products for the federal government? Is eEye Security nothing more than a method for the government to track which hackers have downloaded and are using eEye products and where they are coming from? Enquiring minds want to know. There was a little known fact about the late 90’s and early 2000’s and this part becomes foggy and hearsay. Rumormill at the time was the feds were building a “hacker” database along with other now defamed idiot John Vranesevich.
The government’s notion then, was, when the federal government needed funding for another cybercrime center, they would pull a random name out of its database, and being they had evidence of hacks via way of attrition, they would either make an arrest a month, or convert the arrested hackers into snitches. Pretty interesting method of bringing up statistics in hopes of building a budget wouldn’t you say. So now that the cat comes out of the bag a decade later, many security professionals who were then “on the scene” will begin to know the truth and nothing but the truth.
Mention of attrition? The definition of it was its intent, but moving on to Jericho since you asked for it, is he a government snitch. He too was raided by the feds. One can either take the same stance of it was a mistake, or do the math as well. Martin is a character in his own mind, so he will likely retort with a craftily written retort but before he does, perhaps he should take into account the power of an FOIA request. Jericho before you shoot off your mouth, ask yourself do you REALLY want the public to see who you really are? Should was also bring out good old Pete Shipley? Those on the scene with a clue already know you are a perverse idiot capable of bedding a cat if it stood still, would you care to have your information disclosed the FOIA way? We may or may not get to you guys in another post but for now, back to eEye and their secret backdoors.
This new information about the hacking days of the mid to late nineties and early millenium may overwhelm many in the security industry who may have thought these were good guys, friends. “Hackers with a cause”. For those wondering if this is hyperbole, I implore you to Google information on Marc. While you’re at it, for those in the academic industrie, feel free to find someone in the United States government who can ask any federal agent the following questions: “Has there ever been a time they’ve raided someone’s house without probably cause.”, “How difficult would it be to obtain a warrant to raid someone’s home with guns drawn, and walk away without arresting the suspect they raided for, after solely speaking with him”.
You see Jericho (Brian Martin) and his cohorts at the website Attrition were at the time mining hacker information. They will swear they won’t do so but we know better. So how does Jericho tie into eEye? Simple, via way of Dale Coddington aka Punkis who works at eEye. Snitches of a feather flock together. See it worked like this, once upon a time there was #dc-stuff, no wait, some may not be ready for that. krystlia, malvu, Brian Martin along with Peter Shipley hacking the NYTimes as HFG. (don’t worry Martin, I believe the US has a statute of limitations). There shall be more to come in upcoming weeks. Until then, be careful of those so called old school hackers you look up to. Chances are they are nothing more than government rats.
http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=90221103125889&w=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkat-ul-Ansar
Post new comment