"Tracking the Worlds Dumbest Cyber-Mercenaries" Cooper Quintin "cooperq"

[number6]

Tracking the Worlds Dumbest Cyber-Mercenaries
Cooper Quintin "cooperq", Senior Staff Technologist - EFF, He/Him
20 Minutes, Friday, War Stories - For the Record, @Harrahs

For the last 6 years my colleagues and I have been tracking the activities of the cyber-mercenaries we call Dark Caracal. In this time we have observed them make a number of hilarious mistakes which have allowed us to gain crucial insights into their activities and victims. In this talk we will discuss the story of Dark Caracal, the mistakes they have made, and how they have managed to remain effective despite quite possibly being the dumbest APT to ever exist.

Cooper Quintin is a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the EFF Threat Lab. He has worked on projects including Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state sponsored malware campaigns such as Dark Caracal. Cooper has given talks at security conferences including Black Hat, DEFCON, Enigma Conference, and ReCon about issues ranging from IMSI Catcher detection to fem tech privacy issues to newly discovered APTs. He has also been published or quoted in publications including: The New York Times, Reuters, NPR, CNN, and Al Jazeera. Cooper has given security trainings for activists, non profit workers, and vulnerable populations around the world. He previously worked building websites for nonprofits, including Greenpeace, Adbusters, and the Chelsea Manning Support Network. Cooper was also an editor and contributor to the hacktivist journal, "Hack this Zine." In his spare time he enjoys making music, visualizing a solar-punk anarchist future, and playing with his kids.
cooperq
https://www.cooperq.com
mastodon: cooperq@infosec.exchange

REFERENCES:
https://www.eff.org/wp/operation-manul
https://info.lookout.com/rs/051-ESQ-...8_us_v.1.0.pdf
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/...latin-america/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/0...-latin-america

[followtheplan]

I do appreciate EFF‘s work in general and the presentation on Dark Caracal. What stroke me however was the last slide regarding conclusions. That there should be a connection between the success of encryption and the rise of cyber mercenaries does not seem very logic to me and would have needed some more explanation. And that the rise of government agencies hacking end user devices then should be connected to the rise of cyber mercenaries as well, is just too much. We can make our case against governments infringing on our privacy without blaming them for the rise of cyber mercenaries.