FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app | Hacker News Reader

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app

theregister.com

For their objectives, that was undoubtedly a good return on investment. Even ignoring the ROI, the absolute cost seems quite reasonable given the feature set and target market. Someone picked a good CHS or did a good job with avoiding scope creep.

While I applaud them for their understanding and use of technology, it is a strange feeling to see the FBI start to think like the NSA. Given the positive PR of this approach+result other teams will most assuredly try to replicate it

Which is fine, if you ask me. This app was created for criminal dealings, specifically. It was handed over to them by a criminal. They had an op to specifically distribute the compromised app only to the crime networks.

They didn't take over good-faith services. They didn't try to spy on civilians. They didn't try to blanket-surveil the public.

It was a clever, successful and seemingly by-the-books operation.

No need to break encryption if everyone uses your own backdoored app. Quite an impressive story.

So called drugs lords were relatively low level. Maybe a misdirection operation to convince everybody they cannot break encryption... :-)

I wonder why the FBI would reveal this information? Surely they could continue under the radar for as long as possible and continue catching criminals?

Are you from the States? The discovery process probably made keeping it a secret any longer nearly impossible.

I am not! Thanks for the insight.

Government agencies like the FBI are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and cannot keep stuff like this a secret once they start making arrests. Once they go public it's all subject to scrutiny. This may be why they did all these arrests at once in a large wave.

https://www.foia.gov/

Yet everyone who got Signal from an app store thinks they’re totally fine?

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