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submitted 2 months ago by Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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All the recent dark net arrests seem to be pretty vague on how the big bad was caught (except the IM admin's silly opsec errors) In the article they say he clicked on a honeypot link, but how was his ip or any other identifier identified, why didnt tor protect him.

Obviously this guy in question was a pedophile and an active danger, but recently in my country a state passed a law that can get you arrested if you post anything the government doesnt like, so these tools are important and need to be bulletproof.

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[-] governorkeagan 80 points 2 months ago

He most likely had bad OPSEC.

Secondly, he took this imagery he had created and then "turned to AI chatbots to ensure these minor victims would be depicted as if they had engaged in the type of sexual contact he wanted to see." In other words, he created fake AI CSAM—but using imagery of real kids.

This probably didn’t help much either.

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 2 months ago

The government is cagey about how, exactly, this criminal activity was unearthed, noting only that Herrera "tried to access a link containing apparent CSAM." Presumably, this "apparent" CSAM was a government honeypot file or web-based redirect that logged the IP address and any other relevant information of anyone who clicked on it.

It looks like a combination of bad opsec and clicking on a download link.

I know there has been some back and forth whether it's good to use a VPN with tor and feel like this is just going to open up that conversation again.

[-] governorkeagan 8 points 2 months ago

I’ve been looking into this myself recently and it’s definitely an interesting conversation.

[-] quant@leminal.space 4 points 2 months ago

Bad opsec and illusion of anonymity will likely render all the extra steps null, most likely. Case in point, we've been reminding people not to torrent through Tor for years.

[-] governorkeagan 3 points 2 months ago

Torrenting through Tor sounds like a recipe for disaster.

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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024

161 points (92.1% liked)

Privacy

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