[News] The FBI's Backdoor Dashboard

Wed Aug 14 12:13:59 EDT 2024

Never-before-published screenshots of an internal FBI tool show how the 
agency monitored millions of messages from the secretly backdoored 
messaging app Anom.

<https://www.404media.co/r/6bc3a475?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>
Inside the FBI's Dashboard for Wiretapping the World 
<https://www.404media.co/r/8892cc03?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>
By Joseph Cox • 14 Aug 2024 	View in browser 
<https://www.404media.co/r/f577a070?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>
View in browser 
<https://www.404media.co/r/0fe87308?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>

A screenshot from the Hola iBot system showing intercepted phot
Image: 404 Media.
🧑‍💻
//Joseph Cox presented these findings and others at the DEF CON hacking 
conference this month. You can read the full story of Anom in Cox’s new 
book, ///**Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting 
Operation Ever**///, //_//available here//_ 
<https://www.404media.co/r/d3633652?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>//.//

The FBI’s surveillance system for reading messages from Anom, an 
end-to-end encrypted messaging app the FBI secretly backdoored, was 
capable of much more than simply presenting the millions of intercepted 
chat messages, providing something closer to a complete monitoring of 
the digital activities of thousands of people in more than a hundred 
countries, according to never-before-published diagrams, screenshots, 
and technical documents that describe the system.

The system, called Hola iBot, allowed FBI analysts to plot peoples’ 
physical movements on a Google Maps style interface, provide summaries 
of their conservations, and draw social connections between users. In 
the eyes of one FBI agent, Anom became more of a social network for 
criminals than a messaging app.

“Welcome to Hola iBot!,” a login screen for the system says. “You are 
accessing a US. Government information system, which includes this 
computer, this computer network, all computers connected to this 
network, and all devices and/or storage media attached to this network 
or to a computer on this network. This Information system is provided 
for U.S. Government-authorized use only,” it adds.

“iBot” is a reference to how the backdoor in Anom functioned. As _a 
search warrant application_ 
<https://www.404media.co/r/ed0be187?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83> 
unsealed shortly before the FBI announced its control of Anom in June 
2021 explains, a copy of each message on devices outside the U.S. was 
sent to a server before eventually being sent to the FBI. The FBI 
assumed control of Anom in 2018 after it shut down an encrypted phone 
company called Phantom Secure. A confidential human source (CHS) who was 
developing Anom then offered the embryonic company to the FBI for its 
own use. The CHS was paid more than $100,000.

The diagrams and screenshots were included in various law enforcement 
records I obtained through sources and courts in Europe, or found in 
copies of documents posted online. As the FBI told me when I visited the 
San Diego field office and walked through the rooms where analysts read 
Anom’s messages, it was FBI computer scientists that built the Hola iBot 
system.

To log into the Hola iBot system, users needed to be granted access via 
_the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP)_ 
<https://www.404media.co/r/9d221222?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>, 
a platform that offers various tools and services to law enforcement 
agencies. Once inside, an analyst could review data in cases assigned to 
them. The cases were named after Greek Gods, such as Zeus.

Above the raw content of the messages themselves, analysts could tick a 
box to mark the content as pertinent or “no intelligence value/not 
pertinent.” In some cases, Anom users used the phones for personal or 
non-criminal conversations, although the FBI said the vast majority of 
the messages were overwhelmingly criminal in nature, something which is 
reflected in hundreds of thousands of Anom messages obtained while 
_reporting my book_ 
<https://www.404media.co/r/e8160ff0?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>.

Sometimes Hola iBot also displays a translated summary of the 
conversation. As Anom expanded beyond Australia into Europe, then South 
America, South East Asia, and elsewhere, Anom collected many more 
messages that were not in English. To understand those, the FBI relied 
on in-house translators and used automated services from Amazon.

“On line 2, Ghost comments on Tommy’s Spanish skills,” one summary based 
on communications in Bernese German reads. “On line 6, Ghost asks what 
the other guy wrote.” Other languages mentioned in the Hola iBot 
screenshots include Swedish, Chinese, Serbian, Croatian, Italian, and 
Albanian.

Beyond messages, Hola iBot shows the connections between specific users. 
In one interface, a series of different colored circles represents who 
is talking to who. The red circle represents the targeted user, the blue 
circles are other users they communicated with, and the green circle is 
a group chat which the users are a part of, according to the document. 
This allowed the FBI analysts to not only see what Anom users were 
saying, but unambiguously who they were interacting with across the 
platform, building up a spider web of criminal organizations and how 
they worked with one another. One of the biggest revelations of the Anom 
operation, and others into encrypted phone companies called Encrochat 
and Sky, was how the idea of organized crime groups was now antiquated. 
Instead, criminals act in organized crime networks, transcending 
geographical borders and traditional ethnic divides.

Analysts could also listen to voice memos sent across Anom between 
users. Although Anom had a feature where users could distort the sound 
of their voice, giving the impression their voice memos were secure, the 
FBI was in some cases able to reverse the modifications, providing them 
with the original recorded audio.

despite assurance to its users that Anom had removed all GPS 
functionality, many of the devices actually recorded the user’s physical 
location whenever they sent a message. This data is then presented 
inside Hola iBot as a map, showing analysts where their target has been 
over time.

The Anom operation was the largest sting operation ever, with around 
10,000 law enforcement officers acting on the takedown day in June 2021. 
Since then, authorities have arrested more than a thousand people, and 
seized multiple tons of drugs around the world.

Some cases did fall through the cracks though. A murder in Sweden was 
planned on Anom, and the FBI did not provide the relevant intelligence 
to local authorities in time. The assassination was successful.

Some prosecutions in Europe have ended in acquittals, while courts 
debate whether they can legally use the messages collected by Anom as 
evidence, according to a lawyer working on several Anom related cases.

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<https://www.404media.co/r/97f80763?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83>

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