Mexican Drug Cartel Hacks FBI Agent's Phone

Somehow I missed this story from a month ago. Mexican drug cartel hacker spied on FBI official's phone to track and kill informants, report says | TechCrunch

The last thing that you want is to tip off the Cartel to the fact that you are working with informants.

The report said the 2018 incident happened while the FBI was working on the investigation that would eventually lead to the arrest of El Chapo. At the time, according to the report, someone connected to his cartel tipped off the FBI that the criminal organization had hired a hacker.

The hacker “offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices,” and was able to observe people going in and out of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico’s capital, according to the report, including the FBI assistant legal attaché, a federal agent who works overseas along with local law enforcement authorities.

The hackers, and the cartel, had access to surveillance being done by the Mexican government.

This is bad. This is why I call them Funded But Incompetent.

There were a lot of ways to hack a phone in 2018. If it was an iPhone it could have been done with malicious a iMessage. But as several people have pointed out, it isn't that hard to get someone to leak data about everything they are doing. Do you have TikTok on your phone? Did you let every application have access to your exact position data because it is easier when you need an Uber or want to order Door Dash? Add in the fact that cartels have a lot of money to pay people at telephone companies, or wherever, and I see cellphones as a huge security exposure for this kind of thing, and I don't work in an area where people could die. People did die.

Hat tip goes to Angry Cops, from a video he published 2 weeks ago. (I only just saw the short over the weekend).