Facebook helps the FBI | FBI and Facebook work together against cybersecurity threat
A California man has been harassing and blackmailing other young girls through Facebook and several apps. Though he is caught, the damage he has done cannot simply be undone.
Buster Hernandez, or “Brian Kil” as known online, was so good at hiding his true identity. Facebook, hence, had to turn to a cybersecurity firm to be able to hack him and gather wild evidence to turn over to the FBI. He wrote a zero-day exploit for the Tails Operating System that let the FBI track down Hernandez.
Facebook’s first intervention
Facebook stressed that they did not hand over the exploit collected by them. They also stated that they have never helped law enforcement with cyber-crimes in the past, and this was the first time.
“As we explained in the article, Buster Hernandez was unique because he used all kinds of techniques to hide his identity from law enforcement. Without those unusual challenges, it would have been impossible for us to work with law enforcement on our case” stated a Facebook representative.
In this case, there’s been no risk to anyone despite the fact that there was a lot of suspicion about one individual. We’re not adding a backdoor to our encryption software, as that would compromise everyone’s security. Since there were no other privacy risks and the human-level implications were so great, we had to do it. – Former Facebook employee with knowledge of the case.
Criminal’s Moves
Hernandez was so notorious at Facebook that two former employees regarded him as the worst cybercriminal on the platform. In fact, Facebook had assigned one employee with the exclusive task of tracking his movements for two years. The employee eventually created a machine-learning algorithm to identify when Hernandez was creating new accounts and when he was approaching children to blackmail them. The FBI has tried to hack Hernandez for a while without any success and it remains unknown how much Facebook paid for the hack. Hernandez then uploaded videos to social media about it, taunting the agency.
Hernandez pleaded guilty in February but is awaiting sentencing currently. He’s been charged with a number of crimes, including coercion of a minor, threats of kidnapping, injury and murder.
If you liked this post, then you might also enjoy this one.
Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
