The Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico hacked the telephone of an FBI official investigating kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as a part of a surveillance marketing campaign “to intimidate and/or kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” in line with a just lately printed report by the Justice Division.
The report, which cited an “particular person linked to the cartel,” mentioned a hacker employed by its high brass “provided a menu of providers associated to exploiting cellphones and different digital units.” The employed hacker noticed “’individuals of curiosity’ for the cartel, together with the FBI Assistant Authorized Attache, after which was ready to make use of the [attache’s] cell phone quantity to acquire calls made and acquired, in addition to geolocation knowledge, related to the [attache’s] telephone.”
“In line with the FBI, the hacker additionally used Mexico Metropolis’s digicam system to observe the [attache] by town and establish individuals the [attache] met with,” the closely redacted report said. “In line with the case agent, the cartel used that data to intimidate and, in some cases, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses.”
