The pirate of the Mexican drug cartel spied on the FBI official phone to follow and kill informants, reports a report

In 2018, a hacker hired by the drug cartel of the Mexican sinalaa led by the infamous King Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán spied on the United States Embassy in Mexico in order to identify “people of interest” so that the Cartel targets and kills, according to a new US government surveillance report.

Friday, the office of the Ministry of Justice of the Inspector General revealed the incident within the framework of a Published report Audit FBI’s efforts to counter surveillance in order to protect “its employees, its investigations and its operations”.

The report indicates that the 2018 incident occurred while the FBI worked on the investigation which would ultimately lead to the arrest of El Chapo. At the time, according to the report, someone linked to their cartel caused the FBI that the criminal organization had hired a pirate.

The pirate “offered a menu of services related to the exploitation of mobile phones and other electronic devices” and was able to observe people entering and leaving the American embassy in the capital of Mexico, according to the report, including the deputy legal attaché of the FBI, a federal agent who works abroad with the local law enforcement authorities.

In one way or another – the report does not detail exactly how – the pirate has been “able to use” the mobile phone number to “obtain calls and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with” official telephone.

According to the FBI, the pirate also accessed the Mexico Cameras system to follow the attaché across the city and “identify people” that the attaché has encountered, read the report.

“According to the case agent, the cartel used this information to intimidate and, in some cases, kill potential sources or cooperate witnesses,” added the report.

When he was contacted to comment, the FBI referred questions to the Ministry of Justice, which did not answer a comment request.

For years, Mexico is at the forefront of surveillance and hacking capacities, on both sides of the drug war.

On the law side, for more than a decade now, several local and federal organizations for applying the law in Mexico million dollars to use spy software manufactured by Hacking team and later NSO group Go after the cartels, but also activists And journalists.

On the criminal side, The Sinaloa cartel used encrypted phoneswhich are specially designed devices designed to minimize the risk of surveillance by stripping it of fundamental functionalities and adding encrypted communication technologies.

According to a Vice investigationMexican cartels supported security software used by local government agencies “to locate and disappear from rivals and hide their crimes”.

Earlier in 2015, The motherboard reported That local cartels used “a pirate brigade” to build and manage their own communication networks. Later in 2017, The motherboard revealed That a hacker working for the Sinaloa cartel helped the authorities to find and arrest the elusive lieutenant of the cartel, Dámaso López Núñez. The pirate had originally been hired by the cartel in 2014 to try to hack the federal penitiplano of high security altiplano, where El Chapo was held at the time.