How the FBI found Miss Teen USA’s webcam spy

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/miss-teen-usas-webcam-spy-called-himself-cutefuzzypuppy/

By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
Sept 27 2013

The sextortionist who snapped nude pictures of Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf 
through her laptop's webcam has been found and arrested, the FBI revealed 
yesterday. 19-year old Jared James Abrahams, a California computer science 
student who went by the online handle "cutefuzzypuppy," had as many as 150 
"slave" computers under his control during the height of his webcam spying 
in 2012.

Watching all of those webcams to see when a young woman changes her 
clothes takes a serious time commitment, and Abrahams made one; he "was 
always at his computer," according the FBI complaint against him. Abrahams 
yesterday turned himself in after the complaint was unsealed, and a 
federal judge released him on a $50,000 bond.


Anatomy of a RATer

How did Abrahams get his start learning the intricacies of remote 
administration tools (RATs), the malware used to spy on his victims? Not 
surprisingly, he was a regular user of hackforums.net, which features a 
large RAT forum that I profiled earlier this year. As cutefuzzypuppy, 
Abrahams asked for plenty of help distributing software like DarkComet to 
victims, since he "suck[ed] at social engineering" and needed to find 
better ways to spread his spyware.

He also announced his successes. On May 17, 2012, he told the RAT 
community at hackforums.net, "Recently I infected a person at my school 
with darkcomet. It was total luck that I got her infected because I suck 
at social engineering. Anyway, this girl happens to be a model and a 
really good looking one at that :D. I was hoping I could use her and her 
facebook account to further spread my darkcomet rat. I want to mass 
message all her friends on facebook but I have no idea what to message 
them to get them to download the rat. Any ideas or suggestions would be 
greatly appreciated :)."

[...]



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