Latest news with #Anom
Sunday World
09-06-2025
- Sunday World
Irishman allegedly tried to assist wanted drug dealer escape Australia
Stephen Roche spent almost four months behind bars The Irish man is accused of helping Hussein Chamas (pictured) to escape An Irishman who allegedly tried to assist a wanted drug dealer escape Australia has been released on bail. Stephen Francis Roche was arrested in January after it was alleged he travelled 4,700km across Oz with the fugitive hidden in his campervan. He was charged before the courts in February. The Irish man is accused of helping Hussein Chamas (pictured) to escape News in 90 Seconds - 09 June 2025 Last week, he was released from jail on bail after spending 123 days on remand at Darwin Correctional Centre. Roche's barrister Richard Bryson told a court in Darwin that his 46-year-old client was at risk of being 'prejudiced' by his time behind bars, NT News reports. He added that Roche's daughter was living in Queensland, and that his brother would be providing him with financial support as he returned to the community. The prosecution did not oppose bail, but Judge Sally Ozolins imposed strict conditions, including a curfew and daily check-ins at the Darwin Police Station. Roche is also barred from applying for a passport and cannot own more than one mobile phone or SIM card. He is unable to use any encrypted devices or applications. Stephen Roche is accused of driving Hussein Chamas, a wanted fugitive who escaped from a rehabilitation clinic in New South Wales, more than 4,600km to the Northern Territory. Chamas was in the facility on bail after he was charged with illegally possessing a firearm, drug trafficking, and conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of methamphetamine. He allegedly showed fake court documents to security guards at the facility before he fled in the van with Roche on January 8th. He was arrested 18 days later aboard a yacht in the Arafura Sea. Australian Federal Police allege the 35-year-old is a member of a syndicate which was behind the importation of drugs into Australia. A man suspected to be fugitive Hussein Chamas is arrested on board the yacht The syndicate was busted as part of Operation Ironside, an international police sting that intercepted millions of messages sent through the supposedly secure smartphone-based proprietary messaging app Anom. Chamas was charged with drug offences and breaching a firearms prohibition order in July 2023 and placed in rehab after he was arrested at Sydney Airport. The AFP were alerted of his escape on January 15, and a warrant was issued for his arrest when he failed to appear at the Downing Centre Local Court on January 20. Chamas was arrested after a member of the public alerted Australian Border Force (ABF) officers that a man was seen flashing a torch to a yacht at East Woody Beach in Nhulunbuy. ABF and Australian Federal Police officers who had been conducting covert surveillance on the vessel watched as the yacht's crew were also seen flashing a torch back to the man. AFP officers intercepted the yacht, and Chamas, who was identified as a passenger, was taken into custody under the NSW arrest warrant. Two crew members of the yacht, Thomas Goertz (51) from Germany, and Jade Sui Ying Ormiston (42) from the UK, were also charged but later released on bail. Stephen Roche is due before the court again for a hearing on July 22nd.
Forbes
15-04-2025
- Forbes
The Wiretap: How Law Enforcement Took Control Of The Dark Web's ‘Gmail'
The Wiretap is your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here. For people seeking to keep their communications away from the prying eyes of government and law enforcement, the dark web has provided a haven for years. One option was the Darknet Mail Exchange, or DNMX, which advertised itself as just like Gmail, but with one additional benefit: 'We don't care who you are and will never ask for your information or reveal your identity; this is the dark net after all.' But in October 2023, all those promises of anonymity came undone as the Dutch police seized DNMX servers and began rummaging through users' emails. At the time, cops believed DNMX was being used for the trade of child sex abuse material, terrorist communications and narcotics trafficking. The Dutch national police declined to comment further on the seizure, other than to tell Forbes there was an investigation. 'We will do no further notices about the investigation,' said Netherlands Police spokesperson Thérèse Ariaans. She declined to comment on whether or not the police let the service continue running to ensnare more criminals. Although the service is now down, according to the Wayback Machine, the main clearweb (i.e. non darknet) site for DNMX was still active last year. There have also been reports on social media of criminals continuing to message over the platform as recently as late summer 2024. In recent years, investigators have run communications channels used by criminals, the most notable case being that of Anom, an encrypted app that was controlled by police. More recently, the FBI took over the online profile of a money launderer who went by the name ElonMuskWHM to track his clients, according to 404 Media. Court documents show some darknet users had fretted that DNMX had been hit by a law enforcement raid in 2023, though no further information was forthcoming. On Reddit, an apparent note from the DNMX administrator from 2023 warned that DNMX email accounts were 'no longer in our control.' Since the previously unreported seizure, Dutch investigators have been sharing their findings with all manner of other agencies, from Europol to American federal departments. In one case, they found a child sexual exploitation enterprise using DNMX that offered to pay people to produce illegal footage. In some cases, the DNMX user, whose illicit business was known as Newstarz, would offer to pay as much as $500,000 for a year's contract, or up to $50,000 for a series of images around a given narrative. It also offered an 'Elite Membership Level' that would provide 'sexual access to all models and families at meets,' according to court documents filed by the DOJ. The DOJ is now prosecuting a former U.S. Marine Corps officer, Jonathan Laroche, for allegedly creating CSAM and selling it to the DNMX user behind Newsta, who remains unknown, according to a search warrant and a criminal complaint. Laroche, a former Navy detective who had been sentenced in a separate case for choking a detained sailor at Naval Base San Diego earlier this year, has not yet filed a plea for a new charge of producing CSAM. Neither his lawyer nor the DOJ had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. The owner of DNMX may have seen his service get taken down, but he promised in 2023 to offer a new one. 'The darknet needs a good email provider and I will bring a new one online soon,' according to the Reddit notice. It's unclear if that project ever bore fruit. Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964. Chris Krebs, former CISA director. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images) Getty Images The White House has revoked clearance approval for Chris Krebs, former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and his employer SentinelOne. Trump infamously fired Krebs in 2020 after he lost the election, blaming the ex-CISA director after the latter assessed there was no evidence of votes being compromised in any way. At the time, Trump had been on the warpath trying to undermine the election result. The White House release doesn't mention that public fracas, but claimed Krebs was 'a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.' Alongside claiming he was involved in hiding information on the Hunter Biden laptop saga, the Trump administration also alleged Krebs 'suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission.' Controversial forum 4Chan was inaccessible for many users on Tuesday amid claims it had been hacked and its user data released, including moderators' identities and email addresses. Senator Ron Wyden said he will block Trump's nomination for the next CISA director, Sean Plankey, until the agency releases a report on what he alleged was a 'multi-year cover up' of security flaws at U.S. telecommunication companies, TechCrunch reports. Chinese officials quietly acknowledged to U.S. counterparts in December that the country was behind attacks on American infrastructure, like ports, water utilities and airports, the Wall Street Journal reports. The admission came in December in a Geneva summit with the outgoing Biden administration. Someone has blown the whistle on how DOGE is handling data at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with investigating complaints about unfair labor practices, NPR reports. Silicon Valley residents may've gotten a shock over the weekend after hackers made audio-enabled traffic control buttons imitate the voices of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. According to a TechCrunch report, one Musk voice told passersby, 'I guess they say money can't buy happiness… I guess that's true. God knows I've tried. But it can buy a Cybertruck and that's pretty sick, right?' 'F—k, I'm so alone,' the Musk voice concluded. Tailscale, which protects network traffic with a peer-to-peer mesh virtual private network, announced a $160 million Series C round, led by Accel with participation from CRV, Insight Partners, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital. Existing angel George Kurtz, CEO of cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike, put in again, alongside new investor Anthony Casalena, the CEO of Squarespace. The company, founded in 2019, claims some major AI customers, including Perplexity, Hugging Face and Groq. A breach at the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency allowed hackers to spy on over 100 bank regulators' emails for over a year, Bloomberg reports. As a result, some banks, including JPMorgan and BNY, have paused sharing information with the agency.
