It wasn't clear to me that it was a device that was wireless. They said it was installed.. they called it a wireless router monitoring device, which suggests wireless, but it seems more plausible that they would have installed something physical to listen in on the cable connection (or something else north of the router)... the 'wireless' bit being the transmission of data back to them?
I'm perturbed by the number of hackers getting taken down who blather on about their personal lives, use a VPN with no encryption and think it's safe, and still manage to break into these rather large systems. Either they're skilled but reckless and cavalier, they're idiots and security everywhere is a joke, or both.
Not sure which of those scenarios is more disturbing. Either way, I suspect that, in the wake of these latest arrests, we'll see both better opsec from Anon, as well as an increased focus on security from those who are likely to be targets. In the meantime, I'll get 15 messages on my facebook wall saying, "see who's visited your profile!"
This is nothing surprising. If you listen to the (public) disclosures of wiretaps on e.g., Mob bosses, etc., it's full of mundane chatter about what they had for lunch, who they met, their bowling scores, etc. The reality is that after some time of being secretive and not getting caught, it's human nature to just act normally and let your guard down. If you think about it, the criminal only has to make one mistake out of thousands of individual actions to be caught and prosecuted.
Criminals are just ordinary people, not supervillains!
You just have to read about Gary McKinnon "hacking". The guy himself said that he is no wizard or anything similar but that a lot of the US government computers he got in had a blank password for the administrator...
Yes, from the sound of it the "wireless" part was simply how the device reported back to its owners.
Probably a good call, really. It requires physical presence, but done right it could be nigh undetectable, whereas reporting over the target's uplink could alert a very sharp target, and possibly even reveal who its masters are (based on destination).
