Operation Torpedo was a 2011 operation in which the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

(FBI) compromised three different hidden services hosting

child pornography Child pornography (also called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a ...

, which would then target anyone who happened to access them using a

network investigative technique Network Investigative Technique, or NIT, is a form of malware (or hacking) employed by the FBI since at least 2002. It is a drive-by download computer program designed to provide access to a computer. Controversies Its usage has raised both Fou ...

(NIT). The operation started after Dutch law enforcement compromised a hidden service called Pedoboard, and found it was physically located at a Nebraska web hosting company. The ensuing FBI investigation found that an employee, Aaron McGrath, was operating two child pornography sites at his work and one at his home. After a year of surveillance, the FBI arrested McGrath and took control of his three sites (PedoBoard, PedoBook, TB2) for a two-week period starting in November 2012. During this time the websites were modified to serve up a NIT, which would attempt to unmask visitors by revealing their IP address, operating system and web browser. The NIT was successful in revealing approximately 25 domestic users as well as numerous foreign users. The NIT code was revealed as part of the case ''USA v Cottom et al''. Researchers from

University of Nebraska at Kearney The University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK) is a campus of the public University of Nebraska system and located in Kearney, Nebraska. It was founded in 1905 as the Nebraska State Normal School at Kearney. History In March 1903 the Nebraska Sta ...

and

Dakota State University Dakota State University (DSU) is a public university in Madison, South Dakota. The school was founded in 1881 as a normal school, or teacher training school. Education is still the university's heritage mission, but a signature mission of tech ...

reviewed the NIT code and found that it was an

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

application that would ping a user's real IP address back to an FBI controlled server, rather than routing their traffic through the

Tor network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

and protecting their identity. It used a technique from

Metasploit The Metasploit Project is a computer security project that provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in penetration testing and IDS signature development. It is owned by Boston, Massachusetts-based security company Rapid7. It ...

's "decloaking engine" and only affected users who had not updated their Tor web browser. An investigation by ''

The Daily Dot ''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometo ...

'' claimed that the NIT was created by former part-time employee of

The Tor Project The Tor Project, Inc. is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsible for maintaining software fo ...

and Vidalia developer Matthew Edman and was internally known as "Cornhusker". The

U.S. Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

noted in December 2015 that besides McGrath, 18 users in the United States had been convicted as a result of the operation. One user caught by the NIT had accessed the site for only nine minutes and had since wiped his computer, yet a month-later police search of his home and digital devices found—through

digital forensics Digital forensics (sometimes known as digital forensic science) is a branch of forensic science encompassing the recovery, investigation, examination and analysis of material found in digital devices, often in relation to mobile devices and comp ...

—image thumbnails indicating past presence of downloaded child pornography, as well as text instructions on accessing and downloading child pornography. Another user was unmasked through his messages with an undercover FBI agent, and this user turned out to be Timothy DeFoggi, who was at that time the acting director of cybersecurity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Torpedo, Operation Dark web 2011 in American law Law enforcement operations Tor (anonymity network) Cybercrime Child pornography crackdowns

See also

References