According to HackRead, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency reported that drones deployed along the southern border had been hacked by drug cartels in 2016. Other reports state that drones operated by cartels are used to surveil U.S. security officers and agents. The use of drones to smuggle drugs has also been reported as early as 2015.
A 2020 report by The Guardian noted mysterious text messages received by the editor-in-chief of a Mexican news group in 2016. The messages contained a link, which, according to analysis by Amnesty International, was an attempt to gain access to the writer’s phone. “When clicked, the link installs an invisible software that sucks all the phone’s data, including text messages. It also enables the microphone and camera to be activated remotely,” the article states, noting the use of an Israeli-developed NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
A separate report by Hackers Arise offered a 2018 case in which the Gulf Cartel kidnapped and forced a technical advisor, who was formerly a Telcel engineer, to build a telecommunications network. “His eventual escape and testimony revealed the inner workings of these networks, including the extensive training programs developed for new technical recruits and the sophisticated maintenance protocols that kept the systems operational,” the report says.
In 2020, according to the same report, Mexican authorities identified a network operated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which “centered around a fully functioning telecommunications company that served as a front for the cartel’s communications infrastructure.” The network covered four states, employing more than 50 technical specialists, many of whom were telecommunication company recruits.
“You can track people in so many different ways now,” Hedger said. “The problem is that the public assumes you have to be a nation state or some big intelligence agency to collect this data, and that’s just not true.”
Many online users give up data voluntarily and, in many cases, unintentionally. “They don’t understand the differences on what types of data are hard to collect and which ones are not,” Hedger said.
Signals intelligence, Hedger explained, can be split into two different categories: external and internal communications. “So, while it might be difficult or sophisticated to collect somebody’s voice call and hear what’s happening, it is much less difficult to collect the fact that it did happen, who was talking and where they were geolocated.”
Offering another example, Hedger spoke on the importance of turning off the Wi-Fi on a mobile phone once leaving a destination. If Wi-Fi is left on to connect to other networks, a malicious user can track the location of the phone by following the Wi-Fi signal. “If somebody simulates being a signal, like a tower around you, they can follow you very easily because your phone is consistently trying to update and connect to it,” Hedger said. “It doesn’t take a warrant, you don’t have to be sophisticated, that’s you giving your information up to it.”
Although the recent FBI audit mentions the recruitment of a hacker to collect information, Hedger explained that hackers aren’t required for cartels to conduct such missions. What it often comes down to is insider threat, specifically within telecommunications companies.
“We call this human-enabled [signal intelligence] collection,” he continued. “Why would I conduct this massive operation to hack into, let’s say, AT&T, if someone who’s a senior executive at AT&T is secretly taking money from me and just passes me that information?”
Relationships between cartels and telecommunications companies are stronger than people realize, Hedger stated, with cartel members deeply embedded in every level of society. Insider threat is an equally important, and possibly larger, threat, he noted.
In the case of UTS, however, understanding the information voluntarily given is key.
“I think when people read this report and look at it, they think about geolocation being the most predominant part of it,” Hedger said. “That is only a pittance of what they can do with [UTS].”
“When you build a pattern of life out on somebody, you’re not just looking at where they go, you’re looking at who they talk to, what they’re into, what they like, what their hobbies are, what their secrets are. When you surveil somebody from that angle, you get to know them more than anybody else knows that person.”
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