 A few weeks ago the FBI managed to dismantle one of the larger botnet services that had been taken over people's computers and of course this being a botnet service meant that these computers would basically get rented out to other hackers that would use them to distribute malware, conduct DDoS attacks and other malicious activities. The name of this botnet was called Quackbot sometimes abbreviated to Cubot and it had 700,000 computers under its control 200,000 of which were here in the United States which is probably what got the FBI so involved with taking down this botnet in the first place. Now one thing about this operation where the FBI took down Quackbot that is kind of disturbing to me is that it's an example of the new far-reaching legal authority that the feds have been granted as a result of the changes made to rule 41 jurisdiction limitations some seven years ago. So to sum up this situation the way that things used to work is that if the FBI got a warrant to search something like a computer system or to hack into your network the warrant had to be specific right like if they had a warrant to hack your network they wouldn't also be allowed to go and hack your neighbor's computers or to hack somebody that you know just came by and was using your wi-fi but wasn't actually suspected of a crime. Now the event that initially sparked all of these debates about the rule 41's limitations was the FBI's operation that took down well first took control of a dark web c-sam site called the playpen which the FBI ran themselves for like two weeks they continued to distribute c-sam and they actually improved the speed of the site by moving it to their higher end government servers um and somehow probably through advertising campaigns on other hidden services the site's average weekly visitors spiked from 11 000 to 50 000 per week during the FBI's control period and of course the feds added some malware to the site to try and unmask all of the site's users and I suspect that the attack vector that was used in this case um since it was an older tour browser uh was probably a vulnerability in the sandbox so that they could execute malicious scripts or nits as the feds like to call it to detect the real users IPs their MAC addresses host names and their real usernames the FBI did all of this running the site hacking other people and de-anonymizing them under the single warrant that authorized them to take down the playpen site and to arrest its owner and the people who were caught in this sting all of them appealed to circuit courts saying that the searches and the execution of the knit on machines of the playpen's end users was unconstitutional and so the fruits of those investigations which would be you know finding CSAM on the end users machines or evidence that they had traded CSAM or downloaded CSAM uh that evidence would be inadmissible in court as a result of it being obtained through an invalid warrant but every single circuit court judge so far has denied these appeals saying that the FBI search was in good faith even though it may have violated the law these circuit court judges they no longer have to put their careers on the lines you know they don't have to make these judgments anymore they don't have to make these calls going forward because now the feds have full legal authority to not just infiltrate these illegal sites on the dark web but they can continue running them they can improve their functionality they can increase their user base by as much as 500 percent like what we saw with the playpen which again i suspect was the result of an advertisement campaign and then hack all the users that are connecting to this site as well you know send them warrants arrest them etc now in the case of the playpen operation we would say that these users got what they deserved because they're distributing CSAM and i think that's just about as bad as hurting kids yourself but what about with the quackbot dismantlement here we have a situation where the FBI took over the command and control servers of the botnet they changed the encryption keys so that the hackers could no longer view the communications that were going through and then the FBI used these command and control servers to take control of the 700 000 plus zombie machines that were infected so that they could remove that malware like totally trust me bro we're not going to use the botnet for our own fed ops okay that's probably a bit of a joke but the feds did get a warrant to search the hard drives of all the devices in the united states that were affected by the botnet you can read it yourself in attachment a of this warrant i'll try to remember to include a link to this in the description but this warrant applies to the electronic storage media contained in victim computers located in the united states onto which malicious cyber actors have installed without authorization the quackbot malware and which computers are in communication with the quackbot infrastructure now if we scroll down a bit uh the judge that allowed this warrant did make sure to put some limitations on it um so here you know you could see this to search the electronic storage media identified in attachment a and to search um copy of media that has to do with quackbot and then it goes down to say this warrant does not authorize the seizure of any tangible property except as provided in the accompanying affidavit and in paragraphs one and two this warrant does not authorize the seizure or copying of any content from the electronic storage media identified in attachment a or the alteration of the functionality of the electronic storage media identified in attachment a so this might lead you to believe that proper limitations are put in this warrant to protect your fourth amendment rights and basically make it so that all the fbi can do is some much needed tech support to remove these viruses from people's pc's but there's this thing called the plain view doctrine that allows law enforcement to conduct warrantless seizures of items that are discovered inadvertently and are evidence of a crime like if a cop pulls you over for failing to use your turn signal and he sees you have a duffel bag full of cocaine and machine guns in the back seat he is going to take that and he's also going to take you now i'm not a legal expert by any means so i can't say for sure if the plain view doctrine also applies to computers and you know the digital world but my gut feeling tells me that if illegal files are found on people's computers during these good faith hacking sessions the owner of that computer is going to be facing some future legal problems and illegal files don't have to be things as reprehensible as csam it could be undeclared crypto assets because that would be evidence of tax fraud it could be you know 3d schematics for 3d printed lower receivers that could be evidence that you're going to be making illegal weapons modifications hell if the fbi were to find crack software and like pirated movies on your pc along with bit torn software they could say that that's conspiracy for you to distribute copyrighted material illegally so this is a very big problem that's going to require a much greater deal of digital op sec moving forward because you know yesterday the feds were going after the pedos today they say that they're doing these good faith hacking sessions to remove malware botnet malware from people's pcs but it really only seems like it's a matter of time till the feds say they need to take over torrenting sites and other forums that they don't like and then hack and users so make sure that you're taking the proper precautions but that's it for this video guys wanted to make you aware of that uh the libre shirts are still in stock on base dot win and of course you get 10 off store wide on base dot win when you pay using manero xmr at checkout be sure to like and share this video to hack the algorithm follow me on odyssey and have a great rest of your day