Showing posts with label Drug trafficking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drug trafficking. Show all posts

Sunday, July 12, 2015

"Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman escapes"

"Guards at the Altiplano Federal Prison discovered during a routine check on Saturday that Guzman, known as "El Chapo," was missing, a statement from the commission said."
Guzman escaped through a hole in his cell that led to a tunnel nearly a mile long, Mexico National Security spokesman Monte Alejandro Rubido GarcĂ­a confirmed Sunday morning at a press conference in Mexico City. The hole led to a tunnel that was lighted and ventilated, the spokesman said.

Guzman is the storied boss of one of the world's most powerful and deadly drug trafficking operations.

He escaped in 2001 from a high-security prison in a laundry cart and was not apprehended again until 2014, when he was arrested at a Mexican beach resort.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

"To Move Drugs, Traffickers Are Hacking Shipping Containers"

"The scheme sounds like a work of near science fiction. But police in the Netherlands and Belgium insist its true, and say they have the evidence to prove it: two tons of cocaine and heroin, a machine gun, a suitcase stuffed with $1.7 million, and hard drive cases turned into hacking devices."

The plot, which began in 2011, reportedly involved a mix of international drug gangs and digital henchmen: drug traffickers recruited hackers to penetrate computers that tracked and controlled the movement and location of shipping containers arriving at Antwerp's port. The simple software and hardware hacks—using USB keyloggers and more sophisticated purpose-built devices—allowed traffickers to send in drivers and gunmen to steal particular containers before the legitimate owner arrived."

The scheme was first noticed last year, when workers at a container terminal in Antwerp began to wonder why entire containers—said to contain cargo like bananas and timber—were disappearing from the port."

"I'm really not surprised at these practices," said Jim Giermanski, a former FBI agent and chairman of Powers International, a transportation security technology company. "The reality is that most shippers don't have a clue as to what to do to secure a container" from tampering by smugglers and terrorists, who, Giermanski warns, could use them to conceal dirty bombs.

Portions of an Article by Alex Pasternack as it appeared on Motherboard