Short Bytes: Last year, the FBI engaged in the largest ever law enforcement hacking campaign to shut down “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world.” The FBI made use of a hacking tool called network investigative technique (NIT) to sniff the IP addresses of the pedophile users and busted them.
After a year, the extent of hacking and the unprecedented measures took by the FBI are now being revealed. Detailing the hacking process of FBI, Motherboard writes that after capturing the Playpen server in February 2015, the FBI ran the porn website from its own servers by using a hacking tool called network investigative technique (NIT) and successfully identified about 1,300 IP addresses of pedophiles.
Playpen became famous on the dark web just after its launch in August 2014. There, users could sign up and share whatever images they wanted. According to the documents presented in the court, the site’s main purpose was “the advertisement and distribution of child pornography.”
An FBI complaint described the site as “the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world.”
The hacking tool NIT has been described as an “extraordinary expansion of government surveillance and its use of illegal search methods on a massive scale” in the court filing. It’s being used by the FBI from time to time to expose the identities of Tor users and phishing emails.
However, there are still tons of questions left unanswered, such as the true power of hacking tools like NIT is kept hidden from the courts while the law enforcement authorities seek the permission to use them. While, the true extent of this pedophile hacking campaign is still not known, it remains the biggest ever hacking campaign by a law enforcement authority.
Have something to add about this FBI hacking operation? Tell us your views in the comments section.
Also read: Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter Coming Together to Remove Child Porn
7 thoughts on “FBI Hacked 1000+ Dark Web Computers To Shut Down Largest Child-pornography Site”
Great job.. all this shit could be closed..guys pls don`t use darknet for your benifits, it is very dangerous..BE SMART!
i think it brilliant what the fbi have done good job keep it up
I'm willing that they have one of the best hacking teams formed by hackers who have been proven bright and probably some ex cons. Eighter way, they are doing some great things. Child pornography is just one of those things that make you cringe, and after hearing that one of the biggest distribution sites has been taken down makes me sleep that much more comfortably at night.
Yeah. The darkweb sucks. The only way to get around safely is if you know someone on the deepweb who's been through it all, other than that, GOOD LUCK!
Nowh Wun yes man, Nobody should access darknet..it can turn out to be after you!
Nah, not a single problem here. You must be doing it wrong.
I think is great. I do wonder why the FBI didn't get search warrants. What judge would say no? Could they be testing the waters? I mean who is gonna argue with the takedown of a horrible child porn site and the arrest of its distributors? But what if it was done other group? I fully support what they, the FBI, did. But why not do without legally questionable methods? I hope none of these scumbags get off (no pun intended) do to legal technicalities.