The Internet, once the most secluded and safe place in the world, where people who hide their identities do not have to worry about being discovered by the outside world - "On the Internet, no one knows that you are a dog"[1]

。

More than a decade later, the Internet has become more convenient and developed, but privacy is no longer available. The Internet has gone from a place of hiding to a place of exposure. My friend Little Z is a "white hat"[2]

。 In his view, the Internet is a place where you are naked and have nowhere to hide. As long as a person is online, no matter what they do, what model of computer or mobile phone they use - there is no privacy, let alone security.

A recent investigation of a case made me feel this more deeply.

On December 27, Tian Jing called me and said that one of her close Alipay had been stolen and the loss was relatively large - the more than 300,000 yuan in the account was gone, and asked me if I could help her. I asked her why she came to me for such a simple matter, just go to Alipay, and they compensate for the loss of the theft.

Tian Jing said that she had already found it, but Alipay said that she had not found any abnormal consumption records - all the consumption records were consumed through her best friend's mobile phone, which was not within the scope of the claim, and this matter could not be solved in the normal way now: "Why don't I find you!" ”

I said, "It's almost time for dinner, you call the girlfriend who lost the money, my name is Zhou Yong, let's go to dinner, talk while eating!" ”

A little after 5 o'clock, Zhou Yong and I arrived at the restaurant. Ten minutes later, Tian Jing came in with a girl in a brown coat and introduced us to her best friend Li Xin.

After shaking hands and sitting down, I handed the menu to Tian Jing and asked the two of them to add something. Zhou Yong came over: "Brother Xu, I found that the saying 'people are divided into groups, and things are gathered by likes' is really true, Sister Jing's friends are all beauties!" ”

I asked him to go aside, and when they finished ordering, I started asking why they didn't have the money.

On December 26, 2016, from 10 to 11 o'clock in the morning, Li Xin was in a meeting in the company, and his mobile phone was silenced. After she opened her mobile phone after the meeting, she found that from 10:06 to 10:35, within 20 minutes, she received nine notifications from the Alipay App in a row, and paid nine sums of money, one for 32,000 yuan and one for 44,300 yuan, and the recipient was a game account. She immediately called to freeze her account and lock her card, but by this time she had already swiped 320,000 yuan.

SMS scams are a common form of scam

I asked Li Xin if she had received any strange text messages, such as "there was a problem with the courier", "photos of class reunions", "your children's report cards", "cheating photos of your husband (wife)", "points to redeem prizes", and at the same time the text messages with an affiliate link. She said, "No, what's wrong with this kind of text message?" ”

I said: "This is the most common method of theft - as soon as you click on the link, it will automatically download a 'Trojan' virus, steal your account password, intercept your verification SMS, and then use it to steal your money." ”

She shook her head and said she hadn't ordered it.

I said, "Okay, I'll look elsewhere." ”

After eating and negotiating the commission, I went to Zhou Yong's house - his house has a 200 trillion network, and the network speed is relatively fast. The reason why I need to speed up the Internet is because I have to use the "social worker database" to check what information has been stolen from Li Xin and determine whether this information is enough to steal her account.

Logged in to a commonly used "social worker database", Zhou Yong watched from the side: "Brother Xu, what kind of website is this, I look panicked!" ”

I explained: "After all kinds of illegally obtained personal information is stolen and sold, some 'white hats' will put it on the Internet and store it in the 'social worker database' for ordinary netizens to check whether their identity information has been stolen." ”

Before 2013, various "social work pools" emerged one after another. After that, most of them were shut down, and a small number of servers were relocated offshore, barely making ends meet. After all, in addition to checking whether the information is leaked, the "social worker database" is also easy to be used by lawbreakers.

The "social worker database" that I often use was told to me by Xiao Z. In the leading "social worker database" in the hacking world, as long as your personal information is leaked, it will be added here quickly.

In the "social worker database", I found her basic identity information, graduate school, work address, home address, and accounts on various platforms.

This information can give people a glimpse of her past, but it can't steal her account, which is not linked to Alipay - so it is unlikely that it was stolen because of an information leak. Ordinary food orders and online shopping are also unlikely to reveal payment passwords. So either there was a problem with the mobile phone, or she was targeted during the offline quick payment, and both lines had to be checked.

In the evening, I called Tian Jing and asked her to accompany Li Xin to the acacia market tomorrow, and give her mobile phone to Xiao Z to check, I have already said hello.

At noon the next day, Zhou Yong and I came to the community where Li Xin lived. There is a convenience store downstairs in the community.

She said that every night when she came home from work, she would pay with her mobile phone here and buy a bottle of oolong tea. I want to see if there is anything unusual in the surveillance before December 24, a few days before Li Xin's theft.

When I entered the convenience store, I grabbed two bottles of drinks in the refrigerated area and wanted to talk to the cashier at checkout and ask him to show us the surveillance. At this time, Zhou Yong patted me: "Brother Xu, what are those two doing?" ”

I turned my head to see that the two men were holding their phones in their right hands, and their left hands were pointing their middle fingers at the security camera of the convenience store.

Zhou Yong approached me and lowered his voice: "Isn't it stupid?" ”

I said to take a closer look, maybe it has something to do with Li Xin's matter.

Along the shelves, we crept up behind the two men and glanced at their phones from behind. The surveillance screen of the convenience store was broadcast live on the mobile phone, and Zhou Yong and I were looking at the mobile phone behind our backs, which they could see clearly.

Now that it has been discovered, it is better to be generous, I pushed Zhou Yong, and he leaned in and said: "Dude, what is this?" It's interesting! ”

"It's interesting," the other party said, "We saw a convenience store downstairs on the live streaming website, so we came down and took a look." ”

After asking the name of the website and thanking you, Zhou Yong and I went to this website. The website screen has a delay of about five seconds, and the sound is very clear.

Zhou Yong: "Brother Xu, is it legal for customers to buy things on this website?" Privacy is also too unsecure. ”

I said that live-streaming the other person's images and voices without consent may infringe on portrait rights. However, it is difficult to define this matter, because the infringement of portrait rights needs to be for the purpose of profit, but it is difficult to judge whether this matter is profitable or not.

Zhou Yong asked: "Is the merchant authorized to broadcast live?" ”

I shook my head, this site is supposed to be stolen.

There are only a few domestic surveillance camera companies that broadcast audio and video. When users use the relevant devices of these companies, the system sets the live broadcast mode to private by default, and the live broadcast will not be made public. In order to prevent users from misoperation, users need to manually set it to public, and then it needs to be reviewed by the platform before the relevant live video is displayed on the website. As for the website, there is no right to authorize reprinting.

Zhou Yong stepped forward and took a look: "It's really one of the ones you said!" Hey, is it possible that when Li Xin paid, the password was captured by the camera and then stolen? ”

I think it's enough, the camera isn't clear enough yet.

Zhou Yong: "So we still have to manage the convenience store to monitor those days." ”

I told him no. The Wi-Fi password of the convenience store is attached to the wall, and the camera is connected to this Wi-Fi, so as long as you download the management software, you can directly view the local device under the same Wi-Fi.

Connected to Wi-Fi and installed the brand's monitoring software, I found the storage video in the local device option. The memory of this monitoring is only 32G, and if it is two days late, the video before December 24 may not be visible.

Zhou Yong and I stood in the convenience store and looked at the surveillance upside down. Li Xin got off work late, and when he bought oolong tea every day, it was after 10 o'clock, and there were not many customers at this time, so if there was a problem, it was easy to distinguish.

In the first three days of Li Xin's theft, when she took out her mobile phone to check out, there was no one around except the cashier. Everything is normal, but I always feel that something is wrong, Zhou Yong and I watched it twice, and Zhou Yong shouted: "Brother Xu! I found something wrong! I nodded and said I found out too.

Although there was no one around Li Xin at the checkout, every time she came to buy oolong tea, she would follow up with a man, and after Li Xin finished buying things and left a few seconds, she would go out to keep up. Although the outfit is different each time, they all wear hats to cover their faces, and if you compare them carefully, you will see that they are the same person. Li Xin is being followed!

As soon as I wanted to talk to Tian Jing about this, she called and said that Li Xin had found two "Trojan" software in her mobile phone and asked me if I wanted to take a look. I told them to wait, and forty minutes later, we arrived at the acacia market.

Seeing them, I suggested going to a nearby restaurant to eat and talk while eating. I sat down at the barbecue restaurant and ordered grilled scallops and oysters, and I asked Z what he had checked. Xiao Z checked a total of three problems in Li Xin's mobile phone. Two "Trojan horses", one is the most common goods, and the other is a high-end goods that have never been seen. In addition, Li Xin's mobile phone has been repaired once, and it is possible that someone has done something during the repair process.

Zhou Yong: "Can we reverse tracking?" Find people directly through the 'Trojan Horse', I have seen this play in "The Matrix". ”

Xiao Z shook his head: "That 'Trojan horse' is rotten on the street, it can be downloaded in many places, whether it can be used by hackers, there is no way to find out." The high-end goods are also very troublesome, unless someone sends them out, maybe they can find the source. ”

I asked him how these two "Trojans" were transmitted. He told me that the senior one was not clear; The one on the rotten street, by clicking on the link and scanning the QR code, it is possible to be poisoned.

Zhou Yong: "Scanning the code can also be poisoned!" ”

"Of course!" Xiao Z said, "There are still a lot of this kind of 'Trojan' virus. ”

Li Xin said that she had not clicked on the SMS link, I asked her if she had scanned the QR code, Li Xin nodded: "A while ago, on the subway, someone asked me to scan a code, saying that I was starting a business, and I wanted to scan the code with support, so I scanned it." ”

I asked her if it was before it was stolen. She thought about it, and her face became not very good-looking: "It was the day before it was stolen." ”

I turned my head to look at Xiao Z, he spread his hands, indicating that he couldn't do anything: "As I said, this kind of 'Trojan horse' that can be dropped casually is impossible to investigate." ”

I said I had to go to the guy who repaired the phone.

"Impossible," Li Xin shook his head, "I just got this phone back and broke it, and it's been almost half a year since the screen was replaced." And my other mobile phones were repaired at his house before, so there can't be a problem with his house. ”

I said try your luck, there are no other clues now.

After eating, I asked Qing Xiu for the specific information of his mobile phone, and I asked Tian Jing and Li Xin to go first, leaving Xiao Z behind. Watching them go out, I told him about the discovery that Li Xin was being followed: "Do you think this has anything to do with the theft?" ”

He didn't know: "You've checked it with the 'social worker database' before?" ”

I said I checked it, and it wasn't a big problem. He nodded: "Just to be on the safe side, come back to me in a while and check it again." ”

Zhou Yong: "Brother Xu, is there any difference between Xiao Z's check and you?" ”

I said, "Of course there is a difference. The information on the 'Social Worker Database' is free of charge. Everything that Xiao Z can find is charged. Generally, the paid information is not profitable before it is put on the 'social worker database'. ”

After we returned to the store, Xiao Z logged in to a secret information query point and began to search for information about Li Xin. I searched for a while, but I didn't find it. Little Z logged on to another website - this is also the first time I have seen this website. He explained that this is a site dedicated to hackers to communicate and trade. You need to enter the correct entry code in the white box, if you make a mistake, it will automatically pop up.

After entering an extremely complex set of codes, Little Z enters the website. He searched for information related to Li Xin on the website. Ten minutes later, he found a piece of information that was not available on the 'social worker database' - Li Xin's rental information.

This information is incomplete, and it takes 2,000 yuan to buy a compressed package containing 500,000 complete rental information, and this month's sales record is one. I immediately decided to buy it.

After paying and downloading the compressed package, I found Li Xin's complete rental information in it. These include Li Xin's specific address, contact information, lease contract, and even whether to rent the whole thing, the agent's return visit information, living alone, and ID photos.

Zhou Yong watched from the side: "Brother Xu, so much information, if it falls into the hands of someone with bad intentions......"

I stood up and said I was leaving: "Let's hurry up and ask the person who repairs the mobile phone, follow Li Xin at night, and don't let her have an accident." ”

What changed Li Xin's screen was an online store that repaired mobile phones at home. It's an old shop, and it now has two crown ratings. Li Xin has repaired his mobile phone three times at his house in the past two years, and the three times he came to the door was the same brother.

She gave me the phone number of the phone repairer, but I decided not to call yet, in case this person has a problem, I will be shocked by calling directly. I read the introduction, this door-to-door repair of mobile phones not only has an online store, but also a physical store in the electronic science and technology city. I decided to go straight to him.

There is a three-story mobile phone shopping mall in the electronic science and technology city, and there are counters for various domestic brands on the third floor above ground; The basement floor carries 80% of the maintenance business and copycat mobile phone sales of the entire science and technology city.

The moment I came down from the escalator, several people came to me and Zhou Yong, and asked: Do you want to buy a mobile phone charger with a card? Do you want to charge it all? While talking, don't forget to push each other.

Pushing them away, I walked forward to the end, and there was a circle of high-end partitions, a total of more than a dozen. The third one from the left is the largest one here, and it's also the phone repair shop I'm looking for.

The store is about 60 square meters, and the main business is written on the background wall on the left - second-hand mobile phone acquisition, professional repair, filming, protective stickers, "jailbreaking" modifications, and all kinds of accessories. On the background wall on the right are the addresses of the four branches of Yan City. In the middle, the name of the store is written in Song style - Tengda Professional Maintenance.

On the left is the maintenance area, where five or six masters bow their heads in the transparent window to disassemble and assemble mobile phones; On the right is the sales area, in addition to a variety of mobile phones and accessories, some U disks, MP4, digital photo frames, dash cams are also sold; In the middle, a young man is holding a meeting with the salesperson.

Looking at the busy people in the store, I picked up my mobile phone and called the number given by Li Xin. The phone of the young man standing in the middle of the steward rang, and I hung up, and his phone was also disconnected.

I stepped forward to shake hands with him: "Hello, we are Li Xin's friends, Xu Lang, this is Zhou Yong." His eyes were a little floating, and he didn't look at me much: "Hello, hello, my name is Zhao Tengda." ”

Zhou Yong looked at him and smiled: "Dude, why are you a little weak-hearted?" Sensei is nervous, and neither of us is a bad person. ”

He still didn't look at us very much: "I'm sorry, I'm a little 'social phobia', just ask directly." ”

I nodded—social phobia does have symptoms of avoidance.

Zhou Yong: "That's the case, Li Xin was stolen and swiped more than 300,000 yuan, we heard that you helped her change the screen half a year ago, was there anything wrong with the mobile phone detection at that time?" ”

Zhao Tengda said: "No, I just changed the screen at that time, and I just saw that it could be used normally, and I didn't think about testing the mobile phone software." ”

I asked, "Can you help us analyze what to do about this?" ”

He thought about it for a while and asked me if there was compensation for being stolen?

I said that Alipay said that it could only find the payment information of her own mobile phone, which could only be identified as fraud, not theft, so the compensation application was rejected.

Zhao Tengda asked me how Alipay determined that Li Xin paid with his mobile phone. I showed him a data sheet. All the logins and purchases in those days came from "Li Xin's mobile phone".

Zhao Tengda smiled and looked at me for the first time: "This can't explain anything." I repaired two mobile phones for Li Xin, and the device names of the mobile phones were changed to 'Li Xin's mobile phone' by herself. The mobile phone she used to have should be sold online, right? ”

I suddenly realized, thanked him, and walked out of the mall with Zhou Yong.

When I went out, I called Li Xin and asked her if the mobile phone she used before was sold, and she replied, "It's sold online." ”

I know who the spoachers are. Li Xin's money was swiped away by the person who bought her old phone. The device name of that mobile phone is the same as the one she uses now, and it has been logged into her account, so the payment platform will officially consider it to be independent consumption rather than theft. And the person who bought Li Xin's mobile phone may be the one who tracked her. He bought Li Xin's information on the hacker trading website, and then followed her, looking for an opportunity to let her scan the code, and gave her a "Trojan horse" on her mobile phone.

Finding Li Xin and Tian Jing, I asked Li Xin to contact the buyer who bought her old mobile phone and told him that if he didn't pay back, he would call the police to file a case. Half an hour later, the buyer called and said he was willing to send the money back within three days, hoping not to call the police. I told him that he could not call the police, but that he had to deal with him in person and explain what had happened from beginning to end.

Two days later, in the morning, we met at a coffee shop. At 10:30, a thin black man walked in, stood at the door and made a call, and when he heard Li Xin's phone ringing, he walked towards us.

He walked up to us, I stood up, and he took a half-step back in some fear. I reached out and shook his hand: "Don't be nervous, as long as you pay back the money and tell the truth, we are still very gentle." ”

He will be skeptical. He said that after he bought Li Xin's mobile phone, he found that the Alipay App had not been withdrawn, and there was still a lot of money in the account, but he did not have a payment password or a mobile phone that received a verification code. He thought of a way to buy Li Xin's personal information online based on the phone number left by Li Xin.

I asked him how much it spent. He said, "Eight hundred and fifty dollars a set." As long as you provide an accurate piece of personal information, such as name, mobile phone number or ID number, you can query materials including room opening records, train records, flight records, Internet café records, exit records, entry records, criminal records, housing records, rental records, bank records, driver's license records, etc. ”

On December 25, he spent another 200 yuan to locate Li Xin's location. Near the location location, there is a shopping mall where Li Xin often buys things. At the entrance of the mall, he compared the real person with Li Xin's ID photo, and followed her to the subway, took out the "Trojan horse" virus that had been prepared a long time ago, and asked her to scan the code.

Zhou Yong was surprised: "You're not the one who plays stalking in the convenience store?" He wondered, "What convenience store?" ”

I patted Zhou Yong and said okay, as soon as he came in, I knew that he was not the person who followed Li Xin in the convenience store, and his body was completely incorrect.

Zhou Yong said: "Who is that person in the convenience store?" Isn't that the little brother who repairs the phone? ”

I said, "No, Zhao Tengda is stronger." Wait for this guy to pay back the money, go to Li Xin's agent who rented a house. ”

After the stolen buyer transferred the account to Li Xin, Li Xin directly transferred 60,000 yuan to me: "Xu Lang, your hard-earned money." Thank you so much this time, please have dinner with Tian Jing in the evening. ”

After a few polite words, I asked her about the agency that rented the house, and drove directly with Zhou Yong. When I got downstairs to her neighborhood, I noticed that the police were taking people out of the real estate company. We hurriedly stopped the car and rushed that way. A few aunts next to me were watching the excitement, and I asked my aunt what was going on. The aunt said that she heard that the company's intermediary sold citizen information, so she was taken away for investigation.

Watching the intermediaries being taken into the police car, Zhou Yong said, "Brother Xu, what else are we going to investigate?" ”

I asked him to give Juyu a call - something wasn't right.

Zhou Yong called Ju You and asked her if she knew about the arrest of this intermediary, she said: "I know, we received an unsigned tip, this matter is related to the recent serial case of robbing women living alone, involving a criminal case, you and Xu Lang don't get involved." ”

Hanging up the phone, Zhou Yong said: "Brother Xu, the police said that we are not allowed to mix blindly." ”

I said, "Leave that one alone, and suddenly I remembered something." Zhao Tengda, didn't he say that he just changed the screen for Li Xin and didn't check the software? Then how did he know that the device names of Li Xin's two mobile phones were 'Li Xin's mobile phones', and how did he guess that Li Xin would put his old mobile phones on the Internet and sell them, which is too godly, right? ”

Zhou Yong nodded: "So, the other 'Trojan horse' in Li Xin's mobile phone may have been put by him." ”

Metal detectors

Zhou Yong and I drove back to the mobile phone city, and when we arrived at the repair shop, Zhao Tengda saw us coming again, and greeted us with a smile, but his eyes were still evasive: "I knew that you two had to come back." ”

He took us to a nearby hut, closed the door, and pulled out something I knew - a metal detector: "Don't mind, this thing doesn't feel safe if you don't talk about it again." ”

I raised my hands, he swept around me and Zhou Yong, took out the mobile phone, bugging, voice recorder, and tracker and turned it off: "Dude has enough goods on him." ”

I said, "Okay, you know who I am?" ”

"I didn't know," he said. After you came that day, I followed Li Xin to check her circle of friends, and then found out who you were in her friend Tian Jing's circle of friends. Your story is pretty well written, I watched it all night last night. ”

I nodded: "There are two 'Trojan horses' in Li Xin's mobile phone, except for the one who stole her money, and the other one was put by you." Can you tell us what else you're doing? ”

He didn't look at my face: "I'll only say it once in this room today." I like Li Xin, I liked it when I first came to repair her mobile phone, but do you know that there is such a situation in 'social fear' - I can't flow with a female ** normally, I am like this. ”

Zhao Tengda couldn't communicate with Li Xin, but he wanted to enter her world again. So he began to snoop on her life and privacy. Since elementary school, everything Li Xin has posted on the Internet has not escaped Zhao Tengda's eyes.

Gradually, Zhao Tengda was not satisfied with just peeping on Li Xin's past, and he wanted to see her all the time. So, he took advantage of the door-to-door screen change and downloaded the "Trojan" software in her mobile phone. This "Trojan horse" can synchronously collect and transmit data to Zhao Tengda's mobile phone, including chat history, but this still does not satisfy him. He hacked into every camera that could catch Li Xin on the way from her home to work, including the convenience store one, and connected these to the Internet to watch them at any time.

On December 25, Zhao Tengda found through the camera that Li Xin was being followed. He rushed to Li Xin's community and pretended to be a passerby wandering around the community, so that the stalkers behind Li Xin had no idea what to do. He did it for the next few days. Until he found through the surveillance camera of a laundry that the person who was following Li Xin had entered the intermediary company next to him.

The next day he hacked into the agency's system, hacked into the computers of all employees, and found that there were many people selling customer information. Through some chat logs, he found out that one of them was probably someone who had recently broken into a house and robbed women who lived alone.

I nodded: "So you found out about that person earlier, and you deliberately led us there." ”

He said yes.

Zhou Yong: "I'll just ask one thing, do you confess to Li Xin?" ”

He said, "I don't know, just let it be." ”

Coming out of the mobile phone city, Zhou Yong and I were smoking cigarettes by the car.

Zhou Yong: "Brother Xu, you usually don't use your mobile phone to pay money, you don't use your card much, you only use cash, are you afraid of this kind of information leakage and being tracked down or something?" ”

I said yes.

[1]

On the Internet, no one knows that you are a dog, original text O

the I

te

et,

obody k

ows you'

e a dog。 From a 1993 cartoon in The New Yorker by Peter Steiner.

[2]

A white hat, i.e., a frontal hacker, can identify security vulnerabilities in computer systems or network systems, but do not maliciously exploit them, but publish their vulnerabilities. This way, the system will be able to patch vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by others, such as black hats.