Popular Hacking Forums Cracked and Nulled Shuttered - DTNS 4946
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Guaranteed to fit every time. eBay. Things people love. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 30th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other understand. Today, Big Jim tells us about tariffs and an email from listener Jason. But not me. I'm Jason Howell.

And I'm Shannon Morse. Let's start with what you need to know with The Big Story. Two suspects have been arrested by European and German police in a major international law enforcement operation called Operation Talent that included cooperation by the Australian Federal Police, Europol, and the US FBI, among others. There's a whole list of them. The targets of the operation were two popular hacking forums, Cracked and

and Knoll, those are the two, which collectively had more than 10 million registered accounts between them. Additionally, a total of 17 servers were seized in the investigation. Germany's Central Criminal Investigation Agency warns IP address and communication channels of the registered users, quote, will be the basis for further international investigations against criminal sellers and users of the platforms, end quote.

Law enforcement also seized more than 50 electronic devices, as well as 300,000 euros in cash and cryptocurrency.

The seizure impacts more than 10 million users, and that's between the two forum destinations anyways. Authorities say that the platform served as marketplaces for stolen data, credentials, crack software, malware, hacking tools, security vulnerability scanning tools, and credential stuffing attack tools. I'm sure there was plenty more, but that's just the highlights.

Related targets include the seizure of 12 domains, which are now redirecting to FBI-controlled servers. They've got that warning when you go there. The operation also shut down Celex, which is a financial processor used by Cracked, and

and a Windows RDP hosting service called Stark RDP that was actually linked to both forums. And Cracked.to's administrators did release a statement. They called this, quote, a sad day indeed for our community, end quote. And that just kind of shows that the administrators are still active to some degree, which does suggest that

at least the possibility that one of the forums may reappear under a new domain somewhere down the line. And Shannon, you live and breathe security topics. And so I'm happy to have you on to talk a little bit about maybe if you don't know much about the forums themselves, which I wasn't very familiar with them, I'm really curious what seizures like this and investigations like this

really do to the broader spectrum, the broader kind of hacking community. But what can you tell us, Shannon?

Well, I like the definition of calling this a whack-a-mole game between law enforcement agencies and all these different dark web forums. Because as you mentioned, the team is still active in some way, the people that were administrators of this forum. And oftentimes what we see when you have one of these forums and their servers get taken down, there's some kind of backups involved and there's some kind of duplication involved.

So they're able to kind of remediate this issue for them. And they do recreate these forums under some kind of different domain with possibly new team members, new administrators. And there's always...

some anonymous people behind the scenes who are making these continue down the line. And that's why oftentimes when it comes to dark web forums, we don't see all of them removed all at once. Law enforcement has been trying to get forums like these taken down for absolutely years, probably decades at this point. And it's always a whack-a-mole game because there's just so many and it's so hard for them to actually catch all of these people that are doing these illegal things.

Yeah. I mean, maybe it's the wrong comparison, but I'm always, anytime I run across like something that says the pirate Bay is back, I'm like, man, hasn't this been like, this has been, you know, decades now where it's like, Oh, here they are. Yes, exactly. Um, what, uh,

What about users? Because they call out here and they say, 10 million users, we're going to analyze all this stuff and bring international investigations against the actual users of the platforms. Obviously, the people running a platform like this are culpable, and that's why they've been arrested. But how should users of platforms like this feel if history is any indication of what they have to look forward to out of this?

You know, my experience when I was doing a lot of news about security and privacy is oftentimes the users of these dark web forums do not get caught. And it's usually because they don't have any kind of major criminal history or they are inactive. It's really the

active users and the ones that have enacted some kind of illegal transference of data or illegally collecting money from some kind of financial game through hacking or malicious activity. Those are the ones that usually get targeted in these kind of takedowns because they're the ones that have already had some kind of tracking involved with different

different law enforcement agencies. So unless these agencies have already been planning some kind of takedown of specific users, it's usually very targeted. And I've, I have found that with these many amounts of users, it's just almost impossible for them to kind of take on that many people in an attempt to, you know, find them all and round them up.

Yeah. I mean, 10 million is no small number. That's for sure. I think the last question that I have about this is, you know, it's easy. And I know you're very familiar with this, having worked in security, you know, the security industry and following it for as long as you have. But it's easy to look at hacking stories like this and be like, yeah, there's bad people doing hacking. And that's why they're part of this forum. And to automatically label the people or the users or the

you know, as bad people. But I also know that there are good aspects to the hacking community. Does something like this have a, have a detrimental impact on kind of the positive sides of looking, you know, of keeping all of us safer because we know about certain things and insecurities that forms like this help with.

That's actually a really good question because there are parts of dark web forums that do share security vulnerability tools and things like they will share vulnerabilities that they have found. But oftentimes in those cases, you find that those vulnerabilities that they are finding, they're not –

either they are already exploiting them without a brand or a company knowing about it, or they haven't informed the brand and given them some kind of consensual effort to be able to fix these problems before they are posted on these forums and dark web forums. So in my opinion, I generally think that it is a positive for everybody whenever these forums are taken down because we do have options to...

Use ethical hacking to our abilities to work with brands and work with companies and websites in order to make sure that whenever these vulnerabilities are found, they can be reported and fixed before they do end up on these forums where anybody and everybody can use them for malicious activities. Yeah, cool. Excellent answer. I appreciate that insight. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll hear more about this. I mean, it's only the beginning. We've only just begun.

Only just begun. Now, DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thank you so much to Chris Zaragoza, Jim Hart, Logan Larson, and our newest patrons, David, John, and Declan. Yay, welcome. Good to have y'all. Picture this. You're in the garage, hands covered in grease, just finished up tuning your engine with a part you found on eBay, and you realize, you know what?

I could also use new brakes. So where do you go next? Back to eBay. You can find anything there. It's unreal. Wipers, headlights, even cold air intakes. It's all there. And you've got eBay guaranteed fit. You order a part, and if it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that.

Look, DIY fixes can be major. Doesn't matter if it's just maintenance or a major mod. You got it, especially when things are guaranteed to fit. So when you dive into your next car project, start with eBay. All the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. eBay. Things people love. Work management platforms. Ugh. Endless onboarding. IT bottlenecks. Admin requests. But what if things were different? We found love.

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I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Enjoy a brilliant sleep experience with Soundcore from Anchor. Stressed out by your partner's snoring? Having trouble falling asleep? Waking up too easily?

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If you wear glasses, you know how hard it is to find the perfect pair. But step into a Warby Parker store and you'll see it doesn't have to be. Not only will you find a great selection of frames, you'll also meet helpful advisors and friendly optometrists. Yep, many Warby Parker locations also offer eye exams. So the next time you need glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, or a new prescription, you

You know where to look. To find a Warby Parker store near you or to book an eye exam, head over to warbyparker.com slash retail. There is more we need to know today, so why don't we get right to the briefs?

Let's do it. Microsoft's Q2 2025 earnings showed quarterly revenue up 12% year over year with the net income up 10% to 24.1 billion USD. Yes, that's billion with a B. The AI business has been particularly successful with a 175% year over year increase.

Azure and cloud services grew by 31%, staying close to even with the previous quarter's 33% growth. However, gaming revenue showed mixed results, with overall gaming revenue declining 7% and Xbox hardware sales dropping 29%, kind of obvious given the year. And Xbox content and services saw a modest 2% increase driven by record Game Pass growth and a record 140 million hours streamed.

Yeah. So gaming, probably the outlier here. We've got a few earnings stories here at the top of this block. And I think what we'll see is the common denominator is AI is driving a lot. And that's certainly the case with Meta. Meta's Q4 revenue rose 21%. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will continue to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI over the long term.

The Reality Labs division, which oversees mixed reality products, continued to lose money as expected. Meta projected Q1 growth of 8% to 15%, which would mark the lowest growth rate in two years. And this is interesting. On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also said he wants to go back to OG Facebook. And when asked what he meant by that, Zuckerberg explained.

I think some of this will kind of get back to how Facebook was originally used back in the day. So I think it'll be fun. All right. So going back to the OG Facebook, we'll see if it makes an actual difference to our desire to continue to use Facebook going forward. Can we go back to OG MySpace? Because that's where I got started. Yes, please. Sign me up.

Generative AI, there it is again. Yeah.

And finally, rounding out our earnings palooza, Tesla's reported a 2% rise in Q4 revenue on the year that missed analysts' expectations. Net income fell 71% on the year. Tesla experienced its first ever annual delivery decline in 2024. So that's notable with 1.79 million vehicles delivered, though the company said it plans to offer more affordable vehicles in the first half of this year, 2025.

The company also highlighted plans to launch unsupervised full self-driving technology later this year in parts of the U.S., Europe, and China.

Interesting. Microsoft announced the upcoming arrival of the Intel-powered Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 co-pilot plus PCs using Intel Lunar Lake processors. Business customers now have a choice between these and identical versions powered by Qualcomm's ARM-based Snapdragon X chips. Now, the Surface Laptop 7 and the Surface Pro 11 both start at $1,499.99. That's $1,499.99.

In both cases, the cost is $500 more than the Qualcomm variants. Both devices will be available on February 18th. $500 difference. You've got some choices, right? If you want a little cheaper, you go with the Snapdragon. There you go. Yes.

Microsoft is wasting no time. Lots of Microsoft today. Wasting no time bringing DeepSeek R1 to its Azure AI Foundry platform along with GitHub. Microsoft customers can now integrate the model into their own AI applications. Microsoft is touting R1's speed.

Ooh.

Now, Wizz researchers discovered that Chinese AI company DeepSeek was exposing back-end database information containing chat logs, system logs, and API authentication tokens to the open internet without password protection. The cloud security researchers alerted DeepSeek after the discovery of the database that totals more than

one million records. That's quite a bit. The database has since been taken offline, though DeepSeek has not provided any comments about the incident. We're so new into this whole DeepSeek era, and I already can envision people starting to get really numb to the word DeepSeek. It's going to happen. It just doesn't stop. Hello, Margarita. It's Rowan calling from a remote mountain region in Wales in an area that's never before had mobile coverage.

Hello, Rowan. It's great to see you today. You did it. Vodafone partnered with AST Space Mobile to make the world's first satellite video call, at least according to them, in a test of the system that used a regular smartphone. The test was meant to demonstrate mobile broadband using AST Space Mobile's satellite service that's expected to launch by the end of this year, 2025.

The Verge points out that SpaceX actually demonstrated something similar last year. But in this case, the call was made from a, quote, remote mountain region of Wales that has lacked mobile coverage until now. Vodafone did share video of the call, which has some noticeable lag and some choppiness. No word on pricing of the service is available yet. That's pretty cool.

I'm excited for that. Waymo told The Verge that it is expanding the footprint of its fleet to 10 new cities across 2025. In 2025, Las Vegas and San Diego will be their first new destinations for the autonomous vehicles, though they will be manually driven in those cities. Now, Waymo did not specify whether they plan to launch their commercial robo-taxi service in those markets. Rather, they are looking at ways to challenge and validate their systems. All

Austin, Atlanta, and Miami will also see Waymo vehicles sometime later this year. Yeah, I mean, Las Vegas, that's one of those cities that's just a real challenge no matter how you see it. That's going to be very challenging. Yeah, it's a good way to validate.

The Authors Guild is offering a new certification for 15,000 of its members that will begin appearing on the covers of their books. It's a round logo boldly stating, quote, human authored. It's meant to punctuate the fact that these books were not written by large language models, a technology that some writers worry poses an existential threat to the industry and profession of writing. Authors and publishers will make the final determination to display the badge on their own works.

LG unveiled a slew of new hotel TVs at Integrated Systems Europe 2025 that bring with them built-in Google Cast certification. This new inclusion appears alongside existing support for Apple Airplay, making LG the first to offer both options in its hotel room to TVs.

LG says the feature uses network isolation to ensure privacy between rooms, along with an automatic disconnect upon checkout. The update will be offered for TVs running WebOS 23 or later. I like the options, especially when you're on a hotel TV. That's great. Yeah, I agree. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper in the ongoing stories and follow up.

Now, Tom wanted to find out if we can expect U.S. tariffs to actually take effect, and if so, how they might affect availability of your favorite tech. I'm talking to Big Jim, James Thatcher, the trade nerd, about possible tech tariffs. Jim, thanks for talking to me, man.

Hey, Tom, it's always great to talk to you and always great to help out with the DTNS community. So I want to walk through this slowly. First of all, how many tariffs have gone into effect in the United States?

Well, if you're asking over the life of the United States. Since the change of administration. Oh, okay. So since the change of the new administration, the Trump administration 2.0, we've had zero actual tariff changes at this time. We have seen lots of news and media about it, but we haven't seen anything actually change it. So there haven't been any yet. What has to happen for them to go into effect? It's not just a post on X, right? No.

No, you can't do just a post on X or Truth Social or even Facebook to say, hey, we're going to make this change. It needs to have a executive order that comes behind it that has to start the process. Now, the other way that it could theoretically start is congressional action. But nine times out of 10, it's going to be an executive order. OK. And we've talked before about the fact that there are limits on what the executive orders can do. But

He could put some in place with an executive order. So that could happen. Let's get into what everyone cares about. If an executive order is signed, there might be a court case against it. There might be a challenge against it. But how fast do the manufacturers respond to that? In other words, how fast is I, as a consumer, going to see the prices go up in response to a tariff?

Well, that's a complicated question to answer because it really depends on the manufacturer. It depends on the retailer. It depends on the wholesaler. It depends on everybody in that supply chain that deals with it. It could be an instantaneous effect where you could see –

If, for example, semiconductor chips, it's a commodity. So it very quickly could change very, very rapidly same day. It could be something where it could take longer term. The retailers also have long term purchasing agreements typically and or their buying agreements will keep.

the items to a level at least for typically 30 to 90 days, depending on the retailer. Okay. So we could see some things go up. Chips is a good example where if you're, if you're buying chips directly, especially if you're a manufacturer sourcing them, those prices might go up in an, in anticipation even is if I understand it right. But retail, you might see it take a little longer to work through the chain.

It could be just as quick. It just depends on how savvy the retailer is with regard to the spectrum. Remember, these retailers are going to have to cover not necessarily the cost of the item that they're selling you right now, but the item that they're going to sell in the next week to two weeks to two months.

So they might be trying to hedge their bets a little. And we saw this with the actions that were taken last week with regard to Colombia when it came to things like coffee and abracadabra beans. The coffee situation, we saw coffee indexes spike and then immediately go back down, obviously, after Colombia accepted the proposal by the Trump administration. But, you know, nobody is going to wait.

for a potential tariff to hit them before they try and course correct to make sure there's no loss of revenue. So if they believe it's real, the price goes up in anticipation, which happened with the coffee. As soon as they believe it's not going to happen, which the coffee tariff never went into effect, they do bring it back down. I guess that's the last question is how fast do these prices recover? And it sounds like depending on what happens, they can recover just as quickly as they go up.

Right. If it's just if there's not. So the way that I would look at it is if there's not an executive order or a congressional action that gets taken place and it's just a fear in the market, it would be the same as if we were to have a fear in the market from any other anything else happening. The fires in California have caused.

pricing of certain things to go higher. Well, okay, yeah, that's a fear. So it's fear pricing. Once that fear is quelled, it comes back down. But that's not a set

issue. And the same thing happens with tariffs. It's not a set issue until we start to see orders come out or congressional legislation go into place where these things can actually take effect. Now, there has been movement to increase tariffs, but no actual tariff changes have occurred yet because these are currently pending review. As of right now, as of this recording, I can tell you

There are items that are slated to be reviewed and discussed up to April 1st. That is the first basically lynch point as far as trade is concerned when we could start seeing tariff effects. But we haven't seen anything happen yet. And unless there's an emergency executive order or something else that occurs, I don't see it happening right now. Gotcha. Yeah.

And I guess the final little drop of icing on the cake of this conversation is supply and demand still plays into this, right? Prices might go up anyway just because of high demand, right? Supply and demand is king. It is always king. It is what garners the cost of an item. It also is what garners the profitability of a company to be able to continue to offer that item. So, you know,

So it's going to factor into how this is going to be a long-term issue with regard to imports and exports from the United States. Remember, it's not just one-way transportation that we're talking about here. It's also the export because there's a lot of export items that even come into the United States, get reprocessed, and leave the United States that are paying duties and have to go through import regulations, as well as other countries are going to take reciprocal

I can say the word reciprocal actions. Easy for you to say. Yeah. And do you often, if ever, see supply and demand keep a price from going up even when an extra pressure like a tariff is in place?

Yeah. I mean, we saw that. So for not necessarily tariffs per se, but an action that was similar occurred about two to three years ago when we had the COVID issue and all of the ocean freight costs were rising and rising and rising. We saw retailers try to keep their costs very, very close to what they had been prior to COVID. Now, eventually, you

They did catch up to us, but at that time, everybody tried to keep that level and that line as long as they possibly could. We could see a similar thing happen here. We've also seen some action with the first Section 301 administration of the 7.5% duty, not necessarily the 25% duty in the tranches one and two, but the tranche three administration.

uh, and tranche for a, we have seen, uh, specifically retailers try to maybe take a slight haircut on it, but not a huge haircut because you know, their profitability is what keeps them in business. Yeah. And if the price goes up for whatever reason, uh, fewer people could afford to buy it. So that makes sense. Exactly. Uh, thank you so much for, for helping us understand this. Uh, if people want to follow you or anything you've got going on, where should they go?

Oh, the best place to go is the DTNS Discord. Hit me up in there at me anytime. And that's the best place to find me. Fantastic. Thanks, man.

Thanks, Tom. All right. Thanks again to Big Jim. Great conversation there. If you have feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show, hey, get in touch with the DTNS audience on the socials at DTNS show on X, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky and Mastodon. That's MSTDN.social. For TikTok and YouTube, you can find us at Daily Tech News Show.

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Enjoy a brilliant sleep experience with Soundcore from Anchor. Stressed out by your partner's snoring? Having trouble falling asleep? Waking up too easily?

Suffering from poor quality sleep? Now, put on Soundcore Sleep A20 Earbuds. Experience unparalleled pressure-free comfort perfect for side sleepers. Choose your favorite sound in your curated playlist. Feel your body getting lighter and lighter and enjoy a full night of peaceful sleep with the A20's long-lasting battery. Then wake up feeling fresh with a personal built-in alarm. Get the sleep you deserve with Soundcore Sleep A20 Earbuds.

Discover more on Soundcore.com. S-O-U-N-D-C-O-R-E. Soundcore. Use code SLEEP at checkout to get $30 off. S-L-E-E-P in all caps. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. And today, Jason, a different Jason, is helping us understand.

Jason wrote us in response to Dr. Nikki's experience with her Pixel 4a. Jason writes, I just wanted to thank Dr. Nikki for validating my stance on tech devices and allowing me to feel like I am not alone. I will start by saying I have been a professional programmer since 1982. That's before I was born, Jason. I look at any device as a functional object rather than a statement. I'm loathe to respond.

replace something that is still fully functional. Dr. Nikki seems like a kindred spirit, maybe not the best course of action, but I carried my trusty Nokia, Nokia 1100 until they shut down the 1G towers rip snake. And I still occasionally fire up my old iPod touch for some nostalgic games. That sounds fun. Additionally, I don't want a massive phone.

Thank you, Jason. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. The whole Pixel 4a thing is just it's it's just quite lame. So thank you for writing in about that. Big thanks to Big Jim and Jason for contributing to the today's show. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News show. Also, you, Shannon. This is quite fun. Thank you. Thank you.

The show is made possible by our patrons on Patreon.com slash DTNS. DTNS has a live version called DTNS Live on YouTube and Twitch. You can find details on that and more on DailyTechNewsShow.com. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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So the next time you need glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, or a new prescription, you know where to look. To find a Warby Parker store near you or to book an eye exam, head over to warbyparker.com slash retail.