Honeypots are nothing new when it comes to an FBI agent’s endgame. When all else fails, creating a honeypot is always the GO-TO. For the most part, the honeypots are usually successful. If anything, the 2014 Play Pen scandal proves that.
If you need a refresher, DeepDotWeb explains the situation:
“In December 2014, the FBI took control of the Play Pen child porn website for 13 days after arresting the administrator. While the Bureau was controlling the website, they uploaded malware, which they call NITs (Network Investigative Techniques), which provided them the IP address of the users who logged on in that 13 days.
With the IP addresses acquired, the FBI had an easy job tracking down the criminals to their actual location. From 2015 to now, the federal agency managed to start investigations against hundreds of suspects, and law enforcement authorities all over the world arrested about 900 users of the child porn website.”
Towards the end of May, another CP honeypot led to the arrest of several individuals. This one involved spreading links on the dark web that ultimately led to a file sharing service/site.
The file sharing site, home to the CP honeypot, would then log the IP addresses accessing the links. This made it easy for authorities to obtain court ordered warrants on the suspects accessing; eventually ending in the search of their home and later, their arrest.
The file sharing site that was used for the honeypot is called Ziifile. Despite boasting of online confidentiality on signup, Ziifile is no friend to twisted individuals.
It was written in official court documents that the file sharing service willingly handed over information. This included business records and IP addresses of suspects in an attempt to aid authorities.
Although the overall outcome of this throw down was a measly 3-4 arrest(s), it’s still a step in the right direction. If law enforcement agencies continue to plant successful honeypots, it won’t be long before they make a decent dent in the deranged online community of pedophiles.