Mexican drug cartel hacker spied on FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants, report says

In 2018, a hacker hired by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel run by the infamous kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán spied on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City with the goal of identifying “people of interest” for the cartel to target and kill, according to a new U.S. government watchdog report.

On Friday, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General revealed the incident as part of a published report auditing the FBI’s efforts to counter surveillance with the goal of protecting “its employees, investigations, and operations.”

The report said the 2018 incident happened while the FBI was working on the investigation that would eventually lead to the arrest of El Chapo. At the time, according to the report, someone connected to his cartel tipped off the FBI that the criminal organization had hired a hacker. 

The hacker “offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices,” and was able to observe people going in and out of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico’s capital, according to the report, including the FBI assistant legal attaché, a federal agent who works overseas along with local law enforcement authorities. 

Somehow — the report does not detail exactly how — the hacker was “able to use” the official’s mobile phone number to “obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data, associated with” the official’s phone. 

According to the FBI, the hacker also accessed Mexico City’s camera system to follow the attaché through the city and “identify people” who the attaché met with, read the report. 

“According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the report added.

When reached for comment, the FBI referred questions to the Department of Justice, which did not respond to a request for comment.

For years, Mexico has been at the bleeding edge of surveillance and hacking capabilities, on both sides of the drug war. 

On the side of the law, for more than a decade now, multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies in Mexico have spent millions of dollars to use spyware made by Hacking Team and later NSO Group to go after cartels, but also activists and journalists. 

On the criminal side, the Sinaloa cartel used encrypted phones, which are specially crafted devices designed to minimize the risk of surveillance by stripping it of core functionalities, and by adding encrypted communications technologies. 

According to a VICE News investigation, Mexican cartels were tapping a security software used by local government agencies “to locate and disappear rivals and hide their crimes.” 

Earlier in 2015, Motherboard reported that local cartels employed “a hacker brigade” to build and manage their own communications networks. Later in 2017, Motherboard revealed that a hacker working for the Sinaloa cartel helped authorities track down and arrest the elusive cartel’s lieutenant, Dámaso López Núñez. The hacker had originally been hired by the cartel in 2014 to try to hack into the high-security Altiplano Federal Penitentiary, where El Chapo was being held at the time.