How Evan Ratliff was caught
After 25 days of searching, hackers still figured out Evan Ratliff, editor of Wired magazine. The journalist was the main participant in the Vanish Contest . This is a hide-and-seek in the real world, the goal is to hide your physical location as long as possible. Since the game has the genre of alternative reality, everyone pretends that a person is missing in fact, they publish photographs of the missing person in newspapers, a hotline telephone, etc.
According to the rules of the contest, the main prize of $ 5000 goes to the one who first photographs Ratliff and tells him the code word “Fluk”.
So, Evan Ratliff was caught the day before yesterday on the street of New Orleans, it was done by one of the local residents, an employee of the @vanishteam group (one of the dozens of groups that participated in the competition). All the analytical work was done by team leader Jeff Reifman.
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Chronicle of operational-search activities in the smallest detail recorded here . We will focus on the key points that allowed us to calculate the fugitive.
Randomness helped (though, all Evan’s “accidents” and “mistakes” are hints that he was obliged to leave according to the rules of the contest). The fugitive was shot in the frame by famous video blogger Amanda Congdon, who was shooting a video report in one of the resort cities of California. Here's a shot from that video.
And although Evan did not disclose his name there, his friends confirmed his identity.
Raifman noticed that one of the “employees” of his operational Facebook group for finding fugitive James Gatz ( gatzjd account ) looks like Evan, who is like a video.
Brainstorming allowed to decipher the name of this virtual. James Gatz - short for James Gatsby, the hero of the book of Scott Fitzgerald, favorite writer Evan Ratliff.
It was a real clue. Detectives immediately found on Twitter a secret encrypted diary that belongs to the same person and is published under the nickname @jdgatz.
But how to get access to the diary, closed to outsiders? Raifman turned for help to all followers of @jdgatz, of which there were few. One follower agreed to broadcast other people's tweets.
It soon became clear that on Twitter, Evan reports on his movements. In addition, he tweeted that he shaved bald. This was very valuable information that subsequently helped identify Evan. It turned out that he had greatly changed his appearance (other hacker groups that participated in the competition did not have such information), so the guys from @vanishteam immediately got an advantage.
At the same time, a secret site on tumblr , registered on the same virtual, also showed up, there was also a photo of better quality (link in the lower left corner).
Thus, hackers were able to get a list of real IP addresses through which Evan Ratliff went online, and not addresses encrypted via Tor that were issued as “official prompts”. Began tracking the movement of a journalist in the country.
In this case, the investigator specifically issued important information about the search on Facebook, so that the virtual James Gatz would come here as often as possible and leave fresh IP addresses.
At some point, it was discovered that the journalist had arrived in New Orleans, and his secret twitter started to foul the local pizza delivery service @nakedpizza .
Raifman contacted Naked Pizza employees and promised them part of the prize money if they would help him catch a journalist who had to order a pizza in the next few hours. To guarantee, Raifman sent several trusted employees to the pizzeria area (by that time, hundreds of people had already taken part in the search for Evan, including several residents of New Orleans, which turned out to be very helpful). They have established surveillance. And on September 8 at 4:06 PM, one of Naked Pizza employees noticed Evan Ratliff at the pizzeria, ran up to him with a camera and said “Flyuk!”.
Evan was forced to provide a password by which the winners will receive a well-deserved reward. During these 25 days, they performed a truly huge amount of work.
According to the rules of the contest, the main prize of $ 5000 goes to the one who first photographs Ratliff and tells him the code word “Fluk”.So, Evan Ratliff was caught the day before yesterday on the street of New Orleans, it was done by one of the local residents, an employee of the @vanishteam group (one of the dozens of groups that participated in the competition). All the analytical work was done by team leader Jeff Reifman.
')
Chronicle of operational-search activities in the smallest detail recorded here . We will focus on the key points that allowed us to calculate the fugitive.
Randomness helped (though, all Evan’s “accidents” and “mistakes” are hints that he was obliged to leave according to the rules of the contest). The fugitive was shot in the frame by famous video blogger Amanda Congdon, who was shooting a video report in one of the resort cities of California. Here's a shot from that video.
And although Evan did not disclose his name there, his friends confirmed his identity.
Raifman noticed that one of the “employees” of his operational Facebook group for finding fugitive James Gatz ( gatzjd account ) looks like Evan, who is like a video.
Brainstorming allowed to decipher the name of this virtual. James Gatz - short for James Gatsby, the hero of the book of Scott Fitzgerald, favorite writer Evan Ratliff.
It was a real clue. Detectives immediately found on Twitter a secret encrypted diary that belongs to the same person and is published under the nickname @jdgatz.
But how to get access to the diary, closed to outsiders? Raifman turned for help to all followers of @jdgatz, of which there were few. One follower agreed to broadcast other people's tweets.
It soon became clear that on Twitter, Evan reports on his movements. In addition, he tweeted that he shaved bald. This was very valuable information that subsequently helped identify Evan. It turned out that he had greatly changed his appearance (other hacker groups that participated in the competition did not have such information), so the guys from @vanishteam immediately got an advantage.
At the same time, a secret site on tumblr , registered on the same virtual, also showed up, there was also a photo of better quality (link in the lower left corner).
Thus, hackers were able to get a list of real IP addresses through which Evan Ratliff went online, and not addresses encrypted via Tor that were issued as “official prompts”. Began tracking the movement of a journalist in the country.
In this case, the investigator specifically issued important information about the search on Facebook, so that the virtual James Gatz would come here as often as possible and leave fresh IP addresses.
At some point, it was discovered that the journalist had arrived in New Orleans, and his secret twitter started to foul the local pizza delivery service @nakedpizza .
Raifman contacted Naked Pizza employees and promised them part of the prize money if they would help him catch a journalist who had to order a pizza in the next few hours. To guarantee, Raifman sent several trusted employees to the pizzeria area (by that time, hundreds of people had already taken part in the search for Evan, including several residents of New Orleans, which turned out to be very helpful). They have established surveillance. And on September 8 at 4:06 PM, one of Naked Pizza employees noticed Evan Ratliff at the pizzeria, ran up to him with a camera and said “Flyuk!”.
Evan was forced to provide a password by which the winners will receive a well-deserved reward. During these 25 days, they performed a truly huge amount of work.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/69261/
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