The FBI has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on powerful hacking tools recently, but now the agency claims it can't find documentation related to these purchases.
There is not much information available about what the tools are or what they work. VICE previously reported that the bureau's Child Exploitation Operations Division (CEO) purchased them from anti-child predators nonprofits for $250,000. They are described as one of the agency’s network of survey technology (NITS), which is said to provide “real Internet addresses” of network users who may use anonymous technology.
404 media wrote that after submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the tool, the bureau issued a vague note claiming that other information about the purchase was “lost”. FBI notes have been read:
“Potential response records have been identified during the search process… However, we were told they were not in their intended location. Additional searches for missing records also encountered unsuccessful results. Since we were unable to review records, we were unable to determine whether they responded to your request.”
Maybe it was because someone moved them to another location, recording “not in their intended location”? Gizmodo contacted the Ministry of Justice for more information.
Although its cyber capabilities are significantly lower than those of other intelligence agencies, such as the NSA, the FBI has quite complex hackers Arsenal, and similarities are not without controversy. In 2022, the New York Times reported that the FBI was trying to procure a tool that could hack “any phone call in the United States”, sold by the NSO Group, a notorious Israeli spy supplier whose products have been struggling in hacking scandals around the world. In 2023, the New York Times reported that federal agencies were disobeying the Biden administration, which issued a rule that prohibited federal agencies from reaching deals with the NSO. The FBI was asked to investigate which agency was disobedient to the White House and eventually found that the agency itself had purchased the tool.
Several latest FBI actions prove the agency's growing cyber capabilities. In January, it closed the backdoors of thousands of American computers infected with Chinese malware by taking over the hacker's commands and controlling servers. In 2023, the FBI also used one of its NITs to reveal TOR users who are part of the counter-terrorism case in some way. That same year, the agency hacked and infiltrated a ransomware gang called “Hive”, which eventually undermined the criminal operation. Overall, the Bureau knows what it is doing when it comes to networking, even if it does keep a low profile.
