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arikr
I wonder if that's a lie for the public so that they don't have to reveal the method they actually used to get his password.
sverige
Apparently the 'hacker' himself revealed he had an easy password, not the FBI. What does he gain by making himself look stupid? Have they released him from prison early?
tenebrisalietum
Maybe the FBI told him to say that in exchange for reduced charges or demonstrate cooperation.
0xDEFC0DE
Isn't there a way for the FBI to document TTPs in cases and not have it go to public record?

Why the smoke screen?

lucaslisboa
Maybe he thought that analysts wouldn't go for the most obvious thing because he was a hacker.
jaclaz
>By Mark Molloy and AP 4:09PM GMT 13 Nov 2014

[2014]

makerofspoons
If I had a plausible deniability partition I would put an easy password on it as well.
TallGuyShort
That was my first thought as well, but the article says that password led them to the evidence that ultimately put him away for 10 years. Doesn't sound like much of a plausible deniability partition...
dmix
Most of those anonymous guys were rookie kids just messing around with powerful tools. Not all of them of course but even in Lulzsec, which was known to be the better of the lot, only two turned out to be the hackers who did most of the work IIRC. But it only takes one to take down the rest.

I just came across one of their Wikipedias and it turns out one of the Lulzsec guys was doing blockchain stuff recently that got acquired by Facebook and is now part of Libra which is a bit... ironic. But to be fair he later said:

> Al-Bassam has since been critical of Libra, stating that "the road to dystopia is paved with good intentions, and I'm concerned about Libra's model for decentralization".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Al-Bassam

rahuldottech
Article is from 2014. Year should be appended to the post title.
zymhan
It amazes me how often I read the article and come to the comments to find I missed how old it was.

Thanks for pointing it out, I think flagging the post will help get the post noticed and title changed.

chkaloon
I figured this was an Onion article before I opened it.
carokann
They say it's an encrypted disk. It could have a "safety layer" with an easy to guess password.

Either way FBI doesn't need to know anyone's password IMO. People call me pessimistic or unsophisticated for it but i genuinely believe in the eyes of state actors, you really do not have any privacy. They have access to so many lives, they only complain about getting lost in the data (e.g. failing to detect threats).