Switzerland: The internet detective

Report: Katinka Nowotny

Camera: Stephane Kleeb

Colaboration: David Kriegleder

OPEN

0.13

He walks the streets of Zurich incognito: a different kind of super-sleuth. Guido Rudolphi is an internet hound and he has picked up a scent in the virtual world of the web.

0.27

Just for the hell of it, he hunted down an Al-Quaeda internet mastermind.

OT Guido Rudolphi, Internet detective "Netmon"

After 9/11 we first wondered whether there might be a Swiss connection. Since Switzerland is a financial capital we can already find some sort of link with any of the mess going on in the world. So we thought there may be a trail for this too. And we did actually find their home page here in Switzerland. So, starting with this home page, we broadened our research in various directions. 

1.03 OPEN

1.05

Pretty soon he hit upon the Mauritanian Ould Slahi. Slahi was behind a huge number of Islamic militant websites. There was something amiss: all the homepages had forums: forums which were most often visited in the time running up to terrorist attacks.

Had he stumbled upon the hidden communications of Al-Quaeda?

OT Guido

Generally speaking an e-mail retains the same information going from A to B. But in a forum, I could write something and then the next person has my information and can change it. That means the information doesn’t always stay the same. Things can be changed and manipulated, and this means that forums are far harder to track than emails, for example.

1.55

His suspicions prooved right.

He hacked into Slahi’s web-server.

The information he obtained eventually led to Slahi’s arrest.

2.07 OPEN

2.14

Guido Rudolphi is still in touch with his inner child. His favourite thing in the world is American comic-book heroes. He became a hacker at the age of 16 in order to begin catching his own baddies.

2.27

It’s an exciting job. As the founder of ‚Net-mon’, he employs nine co-workers, also internet detectives. Big companies are his most frequent customers.

2.43

An example of his research?

OPEN

2.48    - 4.50 OT Guido

„There is the famous example of the nice, young blonde boy you meet in the chat room who turns out to be a 240 kilo man with a spot on his nose. This is a little simplistic, but it’s what we see happening all the time. A company might present itself well in its prospectus, but online they have a password-locked homepage, and if you break in you can see that the balance sheets for the next five years have already been cooked and that the company doesn’t exist at all. „

3.33 -  „One of my favourite cases was a huge financial scam. The people involved in it knew exactly the weak points that a computer might have. They locked their emails and they only took their calls from public telephone boxes. At first sight it seemed almost impossible to find out anything about them or prove anything.“

3.58 – „So then we created a home page for a pretty young lady, about twenty-four, twenty-five, with nice photos and everything. And this woman then began chatting with one of the criminals through an online communication device. Five minutes later this man had given this woman all his details! Where he was, his private mobile number, when and how he could be contacted. And we passed these details onto the relevant authorities, who were then able to arrest the man in question.“

4.45 – Once again, the weak point was a person.

OPEN

4.50

Guido Rudolphi considers himself a legal hacker. A virtual warrior against injustice.  He also hunts down paedophiles and neo-Nazis, without charging a fee. And yet, much of his activity borders on illegal.

5.07

OT Guido

„Of course we are not allowed to break the law – that’s very clear. Because the results of our research might be used in court, and if we then have to admit that we obtained the evidence illegally, the data becomes worthless. It is simply that today so much more information can be accessed, quite legally, than the individual user would ever imagine.“

5.35

We decide to give it a go ourselves. What can the internet detective find out about our editor?

5.45

„She has an MA...alright. She studied Economics and Sociology, O.K., so we have that...no earrings. This photograph was uploaded by Günther Picklkostner, copyright GOEK- photos, that’s probably where he works, and there’s a telephone number. We can call and see if he has more photos. Married...(humming)...CNN...here’s the address – that’s probably a neighbour, we could call.

6.39

A short call to the neighbour is enough. The detective pretends to be an old friend from university. The neighbour doesn’t suspect a thing and gets chatty.

6.48

OPEN

The neighbour told me that she’s recently become a member of the ‚Danube Society’ and that she’s written a short report about them. There’s the website.

Editor: So what have you managed to find out about me, and how long did it take?

Guido: It took twenty minutes and I have pasted together a little profile of you. I know your name, date of birth, your husband’s name, employer, the names of your children, which schools they go to, what societies you’re a member of, what kind of sport you do, and your husband and family too. I know where you’ve held talks and presentations, that you were a reporter and where. I can guess your political leanings. I know who your parents are and what they did – they were diplomats. I know which articles you’ve written.  These are lots of tiny little bits of information which come together to form a clear picture of the whole.

Editor: Scary!

Guido: Reality.

7.53

Guido Rudolphi shows us how easy it is to read private e-mails in the public domain.

8.01

OT

“ From the top it looks very good. We have reception of about 60 different networks."

8.06

He can intercept any e-mail – from your Blackberry, your i-phone or your laptop. Less than half of them are locked. Often the factory settings are still set on the equipment – the owner has never bothered to change the password.

8.24 OT GUIDO

„If you just upload your personal documents online willy-nilly then you’ve effectively given up your private-life. And then people say to me: ‚well, I have nothing to hide.’ I just say to these people, fine then, give me the key to your writing desk and we’ll see if you really have nothing to hide. People are much more careful with things they can physically touch, than with the internet. They seem to think they’re anonymous online, nothing can happen to them there – that’s very naive.“

8.58

Everyone leaves a trail – even the most experienced internet crook. And Guido Rudolphi, the Sherlock Holmes of the Cyber world, can find them all.