Hacker Delgatti exposed inconsistencies in testimony to CPMI

Hacker Walter Delgatti’s testimony to the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI) on the acts of January 8 raised questions about his performance and information security. Delgatti is known as “hacker from Araraquara” and also “hacker from Vaza Jato”. He became known four years ago for hacking accounts of authorities linked to Operation Lava Jato. The messages obtained by Delgatti through the invasions, and delivered to the press, contributed to the weakening of Lava Jato.

It is not possible to assess for now his real skills as a hacker, if he is the front man of a group of cybercriminals or if he is just an embezzler (a crime for which he responds in court in several cases).

Despite the history of invasions and even arrests related to Delgatti’s performance, specialists consulted by the People’s Gazette claim that his statements were not technical enough to assess his ability.

“There is nothing very technical. He says some things that are absurd any way you look at them. From a technical point of view and also from a process point of view,” said Eduardo Guy de Manuel, who graduated in Electronic Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA).

For reserve general and political analyst Marco Aurélio Vieira, Delgatti is what is called the “lone wolf”. “I don’t believe he has a boss. He’s that smart, malicious guy. That is, an amateur who has some expertise. He invaded Lava Jato, but Lava Jato worked in an amateur way in relation to the secrecy of the communications themselves” , he stated.

For engineer Eduardo Guy de Manuel, Delgatti would have taken advantage of the opportunity to speak at a CPMI and answer only the questions that suited him. “At a certain moment, he says that Giuseppe Janino [ex-secretário de Tecnologia da Informação do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral] was the only one responsible [pelos sistemas das urnas eletrônicas]. So one guy can only resolve the election for 150 million voters?”, questioned Guy de Manuel, noting that there is a team responsible for Information Technology at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

The lack of technique in the hacker’s statements during his testimony to the CPMI is another point emphasized by Guy de Manuel. “It mixes the ballot box side with the totalization side, which is centralized in the TSE computers. He left in doubt whether the ballot box is liable to be fraudulent or not, whether the source program is the same for all ballot boxes”, highlighted the engineer. He also pointed out that there are different source programs, depending on the version of the ballot box.

“From what I heard him say, I wouldn’t trust him. What he said didn’t make sense. One thing doesn’t make sense with the other. [A fala de Delgatti] it is something that will have to be verified”, said Guy de Manuel.

The engineer also noted that the hacker would not have credentials to enter a select group, which is known as “good hackers”, who are professionals capable of discovering flaws in systems of large companies. “From the hackers that I know, who have credibility to speak, either don’t know him, or don’t give him credibility [Delgatti]”, added Guy de Manuel.

Hacker, cracker and social engineering: what Delgatti may have done to obtain data and information

Delgatti’s testimony points out that he may have used various techniques to obtain data and information. The term hacker, even attributed to him, may not be the best to define the performance revealed in the testimony to the CPMI.

According to the coordinator of the Computer Science course at Unochapecó, Sandro Silva de Oliveira, hacker is a generic term that, in addition to the negative connotation related to cyber crimes, is sometimes attributed to those who dedicate themselves to obtaining solutions and positive effects to systems, especially with regard to information security.

“They are often hired by companies to point out security flaws in their systems. Hackers will say that the company has vulnerability problems, that they are subject to invasion, for example”, explained Oliveira.

In this context, there are still the terms cracker and social engineering, which would have been used by Delgatti to obtain the data. “A cracker is someone who uses his knowledge to profit,” Oliveira said. The university professor also highlighted that the capacity of these individuals is measured by the barriers in the security of the systems that they manage to overcome.

“When you talk about security, there is data obscurity. That is, there is no way to say that a system is 100% secure. What happens is that it is possible to create barriers to prevent systems from being accessed. In this context, a malicious person will break some of these barriers”, explained the university professor.

In social engineering, cyber criminals use techniques to induce unsuspecting users to send confidential data, for example. This technique is widely used in everyday life to apply blows. Both in obtaining the information and in using and sending it to interested parties, Delgatti may have persuaded people to provide data or disclose it. For Oliveira, given Delgatti’s testimony to the CPMI, it is possible to state that the “Vaza Jato hacker” also used this technique. “However, it is very difficult to say whether everything he claims to be capable of doing is what he actually does”, pointed out Oliveira.

Another possibility used by hackers is bribing employees of cell phone companies to gain remote access to their customers’ communications. This access may cause the hacker to take further action to gain complete access to his victims’ communications.

The hacker may also have used the so-called “deep web” (internet pages that can only be accessed with special browsers) to buy computer viruses made by other hackers to break into their victims’ communications.

A much more remote hypothesis is that politicians’ phones and messaging app accounts were accessed through “cyber artifacts”. They are electronic weapons that allow the invasion of victims’ communication systems without them taking any kind of action — such as accessing a virus-infected page or typing their password into an untrusted application. But these artifacts are complex and expensive, and in practice only owned by states and not individuals, so it’s unlikely that Delgatti had access to them. It is not known whether Brazil has this type of cyber weapon, but neighboring countries do.

On video, Delgatti has already claimed to have pretensions in politics

In a video released by former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) on social networks and at the CPMI, Delgatti appears saying he has future plans in politics. He allegedly intended to run as a candidate for a leftist party, without mentioning which one he would be. Delgatti also claims that his lawyer informed him that he had been approached by a centrist party.

“In case I gain some positive notoriety with all this, may I run for deputy for my state. I don’t have a definite party. According to the lawyer, a party called me, but I don’t remember which one. It would be a centrist party. But I don’t know about the future, but currently, if I were to run, it would be for a leftist party,” said hacker Walter Delgatti in the video released by Bolsonaro.