Daniel in the Lion's Den: Deciphering the Dantas Drives

PRETTY DAMN GOOD PRIVACY. PGP on a BlackBerry gizmo. Source: Sorry, I forgot to note it down.

FBI ajudará Brasil a abrir arquivos de Dantas: The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation will help the Brazilian federal police decrypt five hard drives apprehended at the Rio de Janeiro apartment of banker Daniel Dantas, recently convicted of bribery of a federal police agent here.

So Último Segundo reports (at second hand.)

The banker is free pending appeal. He also faces charges of money laundering, tax evasion, and financial (accounting) fraud. Or the local equivalents. I am not a lawyer.

Dantas also faces a separate case, dating back to 2004, of industrial espionage. He and a former Kroll executive, and I think some crazy ex-Israeli military guy, too, allegedly bugged government officials, Dantas’ business partners in Brasil Telecom, and journalists who covered him negatively.

Prosecution of that case was set back recently, however, with a ruling by a federal court that it does not have jurisdiction over the spying case.

The Brazilian federal tax authority is nicknamed “the lion.” Nobody anywhere likes the tax man much, do they?

BRASÍLIA – O Instituto Nacional de Criminalística, em Brasília, jogou a toalha. Cinco meses depois de a Polícia Federal ter apreendido cinco discos rígidos de computador no apartamento do banqueiro Daniel Dantas, o órgão concluiu que não tem condições de quebrar a senha que protege os arquivos ali guardados. Vai pedir ajuda ao FBI, a polícia federal dos EUA. As informações são do jornal “Folha de S. Paulo”.

The Brazilian National Criminalistics Lab (INC) in Brasilia has thrown in the towel. Five months after the federal police apprehended five computer hard drives from the apartment of banker Daniel Dantas, the agency has concluded it does not have the capability to crack the password that protects the files stored thereon. It will ask help from the American federal police. The report is from the Folha de S. Paulo.

Esses discos não são os mesmos apreendidos em 2004 na Operação Chacal. Os de 2004 já foram abertos pelo Instituto de Criminalística e seus dados são usados na investigação que originou a Operação Satiagraha.

These disks are not the same seized in 2004 during Operation Jackal (the spying case). The 2004 hard drives have been opened by the Criminalistics Institute and their data are being used in the investigation that gave rise to Operation Satyagraha (the financial fraud, money laundering, and bribery case.)

Para que as eventuais provas produzidas pela abertura do disco rígido tenham validade no Brasil, a PF e o Ministério Público Federal vão se valer de um acordo que o país assinou com os Estados Unidos em 2001 para remeter os discos.

In order for evidence produced by opening the disks, if any, to be considered valid in Brazil, the Brazilian feds and the Federal Public Ministry will have to appeal to an accord Brazil signed in 2001 with the United States in order to send the FBI the disks.

Esse acordo, chamado MLat (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty ou Acordo de Assistência Judiciária em Matéria Penal), permite a troca de informações criminais entre os dois países sem muita burocracia. Foi por meio desse acordo, por exemplo, que os EUA enviaram um contêiner com documentos bancários que permitiram que a Justiça brasileira instaurasse ações penais contra mais de cem doleiros.

This accord, known as an MLAT, or Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty), allows the two countries to share criminal intelligence without too much bureaucracy. It was by means of this accord, for example, that the USA sent a container full of banking records that enabled Brazilian courts to start criminal proceedings against more than 100 black-market currency dealers.

The substance of the criminal charges against Dantas, I gather, is that he allegedly used doleiros to shift funds from Brazil-domiciled investors to a Caymans-domiciled fund that is not permitted to receive funds from Brazil-domiciled investors because it is tax-exempt (because reserved for foreign investors, to avoid double taxation of capital gains, which tends to turn foreign investors off.)

If you want to meet a doleiro, I think I know some street corners in Rio you can hang around on. It has been a while since we have visited the cidade maravilha. Maybe we will drive up from Paraty over Christmas for a day … Then again, the Avenida Brasil …

Não é exatamente uma vergonha, como imagina o senso comum, que o Instituto Nacional de Criminalística não tenha conseguido decifrar os códigos que protegem os discos rígidos encontrados no apartamento de Dantas, dentro de um armário, num corredor que dá acesso ao quarto do banqueiro.

It is not exactly an embarrassment, as might be imagined, for the INC not to have been able to decipher the passwords for the disks found in Dantas’ apartment, inside a closet, in a corridor leading to the banker’s bedroom.

Dois especialistas em criptografia ouvidos pela reportagem estimam que um arquivo bem protegido, com chaves de 128 bits, por exemplo, podem consumir anos de trabalho de um computador de grande porte para que a senha seja quebrada.

Two cryptography specialists consulted by reporters estimated that a file protected adequately with 128-bit encryption keys, for example, could require years of work by a large computer to break the password.

Right. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) should give you that, right?

Essas senhas são feitas com combinações de zero e um, como toda a linguagem de computadores. Para se calcular a possibilidade de combinações de uma senha de 128 bits, por exemplo, basta pegar o número 2 e elevá-lo a 128. Para se ter uma idéia da ordem de grandeza, daria algo como o número dez seguido de 128 zeros. Outra comparação: as combinações possíveis numa criptografia de 128 bits são maiores que o número de átomos do universo.

These passwords comprises zeros and ones, like all computer languages. To calculate the possible combinations of a 128-bit password, for example, just raise 2 to the 128th power. To give you an idea of how large that number is, it would give you a digit followed by 128 zeros. Another comparison: The number of possible combinations of a 128-bit key is greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

And the FBI has the technology break such a key now? Time to go browsing through the cryptoblogs …