Mafia Boss Caught Due to Weak Encryption

Wednesday, Apr. 19 2006 | Author: J. Angelo Racoma

Here’s a lesson to would-be crime overlords: use stronger encryption (not that we’d encourage anyone to do bad stuff–just expressing a point on security). Poorly-encrypted notes exchanged for years within Bernardo Provenzano’s organization led to the arrest of the Sicilian Mafia Boss, with the police quite easily decoding the messages. So much for security!

The recently arrested “boss of bosses” of the Sicilian Mafia, Bernardo Provenzano, wrote notes using an encryption scheme similar to the one used by Julius Caesar more than 2,000 years ago, according to a biography of Italy’s most wanted man … Those [notes] helped investigators enormously. Once the cryptograms were decoded, several members of Provenzano’s close circle were identified, a step which ultimately led to his arrest.

Ever heard of PGP?