The_Net_Works

CONTENT WARNING:

THIS CAUTIONARY RESOURCE DISCUSSES SEVERE CASES OF SEXUALLY ABUSIVE CRIMES IN THE HOPE OF RAISING GLOBAL AWARENESS & PREVENTING MORE FROM HAPPENING.

CONTENTS

1. Cases
    1-1     Nth Room
    1-2     Doctor's Room
2. Cyber Sexual Abuse
    2-1     Cyber-Enabled-Crime
    2-2     Sexual Abuse
3. Telegram Features
    3-1     Encryption
    3-2     Sociability

1. Cases

The cyber environment of the messenger Telegram is where heinous digital sex crimes known as the "Nth Room" case took place between 2018 and 2020. The scandal's victims are at least 1,154 women with 60.7% of them as teenagers and at least 26 of them as minors.

The primary perpetrators, who are also chatroom operators, are at least 4,000 people with 3,757 of them arrested and only 245 of them punished by December 30, 2020. All perpetrators of the crimes are about 60,000 users, who used over 260,000 login IDs.

    1-1     Nth Room

The original "Nth room" chats appeared on Telegram in 2018, when the former users of "Soranet," a notorious illegal web platform for sharing sexually exploitative videos in South Korea, finally shut down. The former "Soranet" users chose none other than Telegram as their next platform to continue their sexual exploitation.

A user nicknamed "god-god" found his victims on Twitter, where he approached accounts with self-made, pornographic contents whose users are women in their 10s and 20s. He impersonated a police officer simply with a message stating he's from the cyber investigative team who received reports about the receiver's account for pornography, and therefore requesting a statement on the matter from the account's owner. He sent the message along with a hacking link to extract personal information from those who fell for the trick and filled it out. Using the extracted personal information, user "god-god" threatened and forced victims to produce degrading or pornographic videos. He then shared the extorted videos in 8 secret chats that he operated on Telegram, namely room 1 to room 8, thus "nth" rooms, where he regularly shared the extorted, exploitative videos. The structure of exploitation in these initial chatrooms influenced all copycats later on.

    1-2     Doctor's Room

A user nickednamed "doctor" emerged in July 2019, and approached his victims on social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter, offered them underwear modeling gigs or light sex work gigs, extracted personal information and nudes of those who accepted the offers, and used the extorted information and photographs to force the victims to produce dehumanizing and sexually exploitative videos.

Unlike the operator of the "Nth room," user "doctor" sought financial profit from his exploitation, and sold his videos in cryptocurrency in his chatrooms. "Doctor's room" was deliberately structured, payment-based, exclusive chatroom model. "Doctor's room" consisted of 4 chatrooms, including charge-free trial room, level 1 room, level 2 room, and level 3 room. Entrance fee for entering level 1 room ranged between 200,000 and 250,000 Korean Won ($170-215 USD), entering level 2 room cost 700,000 Korean Won ($620 USD), and level 3 room was as expensive as 1,500,000 Korean Won ($1,300 USD). All transactions were made in cryptocurrency such as bitcoin. During transactions, a copy of the paying users' ID cards were demanded, so that user "doctor" could hold onto payers' personal informaiton.

2. Cyber Sexual Abuse

The cases involved the following digital sex crimes: blackmailing, sexual extortion, cybersex trafficking, sexual assault, and image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), which altogether occurred in a sort of cyclically repetitive series. These sexual crimes took advantage of the varied technological features of Telegram app in order to continue the long term, large scale, and multilayered abuses.

    2-1     Cyber-Enabled-Crime

Cybercrimes has two primary categories: advanced cybercrime and cyber-enabled-crime. The latter, cyber-enabled-crime, includes sexual extortion and sexual exploitation.

The "Nth Room" traffickers made their first online contacts with the victims on social media services such as Twitter or Instagram, extracted their basic information through impersonation or manipulation, illegally hacked government offices for further acquisition of personal information, and then commanded the victims to move to Telegram for future interactions.

    2-2     Sexual Abuse

Among the methods of sexual abuse are human sex trafficking, an example of sexual exploitation, and sexual extortion or sextortion, which is a type of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA).

3. Telegram Features

    3-1     Encryption

Telegram is private and secure. The messages on Telegram can self-destruct, and it can be planned to occur at a certain time. The high-tech encryption allowed for great anonymity, which made untraceable abuses possible. As we see with unaccounted trafficking, countless unaccounted viewings of assaults were also due to the features of privacy and security. The users could use aliases and stay underdetected.

Telegram uses Client-to-Client or End-to-End User encryption technology.

The MTProto encryption scheme, which is a symmetric encryption, is the core system of Telegram's encryptive technology. The following image is a simplified illustration of the MTProto encryption scheme.

    3-2     Sociability

Telegram is also social and expressive. Telegram groups can hold up to 200,000 members, and users can fully customize their own messaging environment. The app provided a new way to communicate, and it is unclear how many men paid for this footage, how many messaging apps are involved or how many copycat chat rooms have been made.

The_Net_Works wants to ask the undermentioned questions about the hidden dangers of our seemingly democratic, liberatory communication tools. It dissects how encryption and interaction technologies, when deployed within a violently abusive culture, can cause unprecedented damage on personal and societal levels. It is extremely critical for advanced technological tools to cooperate in achieving justice in the face of exploited humanity, as well as to take responsibility in creating not passively neutral but actively equitable cyberspace.

In the midst of binary discourses on digital democracy and technoliberalism, the philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and freedom in relation to the technologies of encryption and sociability are all in a blur.

The_Net_Works is committed to contributing to the online and offline body of individuals and groups striving towards justice against digital sex crimes worldwide.