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- Criminals are sharing intelligence and security software through WhatsApp, Vice News said.
- They are using a police database to hunt down their people in real time, according the the report.
- The services are being sold for up to $9,000, the investigation found.
Mexican cartels are accessing an intelligence and security database used by government agencies to hunt down their victims in real time, sources told Vice News.
The criminals can geolocate people through minute-to-minute location logs and obtain private information and documents through software called Titan, which is being shared on WhatsApp, according to the report.
Various Titan services are available for purchase from 10,000 Mexican pesos ($600) to 180,000 pesos ($9,000), Vice News reported. Buyers can get their own login or get an official user to fulfill requests.
One source said police forces purchase licenses to use Titan, which are then resold on the black market.
"They sent me a payment method to acquire the licenses and then I re-sell them to whoever wants one," he said. "I know that some law enforcement agencies are also re-selling licenses or services to other cartel members, but that's on them."
According to the investigation, personal information is obtained from a large database, and GPS technology is used to track cellphones.
The Mexican voter ID database, "credit bureaus, bank statements, phone apps logs, emails, amongst many others," also make up the software, a source said.
It is also possible to pay for criminal charges to be deleted from someone's ID on the platform or to have fake ones added on.
Sources told Vice News that a "council" runs the sale of the services, consisting of criminals and Mexican state officials.
One source told Vice News the software is Mexican, but "Israel worked on the backend."
An Israeli cyber-intelligence firm known as NSO Group is also responsible for developing Pegasus, a spyware capable of turning cellphones essentially into mobile surveillance devices.
The company advertises the software as a tool for law enforcement agencies to track down criminals. Still, many governments, including Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Spain, are known to have utilized Pegasus to spy on reporters, political opponents, or opposition groups, a Washington Post investigation found.
However, it is unclear who exactly is behind Titan, Vice News reported, as it doesn't offer any information on its platform login page and keeps changing its servers, presumably to prevent being tracked.
Titan can provide a person's address, call log, criminal history, and credit information simply by entering a first and last name or phone number into the database, Vice News found.
"This is the easiest way to locate someone or to know about their relatives if they are hiding," an anonymous Jalisco New Generation Cartel member told the outlet.
However, sources who spoke with Vice News said they believed the platform was used a lot more by criminals than it was by law enforcement to find missing persons in the country — of which there are about 100,000.
"It is impossible for them to find someone if we don't want him to be found," one source said.
Mexican state governments did not immediately respond to a request by Business Insider for comment.