This Murder Has Exposed the Dark Side of Mexico's Hacking Community Duncan Tucker - VICE News
go to original December 12, 2015

In an online community characterized by bravado and macho attitudes, Robles also loved to flaunt his apparent wealth by uploading YouTube videos of expensive watches, sports cars and fat stacks of cash. His Twitter profile pronounced his love of "weed, mezcal and oral sex." (Facebook)

Raúl Robles, a prominent Mexican hacker and cybersecurity expert, was eating breakfast with his father at a quiet café in a leafy neighborhood of the western city of Guadalajara when a masked gunman walked in and opened fire. Robles, 31, was reportedly hit five times and died at the scene. The killer escaped before police arrived.

The December 2 murder has shocked Mexico's hacker community but it has also provided a window on a murky world of intense rivalry and mutual sabotage where the death itself was seemingly announced beforehand in an online forum.

Robles, a resident of Mexico City, had been the target of several threatening messages on Hispachan, a site for completely anonymous Spanish-language discussion that has proven popular among hackers since its launch in 2012. All the threats have now been deleted.

"I'm gonna kill this faggot!! I know he's coming to my city and I'll kill him here," read the first threat posted in October, alongside an image of Robles.

...Robles — who was known by the pseudonym MegaByte — was the CEO of Hacking Mexico, a cybersecurity firm that claims to provide training for agents from Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office and the National Security and Investigation Center. Having founded the company in 2012, Robles went on to become one of Mexico's best known hackers and would often run hacking courses and give speeches at conferences.

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