The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]

Post by wanderer2323 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

trhway wrote: post #73

freehunter wrote: post #68

I know it's against the rules to tell people to read the article, but I would encourage everyone to read the article. It specifically says this is a potential threat to > "elected officials, candidates, political campaigns, [and] political parties" not to the general public. The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the R…

>The potential threat is for someone at Candidate_1's campaign taking selfies with the app, that then uploads them to Russian servers where the Russian government can see them and can also see what's in the background (sensitive documents?) good old days just less than 20 years ago back at Sun when we were strictly instructed that the computer monitors must be off when the photos would be taken. How times and basic n…

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

JaRail wrote: post #75

slg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can apps still get information that identifies the specific device? If so, another possible threat model could be more about identifying who uses what device rather than anything specifically in the photos themselves. For example, I already have a database of high value target's faces built from political sources like house.gov. Now I do facial recognition between that set of faces and the FaceApp faces. That allows…

Current-gen devices provide an advertising id. It's unique to the device but can be reset to a new random value by the owner in the OS settings.

Post by debt » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:02 AM UTC

zkid18 wrote: post #81

rauchp wrote: post #5

Looks like the FBI designated FaceApp as a threat because of its crazy data policy and its Russian origin. Even though I think it's a really shady app, that's a pretty low bar.

I think FaceApp should be hosted on an AWS-like infrastructure. Hosting in Russia is expensive and does not provide any advantages, such as dynamic routing that is crucial for world-wide app. Most developers use it to comply with Russian standards: you only need to store information about Russian users on Russian servers. In addition, currently in Russia there are no good alternatives for reliable cloud neural networ…

Post by xnyan » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

desine wrote: post #103

walrus01 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably ES File Explorer was recently removed form the Google play store because of suspicious behavior. One of the most popular Android file managers.

I bought microSD reader off Amazon, which has two dongle ends, one USB type A for a computer, one Lightning, for my iPhone. According to the included instructions, it required me to download an app (from the Apple app store) to use on the the iPhone. I didn't trust the App, even with Apple's scans, so I ended up using it with my already-owned Camera Connection Kit (Lightning to USB Host) adapter just fine. The name o…

Post by debt » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

not2b wrote: post #18

The article does not match the headline. The FBI letter only calls it a "potential" threat, meaning maybe it is a threat, maybe not.