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FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

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Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#111

Post by wavefunction »

temp8964 wrote: post #57
knightofmars wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase "Russian collusion" has become a catch-all for anything involving Russian influence, it's ridiculous and it over simplifies reality. The basis for the (actual) Russian collusion investigation had a reasonable starting point. Joseph Mifsud[0], the guy that nobody can find right now. It was absolutely worth investigating and it's disappointing that it became the dog-and-pony show it did. And Russia interferi…

There is nothing new about Russia interfering with foreign elections. What is new is that a presidential candidate can be accused of colluding with Russia. You can't just go back to say "Russian collusion" means something else, when in fact the mainstream media and the Democrat Party members at the time was claiming Trump colluded with Putin.

Throwaway account because you're not proud to take credit for what you're claiming? Don't worry, I didn't downvote you, other than with this post.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#112

Post by upofadown »

kodah wrote: post #101
__s wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not technically. You'd just have to apply encryption at a higher level Send email bodies encrypted to base64 along with a public key fingerprint, then receiver's client would decrypt if it had the private key for that fingerprint But this isn't compelling enough to get a network effect to topple in-browser gmail

Common misconception. The three letter agencies do not really need to know the contents of your email body. They're much more interested in to/from, timestamps, and subject. Establishing that you communicate with a person and then getting their emails is much easier than playing with your encrypted email body.

I think this is a common misconception of its own. The three letter agencies would love to be able to see the content of messages. But the code makers have run so far ahead of the code breakers that this is effectively impossible. So they settle for only meta information and tell the people that are funding them that this is now sufficient for them to continue to do their job.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#115

Post by [deleted] »

piokoch wrote: post #54
mc32 wrote: post #8

Oh boy, that ever useful boogeyman >“In December 2019, the Washington Post reported that Elbakyan was being investigated by the US Justice Department on suspicion that she “may” be working with Russian intelligence to “steal U.S. military secrets...” When you start trotting that out, you know it’s a witch-hunt because if they had real reasons they’d have stated them, since they don’t they offer vague insinuations cou…

I am only surprised child porn has not been found on her computer yet. And there is no report from some hotel room cleaner that he or she was raped by Elbakyan. Those "stolen" military secrets published in journals anyone can purchase for a few bucks does not even sounds scary. Apparently FBI got lazy these days, maybe because of all that Covid mess.

[deleted]

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#116

Post by conradev »

bumbledraven wrote: post #37
shockeychap wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has always bragged about iMessage content being end-to-end encrypted, and thus inaccessible even to Apple. Why aren't they doing the same with email and other files, like other providers? (ProtonMail, to name one example)

modeless wrote here in Feb, 2021 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25778758 ) : > It's also important to realize that the backup includes your encrypted iMessage messages, and the key required to decrypt them. Meaning that if you have backups enabled, all the "end-to-end" encryption in iMessage is defeated. Apple and by extension the FBI can read your messages. This is documented by Apple here: https://support.a…

[EDIT: I misread]

> Even if you disable backups, whenever you correspond with someone that has backups enabled those messages are still accessible to Apple.

That last bit is not true. From Apple’s security PDF:

> When Messages in iCloud is enabled, iMessage, Business Chat, text (SMS), and MMS messages are removed from the user’s existing iCloud Backup and are instead stored in an end-to-end encrypted CloudKit container for Messages. The user’s iCloud Backup retains a key to that container. If the user later disables iCloud Backup, that container’s key is rolled, the new key is stored only in iCloud Keychain (inaccessible to Apple and any third parties), and new data written to the container can’t be decrypted with the old container key.

https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/app...

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#117

Post by upofadown »

shockeychap wrote: post #20
aeontech wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has always been subject to US law, and as such, was always required to provide information that they do have access to. If it's in iCloud, most of it can be extracted by the law enforcement with court order. Nothing changed between now and the San Bernardino case. The difference was that FBI wanted Apple to compromise device encryption, which capability does _not_ exist now.

So why hasn't end-to-end encryption been utilized for years with the storage of email and other files, like they do with iMessage content?

You only need regular client side encryption to protect things in the cloud. Just generate a key on the phone and keep it there. Probably the reason they don't do that is that it would make it so that a lost phone would result in the loss of cloud stored data. People store things in the cloud to prevent that sort of loss.

Email when encrypted end to end in the traditional ways is safe on the IMAP server but also has a requirement to back up a key off the device to prevent loss of old emails on loss of device.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

ndeast wrote: post #97
bumbledraven wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

modeless wrote here in Feb, 2021 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25778758 ) : > It's also important to realize that the backup includes your encrypted iMessage messages, and the key required to decrypt them. Meaning that if you have backups enabled, all the "end-to-end" encryption in iMessage is defeated. Apple and by extension the FBI can read your messages. This is documented by Apple here: https://support.a…

I have long since switched to only doing local encrypted backups, but for some reason it never clicked that of course all of my messages are included in other people's backups. Frustrating that its E2E with a bunch of caveats.

E2EE only applies to data in transit, not data at rest. Talking via E2EE chat client means only that third parties in between cannot read what you write. It doesn't imply the messages cannot be recovered from your device, or your conversation partner's device, and it definitely does not imply said partner can't just leak them, whether accidentally or on purpose.

I'm not sure how E2EE came to be interpreted as to mean "totally secure against everything".

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#119

Post by temp8964 »

wavefunction wrote: post #111
temp8964 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing new about Russia interfering with foreign elections. What is new is that a presidential candidate can be accused of colluding with Russia. You can't just go back to say "Russian collusion" means something else, when in fact the mainstream media and the Democrat Party members at the time was claiming Trump colluded with Putin.

Throwaway account because you're not proud to take credit for what you're claiming? Don't worry, I didn't downvote you, other than with this post.

Thanks. I feel I said lots of stupid things in the past, so I created a long-term throwaway account.

Re: FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims

#120

Post by teclordphrack2 »

temp8964 wrote: post #57
knightofmars wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase "Russian collusion" has become a catch-all for anything involving Russian influence, it's ridiculous and it over simplifies reality. The basis for the (actual) Russian collusion investigation had a reasonable starting point. Joseph Mifsud[0], the guy that nobody can find right now. It was absolutely worth investigating and it's disappointing that it became the dog-and-pony show it did. And Russia interferi…

There is nothing new about Russia interfering with foreign elections. What is new is that a presidential candidate can be accused of colluding with Russia. You can't just go back to say "Russian collusion" means something else, when in fact the mainstream media and the Democrat Party members at the time was claiming Trump colluded with Putin.

There was collusion. Manafort gave polling data to the russians.
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