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Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

forbes.com

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Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#231

Post by skinkestek »

alasdair_ wrote: post #210
HenryBemis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact for the UK: "UK police have a new tactic to circumvent strong iPhone encryption: steal the unlocked phone out of the criminal’s hand" ( https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/05/uk-police-have-a-new-tactic-f... ) I remember reading this a few years back. The title says it all. Why bother cracking codes etc when you can get a judge to sign THAT for you? :) Going through the PDF of the legal document, on page 10, the scr…

This is pretty much how Scott Albrecht of Silk Road was caught. The police caused a distraction the grabbed his unlocked laptop while he was at a cafe. Of course, maybe bringing an unlocked laptop with details of your drug empire to a cafe wasn’t the best opsec out there.

> Of course, maybe bringing an unlocked laptop with details of your drug empire to a cafe wasn’t the best opsec out there.

Consistently running your drug empire from your home isn't good enough opsec either when you have a nation state targetting you.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#232

Post by phnofive »

sneak wrote: post #228
phnofive wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does; five rapid clicks to the side button will trigger an alarm and require a passcode to unlock.

Unable to reproduce on iPhone 12 Pro Max on 14.4.

Do you have ‘Call with Side Button’ enabled?

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#233

Post by 8fingerlouie »

m12k wrote: post #212
dnanabkchsbxb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people still think iPhones have bad battery life? Mine lasts for days.

Thet probably have the contact tracing feature enabled - that thing eats through the battery pretty quickly.

I have contact tracing enabled on my iPhone. Charge it nightly, usually sits around 70%-80% when i plug it in again the following evening.

Then again, i've been spending most of last year in my home, and i live in a rural area, so not much activity besides my wife and kids. I can only assume that the busier your surroundings, the more power is being drawn for contact tracing.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#234

Post by taneq »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #157
taneq wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the server notices were based on this assumption. They were trying to use the draconian cyber security laws instituted after Mitnick and others got caught, which stipulated 10 years jail time for “unauthorised access to a computer system.”

The ones I saw, for the most part, predated Mitnick's arrest. Some by many years. (Blah, I'm old)

Huh, I just kind of assumed they were related since the whole moral panic over "hacking" was about the same time (or, in hindsight, the same time I started using telnet... I'm less old but still quite old. :P )

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#235

Post by exabrial »

sterlind wrote: post #36
exabrial wrote: post #25

I hate be a spoil sport, but generally I don't need protection from the FBI, NSA, CIA. I need convenience to unlock my phone/laptop quickly with a fingerprint, even after a restart. XKCD nails this: https://xkcd.com/538 I'm MOST concerned with Google/Facebook continuously circumventing laws and violating my opt-out preferences. I'd like to have a null advertising ID for instance. Can't do that. And besides, you don't…

the US has problems, but the police won't hit anyone with wrenches to get them to talk. torture taints the evidence obtained. the reason spy agencies can do it is because they're not law-enforcement. that's why they have to use parallel construction, to launder the evidence trail.

They're not going to hit you with a wrench... it's a comic.

However, they will hit you will civil asset forfeiture, freeze your accounts so you can't pay lawyers, run your name through the news so you lose your job, jail you until your trial etc.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#236

Post by lima »

deadbunny wrote: post #176
lima wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Or going for a walk in the forest - many of these conversations are now happening online. On the flip side, even ordinary phone calls and messages are often encrypted by default now, which used to be much more readily available to law enforcement. It's such an interesting situation, society-wise.

> even ordinary phone calls and messages are often encrypted by default now [citation needed]

In Europe, outside of business, WhatsApp messages and calls have almost completely replaced regular phone calls and SMS.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#237

Post by einpoklum »

Are there smartphones where all data - except some write-once installed programs - is stored encrypted, with a complex enough key to not be easily breakable by the authorities, on one hand, but being reasonably usable by you, on the other hand?

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#238

Post by azinman2 »

bigiain wrote: post #144
azinman2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you doing such that those thoughts even cross your mind?

Such thoughts never cross yours? I consider myself “recreationally paranoid”. I like to consider possible avenues of attack on me, and work out mitigations where possible. I’ve always considered it a subset of some people’s “hacker mindset”. The question of “How would I break into my stuff if I were motivated to, and what can I do to prevent it or make it more difficult to break?” provides me with a lot of satisfying…

I’m far more concerned about a thief trying to rob my house than I am about the government coming in for my computers. In fact, in that scenario I’d rather let them have my computers unharmed as it would prove whatever they’re looking for doesn’t exist on my machines. My concern is how do I sufficiently back up data for replacements.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#239

Post by SailingSperm »

bigiain wrote: post #150
SailingSperm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy encapsulates anonymity. Who you are talking to should be just as private as the contents of the message. Anonymity aids privacy.

Not sure I agree. We expect heads of state to be able to have “private” discussions while knowing the other heads of state they may be communicating with. I can have “private” conversations with my partner, even though people know who that is. You can also choose to anonymously communicate with no privacy, Reddit or 4chan style... They may not be totally orthogonal, but I don’t think either privacy nor anonymity are…

You're just describing levels of privacy. Head's of state can of course have private discussions, where only the contents of conversation is private - but the fact the conversations took place are not private. Compare that to AnonA talked to AnonB - We're still aware two people communicated, but it's even more private as we can't infer their relationship (And probabilities about what might have been discussed - from other metadata of the conversation time,place,duration,frequency). And finally, perfect privacy nobody knows that a conversation took place in the first place and the contents are unknown too.

There is also still privacy in public communications when done anonymously, as you can't tie the information disclosed to the real identity (necessarily). -- Hence why for privacy purposes advertising data is often anonymized. (But again, less private of course, if ie I said I was a 2 fingered man in Poland and there is only 5 people fitting that description)

So I'd still say, perfect privacy cannot occur without anonymity.

Re: Evidence that the FBI can hack into private Signal messages on a locked iPhone

#240

Post by bigiain »

azinman2 wrote: post #238
bigiain wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such thoughts never cross yours? I consider myself “recreationally paranoid”. I like to consider possible avenues of attack on me, and work out mitigations where possible. I’ve always considered it a subset of some people’s “hacker mindset”. The question of “How would I break into my stuff if I were motivated to, and what can I do to prevent it or make it more difficult to break?” provides me with a lot of satisfying…

I’m far more concerned about a thief trying to rob my house than I am about the government coming in for my computers. In fact, in that scenario I’d rather let them have my computers unharmed as it would prove whatever they’re looking for doesn’t exist on my machines. My concern is how do I sufficiently back up data for replacements.

I have practically zero concern about thieves robbing my house. I lock the doors when I go out, and pay for insurance.

It’s happened only once to me in over 50 years, and that was because I foolishly assumed a 3rd story window was safe to leave open, when there was enough plumbing on the wall that a determined enough petty thief could climb through it. All I lost was a computer (a PowerMac 6100) but had recent-enough backups at work that it was only minority annoying to replace and deal with insurance. (There was personal email and the like on it, and stored passwords. I monitored the email server carefully for 6 or 12 months after that, and never saw a single login attempt. Whatever they did with it, they wiped it before they connected it to the internet and the email logged I automatically).

I’m also not so concerned about my government coming in for my computers. They’re too incompetent to do it well except for major targets. I do enjoy the thought experiments around “what would happen if the government ‘went bad’?”

(I’m also aware the I, like probably everybody, have data on my machines that if cherry picked by prosecutors would be awkward to have to defend myself against in court. I often rant about wanting to stab my idiot co workers in small group chats for example. If I were a prosecutor trying for force me into a plea bargain or an leo attempting to coerce me into doing something I’d prefer not to do, I have no doubt that a fairly damning looking case could be constructed by choosing only the parts of my data that when put together paint a bad but fictitious/out-of-context story...)

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