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Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

security.stackexchange.com

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Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#61

Post by throwawayadvsec »

qup wrote: post #51
joebiden2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a bot ring. I assume you think that because I posted links to stackexchange quite a few times the last few months. Instead, I just skim over stackexchange.com as part of my feed and when there's something what I assume HN interests, I post it here. I don't care much about Karma. I posted this specific topic since I find it kind of hilarious that police should now lawfully be able to do something they are…

It seemed ridiculous to me that it could make the top of HN. It was a question with no discussion, yet. If it had a discussion or even a good answer, it would have made perfect sense. I assumed the goal would be stack overflow karma, as that's actually valuable.

Or maybe it's the perfect place to discuss this kind of topics.

An Ask HN with the same kind of question could have reached the front page.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#63

Post by godelski »

qup wrote: post #51
joebiden2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a bot ring. I assume you think that because I posted links to stackexchange quite a few times the last few months. Instead, I just skim over stackexchange.com as part of my feed and when there's something what I assume HN interests, I post it here. I don't care much about Karma. I posted this specific topic since I find it kind of hilarious that police should now lawfully be able to do something they are…

It seemed ridiculous to me that it could make the top of HN. It was a question with no discussion, yet. If it had a discussion or even a good answer, it would have made perfect sense. I assumed the goal would be stack overflow karma, as that's actually valuable.

It rose to the top because of the question, the link about France, and because new posts get higher weights. It is at 79pts and 59 comments currently and about to fall off the front page. But also on the front page is a post with 6pts and 1 comment (1hr old), 17 points and 2 comments (2 hrs), 7pts and 2 comments (30 minutes). and a few more. Just a slow Saturday.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#64

Post by rgrieselhuber »

mdp2021 wrote: post #48
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always amazed at how many people don’t understand this. Hanlon’s Razor is just a way to sound smart while indulging in self-soothing biases.

The practice of assessing whether a tempting evaluation of "malice" can instead cover evidence of structural faults is part of the effort towards seeing things as they are. And keeps you away from paranoia.

The notion that paranoia is the default emergent state of not assuming incompetence when potential malicious incentives can be easily articulated is just yet another ideological presupposition.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#65

Post by abecedarius »

erealquestionis wrote: post #42

To me the real question is. Technical feasibility aside. Would the cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Xiaomi, etc) say no when faced with the possibility of losing market share in France. Because of a law pushed through under the cover of security. Many a liberties have slipped under that blanket cover called security. I think they will put in this feature if it's not already there.

Google Search withdrew from China when China went over the line, as they saw it.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#66

Post by lyu07282 »

erealquestionis wrote: post #42

To me the real question is. Technical feasibility aside. Would the cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Xiaomi, etc) say no when faced with the possibility of losing market share in France. Because of a law pushed through under the cover of security. Many a liberties have slipped under that blanket cover called security. I think they will put in this feature if it's not already there.

I think the way it probably works is that if the US gov. wants to root someones phone anywhere in the world they just do it via some API given to them by apple/google directly.

If a foreign country wants to do it to someone on foreign soil (like the saudis to bezos did [1]) they exploit some vulnerability brought on the free market (like the whatsapp/video message exploit chain the saudis used, or exploits like the NSO zero-click iMessage exploit [2]).

If a foreign country wants to spy on its own citizens who protest the government, they could just use the local phone carriers capability to silently ping, update firmware or change system settings remotely, those are intentionally part of the mobile standards (including intentionally weak encryption) so governments can spy on its people.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/bezos-phone-hack-mbs-saudi-arabi... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-imessage-zero-click-hacks/

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#67

Post by mdp2021 »

anonym29 wrote: post #52
mdp2021 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice of assessing whether a tempting evaluation of "malice" can instead cover evidence of structural faults is part of the effort towards seeing things as they are. And keeps you away from paranoia.

Spoken like someone being paid to stigmatize rational skepticism.

I proposed rational skepticism.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#68

Post by zopa »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #32
anonym29 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the perfect cover for malice, lol If ((Assume it's stupidity) == (discount/ignore the risk)), then assuming it's stupidity is never the safer assumption, even if it's empirically more likely to be the correct assumption, no? All boils down to an individual's threat model at the end of the day anyway, though.

I’m always amazed at how many people don’t understand this. Hanlon’s Razor is just a way to sound smart while indulging in self-soothing biases.

Malice is not falsifiable: anything could always just be another trick. So unless you want to end up believing everything is malice, it’s best to start with the benign explanations, until you’re sure they don’t fit.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#69

Post by godelski »

flangola7 wrote: post #50
bambax wrote: post #23

A little OT but strongly related: in France you can go to prison if you refuse to give your phone's password to the police (nothing like a "free country", I guess). Is there a way to set up a phone so that typing a "special" password puts the phone in an alternate state with different apps and content, etc. (and possibly erase the regular content)?

- I presume that's considered willful destruction of evidence and interfering with an official investigation, and worse charges than whatever you were probably facing (unless you really did fuck up and committed something bad). - Investigators are not going to be typing your password into the running original device, they're going to be trying it against an offline clone of the encrypted storage. All that will happen…

On point 3, while I agree he shouldn't be required to give up his password, we should note that they did find child porn on other devices and that there is testimony from another witness of more porn on those hard drives. I'm just saying that this is a bit different than there being no sufficiently prosecutable evidence and the courts requiring it. In fact, that's why they claim his 5th Amendment rights aren't violated (though obviously the length of his sentence relies upon that). He could currently be prosecuted under the current evidence, and that matters.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/rawls...

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#70

Post by mdp2021 »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #64
mdp2021 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice of assessing whether a tempting evaluation of "malice" can instead cover evidence of structural faults is part of the effort towards seeing things as they are. And keeps you away from paranoia.

The notion that paranoia is the default emergent state of not assuming incompetence when potential malicious incentives can be easily articulated is just yet another ideological presupposition.

That part about paranoia was a half-joke. But no, it was not suggested (that was not a «notion») that paranoia would be a «default emergent state». It is tough a temptation of many.

And while you will often be able to identify «potential malicious incentives», you have to put those possibilities together with the rest of those which can complete the set.

Assessments must be complete.

--

Edit: oh, by the way, importantly: paranoia ("off-thought") means "delusionality", and in that sense the statement «And keeps you away from paranoia» was literal. "Be "cool" and exhaustive in assessment, and you will avoid getting stuck in alluring stories". The half joke was about the current use of the term (in the popular interpretation of the clinical state).

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