Cellebrite got into Trump shooter's Samsung device in just 40 minutes Unable to access the Samsung smartphone of the deceased Trump shooter for clues, the FBI turned to a familiar – if controversial – source to achieve its goal: digital forensics tools vendor Cellebrite. Cellebrite has been used for years by law enforcement to break into locked smartphones. In this case the shooter's device was …
conveniently forget about used devices in their predictable rant about the costs of Apple kit.
Move along there, nothing new.
I have an iPhone SE - 3rd Gen that I bought for £230.00. One small scratch on the glass otherwise perfect.
I have never bought a new iPhone and never will. That said, you won't catch me this side of armageddon using a google phone.
>Android phones are cheap (compared to Apple) because Google is doing a big user data slurp and making money elsewhere.
Suits me, I'm running a secured open source build of Android on an old Google Pixel phone, with no Google content, account or links.
Interesting. My firmly middle-of-the-road iPhone 12 was fairly cheap when I got it. Of course, I waited until the iPhone 13 was out and got it at a reduced price. (Around $600, as I recall.) Not everyone wants the very latest shiny. $600 over 24 months ($25/month, and actually less than that, I handed over $100 to start, so it was 500/24 or 20.83/month) is too expensive? Really? I got unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited data, hotspt capability and more for an additional $25/month, so that the phone and service for $46/month, hardly something that will break the bank. There are plans available which cost less but also do less. It's not my fault if you don't know how to look for bargins. I got a great phone which does all that I want and has done all that I want for years and will probably serve for years to come.
Unfortunately (if like me) one is relatively unsophisticated, then you are reliant upon the skill of others to protect your cloud based data (either that or don’t use the cloud - but difficult to avoid these days)
That said, in my experience, people frequently don’t (hassle/convenience preferred?) avail themselves of additional security that is available - say 2FA for your email or (in the case of iOS) activating Advanced Data Protection. Every little bit helps.
As an iOS user, have you activated Advanced Data Protection?
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102651
“Enhanced data protection” makes sure certain changes to your phone can only be made at your home for one hour. So if your phone gets stolen you have an hour time to lock it down. Of course if someone in your home holds a gun to your head, that’s game over.
Another feature reduces the usability of your phone: Various image formats cannot be used etc. So commonly used attack vectors cannot be used against your phone.
I think the 'Why' has been very clearly articulated. Even if a device is 'currently' considered secure, as in - we're not aware of it having been cracked yet - there's no way of creating a backdoor that can "only" be used by the good guys. It will absolutely guaranteed find its way into the public domain, and probably sooner rather than later.
On a related note: I obviously don't trust criminals with cyber-secrets, but my distrust for law enforcement runs a close second. They couldn't run a tap let alone an effective cyber operation.
It only takes _one_ corrupt cop in the right position.
Now seriously, it’s Cellebrite’s whole job to find vulnerabilities. Apple engineers have the job to write code that has no vulnerabilities, so there should be no serious vulnerabilities _known_ to apple at any point.
So if they were to give police a way into phones, that would be a deliberately introduced vulnerability. Probably protected by a 256 bit key, so attackers can’t use it as long as the police keeps that key safe.
If I was apple and decided to do that, I’d make the phone contact apple, send it’s serial number, and get permission to be cracked, and police would have to send the serial number to apple first. So even if someone else gets their hands on it, they get no access. If some corrupt police department uses this, apple can stop access for them.
A third party bad actor spoofs law enforcement credentials and sends the serial number of a phone to Apple to be iCracked. Apple obliges, because the credentials appear legitimate. By going down this road you're simply moving the weakest link from Apple's E2E encryption onto law enforcement's credentialing, and this is almost guaranteed to make security worse not better.
A backdoor is a backdoor; there are zero good reasons for creating one, and zero ways to make it invulnerable to bad actors.
You are so clever. Obviously you wouldn’t just trust spoofed credentials. Same thing as me getting a call from “my banks fraud department”. They’d have a number to call, that number knows whether the officer exists or not and how they can be contacted, and then apple calls them in person.
Seriously?
Spot the weakest link.
1. Apple E2E encryption
2. ‘Trusted’ law enforcement backdoor credentials that they SWEAR haven’t been pwned by some skiddie with a 2FA spoofing toolkit.
3. Pravesh from the “Apple Authentication Centre” at the end of a phone telling you sure, the credentials are fine so go ahead and hack. Would we lie to you etc.
Just… stop.
while I strongly disagree with European clampdown on firearms and anything else (I can't take a f... camping knife on a cross-channel ferry as a foot passanger), there is a very strong correlation between 'per head' gun ownership and gun crime. And both are significantly lower on this side of the pond, so the argument about 'a 15 yrs old shot dead' is a straman.
"very strong correlation between 'per head' gun ownership and gun crime"
You need to make the distinction between legal and illegal gun ownership. The vast majority of gun crime in the US is committed with illegally owned guns, just like in the UK. I doubt the shooter in London bought the gun legally.
There is gun crime, and there is gun fatalities. Two thirds of gun fatalities in the USA are suicides. Then lots of accidents, toddlers playing with guns. Then law enforcement. So gun crime deaths are less than a quarter of gun deaths.
The number of gun murderers by criminals are not that high, and that’s the only part with lots of illegal guns.
Suicide is its own category. The bigger problem is why are people, mostly men, ending up in that situation?
"toddlers playing with guns" very very few. More toddlers die from ingesting pharmaceuticals, drown in baths or killed by a parent/carer.
"Then law enforcement" Again very few. In 2022 there were 48,000 firearm related deaths of which about 1000 were by the police.
The claim that gun violence is the greatest cause of childhood death is misleading as this includes people up to 18 and the demographic most likely to die from being shot with an illegal gun is young black men and boys.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/do-illegal-gun-owners-commit-most-gun-crime-rep-fa/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7226a9.htm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1466060/gun-homicide-rate-by-race-and-age-us/
“ Suicide is its own category” - suicide by gun is a gun death; and two thirds of gun deaths are suicides. In the USA, there are more suicide attempts by women, but many more “successful” suicides by men, because of guns.
It’s like coal gas ovens (I think) in Britain; they gave a sure way to kill yourself, when they were phased out, suicide rates dropped massively.
And when I mentioned toddlers and guns, it’s not toddlers killing themselves, anything around them is more at danger.
"and two thirds of gun deaths are suicides"
Its actually half, the CDC link gives this stat.
"In the USA, there are more suicide attempts by women, but many more “successful” suicides by men, because of guns."
This is because women get preferential treatment by the courts wrt divorce and custody and men get pretty much f-all support while doing jobs that are infinitely more stressful and hazardous. Over 90% of work related deaths are men.
Even without guns the UK suicide rate is heavily biased towards men.
>The number of gun murderers by criminals are not that high, and that’s the only part with lots of illegal guns.
If criminals are statistically so much safer with guns then we should restrict guns to only criminals
If you criminalize guns then only criminals would have guns - and that's safer for everyone
Vast majority? What are the numbers? Where'd you get them? NRA? Are we talking about crimes that don't result in deaths? Or shootings like the las vegas shoting, or Sandy hook, or Pulse nightclub or Columbine? Oh wait, those were all legally purchased guns. How many gun related suicides, accidental shootings, and police shootings resulting in deaths were from illegal guns? Majority of people killed in the US by guns were killed by legally purchased or obtained guns.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/do-illegal-gun-owners-commit-most-gun-crime-rep-fa/
Sandyhook the shooter stole the gun.
Columbine they got someone to straw purchase the guns for them.
If you read the other posts, about half of all gun deaths are suicide but these are not homicides.
Police shootings are very small:
"In 2022 there were 48,000 firearm related deaths of which about 1000 were by the police."
I know that popular belief is that the cops are gunning down unarmed people left right and centre.
Most gun homicides are gang related.
I doubt any of these were legally owned guns
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/08/us/chicago-shootings-july-fourth-weekend/index.html
" The vast majority of gun crime in the US is committed with illegally owned guns, just like in the UK."
And illegally owned guns in the US are primarily only available because legally owned guns are available. Corrupt dealers - ccording to the ATF, 70% of crime guns traced from 2017 to 2021 came from dealers. Then they are stolen from legal dealers, purchased in private sales, stolen during burglaries, robberies and car theft. Then there are guns "borrowed" from family members.
You could ban all guns and that would solve everything just like it did in the UK.
Firearms homicide rate, per 100,000 people
US 4.054
Canada 0.889
Australia 0.103
UK 0.047
Yup, pretty much. Spot the two countries with restrictive gun ownership laws, and let's pop a cap in the idea Canada doesn't have a firearms problem while we're here.
To be fair, I don't believe North America could implement bans with anything like the same success because of the huge porous land borders. But it did work here. And to pre-empt the response: an individual cannot kill or injure 470 people with knives alone in the space of 10 minutes. 2-3 fatalities per knife wielding perp is about as tragic as it ever gets.
The problem with a ban is that there are two stable states: Everyone has guns, and nobody has guns. The problem is the path from the first to the second state.
In the UK, using a gun is a stupid idea in almost all situations, and most criminals know that. A gun is rare. If you wave one around, it’s not the normal coppers coming after you, and they _will_ get you. In the USA there will be criminals trying to shoot their way out of trouble; in the UK that won’t work. But right now, a shop owner giving up his gun in the USA increases his risk. In the UK it is the opposite.
A shop owner giving up his gun increases his risk of being robbed, yea. But decreases his risk of winding up dead. 'suppose it depends what your priorities are.
Most in the US don't have guns (only ~35% adults individually own, or ~45% of households), so they're still closer to the second of your 'stable states'.
In Canada, to legally have a firearm, one must have a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL). Then to legally own some "fancier" firearms like handguns, AR-15s, etc. one must have a higher level of license for these restricted firearms, the RPAL. Legal firearms owners are not the cause of Canada's increasing gun problem.
Canada has a gun problem insofar as that we are sit right atop the largest illegal gun supplier in the world: The United States. Almost all of our crime guns are illegal from the US. So in reality, the US's gun problem becomes our gun problem due to unlucky geography.
There's seems to be debate about that, depending on which statistics you look at.
Regardless I think the reality is guns will follow the path of least resistance. If that happens to be a US source because criminal organisations diverting guns from legal trade there are more developed and relatively less opposed by law enforcement, then a lot will come from there. If the US got relatively tougher on gun licensees selling illegally and corruption along the whole supply chain, or the border magically sealed, then the black-market trade in Canada would thrive instead. Once the guns are out there in large numbers, and given there's huge demand, it's impossible to imagine the legal trade not leaking somewhere.
from gunshot wounds last weekend in the USA and how many here?
level them out to stats of deaths per 100,000 people and you might be surprised at how high the USA is compared to almost everywhere else on the planet.
Murders using firearms here is a relative rarity... thankfully.
I lived in the UK when the gun ban was enacted after the Dunblane massacre, and it made a MASSIVE difference in the amount of gun crime.
That's how I know all the BS that is thrown at even the smallest of gun legislation in the US: BS. It appears it doesn't matter how many kids get murdered there, the argument is somehow always to buy more guns, something that fits perfectly in Einstein's definition of insanity.
Before UK's gun laws, police could hardly keep up with gun crime. It already dropped substantially when they were still running the amnesty.
Maybe you should check again. The numbers on this article are UK guns versus US massacres..
@First AC re: "You could ban all guns and that would solve everything just like it did in the UK.
Oh wait, a 15 year old was shot dead over the weekend in London...
People who break the law don't care about laws.
I understand why you're posting AC. Sensible.
Amongst other things, it's very much a question of access. It's hard to get hold of a (working) firearm in the UK, even harder to get hold of ammunition, and nigh-on impossible to get hold of anything automatic. Even if you know where to go and who to talk to, there's a significant chance that any weapon you obtain will be either very old (and thus unreliable), or the person that sold it to you will be under surveillance, and therefore you will be too. Or both.
That's because there aren't many firearms in circulation, so much easier to track by law enforcement. The vast, vast majority of criminals will therefore choose another weapon.
In the US, there's a high chance (40%+) that you already have a firearm in your house. And if you don't, there are more firearms in circulation than there are people (~120 firearms per 100 people) so getting hold of a weapon and ammunition that can kill a lot of people, very quickly, is very easy.
I'm sometimes curious to understand the motivations of crazy people to commit murders, but let's call that what it is, curiosity. If we knew that, what would be different at all? Nothing. The victims would be no less dead. Future victims of other people would be no more safe. Maybe, if this was an organized event with other participants, some of them might have been tracked down, but that's not really what you were talking about. Whatever the logic was, we already know that it wouldn't actually make sense to anybody, and unless someone has a stereotype they want to uphold, it would not apply in the same way to anybody else.
That makes it hard to argue for the release of manifestos or the like from murderers when we have them, and it makes it really hard to justify going to the effort to try to break in in the thought that one might exist or be reconstituted from other data. Basically, calls to do so sound to me like "Let's go to significant effort and expense to guess the content of something that might not exist and wouldn't be useful even if we got it".
I don't agree. Whenever I've seen someone try that, they take a relatively basic approach, one which I don't think gets anywhere. Basically, they follow this plan:
1. Read something the killer wrote. If it's a manifesto, that. If it's not a manifesto, something they posted to social media. If they didn't post on social media, a message sent to someone picked at random.
2. Decide on some opinion that they seem to hold strongly. If this is an opinion you dislike, go to 3. If not, go to 4.
3. Breathless announcement: people who think [opinion] are killers. We should do something about that kind of person.
4. Is there another opinion, one you dislike this time? If so, go to 3. Otherwise, go to 5.
5. Wait for next killer.
Opinions that you can actually make that case about are pretty obvious, because such things often take the form of "I dislike [x] and would like to kill people who, in my mind at least, represent [x]". You don't need much to figure out that a person who says that is potentially murderous. Even then, you have a lot of people who may say that and never actually do anything. If you get any broader, your correlations will be worthless and lead to harmful stereotypes, for instance "The guy who killed people was a soldier, it is not the first time a soldier was responsible for a mass killing of innocent people, that means soldiers are killers". Simplistic to the point of inaccuracy and not something you can do anything about.
Well true, but I'm not necessarily thinking at an individual level.
Example: a statistically significant majority of gun violence in the US is perpetrated by young black males.
Assuming black babies are not more genetically predisposed to violence than White babies, why would this be the case? Poverty, lack of education*, lack of opportunity, lack of role models... you name it. All of these factors combine to create a motive that means Dewayne and Jamar are statistically more likely to commit gun crime than Brady or Mitch.
* Sidenote: district-based funding in the US is one of the major reasons why it's incorrect to project US-founded accusations of systemic racism onto Europe.
Some of the most 'deprived' areas of the US have the highest per pupil education spending.
Something is very wrong when a city that is in the top 5 for per pupil spending has kids leaving high school with elementary grade reading ability.
The problem is that the teachers in these areas are often the activist types who harp on about imaginary issues and how the kids will never overcome them. Also complete lack of proper male role models in their lives and a general sense of 'why bother trying?'. Working hard and being on time is whiteness, if you try to better yourself then you are white adjacent etc. We're seeing this from the Dem supporters right now as any black Trump supporter is getting attacked.
The key to this story is that it was because Trump was the target. If this had been some average Joe from the street nobody would have cared. The fact it was cracked allegedly within 40 mins tells you a lot.
See also Encrochat. It was well known that a lot of criminals used it. So a lot of resource went into cracking it. And it was successful and involved hundreds of convictions in the UK plus elsewhere. If it was a handful of people committing benefit fraud on it, you can bet nobody would have cared enough to bother.
> If this had been some average Joe from the street nobody would have cared.
Do we know that Trump was the target?
It would be the perfect murder. The focus of your dislike is a proponent of candidate X, you wait for him to go to an X party rally and shoot him. Various 3 letter agencies all run around looking for terrorists or anti-X activists, nobody investigates the neighbor of the poor innocent bystander.
Of course you have to be a good shot - unlike the guy that tried to kill JFK's driver in Dallas
The “40 minutes” is most likely just luck.
If he had a very very very old iPhone that cellebrite could get into, they would still have to try passcodes until they find the correct one. Each passcode takes 80ms, trying all million possible six digit passcodes takes 22 hours. Cracking it takes anywhere from 0 minutes to 22 hours. 40 minutes means you were quite lucky.
PS You can use a ten digit passcode or ten digits and letters, and even if celebrite cracks the three generations of iPhones it can’t currently crack, you are quite safe.
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