Snapchats Don't Disappear 85
Mobile photo-sharing app SnapChat has one claim to fame, compared to other ways people might share photos from their cellphones: the photos, once viewed, disappear from view, after a pre-set length of time. However, it turns out they don't disappear as thoroughly as users might like. New submitter nefus writes with this excerpt from Forbes: "Richard Hickman of Decipher Forensics found that it's possible to pull Snapchat photos from Android phones simply by downloading data from the phone using forensics software and removing a '.NoMedia' file extension that was keeping the photos from being viewed on the device. He published his findings online and local TV station KSL has a video showing how it's done."
But on Colbert (Score:2, Funny)
The two douches who made it said it deletes it off the internet forever.
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..run it on a emulator? at the very least use a silent screenshot app.
or take the screenshots with the screenshot tool that comes with the adt.
Re:But on Colbert (Score:4, Funny)
People need to realize that nothing that you send to another person can ever be guaranteed to "self-destruct".
Sure it can. I've seen it on Mission Impossible.
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Sure it can. I've seen it on Mission Impossible.
And didn't we see that on Mythbusters?
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There's a pretty big difference between someone has a small window to archive a pic, and everything automatically archived.
It's not about protecting oneself from a pre-planned malicious act, but from something accidentally surfacing ten years later, or even intentionally, as the default for everything is a fairly permanent archive. The odds that the type of person that is going to go through the effort to make the screenshots (via emulator) doesn't send off so many creeper vibes as to never get relevant pic
Re: Foresnics software? (Score:1)
What makes you think that the forensics software isn't a 3rd party file manager that lets you see more than the 70% of your crappy file manager?
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Re:Never trust an "app" to do anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you wanted actual security, you'd use a real program to do it instead of an app.
If you wanted actual security, you wouldn't have it on a computer.
Re:Never trust an "app" to do anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you wanted actual security, you'd use a real program to do it instead of an app.
If you wanted actual security, you wouldn't have it on a computer.
If you wanted actual security, you wouldn't send it to someone else's computer.
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If you wanted actual security, you'd use a real program to do it instead of an app.
If you wanted actual security, you wouldn't have it on a computer.
If you wanted actual security, you wouldn't send it to someone else's computer.
If you wanted actual security, you would ensure that no other computer could access the files on your computer.
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Apps are worthless pieces of junk that never do anything correctly.
If you wanted actual security, you'd use a real program to do it instead of an app.
Sorry, but what's the difference? You do realise that App is short for "Application", i.e. what apple calls every program on your machine. On OS X (and iOS) the equivalent to the .exe extension is .app.
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Re:Never trust an "app" to do anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. He means: "Do not feed me. I'm a troll."
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No, I genuinely don't know what he means –what's the supposed difference between a program that runs on a computer, and a program that runs on a small computer?
Keep it in memory (Score:5, Insightful)
How hard could it be to store it in RAM as it is received and then zero out the memory when finished. Sure it is not remotely hack proof but at least when it is broken you can only get new photos.
Or if you don't have the RAM to store the pic store an encryption key.
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Re:Keep it in memory (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I do know how much it is.
It's like 6MB, at worst. While it isn't enough for an uncompressed image, most JPEGS fall under the size limit of this.
http://ryanolson.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/test-how-changing-the-max-amount-of-memory-per-vm-heap-can-effect-your-rom-cyanogen/ [wordpress.com]
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it would need to store more than one picture in RAM though -- to never touch the flash memory it would need to store every picture you have not yet viewed. Of course, the bigger concern is probably that rebooting your phone would wipe every image you haven't yet seen.
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Then how do applications even display images to the user if they won't fit in memory?
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Normally works great, but... looks like someone screwed up, perhaps? Maybe a debug flag that renames the file extension instead of deleting the image got left on... We could speculate for hours, but if it wasn't an accident... that's pretty p
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Then how do applications even display images to the user if they won't fit in memory?
well they do fit.. just keeping a lot of them wouldn't be feasible.
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The dalvik VM has a (small) fixed heap size. Storing received photos in RAM wouldn't be a viable option here.
they could use the ndk to get around that.
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whats the difference, its not 1983 anymore, you dont run one app and shut off your machine, when was your phone rebooted last? why cant they just zero out the flash memory, what is your point of RAM, if they are not going to delete it off your phone what makes you think they are going to delete it off their SERVERs
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Without a special API you can't guarantee that you overwrote the right section of storage (wear leveling and copy on write). But as reve_etrange said, just deleting the file would be a very good start.
Good? (Score:1, Insightful)
Down with DRM in all forms.
Vanishing pictures... thats drm. don't care how you spin it.
FUD (Score:3, Informative)
"However, once the photo is opened, and the timer goes off, Snapchat does in fact delete the photo."
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/09/actually-snapchat-photos-are-just-as-deleted-as-any-other-file-you-trash/ [techcrunch.com]
Super DURRRRRRRRR! (Score:2, Redundant)
What morons thought their claims were even remotely possible. You don't even need to be a techie to save the images forever. Just snap a screenshot while the image is being displayed. Done.
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Just snap a screenshot while the image is being displayed. Done.
Yeah but that notifies the other person, and I think that it can even be disabled.
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I don't see how notifying the sender does anything to change the fact that I now have a permanent copy of their junk. Or I could get a 3rd party screen capture program that doesn't inform anyone that the images has been saved.
Re:Super DURRRRRRRRR! (Score:5, Insightful)
They'd likely be in your social circles, too, so you'd catch shit for your evil deed.
Thank goodness that people sending photographs of their genitals to other people don't have any impulsive friends, make poor choices in who to hang out with, or have ever befriended random people on the net and quickly deem them friends.
Teens in particular are well known for making choices based on long term thinking and a strong sense of never engaging in revenge or social warfare. First world schools are a shining beacon on the hill for compassion, empathy and an overwhelming sense of equality and egalitarian concern for the mental well being of others. You are right: these people would never engage in behavior that damaged another peer. Skilled bullies and social climbers are never popular in middle school and high school, and embarrassing events are quickly hushed up.
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This is a fantastic piece of literature that you've created. I want to turn it into a pamphlet or something, to pass out to people.
Actually, I'd make this part of the login/click-through screen for uploading anything to FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Imagine what it could change!
Wut. (Score:4, Insightful)
Forensics software? Just open up the folder. I mean, you have to rooted, but that's not really weird. Look, here's someone talking about getting pics and vids [reddit.com] before even viewing them in Snapchat. Back in March. If you have to output something to the user, they're going to have to be able to get at it one way or another.
Pooh loves his honey (Score:2)
And that, my friends, is what we call a honeypot. Don't trust anyone with your data if you're about to do something stupid/illegal with your computing device.
So, Uhmm, Yeah... (Score:1)
This is a surprise to anybody? (Score:2)
Seems that people still do not have a clue how computers work. None at all. Here is a hint: If it can be viewed, it can be copied.
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Title is Spot-On Accurate! (Score:4, Informative)
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> Because the pics DO disappear when you open them. Both from your phone and their servers
> There's just an exploit where rooted phones can view/copy the pictures before they are opened/deleted.
No. This is explicitly about recovering the images AFTER they have been viewed. Grabbing them before they have been viewed is old news.
This guy has proved that "deleted" just means renamed and pending actual delete. Even then it sounds like an undelete file tool could get some back. Snapchat should be overw
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're presenting it as an all-or-nothing issue. There are a couple of shades of gray in between. The internal storage of Android devices is typically formatted as ext4, wtih the wear-leveling (I think) done by the flash memory controller. Accessing the "overwritten" data would require quite a bit more work than just analyzing a block-device image. I suspect that you might have to desolder the NAND memory
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If you are paranoid enough to encrypt the data locally after receipt at the phone, then you had better also examine the how the sender and the snapchat server deal with the data. Better setup a public-key system and figure out how to do the key management without discouraging Joe and Jane User.
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. Due to wear-leveling and the likes that is not good enough for data that is supposed to be gone forever. The correct way would be for the app to generate a random encryption key in RAM, encrypt the file with that, save the file to the filesystem but keep the key in RAM,
If you are at the level where you have to worry about an attacker who is able to pull data off of a drive's internally managed wear-leveling management buffers then you also have to worry about all kinds of other less complex attack vectors like a daemon process that silently takes a screenshot every time snapchat displays a photo.
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Because the pics DO disappear when you open them. Both from your phone and their servers
How do you know the pictures "disappear" from their servers? We've already ascertained they are not actually removed from the phone. How do we know the server admins don't keep some of the more "interesting" photos for their private collection? Of course, they wouldn't disclose that publicly.
Furthermore, in the United States, the Stored Communications Act mandates that providers must preserve stored data for up to 180 days upon government request. For an application whose target demographic seems to be horn
I don't get it (Score:1)
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And then they trust something like this? "Digital natives", my ass. If that is really the use case for this thing, then people have even less of a clue today.
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"I just can't think of a situation in which I would send a photo to someone and subsequently care whether they saved it or not. "
Sending nude pictures to your (teen) lover while reducing the risk that they get to be seen by the rest of the school if the relation goes sour. Or to prevent being charged for spreading child porn, like these kids: http://www.connectsafely.org/Commentaries-Staff/teens-convictions-for-child-porn-upheld.html [connectsafely.org]
Maybe cheating husbands and wives who don't want to leave too many trails.
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Snap. Chat. Supposedly a method of instant messaging, but with photos. Yeah, I don't get it either. My (still a teen, but just barely) niece uses it to send me pics of her goofing around with her younger siblings. Beyond that I think whatever appeal there is exists in how simple it is to use. Heard a story on NPR where the kids aren't even using SnapChat for sexting.
Easy fix! (Score:5, Funny)
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Or... (Score:2)
Another fix would be changing the file extension to ".NothingToSeeHereMoveAlong".
Or Maybe :
".TheseArentTheBoobiesYoureLookingFor.HandWaving"