NSA Couldn't Hack San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone; Now Working On Exploiting IoT (theintercept.com) 90
The FBI did turn to NSA when it was trying to hack into the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, according to an NSA official. But to many's surprise, one of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies couldn't hack into that particular iPhone 5c model. "We don't do every phone, every variation of phone," said Richard Ledgett, the NSA's deputy director. "If we don't have a bad guy who's using it, we don't do that." According to Ledgett, apparently the agency has to prioritize its resources and thus it doesn't know how to get into every popular gadget. According to the report, the agency is now looking to exploit Internet of Things, including biomedical devices. The Intercept reports: Biomedical devices could be a new source of information for the NSA's data hoards -- "maybe a niche kind of thing ... a tool in the toolbox," he said, though he added that there are easier ways to keep track of overseas terrorists and foreign intelligence agents. When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things -- billions of interconnected devices -- would be "a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza," he replied, "Both."
Why would they have admitted they could? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The NSA is not well known for revealing what it can and cannot do. It has secrets and values them. Why would we care what any NSA employee says that it CAN do, when we know that it's mission is to keep quiet about that. I don't even know why I am saying this. You already know that the NSA can do more than they are willing to admit publicly or even privately to government agencies to which they report.
Re:Why would they have admitted they could? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with a brain knew there was nothing of value on that phone. They shredded their two personal phones. If the NSA has the capabilities why would they have wasted them on such a dumb fucking case that was a loser?
The hell makes you think the NSAs hacking capabilities have fuck-all to do with some loser of a legal case?
Regardless if they want to admit they have the capabilities or not, they don't have to ask permission. They tried that with Mr. Cook solely to establish legal precedent and failed. This would have purely been an intelligence organization breaking in, which hardly requires a pretty please may I...
I have a hard time even swallowing the claim that they could not break in to the damn thing. Chances are that's just smoke and mirrors too.
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> If the NSA has the capabilities why would they have wasted them on such a dumb fucking case that was a loser?
Especially if it would have revealed resources that they rely on for more important monitoring. The infamous historic example of this is the "Coventry Blitz" in World War II. According to some witnesses, the Allies had warning of attacks on Coventry from successfully decrypting the "Enigma" military encryption. According to the commander of Allied intelligence, they refused to improve defenses a
Reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things. (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a list of reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things:
1) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I sleep.
2) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I pee.
3) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I make kaka.
4) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I pleasure myself.
5) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I wash my body in the shower.
6) Internet of Things devices could watch me while I relax in the tub.
7) Internet of Things devices could watch me whil
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61 ) Internet of Things devices could be watching me fold this sheet of Reynolds Oven Strength Wrap into a hat!
Re: Reasons why I don't like the Internet of Thing (Score:2)
#3 and #4 likely occur simultaneously. You can list them under one bullet point.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously? Who believes anything the NSA says at this point?
I don't know if they can hack that phone or not, but I'm not believing what they tell me about it.
It might coincidentally be the truth, but I'm not taking their word for it.
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Seriously? Who believes anything the NSA says at this point?
Well, when they say that IoT is going to be a security nightmare, and they think the NSA will be able to exploit it.. well I trust that they're telling the truth on that.
NSA's Death Note? (Score:1)
So if the NSA want their own Death Note [wikipedia.org] we are going to need a few more L Sonwdens.
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Lol.. you post in English, on an English speaking site, and link to the Spanish language wiki article about a Japanese cartoon.
At first, I thought you were an idiot. Then I realized this obfuscation is clever enough to mimic the nsa misdirection illustrated in so many articles where they admit to not admitting something of importance which is claimed to not be important.
I write this as a commercial on TV is trying to sell a night light for the crapper. Evidently multiple colors help the shit in the night o
IoT is the new mesh. We should exploit it too (Score:5, Funny)
Urbanites won't need an ISP once everything connects to each other. It shouldn't be too difficult to spy on the NSA while they're spying on us. Surf's up. Catch the wave.
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You're absolutely right about the mesh network being insecure: but SO IS THE INTERNET (see NSA and Snowdon) and the physical and routing layers should always be regarded as untrusted.
The only solution is to use a secure VPN at all times. Of course you'll need an end point at some point, but I'd rather my end point was on a different continent, and ideally a country with minimal treaties with my own.
Of course performance for such a thing will be in the toilet. Ever used Tor? It's slow as well. But if faced w
Pinocchio nose (Score:2, Interesting)
What a bunch of fucking liars. Some private company contracted by FBI could do it and the NSA couldn't ? Maybe the Sheeple believe it, but I don't.
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While I have a healthy skepticism about NSA claims it actually aligns with my expectations that they're not really prepared for this sort of work. The NSA is a bureau of lawyers, just like the engineer-free NTSB and NRC or the analyst-free SEC, etc. There are some limited number of people with actual technical skills in these TLAs, but they have no authority and they are kept carefully on a leash lest they notice something inconvenient to the horde of lawyers.
Maybe the NSA had real in-house talent durin
Re:Pinocchio nose (Score:5, Insightful)
(holds up sign) citation needed.
collecting and analyzing data is not the work of lawyers and managers. maybe those were the people you dealt with (?) but should we think the nsa is understaffed wrt hacking talent?
its funny that people argue about this or that news report regarding the three letter agencies. as if we'd even know or anyone who could talk about it, would know a fucking thing.
argue about whether batman could beat jesus in a go-kart race. if you like fantasy and guessing, at least be creative about it and don't kid yourself that its really real.
the nsa could have the most advanced computing center in the world. or it may not. how the hell would we know? the point is that they are secret and the bigger point is that we, somehow, as a people, have allowed an agency to grow to the point where we have zero insight as to what goes on.
is this something the founding fathers would have thought to be OK? again, playing the fantasy/guess game, I don't think they'd approve of where we have gone and what level of power we've signed away to countless government orgs.
Shift key (Score:2)
Perhaps not using the shift key is, for you, a form of encryption? I didn't find his post at all hard to read.
Internet of Deez Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
In ten years, when the NSA is monitoring your insulin pump and IUD, maybe Sir Tim Berners-Lee can come out with another think piece about he's shocked, shocked, I tell you that the "Internet of Things" has become the biggest surveillance network in history.
And we can all go, "If we'd only had some inkling that this could happen".
Now go shopping with your digital wallet because all you have to do is wave your magic smartphone and everybody behind you in line will think you're just the coolest.
The good guys :) (Score:1, Interesting)
See, the NSA isn't the evil organization that is treating you as an active threat to your own country for no reason.
They are the good guys, the ones who try to stop the terrorists from doing mass shootings! And they aren't even omnipotent, they can't even crack your iPhone!
You know it's true because it's in the news.
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Sorry but you seem really gullible saying something like that.
Yes obviously they are incredibly flawed overgrown infants with no real consciousness and thereby no conscience.
That is how they are able to do something so utterly evil every day and live with it.
That was the plan in raising a generation man-babies. Skilled workers that will do anything you ask and that are too absorbed in their diversions to question anything. Zombies.
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After what has come out I'd say someone would have to be gullible to think other than what I have written.
They should be shut down and replaced by professional military intelligence.
The casual evil they do springs more from incompetence producing a poor chain of command and no enforcement of ethics than any sort of ability.
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The NSA is the "professional military intelligence" you speak of.
How would changing the personnel of the agency affect its directive? They are all following orders.
You are honestly so idiotic as to believe this whole thing was cooked up and executed entirely within that agency with no support or direction from outside? Are you totally unaware of the history of this program? The NSA inherited this program, tools and all, from the TIA [wikipedia.org] "research project".
The casual evil they do and the ignorance under which th
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Orders from highly unprofessional but well connected idiots (eg. Star Trek set thing that was a fuckup on every level - the designer should never have been let on site for security reasons for a start) and plenty of anecdotes about unprofessional staff before even the outsourcing to the bunch that employed Snowden got out. Even that outsourcing was a bit of nepotism that never should have happened but a form
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You just aren't getting it I guess.
This is all business as usual. Things ALWAYS go like this.
You are trying to give your government an out by saying what a tragedy it is they were tricked into hiring these incompetent people.
It. Was. All. Intentional.
These people's incompetence is valuable. They are still good at their trained tasks, they are easily manipulable, and they allow for central command to go blameless because people like you assume that when something goes wrong it was a personal mistake of the p
Your strawman was never here (Score:2)
Good reason to shut them down and go back to the sort of professional military intelligence that they replaced some decades back.
Really? Try actually reading posts before writing something so STUPID in response. Your strawman was never here.
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What makes you think "that kind" of professional military intelligence was replaced? That it doesn't exist and deals with a higher level of information refinement?
Of course this is the scheme.
If you have the sense to guess that this is true, then you might start to realize that the object of intelligence is less defense and more governance. Military governance. That is the reality
WTF kind of idiot question is this? (Score:4, Informative)
When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things -- billions of interconnected devices -- would be "a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza,"
The very fact that it's a security nightmare means that it's a SIGINT bonanza.
So... (Score:2)
I don't know how to feel about that. Will our privacy be saved by bureaucratic inefficiency?
Easy to test (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Put tons of links in the web history to places you can monitor hits.
3. Lock the phone and reset the appleid password.
4. Throw the phone over a fence at Fort Meade.
5. Sit back and watch for those hits. I bet it won't take long.
6. ???
7. Profit!
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I believe that some links that were never public (blind) were 'clicked on' by a bot or even a human, via an ENCRYPTED skype chat, years ago. this was a proof that skype was broken and not secure, even before ebay bought them.
nothing can resist links ;) if your link get triggered and there was only 1 place it was published, that's that. its all the proof you need.
so yeah, that's a good idea. not the part about throwing it over the fence. can't think that would be very healthy for the person doing it.
You're not thinking like an intelligence agency (Score:5, Interesting)
So the "fact" that the NSA couldn't crack it for the FBI doesn't really tell us anything - that would've been their story whether or not they could crack it. Heck, for all we know, the NSA did crack it, and this whole story about the FBI paying some random hacker is a charade to cover it up.
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Title 50 USC actually is very clear about what the NSA may and may not do to help civil law enforcement agencies. If the NSA already has the tools to do it, they may, in certain cases, provide technical assistance. However, they may not, in any way, use Title 50 money to develop tools for civil law enforcement. I'm not seing a business case for the NSA to crack encryption on a smart phone with physical access (not in their job drawer) and consequently, this is not a surprise and says nothing about the NSA's
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The security model in the iPhone 6 is different and a bit more robust than the 5C. If they cracked the San Bernardino phone they would have figured out how to crack an insignificant number of iPhones.
Besides the FBI isn't the NSA. They likely don't even want to talk to each other much less trade hard won information.
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If whatever J. Random Hacker the FBI wound up paying to do so could have that iPhone, theres no way the NSA doesn't have the ability as well. So, really, the secret is out and everyone does know that they have the ability.
They just didn't want to do so. Whether that's because they're keeping their heads down for a while post-Snowden, or they didn't think it was worth their time, or they had some *other* backdoor they didn't want to reveal, or if it was political wrangling and/or acrimony between the two a
Translation into English (Score:2)
"We don't do every phone, every variation of phone," said Richard Ledgett, the NSA's deputy director.
English Translation: "We had every bit of data that phone had to offer within five minutes. There was nothing interesting on it, so we told the FBI to go pound sand and told everybody else that we just couldn't beat Apple's encryption. LOL"
I wouldn't either (Score:1)
Why would NSA piss away capability on something as trivial and unimportant as this? If I were an NSA goon I would do what I do best... LIE.. encryption...what's that? Way over our heads...
It was already widely believe odds of finding anything of importance on iPhone were slim going in and surprise nothing was found. The whole exercise was primarily FBI making a political statement in a case where they believed they would have maximal political advantage. Would have been disappointed in NSA if they gave
Walki talki and transmit numbers (Score:1)
133, 44, 88, 10. Then the other guy has a book that the both of you have a copy of. The numbers correspond to characters. Unbreakable one-time-pad style using low-tech radio from the eighties. No WiFi needed. Works great for communicating evil plans.
One-time pads (Score:2)
WRONG. A one-time pad, used correctly, is unbreakable. "Used correctly" means you only use a page to encode a single message (hence the moniker), the message must be no longer than that page, and the numbers on the pad are truly random (ok, as random as can be); plus you have to ensure that the custody chain of the one-time pads, and (preferably) destroy the page after use.
If you don't believe me, then look it up. Hint: google, wikipedia.
Wording (Score:2)
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If they want you to know something, they will tell you the truth. If they don't want you to know something, they either don't tell, or they lie. There is absolutely no reason why the NSA would try to to tell you misleading truths, when they can much easier tell you misleading lies.
Internet of Total Control (Score:4, Informative)
When we know for a fact that IoT will only subject us to even more intrusive data collection, spying and constant privacy violations, why would anyone willingly put something like that in their homes? We can also assume that bad actors know of these capabilities and they're practically useless in preventing them from carrying out whatever they would do. To me it seems this is all about mass crowd control. Creating an extensive backlog of every citizens life, one that can be revisited when necessary.