Schneier on Security

what's the problem Apple? • April 3, 2017 12:57 AM

@reader @Daniel

I agree that better stories are out there.

Regardless, general petraeus and his mistress forgot to include the military-industrial-congressional-spook-law_enforcement complex, presumably, in their threat model. I am referring to their use of saved drafts in a shared gmail account. Perhaps now, if not then, they realize, obviously, that their threat model was much greater than their respective spouses.

Regardless I enjoyed reading the Gizmodo story and perhaps director comey should now include Gizmodo and its story author, Ashley Feinberg, in his threat model.

Perhaps if director comey read some more on this blog he could improve his opsec; or was his babbling intentional to get him more press coverage? He could start with:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/friday_squid_bl_570.html#comments
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/friday_squid_bl_571.html#comments
At least on this blog somewhere he might learn that putting backdoors in corporate products is of limited use to talented adversaries, if he doesn’t know that already.

Other stories with the fbi in the news include:

Democracy Now
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/21/fbi_head_trump_campaign_under_investigation
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/3/as_sessions_recuses_himself_from_campaign
from the latter:

“AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about this other concern of a group of Democrats, the leadership on the House committee probing Russia’s efforts to interfere with the U.S. election. People like Adam Schiff, the Senator Feinstein of California are saying that the FBI is refusing to cooperate in handing information over—very willing to talk about investigating Hillary Clinton and then saying, a few days before the election, no, they weren’t. But when it comes to this, what about this, Marcy Wheeler, the clash of an intelligence agency with Congress?

MARCY WHEELER: You know, I’m a little bit less worried about this than those Democratic leaders are. And that’s partly because I’ve covered Jim Comey for years, and he’s very self-righteous. He likes to think of himself as this great crusader. Not necessarily a good thing as FBI director. I said that when he was confirmed under the Obama administration. But Democrats, at that point, thought he was—you know, he was pure and great. The Hillary investigation was public. Congress was involved in it. Yes, it was leaking like a sieve. And I do—you know, what Jim Comey did last July, and follow-up in October, was completely inappropriate. You know, don’t get me wrong. That was the unusual thing. But it was—I think it should be treated differently from an ongoing counterintelligence investigation. I mean, there are people who, for example, might be sources named in the dossier that Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent who this dossier got leaked by BuzzFeed in January—there are people who might be sources in that who have have since died, in suspect circumstances. Several—four, actually—Russians have been charged with treason, with allegations that they’re tied to this investigation. The reason you don’t want a counterintelligence investigation to be shared with a Congress that is obviously leaking is because stuff like that—I mean, not only can the targets in the investigation find out and work to undercut the investigation, but people can get killed or charged with treason. And that’s not going to help us get to the bottom of this. So, you know, Pelosi, Schiff are absolutely right to be furious at Comey for what he did against Hillary Clinton last year. I’m not excusing that at all. But they should at least take a step back and think about whether they want the FBI investigation to be successful or whether they want it to be politically damaging, because those may be two different things.”

I assume it was director comey’s blathering that tipped the election to president trump. If true, I wonder if he is happy with it’s consequences.

Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-23/-bro-i-m-going-rogue-the-wall-street-informant-who-double-crossed-the-fbi

Eff
https://www.eff.org/pages/playpen-cases-frequently-asked-questions
the first link there provides some background