Ring Cancels Its Partnership with Flock
It’s a demonstration of how toxic the surveillance-tech company Flock has become when Amazon’s Ring cancels the partnership between the two companies.
As Hamilton Nolan advises, remove your Ring doorbell.
Entries Tagged "law enforcement"
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First Sentencing in Scheme to Help North Koreans Infiltrate US Companies
An Arizona woman was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for her role helping North Korean workers infiltrate US companies by pretending to be US workers.
From an article:
According to court documents, Chapman hosted the North Korean IT workers’ computers in her own home between October 2020 and October 2023, creating a so-called “laptop farm” which was used to make it appear as though the devices were located in the United States.
The North Koreans were hired as remote software and application developers with multiple Fortune 500 companies, including an aerospace and defense company, a major television network, a Silicon Valley technology company, and a high-profile company.
As a result of this scheme, they collected over $17 million in illicit revenue paid for their work, which was shared with Chapman, who processed their paychecks through her financial accounts.
“Chapman operated a ‘laptop farm’ where she received and hosted computers from the U.S. companies her home, so that the companies would believe the workers were in the United States,” the Justice Department said on Thursday.
“Chapman also shipped 49 laptops and other devices supplied by U.S. companies to locations overseas, including multiple shipments to a city in China on the border with North Korea. More than 90 laptops were seized from Chapman’s home following the execution of a search warrant in October 2023.”
Silk Typhoon Hackers Indicted
Lots of interesting details in the story:
The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictment of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions around the world, including eight staffers for the contractor i-Soon, two officials at China’s Ministry of Public Security who allegedly worked with them, and two other alleged hackers who are said to be part of the Chinese hacker group APT27, or Silk Typhoon, which prosecutors say was involved in the US Treasury breach late last year.
[…]
According to prosecutors, the group as a whole has targeted US state and federal agencies, foreign ministries of countries across Asia, Chinese dissidents, US-based media outlets that have criticized the Chinese government, and most recently the US Treasury, which was breached between September and December of last year. An internal Treasury report obtained by Bloomberg News found that hackers had penetrated at least 400 of the agency’s PCs and stole more than 3,000 files in that intrusion.
The indictments highlight how, in some cases, the hackers operated with a surprising degree of autonomy, even choosing targets on their own before selling stolen information to Chinese government clients. The indictment against Yin Kecheng, who was previously sanctioned by the Treasury Department in January for his involvement in the Treasury breach, quotes from his communications with a colleague in which he notes his personal preference for hacking American targets and how he’s seeking to ‘break into a big target,’ which he hoped would allow him to make enough money to buy a car.
UK Is Ordering Apple to Break Its Own Encryption
The Washington Post is reporting that the UK government has served Apple with a “technical capability notice” as defined by the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, requiring it to break the Advanced Data Protection encryption in iCloud for the benefit of law enforcement.
This is a big deal, and something we in the security community have worried was coming for a while now.
The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Apple can appeal the U.K. capability notice to a secret technical panel, which would consider arguments about the expense of the requirement, and to a judge who would weigh whether the request was in proportion to the government’s needs. But the law does not permit Apple to delay complying during an appeal.
In March, when the company was on notice that such a requirement might be coming, it told Parliament: “There is no reason why the U.K. [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption.”
Apple is likely to turn the feature off for UK users rather than break it for everyone worldwide. Of course, UK users will be able to spoof their location. But this might not be enough. According to the law, Apple would not be able to offer the feature to anyone who is in the UK at any point: for example, a visitor from the US.
And what happens next? Australia has a law enabling it to ask for the same thing. Will it? Will even more countries follow?
This is madness.
Friday Squid Blogging: Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device
Fifteen years ago I blogged about a different SQUID. Here’s an update:
Fleeing drivers are a common problem for law enforcement. They just won’t stop unless persuaded—persuaded by bullets, barriers, spikes, or snares. Each option is risky business. Shooting up a fugitive’s car is one possibility. But what if children or hostages are in it? Lay down barriers, and the driver might swerve into a school bus. Spike his tires, and he might fishtail into a van—if the spikes stop him at all. Existing traps, made from elastic, may halt a Hyundai, but they’re no match for a Hummer. In addition, officers put themselves at risk of being run down while setting up the traps.
But what if an officer could lay down a road trap in seconds, then activate it from a nearby hiding place? What if—like sea monsters of ancient lore—the trap could reach up from below to ensnare anything from a MINI Cooper to a Ford Expedition? What if this trap were as small as a spare tire, as light as a tire jack, and cost under a grand?
Thanks to imaginative design and engineering funded by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Office of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), such a trap may be stopping brigands by 2010. It’s called the Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device, or SQUID. When closed, the current prototype resembles a cheese wheel full of holes. When open (deployed), it becomes a mass of tentacles entangling the axles. By stopping the axles instead of the wheels, SQUID may change how fleeing drivers are, quite literally, caught.
Details about the iOS Inactivity Reboot Feature
I recently wrote about the new iOS feature that forces an iPhone to reboot after it’s been inactive for a longish period of time.
Here are the technical details, discovered through reverse engineering. The feature triggers after seventy-two hours of inactivity, even it is remains connected to Wi-Fi.
What Graykey Can and Can’t Unlock
This is from 404 Media:
The Graykey, a phone unlocking and forensics tool that is used by law enforcement around the world, is only able to retrieve partial data from all modern iPhones that run iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1, which are two recently released versions of Apple’s mobile operating system, according to documents describing the tool’s capabilities in granular detail obtained by 404 Media. The documents do not appear to contain information about what Graykey can access from the public release of iOS 18.1, which was released on October 28.
More information:
Meanwhile, Graykey’s performance with Android phones varies, largely due to the diversity of devices and manufacturers. On Google’s Pixel lineup, Graykey can only partially access data from the latest Pixel 9 when in an “After First Unlock” (AFU) state—where the phone has been unlocked at least once since being powered on.
Criminals Exploiting FBI Emergency Data Requests
I’ve been writing about the problem with lawful-access backdoors in encryption for decades now: that as soon as you create a mechanism for law enforcement to bypass encryption, the bad guys will use it too.
Turns out the same thing is true for non-technical backdoors:
The advisory said that the cybercriminals were successful in masquerading as law enforcement by using compromised police accounts to send emails to companies requesting user data. In some cases, the requests cited false threats, like claims of human trafficking and, in one case, that an individual would “suffer greatly or die” unless the company in question returns the requested information.
The FBI said the compromised access to law enforcement accounts allowed the hackers to generate legitimate-looking subpoenas that resulted in companies turning over usernames, emails, phone numbers, and other private information about their users.
Law Enforcement Deanonymizes Tor Users
The German police have successfully deanonymized at least four Tor users. It appears they watch known Tor relays and known suspects, and use timing analysis to figure out who is using what relay.
Hacker News thread.
Robot Dog Internet Jammer
Supposedly the DHS has these:
The robot, called “NEO,” is a modified version of the “Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle” (Q-UGV) sold to law enforcement by a company called Ghost Robotics. Benjamine Huffman, the director of DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), told police at the 2024 Border Security Expo in Texas that DHS is increasingly worried about criminals setting “booby traps” with internet of things and smart home devices, and that NEO allows DHS to remotely disable the home networks of a home or building law enforcement is raiding. The Border Security Expo is open only to law enforcement and defense contractors. A transcript of Huffman’s speech was obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Dave Maass using a Freedom of Information Act request and was shared with 404 Media.
“NEO can enter a potentially dangerous environment to provide video and audio feedback to the officers before entry and allow them to communicate with those in that environment,” Huffman said, according to the transcript. “NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a ‘denial-of-service’ (DoS) event to disable ‘Internet of Things’ devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made.”
Slashdot thread.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.