Entries Tagged "police"

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Possible Vulnerability in Apple’s Automatic Reboot

404Media is reporting (alternate link) that a cyber-weapons arms manufacturer is exploiting a vulnerability in iOS to bypass its automatic reboot security feature. This is the feature that automatically puts an iPhone into a more secure state if it hasn’t been used for 72 hours.

The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode, according to the video.

“This is an absolute game changer for iOS forensics and a function that I wish we had years ago,” a Magnet employee says in the leaked video, specifically mentioning that the solution is targeted at the iPhone’s inactivity reboot feature and the data it makes unavailable. GrayKey Preserve and Evidence Preservation Mode are also designed to combat another iPhone feature that automatically deletes certain data ­- such as cached locations, and recently deleted photos and iMessages ­- after a certain number of days. “We’re gonna be able to preserve that data for an infinite amount of time.”

Presumably, now that Apple engineers know that this flaw exists they can find and fix it. AI turns out to be really good at this sort of thing.

Another news article.

Posted on October 6, 2026 at 7:06 AM • View Comments

Using Device Linking to Eavesdrop on WhatsApp and Signal

Modern messaging apps allow users to link their phone accounts to their computer desktop. Eavesdroppers are taking advantage of this capability:

Apps such as WhatsApp Web and Signal Desktop allow people to use their accounts on other devices, such as laptops or desktop computers.

Germany’s Customs Office has been using these features to connect a police-controlled computer to a suspect’s account.

Once connected, messages can be delivered to that computer without the police having to crack the encryption protecting them.

Netzpoltik details that police are able to gain access in this way either through physical access to someone’s phone or by intercepting verification codes via a state-sanctioned phishing attack or intercepting SMS messages via telephone surveillance.

That last paragraph is important. Making this work requires user consent.

What we want is a feature that displays connected devices, so users could notice if a new device gets connected to their account.

Posted on September 29, 2026 at 7:02 AM • View Comments

Police Are Hiding Their Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras

A usage policy for Flock license plate reader cameras tells police not to talk about the cameras:

When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain terms, to keep them a secret: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”

This reminds me of IMSI-catchers (Stingray was the most popular) a couple of decades ago. Police would go to even more extremes to hide their usage.

Posted on August 20, 2026 at 5:48 AM • View Comments

Robot Police Officers

We’ve taken one small step towards robot police officers: a drone capable of disarming a suspect:

In a June 22 video posted on the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Instagram page, an officer wearing goggles can be seen operating a drone to retrieve a knife from an armed suspect hiding inside a cluttered house. “After not responding to negotiators, a drone was deployed inside the residence,” the post says. “Drone pilots located the suspect hiding in a corner of a garage” and then used a high-powered magnet attached to the drone to grab the knife out of the suspect’s hand. In the video ­ which is soundtracked by the “Mission: Impossible” theme song—the intercepted knife can be seen spinning around in the air as the drone carries it back to the deputies.

Slashdot thread.

Posted on June 29, 2026 at 6:55 AM • View Comments

Hong Kong Police Can Force You to Reveal Your Encryption Keys

According to a new law, the Hong Kong police can demand that you reveal the encryption keys protecting your computer, phone, hard drives, etc.—even if you are just transiting the airport.

In a security alert dated March 26, the U.S. Consulate General said that, on March 23, 2026, Hong Kong authorities changed the rules governing enforcement of the National Security Law. Under the revised framework, police can require individuals to provide passwords or other assistance to access personal electronic devices, including cellphones and laptops.

The consulate warned that refusal to comply is now a criminal offense. It also said authorities have expanded powers to take and keep personal electronic devices as evidence if they claim the devices are linked to national security offenses.

Posted on April 7, 2026 at 5:45 AM • View Comments

Encryption Backdoor in Military/Police Radios

I wrote about this in 2023. Here’s the story:

Three Dutch security analysts discovered the vulnerabilities­—five in total—­in a European radio standard called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera, and others. The standard has been used in radios since the ’90s, but the flaws remained unknown because encryption algorithms used in TETRA were kept secret until now.

There’s new news:

In 2023, Carlo Meijer, Wouter Bokslag, and Jos Wetzels of security firm Midnight Blue, based in the Netherlands, discovered vulnerabilities in encryption algorithms that are part of a European radio standard created by ETSI called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which has been baked into radio systems made by Motorola, Damm, Sepura, and others since the ’90s. The flaws remained unknown publicly until their disclosure, because ETSI refused for decades to let anyone examine the proprietary algorithms.

[…]

But now the same researchers have found that at least one implementation of the end-to-end encryption solution endorsed by ETSI has a similar issue that makes it equally vulnerable to eavesdropping. The encryption algorithm used for the device they examined starts with a 128-bit key, but this gets compressed to 56 bits before it encrypts traffic, making it easier to crack. It’s not clear who is using this implementation of the end-to-end encryption algorithm, nor if anyone using devices with the end-to-end encryption is aware of the security vulnerability in them.

[…]

The end-to-end encryption the researchers examined recently is designed to run on top of TETRA encryption algorithms.

The researchers found the issue with the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) only after extracting and reverse-engineering the E2EE algorithm used in a radio made by Sepura.

These seem to be deliberately implemented backdoors.

Posted on August 26, 2025 at 7:06 AM • View Comments

Surveillance in the US

Good article from 404 Media on the cozy surveillance relationship between local Oregon police and ICE:

In the email thread, crime analysts from several local police departments and the FBI introduced themselves to each other and made lists of surveillance tools and tactics they have access to and felt comfortable using, and in some cases offered to perform surveillance for their colleagues in other departments. The thread also includes a member of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and members of Oregon’s State Police. In the thread, called the “Southern Oregon Analyst Group,” some members talked about making fake social media profiles to surveil people, and others discussed being excited to learn and try new surveillance techniques. The emails show both the wide array of surveillance tools that are available to even small police departments in the United States and also shows informal collaboration between local police departments and federal agencies, when ordinarily agencies like ICE are expected to follow their own legal processes for carrying out the surveillance.

Posted on June 20, 2025 at 7:00 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.