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So I bought something at a thrift store, it's a “Cellebrite Touch”
- ilikenwf 7y agoYou can find these on ebay...
- latchkey 7y agohttps://www.ebay.com/itm/Cellebrite-Touch-Phone-Data-Transfer-Machine-Cables-and-Case-No-License/333216190176 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cellebrite-Touch-Phone-Data-Transfe...
- SyneRyder 7y agoThis was way more interesting than the title suggests, so if you don't know what a Cellebrite is (like I didn't), keep reading the thread. For people who do know what it is, the real question is "what the hell was that doing in a thrift store?!"
- peterwwillis 7y agoBack in the day you'd find random gear like this just thrown in dumpsters when it became obsolete or replaced. Rarely was data wiped correctly. I can see a misguided intern thinking, "someone else must be able to use this!", or it just getting into a donation pile by accident.
- TheCapn 7y agoMy assumption is dumpster -> dumpster driver -> pawn shop/thrift store
- bifrost 7y agoCome to thrift stores in Silicon Valley, you'll find all kinds of neat stuff!
- teekert 7y agoCellebrite in an Israeli company that specializes in extracting data from phones. The device bought in the thrift store appears to be a device to copy data from phones already unlocked and open, in other words, not the most interesting device they have, and it's from 2014. Still a nice read though.
- icelancer 7y agoBefore people complain (like last time) on why Foone doesn't just blog... https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338 https://twitter.com/foone/status/1100068394001256448 https://twitter.com/foone/status/1100068394001256448 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128
- beamatronic 7y agoWe need a client that formats a series of twitter posts into a single blog post
- _Microft 7y agoThere is at least one Twitter bot (@ThreadReaderApp) which does that. People can mention its name and add "unroll" as comment and it produces a website with the tweets compiled. Pasting a link to a tweet into a field on their frontpage gives the same result: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1135354815259656192.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1135354815259656192.html Edit: some Twitter users do not like services like this because people can neither interact with them on these pages nor will the posters get stats how often it was accessed. They consider it stealing their content. I like them (as user, not content creator) because I like to archive interesting things as PDFs, since you never know if or when something will go away. You might want to use Firefox' reader mode or clean up the page using Stylus or the built-in web development tools before printing to remove all the junk. When Firefox does not offer to open reader mode on some pages, you can still access it by prepending about:reader?url= to the url. It works anyways most of the time. It even works as search shortcut, so you can add something like read as keyword that points to about:reader?url=%S , usage is then read <url goes here> in the adress bar.
- _Microft 7y agoOne more thing regarding Stylus: you can conditionally apply custom styles by adding a parameter to the rule, so you can sanitize e.g. the Twitter thread UI when you want to screenshot them without sacrificing the UI for normal use. Here's an example that is triggered by appending ?simple to a direct link to a tweet. @-moz-document regexp("https://twitter.com/.*\\?simple") { .translate-button, .tweet-stats-container, .stream-item-footer, .ProfileTweet-actionList, .inline-reply-tweetbox-container, .UserNameBreak, .tweet-timestamp { display: none; } .tweet .time::before { content: ""; } }
- stordoff 7y agoIf it's telling you to configure settings on the device, can it be considered forensic? Something about that feels off.
- gaspoweredcat 7y agothat could be either for data recovery or sim unlocking both of which often require a diag mode or debug port to be enabled on the device
- breakingcups 7y agoAt the end of the thread, Foone posts this: 'correction, which explains some of the weirdness like the "buy-back" thing. This isn't a Cellebrite UFED Touch, it's a Cellebrite UME (Universal Memory Exchanger ) Touch. This means it's designed for phone stores to transfer data off old phones onto new phones and such. This is why it can't hack the phones, just copy data off them. It just seems they built their UFED platform and UME platform on the same hardware base. It also makes a lot more sense why this ended up in a thrift store.'
- gaspoweredcat 7y agoi heard about these things but never used one myself (although i had access to a similar if ess user friendly data extraction tool called a DM3 used for nokia and blackberry forensics etc) they were mainly for forensic or data recovery and sometimes unlocking or password removal. i can tell you that the left side will almost certainly be for various data clips/cables (usually over UART) which usually use an RJ45 although some older ones used the serial connector and a 3.5mm jack, use of RJ45 cables is still fairly common as some models can only be unlocked via UART im also not sure the sim card slot is actually for sim cards as such but more likely a smartcard auth token for software licences, most unlocking solutions etc are sold as a "box" which is essentially a USB>UART and a USB smartcard reader with a card for the software licence, it may even have accepted 3rd party licences such as infinity etc as i believe they were meant to be a sort of all in one solution. although it may have been for sims if it was recovering contacts and messages stored on the sim as for why it was there i guess its just ended up unused then gotten chucked out in a clear out, old kit tends to fall by the wayside in this game despite it initially being quite expensive (ask anyone in the mobile biz for any decent amount of time and they almost certainly have an MTbox/MXbox laying about) generally by the time its obsolete its more than paid for itself and is really pretty useless unless you work on a lot of very old stock places ive worked at had dozens of old unused unlocking boxes and the like which eventually ended up in various tote boxes etc and when the business moved the majority ended up in the skip (where people soon came to try and dig out any potentially worthwhile bits) i suspect this found its way to the store in a similar fashion it may not actually be much use in this day and age but its an interesting find
- tty2300 7y agoDoes anyone have the link that turns a twitter thread in to a blog post? This is unreadable.
- nasredin 7y agoThank you for the TLDR. Terrible writing and Twitter is a fatal combo.
- plotteddancer16 7y agoI think you win https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338
- dang 7y agoWe detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20080987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20080987 and marked it off-topic.
- nebfold 7y agoI used to work in a mobile phone shop and we had these to transfer data between old and new phones. With regards to the SIM slot, SIM cards can store around 100 phone numbers and many people that swap phones regularly do keep their contacts on a SIM card. SIM cards can wear out over time so this was useful for swapping phone numbers from an old SIM to a new one or a nanoSIM etc.
- tomcam 7y agoGrady Booch even gets in on the action: https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1135459629658329090?s=20 https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1135459629658329090?s...
- cannot-remember 7y agoThis device is used in commercial apple stores for transferring data off customers old, non-apple phones. Pretty straightforward service, hardly a curious device.
- bredren 7y agoBut with a drip of whodunit the thread made the product seem quite mysterious.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago"Not news to you personally" is not the same thing as "not interesting."
- myself248 7y agoCellebrite makes devices for forensics, and they make devices for cellphone stores. This is the latter. Definitely not interesting. It's like saying "I found a Diebold fountain pen, can I learn about ATMs from it?". No. It's not the same thing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoI've never seen one of these gizmos before. It's new and interesting to me. It's got three RJ45 ports! That's weird! Sure, it's not as interesting as if the guy had found a government forensic tool at the thrift store, but it's still interesting. Let people enjoy things.
- floren 7y ago'I tried hooking up the micro-usb cable to an older android phone I had sitting around and it goes "OH YEAH THAT'S AN HTC ONE. WHICH MODEL IS IT?" Scary.' USB vendor/product ids: very spooky? http://www.the-sz.com/products/usbid/index.php?v=0x0BB4&p=0x0DEA&n= http://www.the-sz.com/products/usbid/index.php?v=0x0BB4&p=0x...
- Spivak 7y agoWait until he finds our that you can figure out manufacturer from MAC addresses too.
- _bxg1 7y agoWhat a ride.
- iscrewyou 7y agoUsed to work at Best Buy in Mobile. and used this POS all the time. It was good when it worked. A lot of the time it was not working because it had to get flashed by connecting to the Ethernet port. We used it to transfer information from one phone to another. It did work with almost any phone. You just had to Find the right kind of cable for every phone back then. Sometimes it would even connect and transfer via Bluetooth. Good times.
- NikolaNovak 7y agoOne thing caught my eye any clue what a Microphone is doing on a device like that? https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135361988526084099 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135361988526084099
- tastroder 7y agoI'd guess they simply reuse some tablet hardware design (and those usually incorporate a mic) instead of coming up with their own.
- sizzle 7y agoMaybe cops can use it to record hidden convos?
- iscrewyou 7y agoWe never used the mic functionality. But maybe some kind of audible way to detect phones on a different pitch? Like they do with Alexa now a days.
- dmix 7y agoYou already answered this question earlier. It’s just some off the shelf Chinese computer that’s used for multiple different products.
- BIOLORD 7y agoSo it turns out that this is not (thankfully) a phone hacking tool. Instead it's a "dump all data off a phone you already have access to" tool. SURRENDER YOUR PASSWORD AND BIOMETRIC IDENTIFIERS CITIZEN OR YOU ARE DEAD TO RIGHTS.
- Lowkeyloki 7y agoAnyone else read this and think "Celibate Touch"?
- stcredzero 7y agoUp the build quality, but keep the hyper rugged design philosophy, round things off so it slides into a backpack easily, make sure there's plenty of ports, and I'd consider buying tablet PC with about this form factor. (Yes, yes, I could just buy a tablet PC and put it in a paranoid-level ruggedized case.)
- NoPicklez 7y agoThese devices are used heavily in telecommunications for transferring data from almost any model device to another. Very useful when customers transfer from an old Nokia to say a brand new iPhone.