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This is truly a hacker’s retort. It attacks Cellebrite's ability to operate by casting doubt on the reports generated by the product that their customers may w
by po 5y ago
This is truly a hacker’s retort.
It attacks Cellebrite's ability to operate by casting doubt on the reports generated by the product that their customers may wish to use in court.
It places them in legal peril from Apple, and removes any cover Apple would have to not take legal action. (I assume someone at Apple knew they were shipping their DLLs?)
It makes a thinly-veiled threat that any random Signal user's data may actively attempt to exploit their software in the future and demonstrates that it's trivial to do so.
edited to add a bonus one:
Publish some data about what they are doing to help create a roadmap for any other app that doesn't want their data to be scanned.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoAll that trouble becaused a bag conveniently "fell from a truck". All in all I'm really happy for all this.
- ampdepolymerase 5y agoIndeed, how convenient. If it truly did fall off the truck right while he is on a walk then there is the possibility that is a rubber duckie attack. This is basically the equivalent of leaving a USB flash drive lying around. I hope the author took the necessary precautions when reverse engineering the device. Companies like cellebrite have deep connections to certain three letter communities that staging this sort of attacks trivial.
- CPLX 5y ago> If it truly did fall of the truck lol
- baby 5y agoSeeing reactions like GP’s I’m surprised at how many people don’t know this expression.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoI thought it was an euphemism because they couldn't reveal who gave it to them. Confessing it was stolen, even as an euphemism, is too blatant to be taken seriously IMO.
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoIf English is your second language, you may not have come across it. It's a very informal and infrequent idiom.
- baby 5y agoFWIW we have the exact same expression in French “c’est tombé du camion”
- CloselyChunky 5y agoDito for German: "vom Laster gefallen"
- bawolff 5y agoEven if you didn't, i think its pretty obvious from context.
- djoldman 5y agoI think we can be relatively confident that the connected machine was airgapped and perhaps run in a VM. Perhaps even in a faraday cage..
- boredpenguin 5y ago> (...) and perhaps run in a VM. One of the screenshots[0] shows the VMware Tools Service running, so yeah, looks like a virtualized guest. [0]: https://signal.org/blog/images/cellebrite-dlls-loaded.png https://signal.org/blog/images/cellebrite-dlls-loaded.png
- jacquesm 5y ago"falling off a truck" is slang for "was stolen".
- thayne 5y agoGiven the sort of business Cellebrite is in, they would probably still want to treat anything connected to it with an overabundance of caution.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoTIL: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fall+off+a+truck https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fall+off+a+truck Edit: looking up a bit more, it seems like this idiom is used to denote goods sold for cheap because they were stolen. Like "Bob is selling genuine iPhones very cheap, I fear they fell from the back of a truck". Edit edit: I initially took it as "we won't tell how we got this", because I didn't know this idiom, but it seems several people agree with this interpretation. Not necessarily stolen, but obtained from an undisclosed source.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y agoThat isn't quite right. Although it's commonly used to describe something that's been stolen, it's more generally used to indicate that the speaker doesn't want to talk about where it came from. That's how it's been used in this article.
- jjoonathan 5y agoI am happy to see the bag survived its most untimely truck tumble while remaining a e s t h e t i c a l l y - - - p l e a s i n g.
- daemin 5y agoWhat a sturdy bag it is!
- nealmcb2 5y agoI love Kim Zetter's tweet: Must have been a turnip truck https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1384936715769503745 https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1384936715769503745 That's a dig at the turnipesque savvy of Cellebrite, which royally stumbled into this. cf. https://www.dwt.com/blogs/privacy--security-law-blog/2015/03/chairman-wheeler-says-the-fcc-didnt-just-fall-off https://www.dwt.com/blogs/privacy--security-law-blog/2015/03... > FCC chair Wheeler said the FCC “didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” Through CALEA, CPNI, and CSRIC, Wheeler said the agency has been working to protect consumer privacy.
- spinny 5y agoYup. Those things have way to "fell from a truck". Another win for the "fell from a truck" gang ;)
- batch12 5y agoI found that funny too. It sounds to me like a good way to end up with the device to analyze without being constrained by a contract or EULA prohibiting it.
- cheschire 5y agoYes, it's known as a euphemism. TFA just took the joke to hilarious extremes with the photos. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fell-off-the-back-of-a-t...
- spurgu 5y agoTFA? I know you're referring to Moxie (somehow) but I can't figure out the acronym.
- upofadown 5y agoI really seriously doubt that anyone would ever advance the idea that Signal had deliberately framed them by creating false data on their phone. I don't see this as much more than pointing out that Cellebrite has vulnerabilities, just like the ones they exploit.
- zaphar 5y agoYou wouldn't imply that Signal had framed you. You would imply that someone else had framed you using the same vulnerabilities as Signal has now indicated exists. i.e. You can't trust Cellebrite because it's now known to be trivial to subvert their software. It's also difficult for Cellebrite to prove that there aren't remaining vulnerabilities in their software since Signal didn't disclose the problems they found and won't do so unless Cellebrite discloses the exploits they claim to be using in Signal.
- upofadown 5y agoYou can't just claim an unknown entity framed you and hope to get anywhere. Heck, you could just as well claim that Cellebrite themselves had it in for you. Cellebrite has never claimed any particular exploits in Signal. Signal is exploitable in this particular way for entirely obvious and common reasons.
- zaphar 5y agoWhy would it have to be an unknown entity? I imagine in at least some court cases there could be potential antagonists to pin the blame on.
- novok 5y agoYou can claim that by having signal on your phone, it probably compromised the evidence gathering and you didn't know about it and you don't know how, so that evidence is not trustworthy. Kind of like police opening anti-tamper / anti-shoplifting seals which ruin the item they are trying to confiscate with a large amount of dye.
- deleted 5y ago
- polar 5y agoCellebrite acquired BlackBag Technologies recently. BlackBag emerged from Apple's security team.
- gnud 5y agoFitting name. Black-bag the opposition politican, and then black-bag her phone.
- anakaine 5y agoA little different from brown bag, in which the non-traceable payment travels under the table.
- jeffrallen 5y agoOr dog shit under a door.
- op00to 5y ago> It attacks Cellebrite's ability to operate by casting doubt on the reports generated by the product that their customers may wish to use in court. Fortunately, parallel construction means you never really have to throw out bad evidence as long as you can find some good evidence too!
- maccam912 5y agoKnowing that at least one row of data in a database might have been modified randomly means you can't fully trust any one line in the database completely. It reminds me of the story of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan
- neodymiumphish 5y agoSure, but the data on the phone will lead you to evidence in the real world, which will be meaningful proof that can be used in court.
- lostcolony 5y agoYou either will have to come up with a plausible (literally, 'warranted') way to have gotten that data in the real world without relying on the data on the phone as the reason you went looking, or it will likely be thrown out due to it being "Fruit of the poisonous tree".
- sneak 5y agoThat's precisely what parallel construction is: a lie told by investigators to the court to sidestep the poison tree, bolstered by real evidence specifically gathered to lie outside of the branches of same. It's a method that crooked law enforcement uses to deceive courts. It's so common as to have its own name now.
- lostcolony 5y ago
- londons_explore 5y agoSadly I suspect the people in law enforcement who make purchasing decisions never read the Signal blog, and therefore all these points will be moot.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThey don't have to read that. The defense lawyers have to read it, and the people in law enforcement need to read the cases where judges throw out Cellebrite evidence based on that.
- waltwalther 5y agoThis.
- nvr219 5y agoThe worst enterprises using Cellebrite don't really have to worry about defense lawyers.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoNo, but Cellebrite does because their credibility is what sells their products to law enforcement. It wouldn't kill all their sales, but enough to be painful.
- psd1 5y agoIf you, as I do, hold that personal devices should be private, then you're probably happy with the extraction tools being weak. Let them remain complacent.
- syshum 5y agoThe problem with that is the cases would need to get to the discovery stage. 95% of all criminal cases in the US are Plead out largely because the defendant can not afford competent legal representation This is why all kinds of questionable investigative tactics are still used even some that have clearly been ruled unconstitutional, they know most of the time it will not matter, they just need to get enough to make an arrest, the system will destroy the person anyway no conviction needed, and most likely the person will plead guilty even if innocent just to make the abuse stop
- crb002 5y agoIt was brazen enough to pop an iTunes GUI a few years back.
- rodgerd 5y ago> It makes a thinly-veiled threat that any random Signal user's data may actively attempt to exploit their software in the future and demonstrates that it's trivial to do so. That does not make me feel good about Signal.
- rpdillon 5y agoI've seen this reaction a few times. Can you say more? Presumably Signal users value privacy, and the implication is that when hacking tools used to violate that privacy are applied to a device running Signal, it may try to interfere and prevent the extraction to some degree. This seems like an ideal feature for a private messenger. In contrast, it would strike me as strange if a Signal user switched to another messenger that allowed the data extraction because they were uncomfortable with Signal blocking it.
- Utanith 5y agoIt's kind've hard to argue about having random unknown data laying around, but... The insinuation that my device may be host to something potentially malicious is concerning. It gets a little worse that it can change, without notice. I'd tend to trust Signal and their security, but the potential for that mechanism to be hijacked is always present. They've certainly made it hard, though, and I think the folks at Signal are probably clever enough that my anemic observations don't tell the whole story.
- atat7024 5y ago> The insinuation that my device may be host to something potentially malicious is concerning. It gets a little worse that it can change, without notice. Do you use an iPhone or a phone with Google Play Services on it? Those both have the technical capability of receiving targeted updates.
- codethief 5y agoNot just that. In the case of Google Play Services, SafetyNet also downloads random binary blobs from Google and executes them as root. Makes me feel a lot… safer about my phone.
- microtherion 5y agoIANAL, and I don't speak for Apple, but as far as I can tell, the part about Apple is nonsense. CoreFoundation is open source: https://github.com/opensource-apple/CF https://github.com/opensource-apple/CF libdispatch is open source: https://apple.github.io/swift-corelibs-libdispatch/post/libdispatch-is-open-source/ https://apple.github.io/swift-corelibs-libdispatch/post/libd... ASL is open source: https://opensource.apple.com/source/syslog/syslog-349.1.1/libsystem_asl.tproj/src/asl.c.auto.html https://opensource.apple.com/source/syslog/syslog-349.1.1/li... The objective C runtime is open source: https://github.com/opensource-apple/objc4/blob/master/APPLE_LICENSE https://github.com/opensource-apple/objc4/blob/master/APPLE_... icu, pthread, zlib, and libxml did not even originate at Apple.
- foxylad 5y agoAdd one more: Anyone publicly attacking Signal's privacy in the future is painting a very large target on their forehead.
- neodymiumphish 5y agoThere's a difference between attacking their privacy (which is fair and should be done regularly if users' privacy is at stake) and claiming access to secure data that is wholly untrue.