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TFA: >Uh, is that legal? >No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. >Neither is hacking somebod

TFA: >Uh, is that legal? >No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. >Neither is hacking somebody’s computer, which is what Signal’s blog post is saying a “real exploit payload” could do. It said, “a real exploit payload would likely seek to undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” All of those things are a violation of the federal anti-hacking law known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, and probably also of many state-law versions of the CFAA. (If the computer belongs to a federal law enforcement agency, it’s definitely a CFAA violation. If it’s a state, local, or tribal government law enforcement agency, then, because of how the CFAA defines “protected computers” covered by the Act, it might depend on whether the Windows machine that’s used for Cellebrite extractions is connected to the internet or not. That machine should be segmented apart from the rest of the police department’s network, but if it has an internet connection, the CFAA applies. And even if it doesn’t, I bet there are other ways of easily satisfying the “protected computer” definition.)

vinay_ys 5y ago
Imagine physical vault in your house. This vault has mechanism within it such that if anyone forces it open it will destroy all its contents. It may have defense mechanisms triggered to act as deterrence – it may spill/spew very bad odor and permanent ink – on anything nearby and that odor and color will be very hard to get rid of. Is such a vault legal? If someone breaks into your house and steals such a vault and in the process of trying to open it, if they suffer damage, is the owner of the vault liable? What's the principle being applied here? How would the same principle be applied in the case of digital property?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  The issue here is not "someone" breaking into your house and stealing it, it is the authorities doing it. Destruction/sabotage of the evidence collection process is very possibly going to be held against you.
  - vinay_ys 5y ago
    Yeah, and the authorities have to do it the right way. There's a reason why this is such a big issue and not as straightforward as you make it to be. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-phone-search-protests-password-rights https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-pho...
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      I agree that the overall situation around evidence recovery from locked devices is not straightforward, but I don't think I referenced this in my comment–I merely provided insight into why the specific actions might be considered to be illegal (using the argument in the blog post, I might add).
  - Certhas 5y ago
    But all Signal is (threatening to be) doing is blowing up devices that parse all files using insecure software. Let's look at another case, I remember that some people had USB drivers that detected "wrigglers" and shut down the computer in response to such a wiggler. Would that also be illegal? If I install anti scan files and anti mouse wrigglers when travelling to China do they become legal then?
    - sjy 5y ago
      The article quotes the part of the Signal blog that said “a real exploit payload would likely seek to undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” A complex exploit like that would say much more about the author’s intent than a driver that shuts down the computer when a “wiggler” is detected.
      - thayne 5y ago
        But what if Signal's (or anyone else's) exploitation simply locked the device when the file was read, preventing further data extraction?
- sjy 5y ago
  The parts of the article quoted above suggest that the principle is a CFAA violation – someone who distributes an exploit tailored to destroy evidence captured by Cellebrite probably “knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer.” Difficult philosophical questions arise with the phrases “knowingly causes” and “intentionally causes damage,” but a jury can use common sense to resolve them on the evidence in a particular case. The same issues arise when trying to determine intent and causation when someone fires a gun or carries a bag full of white powder. The details matter.
  - Certhas 5y ago
    I think the crucial point glossed over in the analysis of the blog post is "knowingly causes the transmission". The user of Cellebrite causes the transmission. I would really like to see a proper legal analysis of the situation, and this doesn't seem to be it. The author also misses the point of the "show me yours I'll show you mine". Cellebrite is, from what I understand, knowingly leaving everyone's machine vulnerable in order to conduct their business.' This is something that _should_ be illegal. Not disclosing (and actively benefiting from) vulnerabilities in other peoples products is what we should have laws against.
    - sjy 5y ago
      The DOJ publishes legal guidance on prosecuting computer crimes [1], which includes this relevant passage: > An attacker need not directly send the required transmission to the victim computer in order to violate this statute. In one case, a defendant inserted malicious code into a software program he wrote to run on his employer's computer network. United States v. Sullivan, 40 Fed. Appx. 740 (4th Cir. 2002) (unpublished) [2]. After lying dormant for four months, the malicious code activated and downloaded certain other malicious code to several hundred employee handheld computers, making them unusable. Id. at 741. The court held that the defendant knowingly caused transmission of code in violation of the statute. Id. at 743. The CFAA is notoriously broad, which is probably why Pfefferkorn didn’t feel the need to undertake a detailed analysis of exactly how it prohibits the deployment of a targeted exploit which would “undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” [1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/legacy/2015/01/14/ccmanual.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/l... [2] https://www.anylaw.com/case/united-states-v-sullivan/fourth-circuit/02-28-2002/tYJVPmYBTlTomsSB8cc0 https://www.anylaw.com/case/united-states-v-sullivan/fourth-...
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  If the vault hurts police officers who had a legal warrant for opening it, through a feature that was purposefully designed for this, I would bet that yes, it would be completely illegal, and both the manufacturer AND owner (if it can be proved they were aware) may be held responsible for the injuries. Similarly, if your app/device damages government property and tampers with legal evidence, both you and the creators would likely be held responsible. Even if the law may be unclear, you will definitely face charges for this, given how defensive police departments are in these cases (there was one case where a person they beat up had extra charges brought against him for dirtying the officers' uniforms with his blood... ). Furthermore, simply creating exploit code and releasing it into the wild is illegal, so Signal, if it were ever found to have done what they let us believe they could do, could be held legally responsible, even if the code never made it to exploit a live system at all.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Is such a vault legal? " You definitely are not allowed to have traps in your house with the intention of hurting potential thieves. So definitely no bear traps etc. Permanent ink would probably still fall under that category. And below that it becomes grey area.
  - richardwhiuk 5y ago
    That depends on the state in the US. Stand Your Ground and Castle doctrine make it substantially less clear.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Less clear, maybe, but as far as I understand the various regulations, they all refer to personal self defense. So to protect yourself from harm, you may use (deadly) force. That would not apply to protecting your vault from theft, by using physical - automated - violence against the thief.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    What about dye packs from banks?
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      You are probably not a bank, so not the same rules apply.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4
- smallnamespace 5y ago
  The purported hack here would specifically target Cellebrite, not anyone accessing these files in general. Also, if you know someone is stealing your lunch from the shared work fridge, so you add rat poison to your lunch, do you get to walk away scot free on the theory that it’s the thief’s fault?
  - thayne 5y ago
    But cellebrite could be used by an oppressive regime, or criminals that got their hands on it. I'm doubtful such an argument would hold up in court, but I don't think you can honestly say targeting cellebrite is the same as targeting US law enforcement.
- _Algernon_ 5y ago
  Physical booby traps tend to be illegal if they aren't supervised. Not sure if that's only for physical damages / injuries or applies to other damage as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    There's a fellow on YouTube who leaves bait boxes that shoot glitter and spray stink spray.
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      Not a lawyer but if I was a lawyer, I would tell my client to never do that. Should something go wrong and the glitter gets into someones eyes, that's a case. Even worse, glitter dispenses while person is operating a vehicle and pedestrians are injured, that's a case.
indigochill 5y ago
>No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. My point is Cellebrite/the Cellebrite user would be the one spoiling the evidence. The evidence is sitting there on the device unspoiled, and only if the user decides to charge ahead without heeding the public warning that doing so without the necessary precautions will spoil the evidence will the evidence actually be spoiled. Signal itself has no knowledge of which files constitute evidence (it applies this completely indiscriminately), so I don't think you could argue that it is knowingly spoiling evidence.
- nearbuy 5y ago
  > Signal itself has no knowledge of which files constitute evidence (it applies this completely indiscriminately), so I don't think you could argue that it is knowingly spoiling evidence. The article, written by a legal scholar with a specialty in precisely these issues, directly contradicts this. Signal coyly threatened to make their app hack Cellebrite machines with the intent of spoiling evidence. It doesn't matter that they aren't targeting specific evidence. Blanket spoiling all Cellebrite evidence would apparently be enough to get them in legal trouble.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    Where is this special status for Cellebrite coming from? Just because they're one of the vendors whose software happens to be used by some governments, I'm suddenly forbidden from having an arbitrary sequence of bytes on my device in case someone else happens to connect and run some arbitrary software on it? I'm having a hard time imagining this being a viable argument. Seems like the vendor should just fix their software if they expect it to work reliably. Anything else would be too large of a transgression on civil freedom.
    - acdha 5y ago
      There’s no special status for Cellebrite: it comes down to intent and, especially, that judges are not computers rigidly executing code. If you do something which is designed to damage equipment used by law enforcement, a judge is going to ask what your intention was, not just throw up their hands and say anyone could have had those random bytes. As a real-world analogy, consider for the sake of argument how having a trap on your home safe might look if you were a) in a very high-crime neighborhood or b) engaged in criminal activities and had written of your desire to harm cops – even if the action is exactly the same (and illegal in your jurisdiction), I’d expect the latter situation to go a lot worse because you’re knowingly targeting law enforcement engaged in (at least from the court’s perspective) legitimate activities. Since Signal would be deploying that exploit to millions of devices to combat surveillance tech, I would expect that to at least result in a suit even if they were able to defend themselves successfully. It would be especially interesting to see how Cellebrite’s use by various repressive regimes entered into that: an American court might, for example, be sympathetic to a campaign trying to protect dissidents in China which happens to impact an American police agency using the same tool.

vinay_ys 5y ago

Imagine physical vault in your house. This vault has mechanism within it such that if anyone forces it open it will destroy all its contents. It may have defense mechanisms triggered to act as deterrence – it may spill/spew very bad odor and permanent ink – on anything nearby and that odor and color will be very hard to get rid of. Is such a vault legal? If someone breaks into your house and steals such a vault and in the process of trying to open it, if they suffer damage, is the owner of the vault liable? What's the principle being applied here? How would the same principle be applied in the case of digital property?

saagarjha 5y ago
The issue here is not "someone" breaking into your house and stealing it, it is the authorities doing it. Destruction/sabotage of the evidence collection process is very possibly going to be held against you.
- vinay_ys 5y ago
  Yeah, and the authorities have to do it the right way. There's a reason why this is such a big issue and not as straightforward as you make it to be. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-phone-search-protests-password-rights https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-pho...
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    I agree that the overall situation around evidence recovery from locked devices is not straightforward, but I don't think I referenced this in my comment–I merely provided insight into why the specific actions might be considered to be illegal (using the argument in the blog post, I might add).
- Certhas 5y ago
  But all Signal is (threatening to be) doing is blowing up devices that parse all files using insecure software. Let's look at another case, I remember that some people had USB drivers that detected "wrigglers" and shut down the computer in response to such a wiggler. Would that also be illegal? If I install anti scan files and anti mouse wrigglers when travelling to China do they become legal then?
  - sjy 5y ago
    The article quotes the part of the Signal blog that said “a real exploit payload would likely seek to undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” A complex exploit like that would say much more about the author’s intent than a driver that shuts down the computer when a “wiggler” is detected.
    - thayne 5y ago
      But what if Signal's (or anyone else's) exploitation simply locked the device when the file was read, preventing further data extraction?
sjy 5y ago
The parts of the article quoted above suggest that the principle is a CFAA violation – someone who distributes an exploit tailored to destroy evidence captured by Cellebrite probably “knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer.” Difficult philosophical questions arise with the phrases “knowingly causes” and “intentionally causes damage,” but a jury can use common sense to resolve them on the evidence in a particular case. The same issues arise when trying to determine intent and causation when someone fires a gun or carries a bag full of white powder. The details matter.
- Certhas 5y ago
  I think the crucial point glossed over in the analysis of the blog post is "knowingly causes the transmission". The user of Cellebrite causes the transmission. I would really like to see a proper legal analysis of the situation, and this doesn't seem to be it. The author also misses the point of the "show me yours I'll show you mine". Cellebrite is, from what I understand, knowingly leaving everyone's machine vulnerable in order to conduct their business.' This is something that _should_ be illegal. Not disclosing (and actively benefiting from) vulnerabilities in other peoples products is what we should have laws against.
  - sjy 5y ago
    The DOJ publishes legal guidance on prosecuting computer crimes [1], which includes this relevant passage: > An attacker need not directly send the required transmission to the victim computer in order to violate this statute. In one case, a defendant inserted malicious code into a software program he wrote to run on his employer's computer network. United States v. Sullivan, 40 Fed. Appx. 740 (4th Cir. 2002) (unpublished) [2]. After lying dormant for four months, the malicious code activated and downloaded certain other malicious code to several hundred employee handheld computers, making them unusable. Id. at 741. The court held that the defendant knowingly caused transmission of code in violation of the statute. Id. at 743. The CFAA is notoriously broad, which is probably why Pfefferkorn didn’t feel the need to undertake a detailed analysis of exactly how it prohibits the deployment of a targeted exploit which would “undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” [1] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/legacy/2015/01/14/ccmanual.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/l... [2] https://www.anylaw.com/case/united-states-v-sullivan/fourth-circuit/02-28-2002/tYJVPmYBTlTomsSB8cc0 https://www.anylaw.com/case/united-states-v-sullivan/fourth-...
tsimionescu 5y ago
If the vault hurts police officers who had a legal warrant for opening it, through a feature that was purposefully designed for this, I would bet that yes, it would be completely illegal, and both the manufacturer AND owner (if it can be proved they were aware) may be held responsible for the injuries. Similarly, if your app/device damages government property and tampers with legal evidence, both you and the creators would likely be held responsible. Even if the law may be unclear, you will definitely face charges for this, given how defensive police departments are in these cases (there was one case where a person they beat up had extra charges brought against him for dirtying the officers' uniforms with his blood... ). Furthermore, simply creating exploit code and releasing it into the wild is illegal, so Signal, if it were ever found to have done what they let us believe they could do, could be held legally responsible, even if the code never made it to exploit a live system at all.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"Is such a vault legal? " You definitely are not allowed to have traps in your house with the intention of hurting potential thieves. So definitely no bear traps etc. Permanent ink would probably still fall under that category. And below that it becomes grey area.
- richardwhiuk 5y ago
  That depends on the state in the US. Stand Your Ground and Castle doctrine make it substantially less clear.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Less clear, maybe, but as far as I understand the various regulations, they all refer to personal self defense. So to protect yourself from harm, you may use (deadly) force. That would not apply to protecting your vault from theft, by using physical - automated - violence against the thief.
- dylan604 5y ago
  What about dye packs from banks?
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    You are probably not a bank, so not the same rules apply.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4
smallnamespace 5y ago
The purported hack here would specifically target Cellebrite, not anyone accessing these files in general. Also, if you know someone is stealing your lunch from the shared work fridge, so you add rat poison to your lunch, do you get to walk away scot free on the theory that it’s the thief’s fault?
- thayne 5y ago
  But cellebrite could be used by an oppressive regime, or criminals that got their hands on it. I'm doubtful such an argument would hold up in court, but I don't think you can honestly say targeting cellebrite is the same as targeting US law enforcement.
_Algernon_ 5y ago
Physical booby traps tend to be illegal if they aren't supervised. Not sure if that's only for physical damages / injuries or applies to other damage as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katko_v._Briney
- mannerheim 5y ago
  There's a fellow on YouTube who leaves bait boxes that shoot glitter and spray stink spray.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    Not a lawyer but if I was a lawyer, I would tell my client to never do that. Should something go wrong and the glitter gets into someones eyes, that's a case. Even worse, glitter dispenses while person is operating a vehicle and pedestrians are injured, that's a case.

indigochill 5y ago

>No, intentionally spoiling evidence — or “spoliating,” to use the legal term — is definitely not legal. My point is Cellebrite/the Cellebrite user would be the one spoiling the evidence. The evidence is sitting there on the device unspoiled, and only if the user decides to charge ahead without heeding the public warning that doing so without the necessary precautions will spoil the evidence will the evidence actually be spoiled. Signal itself has no knowledge of which files constitute evidence (it applies this completely indiscriminately), so I don't think you could argue that it is knowingly spoiling evidence.

nearbuy 5y ago
> Signal itself has no knowledge of which files constitute evidence (it applies this completely indiscriminately), so I don't think you could argue that it is knowingly spoiling evidence. The article, written by a legal scholar with a specialty in precisely these issues, directly contradicts this. Signal coyly threatened to make their app hack Cellebrite machines with the intent of spoiling evidence. It doesn't matter that they aren't targeting specific evidence. Blanket spoiling all Cellebrite evidence would apparently be enough to get them in legal trouble.
- feanaro 5y ago
  Where is this special status for Cellebrite coming from? Just because they're one of the vendors whose software happens to be used by some governments, I'm suddenly forbidden from having an arbitrary sequence of bytes on my device in case someone else happens to connect and run some arbitrary software on it? I'm having a hard time imagining this being a viable argument. Seems like the vendor should just fix their software if they expect it to work reliably. Anything else would be too large of a transgression on civil freedom.
  - acdha 5y ago
    There’s no special status for Cellebrite: it comes down to intent and, especially, that judges are not computers rigidly executing code. If you do something which is designed to damage equipment used by law enforcement, a judge is going to ask what your intention was, not just throw up their hands and say anyone could have had those random bytes. As a real-world analogy, consider for the sake of argument how having a trap on your home safe might look if you were a) in a very high-crime neighborhood or b) engaged in criminal activities and had written of your desire to harm cops – even if the action is exactly the same (and illegal in your jurisdiction), I’d expect the latter situation to go a lot worse because you’re knowingly targeting law enforcement engaged in (at least from the court’s perspective) legitimate activities. Since Signal would be deploying that exploit to millions of devices to combat surveillance tech, I would expect that to at least result in a suit even if they were able to defend themselves successfully. It would be especially interesting to see how Cellebrite’s use by various repressive regimes entered into that: an American court might, for example, be sympathetic to a campaign trying to protect dissidents in China which happens to impact an American police agency using the same tool.