5 ms·

For $300 a Utah company can recover vanished Snapchats

16 points by hansy 13y ago

vxNsr 13y ago
It really was only a matter of time before this came out. Though by making it $300 they really restrict their clientele to companies or the government, both of whom would be able to cough up the money for investigations. This will almost definitely keep out the riff-raff trying to retrieve that dick-pic or nip-slip.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  Anyone who has enough money to pay for a smart phone could probably scrape up $300 if they wanted that photo badly enough. Kids who are too young to have a credit card might find it difficult to use the service, however. But now that this company has figured out how to do it, others will figure it out too and the competition will lower the price.
  - vxNsr 13y ago
    I don't know... Most people I know with smart phones didn't pay >$200 and a lot got some sorta deal. Regardless, @ ~$300 or even if it went down to $100 most people aren't gonna spend that to retrieve a pic unless it's supremely important.
DigitalSea 13y ago
Well it was only a matter of time. On my Galaxy S4 I rooted it and am running GameSpector and downloaded a patch that not only removes the warning sent to the sender of said Snapchat I have taken a screenshot of their Snapchat but it also keeps the Snapchat indefinitely (the countdown drops to zero, but the video or image remains until you press clear). Anyone who honestly believes Snapchat is truly anonymous is very much mistaken. Be careful. Any anonymous service is bound to be abused and used for nefarious purposes. The high price tag ensures that only serious situations will warrant a Snapchat recovery (primarily law enforcement and on occasion, paranoid parents). Considering most people use Snapchat on their iPhone's mainly, I think most are safe for now.
- treahauet 13y ago
  There are tweaks available on Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices that provide similar functionality.
shmageggy 13y ago
I know nothing about Android development (this service isn't available for iOS yet, according to the article). Does the OS give you low enough level control to overwrite specific memory locations, say with random data? In other words, could the snapchat app shut this down with a simple update?
- HorizonXP 13y ago
  Sure. Just pass a reference to the Java-land object down to C++ via the Java Native Interface (JNI) and use memset to wipe out the memory in that location.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Even if they did this, there's still a huge problem on Android in that it is trivial to root virtually any Android phone and a rooted phone can be running a background app with READ_FRAMEBUFFER_ACCESS and constantly polling the framebuffer, so anything you see on the screen is leaked out of any app. And you can do this all at the app level without even getting into kernel driver hacks. Anyone who thinks the photos passed along through these apps are in any way safe from being saved and leaked by the receiver is very technically naive. All of the old rules about all bets being off if someone has physical access to a device in the chain still apply.
  - Sprint 13y ago
    I find it extremely positive and beneficial that I have root access on my smartphone and I would not like to buy a device I cannot hack like that.
  - rajivm 13y ago
    You could draw the photos in a SurfaceView with a "secure" flag (see http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceView.html#setSecure(boolean) http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceV...). This would prevent other apps from reading them out of the framebuffer, or even taking a screenshot of them. If Snapchat isn't doing this, well their developers should do some research...
grey-area 13y ago
The appeal of Snapchat—and a growing number of companies specializing in ephemeral media—is that once the expiration date has passed, you no longer have to worry about whatever it is you just shared. It’s gone forever. Nobody can dredge it back into public view. It's not necessary to root your phone to circumvent snapchat or run special software after the fact. Since you can always use a camera (say on another phone) to take a photograph of the screen and record the image that way, why would anyone consider snapchat or similar services secure or reliable? If you can see it, you can reproduce it, and share it as much as you want via other channels.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  Snapchat alerts users that the person on the other end has saved a screenshot, so as long as you don't see that, most people would assume that it has, in fact, disappeared.
  - cheald 13y ago
    grey-area is referencing the analog hole, which is completely undetectable and unpreventable.
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      Right. I'm saying that I don't think laymen think about the analog hole; they just see that feature and assume that it actually does disappear.
  - YPetrov 13y ago
    Is that for Android only? Yesterday my friend and I tried it (I have an iPhone, he has a Samsung), because I was curious if I will be able to take a screenshot while holding my finger on the image and it worked. He received no notification about the screenshot, though.
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      Nope, my iPhone has told me when another iPhone user has saved a screenshot before. Unsure about Android/iPhone.
tagabek 13y ago
What does "special forensics software" even mean? What is stopping some smart hackers from making a software that does the same thing, open sourcing it, and allowing 'regular' people to do the same thing for free?
- illuminate 13y ago
  Not much, really. Anything that scrapes the disk image should be able to recover the images. There's already a "free" open source application or three. I don't work in the field, but I've had some classes with local forensics engineers. Forensics teams buy software almost solely because they are able to reliably cite the software's use in court, and the developers could be subpoenaed easily to explain the function if the defense decided to call its use into question. Open-source solutions likely will never be used for that reason.
saurik 13y ago
A bunch of people here seem to misunderstand this as less powerful than being able to just modify the software (largely trivial on both iOS and Android) to not delete the images in the first place, or to save them while viewing them: that requires forethought to have made that modification ahead of time. The people who talk about "forensics" are interested in situations like "cell phone belonging to victim found at the murder scene: checking the system logs, the most recent application to have been used was SnapChat; if we knew what they had just received, we might have a clue (or just a naked picture of someone close to the victim)". Honestly, what they are doing is probably about as "lame" as "undelete a file", possibly with the at-most complexity of "undo some simple encoding" or "undelete a file that was stored as a row in an SQLite database that has yet to be vacuumed". So, this isn't technologically "wow" (one of the threads here is "how is this 'special'?"), but this also really isn't "engh, I can root it and scrape the framebuffer". It isn't even a company bragging that they beat SnapChat, so the "it's lame tech" part doesn't even matter: it is a company advertising a product/service for police departments to undelete self-destructing messages from a program that is very very popular. I thereby feel a more interesting conversation to be having on HN about this article isn't "lame, we knew SnapChat was insecure" or "lame, I could have done that" or "lame, there are easier ways to do that": it would be something closer to "damn, that was easy, we all knew it could be done, I could have even done it, and apparently it is worth $300 a pop to do this for forensics purposes? what other business opportunities are low-hanging fruit I'm missing out on by dismissing them as 'lame'?". (Yes: I know that "lame" wasn't a quote from any of the responses; I am summing up the sentiment. It isn't just HN either, but the other places I've seen this discussed don't have the business focus.)
- A1kmm 13y ago
  I think that given Snapchat's advertising ('the snap disappears') they should really be doing more on the client to make sure third parties don't get access to the picture, for example, by not storing it on the device at all.
quarterto 13y ago
They spelt danah boyd's name wrong.

16 points by hansy 13y ago

vxNsr 13y ago

It really was only a matter of time before this came out. Though by making it $300 they really restrict their clientele to companies or the government, both of whom would be able to cough up the money for investigations. This will almost definitely keep out the riff-raff trying to retrieve that dick-pic or nip-slip.

greenyoda 13y ago
Anyone who has enough money to pay for a smart phone could probably scrape up $300 if they wanted that photo badly enough. Kids who are too young to have a credit card might find it difficult to use the service, however. But now that this company has figured out how to do it, others will figure it out too and the competition will lower the price.
- vxNsr 13y ago
  I don't know... Most people I know with smart phones didn't pay >$200 and a lot got some sorta deal. Regardless, @ ~$300 or even if it went down to $100 most people aren't gonna spend that to retrieve a pic unless it's supremely important.

DigitalSea 13y ago

Well it was only a matter of time. On my Galaxy S4 I rooted it and am running GameSpector and downloaded a patch that not only removes the warning sent to the sender of said Snapchat I have taken a screenshot of their Snapchat but it also keeps the Snapchat indefinitely (the countdown drops to zero, but the video or image remains until you press clear). Anyone who honestly believes Snapchat is truly anonymous is very much mistaken. Be careful. Any anonymous service is bound to be abused and used for nefarious purposes. The high price tag ensures that only serious situations will warrant a Snapchat recovery (primarily law enforcement and on occasion, paranoid parents). Considering most people use Snapchat on their iPhone's mainly, I think most are safe for now.

treahauet 13y ago
There are tweaks available on Cydia for jailbroken iOS devices that provide similar functionality.

shmageggy 13y ago

I know nothing about Android development (this service isn't available for iOS yet, according to the article). Does the OS give you low enough level control to overwrite specific memory locations, say with random data? In other words, could the snapchat app shut this down with a simple update?

HorizonXP 13y ago
Sure. Just pass a reference to the Java-land object down to C++ via the Java Native Interface (JNI) and use memset to wipe out the memory in that location.
georgemcbay 13y ago
Even if they did this, there's still a huge problem on Android in that it is trivial to root virtually any Android phone and a rooted phone can be running a background app with READ_FRAMEBUFFER_ACCESS and constantly polling the framebuffer, so anything you see on the screen is leaked out of any app. And you can do this all at the app level without even getting into kernel driver hacks. Anyone who thinks the photos passed along through these apps are in any way safe from being saved and leaked by the receiver is very technically naive. All of the old rules about all bets being off if someone has physical access to a device in the chain still apply.
- Sprint 13y ago
  I find it extremely positive and beneficial that I have root access on my smartphone and I would not like to buy a device I cannot hack like that.
- rajivm 13y ago
  You could draw the photos in a SurfaceView with a "secure" flag (see http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceView.html#setSecure(boolean) http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/SurfaceV...). This would prevent other apps from reading them out of the framebuffer, or even taking a screenshot of them. If Snapchat isn't doing this, well their developers should do some research...

grey-area 13y ago

The appeal of Snapchat—and a growing number of companies specializing in ephemeral media—is that once the expiration date has passed, you no longer have to worry about whatever it is you just shared. It’s gone forever. Nobody can dredge it back into public view. It's not necessary to root your phone to circumvent snapchat or run special software after the fact. Since you can always use a camera (say on another phone) to take a photograph of the screen and record the image that way, why would anyone consider snapchat or similar services secure or reliable? If you can see it, you can reproduce it, and share it as much as you want via other channels.

steveklabnik 13y ago
Snapchat alerts users that the person on the other end has saved a screenshot, so as long as you don't see that, most people would assume that it has, in fact, disappeared.
- cheald 13y ago
  grey-area is referencing the analog hole, which is completely undetectable and unpreventable.
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    Right. I'm saying that I don't think laymen think about the analog hole; they just see that feature and assume that it actually does disappear.
- YPetrov 13y ago
  Is that for Android only? Yesterday my friend and I tried it (I have an iPhone, he has a Samsung), because I was curious if I will be able to take a screenshot while holding my finger on the image and it worked. He received no notification about the screenshot, though.
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    Nope, my iPhone has told me when another iPhone user has saved a screenshot before. Unsure about Android/iPhone.

tagabek 13y ago

What does "special forensics software" even mean? What is stopping some smart hackers from making a software that does the same thing, open sourcing it, and allowing 'regular' people to do the same thing for free?

illuminate 13y ago
Not much, really. Anything that scrapes the disk image should be able to recover the images. There's already a "free" open source application or three. I don't work in the field, but I've had some classes with local forensics engineers. Forensics teams buy software almost solely because they are able to reliably cite the software's use in court, and the developers could be subpoenaed easily to explain the function if the defense decided to call its use into question. Open-source solutions likely will never be used for that reason.

saurik 13y ago

A bunch of people here seem to misunderstand this as less powerful than being able to just modify the software (largely trivial on both iOS and Android) to not delete the images in the first place, or to save them while viewing them: that requires forethought to have made that modification ahead of time. The people who talk about "forensics" are interested in situations like "cell phone belonging to victim found at the murder scene: checking the system logs, the most recent application to have been used was SnapChat; if we knew what they had just received, we might have a clue (or just a naked picture of someone close to the victim)". Honestly, what they are doing is probably about as "lame" as "undelete a file", possibly with the at-most complexity of "undo some simple encoding" or "undelete a file that was stored as a row in an SQLite database that has yet to be vacuumed". So, this isn't technologically "wow" (one of the threads here is "how is this 'special'?"), but this also really isn't "engh, I can root it and scrape the framebuffer". It isn't even a company bragging that they beat SnapChat, so the "it's lame tech" part doesn't even matter: it is a company advertising a product/service for police departments to undelete self-destructing messages from a program that is very very popular. I thereby feel a more interesting conversation to be having on HN about this article isn't "lame, we knew SnapChat was insecure" or "lame, I could have done that" or "lame, there are easier ways to do that": it would be something closer to "damn, that was easy, we all knew it could be done, I could have even done it, and apparently it is worth $300 a pop to do this for forensics purposes? what other business opportunities are low-hanging fruit I'm missing out on by dismissing them as 'lame'?". (Yes: I know that "lame" wasn't a quote from any of the responses; I am summing up the sentiment. It isn't just HN either, but the other places I've seen this discussed don't have the business focus.)

A1kmm 13y ago
I think that given Snapchat's advertising ('the snap disappears') they should really be doing more on the client to make sure third parties don't get access to the picture, for example, by not storing it on the device at all.

quarterto 13y ago

They spelt danah boyd's name wrong.