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Israeli Security Firm Claims Spyware Tool Can Harvest iCloud Data in Targeted iPhone Attack
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Exactly. How will they get a hard line into your phone?
Now excuse me while I plug my phone into a random USB port in this airport...
(Not picking on you, DCIFRTHS, this was just something I’ve contemplated when I find myself using public charging options. Surprised this hasn’t popped up in a movie. Or real life.)
That’s actually quite a good idea, especially for those who know to be targets. The downside is the hassle in restoring the fake and real accounts back n forth when traveling.
Perhaps a memory card version that allows one version to run off a memory card and one off the actual internal storage drive.
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Well, thankfully, not yet.
The problem is more trajectories unless something is done. I can't say which direction China is headed right at the moment or where they'll end up, but many of the Western countries have a pretty clear direction things are headed. Will it go that far? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't doubt it either.
Ahh, but who is a terrorist? How do we define that word now that we've headed into a postmodern flexibility of language and Nineteen Eighty-Four type politics and power-plays? How long before someone who supports, say, some 'pro-family' group, or says something that offends the wrong people, etc. ends up in that definition? Ever heard of Southern Poverty Law Center and their infamous list?
Unfortunately, I don't think we're too far off a lot of people who wouldn't have been technically considered terrorists, being labeled as such to suppress.
But, what happens when your home burns down and that external drive, and the computer that was backed up on it, are melted into puddles? I suppose you could have a few drives and rotate them out to off-site storage and such (which I used to do). But, using a cloud service is an easy way to get that off-site copy (in addition to a local one).
I do too, but I'm not sure how much that means if the people making the laws in regard to it are corrupt and can't think properly, or we go down the 'living document' path in a postmodern sense, or the judicial branch that is supposed to enforce it decides to play politics instead of doing their job, etc.
But, who is he a traitor to? The USA gov't or me? If he exposes their corruption, he might be a traitor to them, but he's a hero to me (because I hired them not to be corrupt, and as their boss, I want to know).
Yeah, it takes a while, but eventually works. When I setup Backblaze, I included - eventually - about 3TB between my local machine and an attached external drive. (I started with the most crucial stuff, and then kept including more once that completed.) It maybe took a week and a half. That's fine, as it's backup (unless my house burns down over that week and a half). The main gotcha would be if your Internet provider has data caps, where going over them leads to a big charge. Then, you'd want to 'stage in' so much of your data each month until it is done.
But, once it is done, I find it keeps up pretty well (unless you're creating huge videos or something). I'm not a pretty typical cable broadband plan, I think. Nothing too fancy. If suppose if you're rural, it might be more challenging. I think then I'd rotate a few drives between home and a safety deposit box or something like that (as I mentioned above).
But, please do it! I used to do IT consulting, and have seen too many people eventually get burned by data loss. It really is no fun.
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is there any reason not to believe the gist of this story?
I flirted with the cloud in 2010-2014. Now everything important is on computers not even hooked up to my local WiFi.
Mobile devices get a few phone numbers and emails, a pic or two and some music.
No iCloud, AppleMusic etc. etc.
Firefox, DuckDuckGoose with add blockers and VPN.
Serious data transfer happens when I carry an HD or SSD in a caddy from one machine to another.
I'm not a highly felonious kind of guy. I just tired of getting ads for pharmaceutical grade fermentation equipment and 16 bit Hall effect rotation sensors every time I wander over to Daily Kos.
Now what gets through the add blockers is underwear, and the NSA does not care about that stuff.
Target can't target me either, which makes life better junkmail wise.
I flirted with the cloud in 2010-2014. Now everything important is on computers not even hooked up to my local WiFi.
Mobile devices get a few phone numbers and emails, a pic or two and some music.
No iCloud, AppleMusic etc. etc.
Firefox, DuckDuckGoose with add blockers and VPN.
Serious data transfer happens when I carry an HD or SSD in a caddy from one machine to another.
I'm not a highly felonious kind of guy. I just tired of getting ads for pharmaceutical grade fermentation equipment and 16 bit Hall effect rotation sensors every time I wander over to Daily Kos.
Now what gets through the add blockers is underwear, and the NSA does not care about that stuff.
Target can't target me either, which makes life better junkmail wise.
No worries
I was thinking along the lines of something like the What's App situation where a phone call to a device, even if you don't answer it, would make you susceptible.I'm with you on the USB situation. I never plug into anything that I don't own, and I'll only buy first party, sealed chargers. I know it's not foolproof, but it gives me a little piece of mind.
Plenty of evidence that this government CAN with a National security letter compel the inclusion of a backdoor or weaknesses, implicit or explicitly, in hardware or software.
Snowden revelations provides further plenty of evidence that they have an ambition and track records if grabbing data purely for the reason of its existence.
Last but not least their rabid insistence that the Chinese (who have but a fraction of the US’s financial resources and expertise dedicated to this field) MUST be doing this....is the clearest and most telling indicator that they’re doing something in this area at the very least. How much and where, is the real question.
My employer doesn't allow the use of public clouds for work product. So you don't put work stuff on iCloud, Google, Microsoft, DropBox, etc. I only put things on iCloud that I would expect could be made public. I put other things on Growly Notes in encrypted documents and only store them locally, backed up of course. I'm not an important person though - celebrities really should take stronger actions to protect their privacy.
Smart employer. This is one reason I don’t like the Google Pixel smartphone and wouldnnever buy it as it forces you to save most of your stuff to their Cloud server instead of allowing you to save to your own device. #1 reason there not to buy one.
this is no good.
this is cyber terrorism.
I don't care who they sell these hacks to and why, it should stop.
Apple should address this immediately.
this is cyber terrorism.
I don't care who they sell these hacks to and why, it should stop.
Apple should address this immediately.
Regarding how often it happens, I really don't know. It can happen on either side of the border so whether a foreign government would want to search a phone is entirely dependent on what country you are traveling to. In the past 3 years I've gone to Spain, Germany, Peru and New Zealand without any issue. Coming back into the US, your chances of having a phone or tablet searched will probably depend on what country you have visited as well as behavior profiling (do you act nervous waiting in line to go through customs) and there may even be a completely random "audit" where one out of XXX people going through line are randomly selected for an inspection.
By the way, I don't really believe "random" means random. Shortly after 9/11 I was traveling between Indianapolis and Los Angeles frequently and I was "randomly" chosen for an extra pat down and search of my carry on bags at the gate on 11 out of 12 flights. I have no idea what I was doing or wearing that fit some profile but there is no way I was "randomly" chosen on over 90% of my flights within a 4 month time period.
My last couple of trips had patdowns. My watch was flagged by the machine. It appears that some people try to hide things under their watches. My right shoulder has been flagged as well - my guess is that it's due to a chest port that I used to have when I was on chemo.
Yeah, I'm only doing USA/Canada for my experience. It certainly is the USA that is going a bit crazy on this stuff. Canada has gotten easier, if anything.
I'm more just curious if being asked to see the phone, unlock it, etc. is becoming an even semi-regular thing at all. I've never had/seen it happen.
Same experience here, though even recently. If I were to guess, I'd also say like 80% of my airport security checks coming to the USA have included a 'random' search/body-scan. While waiting, I'd see a few women 'randomly' flagged, but it was mostly men. I also have a beard (as does your profile icon) which maybe triggers some kind of profiling?
I don't care all that much, aside from a slight delay. I just don't like them pretending it's random. Profiling is a thing any kind of law enforcement does... so long as it doesn't get lazy and abused, as that will probably end up letting more bad things through.
If it were North Koreans,Iranians,Russians or someone to that extent then you would have heard from Trump about it otherwise we don’t want to upset our campaign donors before the next elections around the corner
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Doesn't mean that every phone is hackable. Government backdoors have existed, but nobody's found one in iOS or Android.
As of now we do know that the iPhone and Android phones are hackable by Israeli companies which is what this thread is about. Unless this can be closed it can also be considered a backdoor although a perhaps unapproved backdoor. Behind closed doors we don't know what was and was not approved. What we do know today though is that there is an open backdoor with access to all info on OS in IOS and Android.
Kashoggi found out the hard way before being hacked to pieces.
I like the idea of that, but it says at the bottom of the description, "Please Note: Not compatible with original APPLE cables"
I'm not sure why, but there seems to be some intelligence going on with some devices and even charging (I think the Lightning cables have a little chip in them). Or, Playstation controllers won't just charge when plugged into power only either. So... I wonder if this will actually work for iPhone/iPad?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that there is some comm between the iOS cable and the charger to check for compatibility. But for $3 it might be worth a try. I carry an extra battery for this stuff anyway. I wonder if wireless chargers do the same.
Still doesn't allude to a government backdoor, just that an elite hacking group somehow found a way in. It's happened in the past, doesn't mean everything you own is always hackable. They haven't really demonstrated the hack, though.
Yeah, I was thinking about it for family members. I can't actually remember the last time I've ever used a USB port in a public place. I also carry a battery for this when I travel, just in case, but I hardly end up using it either.