Just a little BTW info for those interested. If one is thinking about about resisting authoritarian tendencies of governments, then they need to be aware of their capabilities.
Personally, I like to keep up with these sorts of things as opposed to web site navel gazing and the weird capability of down rating comments. I mean, Jeeeez, they are just electrons on a screen
Anyway, Feds are revealing that another NSA contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton (as did Snowden )stole a huge database of computer exploits that are used against targeted systems; such as foreign or domestic computers. His lawyers are saying he only took them home to work on them and improve. Maybe, but you know, his systems would have been targeted as an employee with such access. Kind of like Clinton and her server.
The 2nd is also very interesting.
In January, someone hacked Cellebrite, an Israeli forensic hacking company who sold tools to Russia, Turkey, etc… as well as US LEA.
Well someone got into their tool box and took 900gb of data, including lots of unknown iOS tools used on iPads and iPhones throughout the world. These vulnerabilities were known but not disclosed to the public by the companies. Why? either for reputation or security reasons.
But what is interesting is that some of the apps released appear to be jailbreak code developed by the unofficial iOS jailbreak community.
” Zdziarski also said that other parts of the code were similar to a jailbreaking project called QuickPwn, but that the code had seemingly been adapted for forensic purposes. For example, some of the code in the dump was designed to brute force PIN numbers, which may be unusual for a normal jailbreaking piece of software.
“If, and it’s a big if, they used this in UFED or other products, it would indicate they ripped off software verbatim from the jailbreak community and used forensically unsound and experimental software in their supposedly scientific and forensically validated products,” Zdziarski continued. …”
So jailbreakers got their code stolen and sold for commercial purposes so security agencies could break into phones. Great.
Cellebrite may have been the Israeli company the FBI paid thousands to break into an iPhone earlier this year; probably using this tool set. The FBI should grab this code dump and save the taxpayers some money.
These are just two examples of US and allied govt capabilities in accessing electronic data. If you are interested in organizing resistance, you need to be as paranoid as your fellows in the 60’s; because the mentality hasn’t changed, just the capabilities.
And if someone in your group suggest you get “serious” and maybe do a little anti-govt or property violence…run as they are 99% sure to be FBI plants. Worked in the student movements, the radical elements, the militia movement and now “terrorist” cells. The old ways are often the best.
Ridge
———excerpt———
“Myers said Martin took “many thousands of pages” of classified material as well as 50 terabytes of digital data, much of which has “special handling caveats.”
Martin previously worked in the Navy, leaving active duty in 1992 and then held a variety of tech jobs with government contractors. He worked at the NSA from 2012 to 2015, where he was an employee of the intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
For some portion of that time, Martin was in the NSA’s elite hacker unit, Tailored Access Operations, which makes and deploys software used to penetrate foreign targets’ computer networks for foreign espionage purposes.
Some U.S. officials said that Martin allegedly made off with more than 75 percent of TAO’s library of hacking tools — an allegation which, if true, would be a stunning breach of security.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/prosecutors-to-seek-indictment-against-former
-nsa-contractor-as-early-as-this-week/2017/02/06/362a22ca-ec83-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html?utm
_term=.9e0feccff416
Wonder if this is independent of the anti-Iranian malware that escaped?
https:/arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/02/a-rash-of-invisible-fileless-malware-is-infecting-banks-a
round-the-globe
The Cellebrite toolkit probably doesn’t have this but the NSA dump, as that exploit has Stunext characteristics, may be in the TAO coding.
What is interesting is that its injected into the physical (chipset firmware or the RAM) memory and doesn’t reside on the HD except as Win Registry entry. Using Powershell and NetSH tools to get around a network makes sense, but the initial infection and how it got into the chipset is the mystery; I guess they will reveal at the meeting later this spring.
They went after banks so its “private” unless its a test so as to a weapon for economic warfare.
A release of supposed TAO tools was threatened last Fall with some making it into the wild. Now this storehouse in private hands.
Too many people are writing too many tools and are in too many hands. They are also too tempting a target for theft; for private or nationalistic reasons.
I just want to point this stuff out so that people don’t become over dependent on their devices and are lulled into false sense of security.
R
Offensive cyberweapons are just more sexier than doing defensive security. This trend by governments is going to end up making the internet unusable for ordinary people.
The comparison between Snowden and Martin is overblown. Snowden was indeed a whistleblower. Martin was an entrepreneur and a thief.
Tactics for resisting tyranny are always problematic. Nonetheless, most tyrannies tend to be short-lived, or the states cycle through greater and lesser restrictions.
People are writing these tools because they are awash in taxpayer money to write these tools because of “national security”. How much of the estimated $10 billion a year that NSA gets is allocated to tailored access operations (TAO)? That’s a huge bundle of mischief.
Banks that use Windows(TM) are guilty of engineering malpractice.
And to ramp up one’s feeling of insecurity even more, Bruce Schneier has been compiling Internet of Things security advisories. Now there is a wide open door to one’s private or Enterprise Network.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/02/security_and_pr.html
R
I have blocked all access from my SmartTV’s and the Amazon Firestick and the Roku to my computers, except they can access the DLNA server ONLY through the designated port access.
I’m glad I don’t have a model that uses voice command. Obviously those TV’s can record your voice and transmit it out. Samsung admits as much and it is obvious. Samsung says they don’t, but do you trust a multinational multibillion dollar company?
Samsung’s voice command TVs EUL had a couple of lines about not discussing anything private in front of the TV. Might hurt its delicate ears and your conversation about cancer, abortion and/or govt overthrow might get recorded without your knowledge.
The problem with all the IoT devices (Nest and Honeywell thermostats ,cameras, refrigerators, printers ,etc….) is that there is little default security on the stupid things. There are search engines out there to find open cameras so you can look in on some stranger in Wyoming or see what that guy in Atlanta has in his refrig. And Chrysler got in trouble about the OS in some models being open to hacking and strangers across the globe hitting the brakes, accelerator, put it in reverse, etc…
Then bots took over millions of them and used them on an attack against the Krebs security website.
Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean its a good idea.
R
A major university had their network slow to a crawl. After extensive investigation, it found that 5000 of its IoT devices (lightbulbs to Vending machines) had been taken over by a botnet and locked the IT Dept out.
Then began to spew DNS nd other requests across the net, slowing it down.
R
—–excerpt——-
The “incident commander” noticed “the name servers, responsible for Domain Name Service (DNS) lookups, were producing high-volume alerts and showed an abnormal number of sub-domains related to seafood. As the servers struggled to keep up, legitimate lookups were being dropped–preventing access to the majority of the internet.” That explained the “slow network” issues, but not much else.
The university then contacted the Verizon RISK (Research, Investigations, Solutions and Knowledge) Team and handed over DNS and firewall logs. The RISK team discovered the university’s hijacked vending machines and 5,000 other IoT devices were making seafood-related DNS requests every 15 minutes.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3168763/security/university-attacked-by-its-own-vending-machines
-smart-light-bulbs-and-5-000-iot-devices.html