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FBI Used New Cellebrite Software To Crack Trump Shooter's Phone (bloomberg.com) 169
The FBI was given access to unreleased technology to access the phone of the man identified as the shooter of former President Donald Trump, Bloomberg reported late Thursday, citing people familiar with the investigation. From the report: As the FBI struggled to gain access on Sunday morning to the phone, they appealed directly to Cellebrite, a digital intelligence company founded in Israel that supplies technology to several US federal agencies, according to the people, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the case.
FBI agents wanted to pull data from the device to help decipher his motives for the shooting at a rally in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, where Trump suffered an injured ear and a spectator was killed. Authorities have identified the deceased shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks. The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh held a license for Cellebrite software, which lets law enforcement identify or bypass a phone's passcode. But it didn't work with Crooks' device, according to the people, who said the deceased shooter owned a newer Samsung model that runs Android's operating system. The agents called Cellebrite's federal team, which liaises with law enforcement and government agencies, according to the people. Within hours, Cellebrite transferred to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, additional technical support and new software that was still being developed. The details about the unsuccessful initial attempt to access the phone, and the unreleased software, haven't been previously reported.
FBI agents wanted to pull data from the device to help decipher his motives for the shooting at a rally in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, where Trump suffered an injured ear and a spectator was killed. Authorities have identified the deceased shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks. The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh held a license for Cellebrite software, which lets law enforcement identify or bypass a phone's passcode. But it didn't work with Crooks' device, according to the people, who said the deceased shooter owned a newer Samsung model that runs Android's operating system. The agents called Cellebrite's federal team, which liaises with law enforcement and government agencies, according to the people. Within hours, Cellebrite transferred to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia, additional technical support and new software that was still being developed. The details about the unsuccessful initial attempt to access the phone, and the unreleased software, haven't been previously reported.
Can they learn if he was schizophrenic? (Score:2)
Twenty years old. That's in through the right time to be discovering such things about a person, I think?
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Not a bad FP. Is there anyone around here who is unwilling to stipulate that the shooter was crazy? Not sure that the exact flavor of insanity matters too much. It's always a perfect explanation, but without any explanatory power. "He did it because he was crazy, but there's no way to predict what he'll do next since he is crazy."
However my theory is that they are looking for a pattern of motivations that combined with a pattern of innovation, perhaps combined with a pattern of crazy luck, all of which led
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Are you referring to the recent laws passed in various states about needing ID to access porn websites? You realize California is actively working on the same fucking legislation, right? California, the bastion of GOPness, right?
The world isn't so black and white as Democrat and Republican. Please grow up.
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NAK
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Point of clarification: If the apparent fascist troll had asked politely, then I would have clarified what I was referring to.
Yes, it's rude of me to label him that way, but I only have the one reply to consider and no interest or motivation to evaluate another sock puppet more carefully.
Kind of scary (Score:3, Insightful)
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An Israeli company is the one that is able to unlock everyone's phones, and they act like that is OK. I'm not...
If a trees worth of American Rights violations goes down in an Israeli forest, do American citizens give a shit enough to at least put down the voting axe?
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An Israeli company is the one that is able to unlock everyone's phones, and they act like that is OK. I'm not...
If a trees worth of American Rights violations goes down in an Israeli forest, do American citizens give a shit enough to at least put down the voting axe?
If the FBI had a search warrant for the shooter's phone, no one's rights were violated here.
Re: Kind of scary (Score:2)
Can you violate the rights of a dead person? And here I mean it both morally and legally. (This is a real question not sarcasm)
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So wait, who do I vote for President that will take us completely out of the Middle East? I didn't realize we had a candidate that was actually for that.
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TBH, I'm OK with this.
1. Better Israel than Russia or China
2. They don't have to try another San Bernardino style lawsuit against Apple.
Israel could launch all USA nukes if wanted (Score:2)
> Better Israel than Russia or China
"At least this Yugo starts..." oooyy
Re:Kind of scary (Score:5, Insightful)
If Israel can do this publicly for a fee, how confident are we that foreign intelligence agencies cant do it privately?
Also, note that Israel has sold secrets to China before.
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If Israel can do this publicly for a fee, how confident are we that foreign intelligence agencies cant do it privately?
Also, note that Israel has sold secrets to China before.
Nothing gets sold by Israel to China without the US's approval. Many weapon sales and port administration contracts have been rejected for this reason.
Every once in a while, the US throws China a bone, but it's never anything meaningful. Besides which, there are plenty of US firms that do business in China with the US' approval.
Re:Kind of scary (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing gets sold by Israel to China without the US's approval.
Israel may follow that rule but that doesn't mean Israelies always follow that rule.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.... [middleeastmonitor.com]
All you need to do is find someone with the tech you want who wants the money your willing to pay. Rules or no rules.
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Nothing gets sold by Israel to China without the US's approval. Many weapon sales and port administration contracts have been rejected for this reason.
Every once in a while, the US throws China a bone, but it's never anything meaningful. Besides which, there are plenty of US firms that do business in China with the US' approval.
You think Israel can't transfer a file to China and except Bitcoin in return? They could easily do that and the U.S. would be none the wiser.
Re: Kind of scary (Score:2)
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Except Israel kidnaps, assassinates, murders, imprisons, tortures, genocides and terrorises.
If you're comfortable with Israel being able to hack our personal devices, you don't know what they do.
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The CIA can probably do it as well. What's your point? My comfort level about someone able to hack a computer device doesn't even enter the equation. I'm not okay with a great many things in this world but last I checked, the world doesn't give a shit and I'm not influential enough to change that.
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Also, way to derail this thread. Now we're going to have a 100 comments about the stupid fucking middle east and their 1000 year problems.
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You are confusing Hamas and Israel. 1,000 people slaughtered. Many hundreds kidnapped. But maybe you are a Nazi who doesnâ(TM)t count Israeli citizens as "people"?
Israelis don't count Palestinians as people which is why thy continue to steal Palestinian land [youtube.com] and attack ambulance personnel [cnn.com] trying to aid the injured. Or a group of kids playing foosball, because that foosball is so deadly. Or deliberately amputating appendages [cnn.com] for routine wounds. Or destroying food stocks [cnn.com] and vandalizing people's homes. Or just shoot children [imgur.com] whenever they feel like it. Or shooting civilians holding white flags [cnn.com]. Let us no forget all the raping [imgur.com] of Palestinian girls and women which
Re: Kind of scary (Score:1)
Isn't it amazing how the Israelis are capable of killing the exact same number of people each day per the numbers relased by Hamas? If I were the Palestinians I would certainly appreciate that statistical impossibility.
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Zionists used to be okay, but labels evolve.
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> 1. Better Israel than Russia or China ... because the genocide of the Palestinian people is so cool... So let's give Israel all the keys, what could go wrong?
Re:Kind of scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither Russia nor China is a colonialist apartheid state in the middle of a genocide that's killed nearly 200,000 people.
Nazi clown.
Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Re:Kind of scary (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the Uighurs may have something to say about China as well.
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Interesting, this is my first encounter with denialism of Uighur repression. Apparently it's usually seen on the far-left, although the far-right has flirted with adjacent concepts of rationalization, which is perhaps closer to what you're doing:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opin... [aljazeera.com]
China hasn't given up on their very real attempt at Uighur genocide:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/... [hrw.org]
It also looks like you got punked by China exactly as intended:
https://www.voanews.com/a/unes... [voanews.com]
https://uhrp.org/statement/une... [uhrp.org]
Als
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Neither Russia nor China is a colonialist apartheid state in the middle of a genocide that's killed nearly 200,000 people.
Nazi clown.
Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Russia wasn't given land that belonged to someone else in order to create a state that didn't exist beforehand, then try to take more land. They may be trying to take over Ukraine, but they aren't trying to wipe out every man woman and child in order to settle their land.
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Neither Russia nor China is a colonialist apartheid state in the middle of a genocide that's killed nearly 200,000 people.
Nazi clown.
Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Russia wasn't given land that belonged to someone else in order to create a state that didn't exist beforehand, then try to take more land. They may be trying to take over Ukraine, but they aren't trying to wipe out every man woman and child in order to settle their land.
Who did it belong to before then?
Clue by four: the British. We took it from the Ottoman Turks, they took it from the Egyptians (we've gone back to the 1500s here)... Both the Egyptian Mamluk and Ottoman states no longer exist.
Also the Israelis are not killing every man, woman and child. Get your head out of your arse and stop spreading propaganda from a terrorist organisation that would see your white arse strung up next to every Jew and Muslim they didn't like if they could.
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Neither Russia nor China is a colonialist apartheid state in the middle of a genocide that's killed nearly 200,000 people.
Nazi clown.
Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Russia wasn't given land that belonged to someone else
Nope, they took land that belonged to someone else.
They may be trying to take over Ukraine, but they aren't trying to wipe out every man woman and child in order to settle their land.
They absolutely are trying to eliminate Ukraine not just as a nation but as a culture, and they're quite happy to kill as many Ukrainians as needed to do it. And Israel is not trying to kill every Palestinian, though they're happy to kill as many Palestinians as needed to destroy any possibility that Palestine may become an independent nation.
The only real difference is that most of the Palestinians want to eliminate Israel, while most Ukrainians would b
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Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Are you trying to change the meaning of "genocide"? Stop that. You are weakening my language. (Or genociding it? Hmm)
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Actually Russia is, you forgot about their ongoing genocide in Ukraine?
Are you trying to change the meaning of "genocide"? Stop that. You are weakening my language. (Or genociding it? Hmm)
No, the Hamas apologists are doing that. It won't be long now before Israel has killed 3 times the population of the Gaza strip.
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Are you trying to change the meaning of "genocide"? Stop that. You are weakening my language. (Or genociding it? Hmm)
From the Genocide convention:
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Either you're misreading the definition or I am, because I don't think forced annexation is what was meant by the authors of that text. (There are two parts to the definition, both of which must be fulfilled, and I'm skeptical about the former part, not the latter.)
But I don't like lawyering about it either. The linguistic definition I've always understood seems more relevant: the wiping out of a people. I guess only China and Palestine are attempting this simple clear genocide.
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Either you're misreading the definition or I am, because I don't think forced annexation is what was meant by the authors of that text.
The linguistic definition I've always understood seems more relevant: the wiping out of a people.
Genocide is not limited only to killing nor does it need to extend to every group member. You are right "forced annexation" does not itself necessarily constitute genocide. My argument was instead based on actions and expressions of intent that fit the definition from the genocide convention.
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I guess it's a more complicated question about what is meant by destroying a people. I interpret it pretty literally (the verb being "destroy") (and forced sterilization counts for sure), but killing a lot of people in an unjustified war doesn't seem to reach that threshold. It's an atrocity but I would call it "mass murder" or "crime against humanity".
And it's not like mass murder is necessarily less bad than genocide, or vice versa.
Perspective... (Score:2)
The number of deaths here are all somewhat suspect, fog of war and all that, but these are the numbers reported by OHCHR:
Civilian deaths during War in the Donbas 2014 - 2022:
- about 4000 (how many from each "side" in the conflict is difficult to determine) about 150 of them were children.
Civilian deaths during the War in Ukraine 2022 - 2024:
- about 30000 (again, figuring out which "side" killed how many is difficult) and about 200 were children.
Note that in both time-frames, military deaths are vastly highe
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Ok, but those are the real numbers, and they more-or-less bear out that analysis. Do you have a better source for data than the UN OHCHR?
Anyway, my point was about comparing the war in Ukraine to the war in Palestine. Both conflicts are objectively horrible, but which one looks more like genocide? Are there displaced people in Ukraine? You bet, but how many were displaced INTO Russia vs. how many Palestinians have been displaced INTO Israel? I leave that as an exercise for the reader. There is informati
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Palestinians are the only when planning and trying to commit a genocide in that conflict. Intention is a prerequisite for genocide. Hamas has intention, Israel doesn't. So right back at you. Furthermore, Hamas has intention not only towards Jews/Israelis, they *intentionally* put Arab civilians and children in harms way. In other words, they commit genocide towards *their own population*.
Look at this short interview https://www.memri.org/tv/jorda... [memri.org]
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Financed by the USA. We give Israel over ten billion a year.
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Do you also complain about your local locksmith? They also can unlock everyone's doors.
And just like here, they require legal right to do so. Vote accordingly.
Re: Kind of scary (Score:2)
The way it works is CIA has all powers, but people limit FBIs powers for civil liberties reasons. CIA cant operate in USA by law, but close allies, UK, Israel, France and South Korea etc do as foreign spies without interference. CIA then taps these spies for intel about US. CIA presumably has same abilities.
Re: Kind of scary (Score:2)
Re: Kind of scary (Score:2)
Overarching Question (Score:5, Interesting)
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If they were aware it's already on their fix list.
If they're not then Cellebrite isn't giving them the details.
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If they were aware it's already on their fix list.
How do you know that? Is public knowledge for years that Cellebrite is breaking encryption on Apple devices, for any other company Apple would close the vulnerabilities in days.
Re: Overarching Question (Score:2)
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Paranoid much?
Did you read the article or summary? They can only hack older versions of iOS and older devices with their product version. For the FBI in this case, they got a cutting edge beta version no one else has seen before.
So obviously yes Apple fixes stuff and has in the past issued many emergency quick fixes.
Tell us you never owned an iPhone without telling us.
What is the purpose or value to Apple to leave holes in iOS for an Israeli company to hack with full public knowledge that the devices are
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The overarching (or underlying) question is whether Google/Android (and Apple) are aware of the vulnerabilities being exploited by Cellebrite and whether they intend to fix them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're exploiting hardware vulnerabilities when it comes to Samsung. Back in the day the their old CDMA phones all used the same master password which let you do things you're really not supposed to be able to, like changing the device's MEID.
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> The overarching (or underlying) question is whether Google/Android (and Apple) are aware of the vulnerabilities being exploited by Cellebrite and whether they intend to fix them.
Or do they have some sort of arrangement with manufacturers to leave the door for them in a direct or indirect way?
Guess answer to that question we will never know.
Re:Overarching Question (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely Cellebrite is sitting on 0days and not disclosing. They're known to do this.
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They operate out of a rogue state. We should sanction their technology and make it illegal to import, and any evidence gathered with it should be fruit of the poison tree.
After all, how can we know what it does to the data? How do we know it doesn't let the user add whatever they want to the suspect's phone? How can we be sure that the forensic images are accurate? It should be shot down in court, as there is no way to verify it, and they certainly won't let anyone examine the source code.
It might also be a
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The overarching (or underlying) question is whether Google/Android (and Apple) are aware of the vulnerabilities being exploited by Cellebrite and whether they intend to fix them.
We literally just ran a story on how Cellebrite play a game of whackamole with bugs. That they need to release constant software updates because newer releases of the OSes cause the previous versions of their forensics software to fail.
That said there was also a story a few years back that Cellebrite doesn't actually use all it's known vulnerabilities in the product so they have a back log of zero-day exploits waiting for a phone's new OS update.
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Someone shared a table showing which hardware and OS combinations Cellebrite could break. Based on that, and the fact that it required the "beta" unreleased version of Cellebrite to access this phone, I'd say that they are indeed playing a constant cat and mouse game of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities after Apple patches them version by version.
It sounds like their main strengths are in finding those vulnerabilities, and most importantly, keeping them secret.
Re: Overarching Question (Score:2)
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Well, if Apple/Google were aware of the flaw, they would fix them - they're not the kind to leave open a backdoor. Because if it was a backdoor, it will get exploited by someone sooner or later and they'd be forced to close it.
This company is well known for sitting on 0 days so it has a way in, and by sitting on them, the vulnerabil
All you need to understand (Score:3)
One takeaway you need to understand is the fact that no matter how much companies will tell you how secure your data is with their hardware, it's a lie.
Another is the fact that if Company A, B or C can do it, so can Hacker X, Y and Z. ( The latter tend to end up working for the former eventually )
The moral of this story is: Do not put anything on your phone you consider to be sensitive or important information because, as we've seen over and over again, breaking into these things appears to be trivial for those with enough motivation and know-how to do so.
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The moral of this story is: Do not put anything on your phone you consider to be sensitive or important information because, as we've seen over and over again, breaking into these things appears to be trivial for those with enough motivation and know-how to do so.
Considering that the shooter is dead, he's now free of worldly concerns such as whether or not the feds are able to rummage through his phone. IMHO, the real take away here is that if you get yourself into enough trouble where you legitimately have to worry about Cellebrite being used to crack your phone, you probably have much bigger problems.
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Or, as in his case. no problems at all.
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From Cryptonomicon:
Re:All you need to understand (Score:4, Informative)
breaking into these things appears to be trivial for those with enough motivation and know-how to do so
According to leaked information from Cellebrite, they can't touch an iPhone 12 or later and they can't touch an iPhone running iOS 17.4. The shooter here had a "newer" Samsung phone, where Cellebrite had a breach in development but not published yet. But nobody told us _how_ new that "newer" Samsung phone is. "Newer" might be "less than 3 years old" for all we know.
So it's not trivial. On iOS you can make it a lot harder by not using a six digit passcode but ten digits and letters. The trick is, without that passcode the iPhone doesn't just disallow access, but it is totally incapable of reading most of the data on the device. Don't know enough about Samsung phones, but you can likely make them safer as well quite easily.
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He had two phones. One on the roof, another at his residence. Based on the way they were described, I get the impression both were active phones (as opposed to an older, retired phone he no longer used). Here's a picture of the phone he had with him [nypost.com]. I'm sure someone into phones can identify the model based on the cameras.
Re: All you need to understand (Score:2)
A lot of innuendo going on there. (Score:3)
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The story I'm getting is that the latest iphone and ios is harder to break than the latest samsung and android.
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How so? The shooter had two different phones?
Re: A lot of innuendo going on there. (Score:2)
An ear or a LIFE? (Score:1)
FTFY
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Like you, I reversed the order. A death is more relevant than any non-debilitating injuries. This is regardless of any notable characteristics of the living that remain.
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Lets face facts (Score:2)
Re: Lets face facts (Score:2)
If there is a lock on a door, there is always a way around it.
Cryptography doesnâ(TM)t work that way. On iOS, without the passcode, the data youâ(TM)d like to read doesnâ(TM)t exist. There is no lock to get around. If you want to break into my house, the house contents is there even if you donâ(TM)t have the key but climb through an open window. On iOS, without passcode, the data isnâ(TM)t there. No passcode is stored. No passcode hash is stored.
Now apple has taken steps to stop you from trying lots of passcodes quickly. Thatâ(TM)s som
Re: Lets face facts (Score:2)
Re: Lets face facts (Score:2)
Yep. If invariant relations exist between points of data, it can be cracked. Only everything encrypted by one time pads avoids this quality.
samsung can unlock it. (Score:2)
Thats what probably actually happened.
The kiosk and mdm stuff that gets checked at boot enables them to check and execute whatever, even if its not first boot.
Corrupted evidence (Score:1)
Welcome me back, I've been away on a forced break (Score:2)
I'll tell you one person that the FBI ought to be looking for:
The guy in the photo on either X or Facebook who was said
to be hosing down the crime scene. He was on top of a roof
with a thick hose squirting water onto what might have been
where the shooter was sited.
He was facing away from the camera and wearing an FBI jacket.
I'll give them a bunch of (probably unnecessary) hints:
Was he really an FBI agent?
Was that really the roof in question?
Are there any other shots of him?
Can you see his face in any of the
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I see. Thanks for that. That certainly narrows down the possibilities. I know that the Bren machine gun shoots tight 'groups', much tighter than the M60, for example. Spraying the bullets around is often useful to kill, and the Bren has fallen out of favor for not just its complexity but also the tight 'groups'. If you had to launch bullets over a big hill using a mortar sight though, you might still choose a Bren for just that reason.
Have a nice day, iggymanz.
Regards, Graeme.
-- I used to be a perfectionist
The FBI was given access to unreleased technology (Score:2)
The FBI were given access to one of the backdoor(s)
“Cellebrite, a digital intelligence company founded in Israel”
Why are so many Cyber security companies run by former Mossad agents?
The actual truth in the background (Score:3)
FBI: I'm not touching this.
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Not everything is about you. If you're remotely honest, not many things are. Grow the hell up.
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I've only heard of "decent Republicans" in legend. Even looking before I was around, gotta ask yourself how all those "decent folks" were about people like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The only reasonable answer is that they were never decent: They just held their forked tongues a little better in civilized company.
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Totally not a cult.
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Given that roughly half of the US support Trump, describing his support as a "cult" is faintly ridiculous.
What about a group that demonizes feminists, and insists that men who wear dresses be allowed in women's toilets and changing rooms by law? That sounds like an extremist cult, yet going by your post history, that group has your fanatical support.
why people aren't criticizing Apple here... (Score:4, Informative)
iPhone 12 or newer and Cellebrite can't touch the contents [macrumors.com] of a locked phone.
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It should be noted that the publicly listed capabilities of cellebrite apply only to their standard and law enforcement tiers of subscription.
They do not publish or even offer everything to just anyone, including the normal customers.
As you can see here they most certainly do have higher tiers of service for certain governments (FBI in this case, CIA in a past case)
In their previous CIA case they ended up using a zeroday exploit that no one really knew they had.
It was then it became obvious it was part of t
That we know of... (Score:2)