Category Archives: Going Dark.

ACLU sues FBI for information about its encryption-cracking skills

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The FBI must be more transparent about its ability to break into people’s mobile devices, the American Civil Liberties Union says, and the group is suing for information about what the feds have in their toolkit. The ACLU says the bureau should come clean about what its Electronic Device Analysis Unit (EDAU) is using “to unlock and decrypt information that is otherwise securely stored on cell phones.” The group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Monday in a San Francisco federal court. “We’re demanding the government release records concerning any policies applicable to the EDAU, its technological capabilities to unlock or access electronic devices, and its requests for, purchases of, or uses of software that could enable it to bypass encryption,” the ACLU says in a news release. The suit is the latest offensive in what some call the Crypto Wars — an ongoing legal and policy struggle over […]

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European police crack encrypted phone network, arrest hundreds of alleged criminals

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Law enforcement agencies in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom on Thursday announced hundreds of arrests of alleged drug dealers and other criminals in a major bust made possible by cracking an encrypted phone network. European police officials said they broke into the platform of EncroChat, a bespoke encrypted messaging service, in April and had been quietly reading the messages ever since. They did not reveal the technique they used to breach EncroChat. The operation is nonetheless a significant breakthrough for law enforcement agencies that often say encrypted messaging apps stymie criminal and national security investigations. Andy Kraag, head of the Netherlands’ National Criminal Investigation Service, said investigators exploited “state-of-the-art cyber technology” to break EncroChat’s encryption, taking advantage of the alleged criminals’ trust in the encrypted platform. French authorities were involved in cracking EncroChat’s network and deployed a monitoring tool, Vice News reported. The Dutch police claimed they were […]

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Facebook paid for a 0-day to help FBI unmask child predator

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A third-party cybersecurity firm were paid to drill a hole in a Tor-reliant operating system to uncover a man who spent years sextorting young girls. Continue reading Facebook paid for a 0-day to help FBI unmask child predator→

U.S. officials say they’ve cracked Pensacola shooter’s iPhones, blast Apple

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Federal law enforcement officials said Monday they had unlocked the iPhones of the perpetrator of a December terrorist attack at a U.S. Naval base — and sharply criticizing Apple for not granting them access to those encrypted communications. FBI technicians cracked the phones of a Saudi aviation student who killed three U.S. sailors at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, uncovering evidence linking him to an Al Qaeda affiliate, Attorney General William Barr said. Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray urged Silicon Valley companies to write software that allows investigators to access encrypted communications with a warrant, a move that technology firms and security experts have criticized for years. Authorities took their usual claims a step further, though, by criticizing Apple for what they described as effectively standing in the way of their investigation. “We effectively received no help from Apple,” Wray asserted at the press conference. He did not detail the […]

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Privacy groups are still trying to get documents unsealed in Facebook encryption case

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Civil liberties groups on Tuesday asked an appeals court to unseal a federal judge’s ruling that rejected a U.S. government effort to force Facebook to decrypt voice calls. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the public has a right to know about how U.S. prosecutors tried to force Facebook to decrypt the calls in a 2018 investigation of the MS-13 gang, and why a judge rejected the prosecutors’ effort. The Department of Justice is urging the court to keep the ruling sealed, arguing that making it public could compromise ongoing criminal investigations. It is the latest front in a broader standoff between privacy advocates and law enforcement over access to encrypted communications. Law enforcement officials have for years lamented that strong encryption has hampered investigations into terrorists and criminals. But many technologists say any software especially designed for law enforcement access risks weakening security […]

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Facebook intends to implement end-to-end encryption despite DOJ pressure

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Facebook is not giving in to Department of Justice demands on weakening encryption, according to a new letter the company sent to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf on Monday. “Cybersecurity experts have repeatedly proven that when you weaken any part of an encrypted system, you weaken it for everyone, everywhere,” Will Cathcart, vice president and head of WhatsApp, and Stan Chudnovsky, vice president and head of Facebook Messenger, wrote in the letter, which CyberScoop acquired. “The ‘backdoor’ access you are demanding for law enforcement would be a gift to criminals, hackers and repressive regimes, creating a way for them to enter our systems and leaving every person on our platforms more vulnerable to real-life harm.” The letter comes as tech companies, privacy experts, lawmakers and government agencies continue to debate how law enforcement can track criminals when they are “going dark” by using encrypted commercially available […]

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Senior FBI cyber official Amy Hess to take security position at City of Louisville

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Amy Hess has spent nearly three decades at the FBI, rising to become the highest-ranking woman in the bureau and head of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. Now, she’s heading to Louisville, Kentucky, where, starting in February, she will be chief of public services, overseeing things like emergency services and public works. Mayor Greg Fischer announced Hess’s appointment last month in a statement picked up by local media but little noticed inside the Beltway. It is a homecoming of sorts for Hess, who previously served as special agent in charge in the FBI’s Louisville field office. It was not immediately clear who would replace Hess as head of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. CyberScoop has requested comment from the FBI. As a senior FBI cybersecurity official, Hess has spoken out about hacking threats from the Chinese and Russian governments, but also about how the FBI is working […]

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Peter Thiel says he doesn’t trust the FBI to safeguard an encryption backdoor

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Peter Thiel says a U.S. law enforcement plan to access Americans’ protected communications is a bad idea. Thiel, founder of big data analytics platform Palantir and vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, told Fox News Sunday he supports the use of encryption to protect U.S. data. His comments come as government officials including, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, have threatened legislation that would require companies like WhatsApp and Apple to make it possible for the FBI to access encrypted messages. Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist with a Silicon Valley background, suggested the FBI would not be able to ensure outsiders wouldn’t be able to use the same mechanisms to read communications that now are safe from prying eyes. “Maybe the FBI gets the information, maybe other people get it,” he told the Sunday morning show “Fox News Futures.” “I don’t trust the FBI to keep it protected inside the FBI…The […]

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Senator asks Department of Justice if it can keep a lid on its software exploits

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In recent years, Department of Justice agencies have quietly acquired and deployed hacking tools in support of their law enforcement mission. A handful of high-profile cases have brought greater scrutiny to those efforts, most notably in 2016 when the FBI used a contractor to crack the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. Now, a senator is asking Attorney General William Barr for a more thorough accounting of what law enforcement agencies are doing to protect these software exploits from foreign intelligence agencies and other adversaries. “Just as the American people expect the government to protect its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, so too do Americans expect that the government will protect its cyber arsenal from theft by hackers and foreign spies,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote to Barr in a letter dated June 5. In particular, the department has invested heavily in tools to break encrypted communications, as top law enforcement officials have lamented the […]

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