Items tagged with cellebrite
Last week, the CEO of messaging app Signal got his hands on Cellebrite software, which is typically used for extracting data from mobile devices. Several security vulnerabilities were discovered with this acquisition, leading to Signal including files in its app that would corrupt all present and future data collected by the Cellebrite utility. Now, the Cellebrite Physical Analyzer, or “the most intrusive phone cracking tool offered by the company,” is no longer fully supporting iPhones. Cellebrite is an Israeli digital forensics and intelligence company that provides both hardware and software to crack phones. These products are used by law enforcement agencies around the world and...
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Israeli-based digital intelligence company Cellebrite provides software that enables the extraction of data from devices. While law enforcement loves this, it raises ire from phone manufacturers and individuals alike, with privacy concerns abound. Interestingly, the CEO of Signal got their hands on one of these devices and managed to hack it, which provided some interesting insights, to say the least. For context, Cellebrite software seems to exist in a moral and legal grey area, when law enforcement can unlock phones without authorization by the owner. While it is important to note that Cellebrite software requires the device to be in the hands of the person attempting to get data, this may...
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It appears that no one is safe from the hacking capabilities of Israeli security firm Cellebrite. Cellebrite is well-known in law enforcement circles for its lineup of hardware devices that are able to use brute force methods to hack smartphones and tablets. The company recently announced that it has the capability to "perform a full file system extraction on any iOS device" with its latest Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED). This newest product, dubbed UFED Premium, can chew through any and all passcodes on an iOS device to unlock them. What's even more critical, which Apple has attempted to thwart in the past with USB Restricted Mode, is that UFED Premium can perform...
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Cellebrite, an Israeli company known for selling solutions to law enforcement agencies around the globe to unlock smartphones, is back in the news again. This time around, the company is touting a new solution that would make it possible to crack just about any device that is currently running Apple's iOS 11 operating system. To understand why this announcement is so pivotal, we must rewind to just over two years ago. Following the San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 people dead in late 2015, Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice got into a war of words about device encryption and backdoor software access, bringing the subject to a mainstream audience. Law enforcement officials --...
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According to the National Safety Council, one-quarter of all accidents in the United States are caused by texting and driving. Approximately 330,000 people a year are injured due to accidents involving texting and driving. In order to combat the problem, some police departments in the US are currently testing the “Textalyzer”, a device that can reveal whether or not a person was on their mobile device while driving. The Textalyzer is a tablet-like device and police officers will be able to connect the driver’s smartphone to it and download their activity data within a few seconds. The device records every click, tap or swipe, as well as the apps the driver was using at the time. Image credit: NBCThe...
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Just a couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the Israeli security firm Cellebrite, and how it suffered a major data breach. After the information began to trickle out, it seemed like no real damage was done. Cellebrite itself said that what leaked was an old, irrelevant backup. A new discovery, however, questions that answer. If you're not familiar with Cellebrite, it was the firm that the U.S. government hired to break into an iPhone 5c to aide with investigation of the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack. Apple at the time refused to help crack the phone, so Cellebrite was brought in, and succeeded. Not long after, the firm boasted about its ability to crack nearly any smartphone - be...
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Israeli tech firm Cellebrite has offered to help an Italian father hack into a locked iPhone 6 handset that belonged to his deceased son. It's the same tech firm that assisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation with hacking an iPhone 5c after Apple refused over fears that cracking its own security would leave hundreds of millions of iPhones vulnerable to attack. Cellebrite was sympathetic to a story about Leondardo Fabbretti, who's 13-year-old son Dama, adopted from from Ethopia in 2007, passed away in September 2015 of bone cancer. Fabbretti wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking for help with getting into the device so that he could extract photographs, videos, and anything else that...
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John McAfee is a lot of things. He's an antivirus pioneer who sold his McAfee antivirus technology to Intel; he's a Libertarian candidate for U.S. president; and he's an eccentric individual with a heck of a story to tell about his escape from Belize where he was a person of interest in a murder investigation. On top of it all, he's supposedly a man with inside knowledge about how the FBI cracked the work-issued iPhone 5c model that was once used by Syed Farook, one of San Bernardino shooters.In an email exchange with Forbes, McAfee said Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Sun Corporation, inked a deal with the FBI nearly three years ago to provide forensic analysis of mobile devices, including smartphones...
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