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Mobile 'Remote Wipe' Thwarts Secret Service
bennyboy64 writes "Smartphones that offer the ability to 'remote wipe' are great for when your device goes missing and you want to delete your data so that someone else can't look at it, but not so great for the United States Secret Service, ZDNet reports. The ability to 'remote wipe' some smartphones such as BlackBerry and iPhone was causing havoc for law enforcement agencies, according to USSS special agent Andy Kearns, speaking on mobile phone forensics at a security conference in Australia."
My heart bleeds for these guys. Really, it does.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Are they secure wipes or can data still be gleaned?
The Secret Service just need a Faraday Cage Fanny Pack.
They seriously can't turn them off temporarily before they stash the mobile devices out of range of service?
I wouldn't waste a moment waiting on the phone to power down on its own.
Seems to be that the gating factor with a laptop is that it has to be online in order to get a poison pill. A smart phone, well that's easy to send a poison pill because it's still online even after the point you lose control of the device. A laptop, however, can be left turned off and the disk duplicated before anyone actually turns the power on the drive.
Disk encryption helps to the extent that it prevent an unauthorized people from accessing the drive but that's not the same as a remote wipe, since you can still use rubber hose cryptanalysis or a supoena to get the passphrase. What's needed is some kind of pc hardware that can take instructions to do a remote wipe from a pre-boot phase to delete the encryption key itself (not just the passphrase), and secure enough so that some hacker can't remote wipe your pc for you.
Sounds like it's working then.
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So the Slashdot groupthink's anti-law enforcement stance has extended to the Secret Service now? Which part are we in favor of: counterfeiting money or assassinating the president? Personally I'll go ahead and take a bold anti-counterfeiting/anti-assassination position and say that this is a bad thing.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
is a botnet !
Thanks in advance.
Yours In Smolensk,
K. Trout
Airplane mode F T W.
~Mekkah
Some phones never truly turn off, and have the ability to be turned on remotely. The government was pushing for this feature, and now it has turned around and bit them. The only way to be certain that the black box you are carrying cannot communicate with the outside world is to remove the battery or stick it in a Faraday cage. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.
My understanding is that this very feature is either available or available-real-soon-now in certain corporate models with integrated cellular broadband cards(since, effectively, if the PC has a cell card with BIOS integration, doing just about anything a smartphone could do under the circumstances is just a matter of implementation).
Seems to be that the gating factor with a laptop is that it has to be online in order to get a poison pill. A smart phone, well that's easy to send a poison pill because it's still online even after the point you lose control of the device. A laptop, however, can be left turned off and the disk duplicated before anyone actually turns the power on the drive.
There are laptops with built-in cellular data cards (Dell, HP and others sell them). Some of them also offer remote tracking & wipe capability.
If a device serves the interest of a particular user, then that device is less useful to people whose interests conflict with that user.
Not much of a story or revelation when you phrase it that way, huh?
Let's not forget that law enforcement is just one entry on a long, long list of entities whose interests may conflict with the owner of a phone, and most of those people happen to also be law enforcement's opponents. So it's not like you can "fix" the "problem" of devices serving their users, without taking a largely pro-crime stance. Yes, largely, because the efforts of law enforcement are pretty much small time and comparatively rare events, compared to the constant daily barrage of crackers, thieves and other unknowns.
Imagine: someone's phone may go missing, and that's all you know ahead of time. Just what are the chances that it's missing because law enforcement took it? You can practically ignore the possibility. Wipe it, and defend all users' ability to encrypt and remote-wipe their devices. Don't let them turn this into some kind of excuse to remove devices' capability to serve their users, because it really will be disingenuous. If someone tries to do that, they are not trying to protect their citizens from crime.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Don't have it waiting for the poison pill - have it waiting for the antidote.
Which is administered manually or via internet.
24 hours without the "antidote" - it locks up.
Turn it on after that without the "antidote" - it gets wiped out completely.
I'd be pretty cross if they pulled the battery out of my iPhone. They'll void my warranty!
Really, your telling me there are plans for the Death Star on the phone and you can't get them any other way if it gets wiped?
Call history will be with the phone company, get a warrant. So you loose self incriminating video they took of themselves committing the crime, probably to post on youtube later...
Think Deeply.
Inclusion of this feature will likely cause cell phones to be banned in public places, since it will make it possible for terrorist cells to randomly set explosives and remotely detonate by phone without leaving a trace? If the terrorists can up the ratio of kills 100's:1, then they stand a very good chance of winning. Soon we will need to play a little smarter.
Can't with the iPhone
Why on earth do agents not have metalised bags to drop phones to be used as evidence into? Not to be opened until in a secure location with no network signal?
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As I understand it, doing any of the following should be able to prevent a remote wipe from happening:
* put it into "airplane mode"
* remove the SIM (assuming GSM with no wifi)
* remove the battery
If you need the SIM or battery to get the data off the device, you can then take it to a faraday cage and put the SIM or battery back in once you're sure no signal can get to the phone. Yes?
Anything that protected against these "attacks" would also make it so the phone's user couldn't access their data when the signal strength was sufficiently poor. Which some folks might choose as their configuration, but then they're open to a new kind of denial-of-service attack.
Remote wipe is useful when you want to prevent a random schlub (eg. pickpocket, guy at bar) from getting data off a randomly-acquired phone (eg. "iPhone HD"). I do not think it's useful for preventing a professional with intent from getting data off a phone they're targeting specifically because of its data. Am I wrong?
I would set my phone to wipe-on-battery-pull. Most phones have a latch you have to pull before the battery actually comes out. That could be the trigger. Or, wipe-on-out-of-range-from-me, which would require another piece of hardware, possibly implanted. Then when they turn it on in the lab, it wipes because I'm not there.
Remote wipe is super easy on a laptop. Use full-disk encryption and don't leave your laptop powered on. If they can't guess your passphrase, it's equivalent to what happens when an iPhone is remote-wiped -- with the exception that you could be convinced to give them your passphrase eventually.
Plant some “evidence”.
There. Done.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What no empty aluminized mylar potato chip bags?
Or a bag made out of the same Steel Mesh as these Wallets?
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/07/steel_wallet
I wonder if they want to change paper so it can't be destroyed. That way it would be easier to investigate a paper trail.
History is so yesterday!
But even for an iPhone, you can't remote wipe it if the device is powered down, right? I would think even putting it in airplane mode would be sufficient, as the phone stops, well, "phoning home". And if the Secret Service can't even manage to remember to turn off the phone, well, yeah. My heart bleeds for them.
Land of the freexcvbpbp...let me go!...
The SS thing is a red herring. So what, they're one small part of the government. They only have a two-letter acronym!
What about the FBI? NSA? CIA? Trust the SS all you want. The other three-letter agencies? I don't trust them, and it's their own fault. Had they not repeatedly abused the public trust for the past several decades, I might feel differently.
:(){
Well, if they followed proper procedures, this wouldn't be a problem.
Walk around the exhibits at any forensic conference and you will see a variety of devices for making sure this does not happen. You can use any of them - they all work. Anything from the Paraben "tent" to the HTCI "glove box". The idea is that you put the phone into a shielded container where you can operate on it to collect evidence.
When the phone is collected you have the choice: either remove the battery or put the phone into a shielded bag. No special shielded bags handy? Then you have to remove power and hope the phone doesn't lock itself. Don't want to deal with a locked phone? Get some shielded bags then.
This isn't a real problem with phones, it is a real problem with having the right knowledge and procedures. It shouldn't even be a matter of training anymore.
Anti-counterfeiting and anti-assassination are good, yeah. Killing Remote Wipe helps more than just the Secret Service, though. Just because we trust the Secret Service does not mean that other three-letter agencies are trustworthy.
:(){
stumped by a technological problem that can be solved by carrying a piece of tinfoil.
Just wrap it in tin foil, and keep the rays from getting to it and commanding the wipe.
Act quickly...
Later, keep it inside the Faraday cage you have constructed. You HAVE constructed the cage, right? If it's GSM, pull the SIM. If not, well, the cage will need to be expanded to be comfortable...
Any questions?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A laptop Dead Man's Switch? Thus:
Hard drive is connected to another circuit in one of X possible number of places. If hard drive does not receive keyphrase from circuit after powering on, then bootstrap sequence is programmed to immediately wipe control sectors, then whole drive if it has the time.
Alternate configuration would be more true to the name where the hard drive must constantly have power and circuit connections. Very difficult to remove all possible pieces at once. Any data stored by this method is probably valued enough to be on a mainframe somewhere, so the laptop is expendable.
Anything can be patched around with enough time, of course. But the effort involved to remove platters or memory in order to extract the data, would probably mean that what you are suspected of doing is very bad indeed.
Speaking of which, if I crack open a SSD hard drive in my dusty garage, how tough is it to transplant the memory without damage?
I have thought of this for a very long time....but never have time to get my hand dirty to implement. It goes like this:
1. Pair with a few bluetooth devices. (hand free, or laptop, or another cell phone...)
2. A software that monitor the signal of the devices, or Wifi
3. If all or predefined set of the devices go offline longer than the predefined timeout, nuke the device.
(Say it would never trigger if it see your home/office wifi, then when you are outside it has to be paired with the bluetooth hand free to prevent being triggered)
Depends if the officer take the battery out quick enough...or how it will be treated in the lab. But at least this is more effective against thief.
Instead of nuking the device, it could be programmed to do something like SOUND loudly so you could recover it before the thief runs away, or it could turn the phone into recording mode, taking pictures, audio, geolocation, phone home...
Every time I see an article about remote wipe, someone inevitably recommends a Faraday cage to prevent reception of a remote wipe signal.
The question is, does any mobile platform enable a "dead-man" switch, or call-home switch? The thought is that if the phone does not call home after a specified period of time, the device wipes itself.
This would seem to be an effective countermeasure against the "Faraday cage" remote wipe work-around.
It might not be effective for those that use AT&T's service though....
If you are running BES and have properly setup encryption on your Blackberry they will need the password to unencrypted. With 246bit AES encryption this will take some time to break. The remote wipe is just added security.
I an put an application on my phone that auto wipes under certain conditions.
If I was conducting large scale criminal operation, I would.
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statement:
The mission of the United States Secret Service is to safeguard the nation's financial infrastructure and payment systems to preserve the integrity of the economy, and to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites and National Special Security Events.
There first priority is being sure bankers get paid.
Think about that.
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What information are they really going to get from a phone that they can't get somewhere else?
Call history is going to be available from the carrier. Message history from the carrier. Email is stored on a server somewhere. All those cloud apps are on a server somewhere. And if you've got a wipe function for your phone.. isn't it likely you have a backup of your phone somewhere.. that could be retrieved for analysis?
Speaking of which, if I crack open a SSD hard drive in my dusty garage, how tough is it to transplant the memory without damage?
If you have the exact same model SSD to transplant the chips into, it's just down to your soldering skills.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Faraday cage?
People have the right to destroy our own property. That right can be infringed by a legitimate order not to destroy evidence of a crime, when due process uses prior evidence of that crime and the existence of further evidence.
But until a person is so ordered, it is their right to destroy their own property. The condition of our property that we cause is also our property. So deleting electronic records from our own devices is within our rights.
--
make install -not war
Smashing the phone into the ground also helps.
If you come up with Remote Wipe toilet paper, then I will be impressed.
If the device cant talk to the towers, it wont get a wipe signal:
1 - get device and turn off immediately or remove battery
2 - put in cage ( room sized is best )
3 - power back up and do your forensics without concern
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When a smart phone is taken into custody, how often would the owner not also be detained?
In the event a phone is acquired by itself, isn't it possible to simply power down a phone, to be accessed in presence of signal suppression equipment (inexpensive, "off the shelf" technology)??
Who needs a faraday cage? Law enforcement around here could just take the phone into our local Walmart. Never seem to get a signal in there!
The Secret Service can bring any phone they want to work on to my workplace, and work on it at their leisure. You can't get a wireless signal inside my building to save your life. Plenty of time to crack the phone without it being remotely disabled.
--something witty