Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor To Governments

Voline writes "In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a U.S. government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on 'the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship' between the U.S. and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec. If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?"

Comments

Re:How Not to be Seen

[loufoque]

The next time you text "i hacked my xbox!" to your friend, expect federal prison for life.

Hacking stuff you own is perfectly legal.

Re:How Not to be Seen

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new around here..

Re:News from a twit.

[cong06]

This isn't news. This is slashdot.

Re:How Not to be Seen

[loufoque]

You only get thrown into federal prison for doing illegal things.

Re:News from a twit.

[Dunbal]

Now a tweet and a few images are considered legit news?

You're right. We're completely missing the celebrity angle here. What does Lady Gaga think about all this? /sarcasm

Re:How Not to be Seen

[swalve]

There will be a decoder ring to encode keystrokes.

Re:How Not to be Seen

[Anonymous Coward]

You only get thrown into federal prison for doing illegal things.

But innocent people have nothing to hide!

Re:How Not to be Seen

[jotaass]

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/538/

Haven't you guys ever seen a spy show before?

[flibbidyfloo]

Why do you think it's so easy for spies to steal your cell phone data? You see it on shows like Chuck and 24 all the time! Spies all have a magical device that plugs into any cell phone and downloads all the data in exactly as long as it takes for the phone's owner to almost get back from the bathroom, giving them just enough time to put it back where it belongs.

How could they do that if Apple (i.e. every evil phone maker) wasn't providing them with a back door?

That's why I always carry a dummy phone with decoy data on it while my bluetooth headset is secretly connected to my real phone, which is hidden in my shoe!

Re:How Not to be Seen

[HAKdragon]

Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.