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Privacy Advocate Jacob Appelbaum Reports Break-In Of Berlin Apartment
Jacob Appelbaum isn't shy about his role as a pro-privacy (and anti-secrecy) activist and hacker. A long-time contributor to the Tor project, and security researcher more generally, Appelbaum stood in for the strategically absent Julian Assange at HOPE in 2010, and more recently delivered Edward Snowden's acceptance speech when Snowden was awarded the Government Accountability Project's Whistleblower Prize. Now, he reports, his Berlin apartment appears to have been burglarized, and his computers tampered with. As reported by Deutsche Welle, "Appelbaum told [newspaper the Berliner Zeitung] that somebody had broken into his apartment and used his computer in his absence. 'When I flew away for an appointment, I installed four alarm systems in my apartment,' Appelbaum told the paper after discussing other situations which he said made him feel uneasy. 'When I returned, three of them had been turned off. The fourth, however, had registered that somebody was in my flat - although I'm the only one with a key. And some of my effects, whose positions I carefully note, were indeed askew. My computers had been turned on and off.'" It's not the first time by any means that Appelbaum's technical and political pursuits have drawn attention of the unpleasant variety.
It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
As we improve our ability to keep private things private the government's orginizations will find it easier to snoop by gaining physical access first. There's no doubt we're on the slippery slope. I have to wonder, which orginization broke into his apartment? Or maybe it was a combined effort and they are sharing in the information gained, if any.
Just because they are spooks doesn't make them competent.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Common tactic of the German Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung
Come on, he installed four alarm system and didn't bother with a single surveillance camera? I am not saying that there wasn't somebody in his apartment, but it's hard not to think this might have just been a case of a malfunctioning alarm system and a whole bunch of paranoia on top. If the government is after you, at least make sure you get some pretty pictures of them, cams are cheap these days.
You can't overlook the possibility that they were leaving a message, whoever it was.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's surprising that there are still some people in the USA who are surprised that your spooks are generally perceived, all over the world, to be criminals.
It is surprising that some people are unable to conceive of the idea that many nations would like to get their hands on the information that Snowden took, and which Appelbaum has access to. For all you know it could be Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Germans, French, Israelis, Swedes, or just about any other country's agents. That is before you consider criminal gangs or hacker groups. Your imagination is far too limited to consider the range of possibilities.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
Only if your aim was to hide the fact that you were ever there.
Plug in UEFI bootable USB stick.
Turn off
Turn on
Keylogger and remote backdoor installed.
So those machines are toast. He needs new ones.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This computer holds the latest and greatest they have in espionage software and possibly hardware. I'd say get it thoroughly examined so we know what to look for on other machines.Make good forensic copies of anything that is able to hold data in the device and only work on copies of copies so you'll always be able to start from scratch if you mess up or want to prove your findings.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
None of your hardware can be trusted any longer, your apartment is bugged, and man do I feel for you having to clean it up.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
My desktop computer moves when I make hardware changes. The dust is medium and consistent. Someone moving the computer to clone a drive or plug something in the back will make it so I can tell, unless they can also clean it and age the dust 8 months. You don't have to be OCD to notice changes. It just helps.
Learn to love Alaska
By the sound of it, he's doing a lot of things right. Read his bio. I'm very glad and thankful there are still brave men left.
My desktop computer moves when I make hardware changes. The dust is medium and consistent. Someone moving the computer to clone a drive or plug something in the back will make it so I can tell, unless they can also clean it and age the dust 8 months. You don't have to be OCD to notice changes. It just helps.
I use the same excuse as a reason not cleaning my apartment.
Be seeing you...
Sure, there are probably some surveillance things tossed in mainly "to be found", but the fact is that a break-in like this - where 3/4 of the systems weren't even turned back on is either a) laughably amateur, or b)(more likely) a deliberate message TELLING him he's under surveillance.
If he's practicing even moderately good security measures, he's likely beyond all but governments' ability to crack. And if they're after him, there are few things that he could do to PREVENT such surveillance.
-Styopa
Very true. Instill an element of fear in someone who you know will talk about it, creating an element of fear over the wider community. PsyOps. Which we know governments practice.
The Russians know no more than the rest of us - Snowden has made it clear he gave all documents to others, and this is extremely believable. It makes it pointless to limit damage - or even establishing what damage there is to be limited - by capturing or killing him.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
They might have had no alternative but to turn off the three alarms. After all a loud ringing alarm will soon bring investigators of one sort or another.
Who knows just how persnickety his staged positioning of items in the room might have been. That magazine might overlap that envelope on the table "just so", and he could have had photos on his smartphone that he could match better than even a professional team could restore.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
But turning the computers on is just plain gross incompetence.
Turn the computer off/reboot into a forensic linux cd/dvd, examine the hard drive, do what you want, switch some system files for files more under your control, then hope he doesn't notice you've done these things.... then follow his computer activity/trail, his tor activities....
No "security researcher and hacker" would have his computer set up to boot from the CDrom, or have his bios un-password protected, or his hard drive unencrypted. If they were "Really Good" at computer forensics they might have simply removed the drives cabled them up and cloned them, encrypted partitions and all. (It would be impossible to add their own versions of software to an encrypted drive. Of course this assumes he's not running Windows).
If done right, and everything put back in place, the only thing he would have to determine that the "computers" were turned on would be the power on count in the drive's SMART data.
Of course, he could have gone old-school, and placed a tuft of cotton fuzz in the fan vent. Someone who uses 4 alarms might just be that careful.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Your web browser will download anything from anywhere the pages you visit tell them to. Even if you browse only encrypted sites the site itself can be trivially exploited via XSS, SQL injection, or the zero-day exploits purchasable on the black market. Now, some of the pages you've been browsing can contain hidden <iframe> tags or if JS is enabled XMLHTTP Requests to download child porn. You'll never see the images, but there it is: an ISP record that your computer regularly made requests to child porn sites and downloaded kiddie porn. The spy agencies can simply put CP on your systems remotely, and give them "probable cause" to search. A physical copy would be quite a nice touch.
This isn't a hypothetical warning. I clean up servers linking to CP about 3 times a year. The government doesn't even have to do anything but make possession of certain strings of 1's and 0's illegal. Then the angsty teen skiddies with a copy of Metasploit inject the illegal pictures to ordinary sites in protest that sexting pics of themselves is illegal. Now, your Internet history clears after a period of time, so if it's not in there right now, it could have been and probably still resides on your drive's free sectors. You should be using whole drive encryption for this reason alone -- Although that doesn't rid the ISP record of your apparent obsession with disgusting perverse illegal imagery.
A police state has two prime tools:
0. Ensure it's impossible to obey every law.
1. Selective enforcement of the law.