Slashdot Mirror
San Bernadino D.A. Says Shooter's Phone Could Harbor "Cyber Pathogen" (theguardian.com)
Mr.Intel writes with the Guardian's report that : San Bernadino D.A. has a novel argument for why Apple should be forced to provide the FBI with tools to decrypt the iPhone once used by mass-shooter Syed Rizwan Farook: a "dormant cyber pathogen," he says, could have been unleashed by the county's electronic infrastructure, and only by examining the phone's content can any really be sure. From the article: The questionable claim comes from Ramos's amicus brief in the case, filed with the US District Court on Thursday afternoon. In it, Ramos supports the FBI's argument that Apple should be compelled to build a one-use version of its operating system to load on to the seized phone – used by the mass-murderer, but still technically property of his employer, San Bernardino county – in order to weaken the security and allow the Government to brute-force the shooter's passcode. ... Ramos said: 'The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County'.
I don't have a link handy, but I saw something in the news yesterday or today saying there was no good reason to think this is true.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
San Bernardino D.A. admitted he made the whole thing up.
Perhaps the phone contains unicorns farting rainbows. I am sure that looking for unicorns would be good reason to crack the phone.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Bull hockey... And don't forget the children!
Link to Ars Technica version of original story, which was updated to say that it is a non-issue: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Link to Ars Technica story on the fact that the first story was false: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The ONLY CURE for a "lying dormant cyber pathogen" is for the phone to be boiled in holy water.
Next filing Ramos will argue there might be a cyber demon hiding there just like the one on Buffy, ready to eat the souls of all Americans except the atheists.
That's the real reason Christie Dropped out. Well, at least this seems nearly as plausible as the DA's claim.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino County's infrastructure and poses a continuing threat to the citizens of San Bernardino County.
Look, we know they had guns. That's just the part we know about.
What we *don't* know is whether these nefarious masterminds also had a cyber malworm with nuclearized darkweb spearphishing viruses that could use long-blockchain cloud replication vectors to infect all the computers in San Bernadino AND THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THEM!!
Only by decrypting the phone can we be 100% sure it doesn't contain such a doomsday "cyber pathogen."
Nothing posted to
If you assert the existence of a "cyber-pathogen," there's no reason to stop at one phone... why not decrypt and search every phone? Only way to be sure...
And if they should make what would otherwise appear to be a successful decryption attempt and they do not find anything along the lines of what they are looking for, they will forever remain uncertain whether their decryption attempt did not inadvertently erase part of the phone's contents or if this whole thing was just a wild goose chase.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
believe that the public is infinitely stupid!
It could have anything.
Let's unlock it because it "could have":
1/ The secret to unlimited green energy
2/ A list of the sporting records for the next century
3/ A picture of a cat in a box
4/ The entire global drug supply network's name and addresses
5/ The location of the largest weapons grade plutonium deposit in the universe
6/ The source code for Windows 22
7/ Nothing at all interesting
FFS: make a decent case as to what it probably has.
Why don't you post those death threats to an elected official under your real name?
lucm, indeed.
Yup. Terrorists kill people. Drug dealers kill people or deal drugs which kill people. Pedophiles abuse children.
And you know what, the authorities and governments fucking LOVE to use those guys to create or abuse laws in order to give themselves new and expanded powers. We already know that there's not just one phone, but at least 17 other cases where they're asking for pretty much the same fucking thing (and none of those terrorists). All they need is a nice precedent and a year from now they'll be using it break open the phones of everyone charged slightly above littering or jaywalking. It'll also be very helpful when they seize mobile devices at those ever-growing "borders" from pesky reporters or political types.
The authorities have already said they don't really know that there's anything useful on the phone (but we have to do everything, just in case). Given the wiretaps and other B.S. they've already been pulling, it's probably also a safe bet that most of it (if not all) they have already. But evidence gathered through illegal clandestine means can't be used in court, so you've gotta set a precedent for a nice new "legal" method.
Sorry, but I applaud Apple for taking a strong stance on this, unlike the fuckers at Amazon who decided the best way to deal with the issue is to preemptively remove device-encryption with their latest (mandatory) update.
Maybe the phone entraps a balrog that will get free and kill us all if the phone is unlocked.
Or two balrogs. Best let sleeping dogs lie.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why don't you post those death threats to an elected official under your real name?
No need. The FBI will just order Apple to decrypt "Anonymous Coward" and they will capture him/her immediately.
Colin Powell will be warning the UN General Assembly about it later this week, and plans to show them a vial of deadly cyber pathogen to prove it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It seems reasonable to me that San Bernardino county could ask Apple, politely, to please break the encryption. No warrant, no lawsuit, no precedent. Just a customer request.
Because if it's a polite request from a customer, large number theory and computability theory don't apply any more?
Can we get an H-1B in here to do STEM stuff for this guy?
The phone should be decrypted and the results made known to the courts.
The better to infect them with the cyber pathogen in question.
The first rule of the envelope full of Anthrax: DON'T OPEN THE ENVELOPE FULL OF ANTHRAX!
The second rule of the envelope full of Anthrax: ...
If the iPhone holds a "Cyber Pathogen" then it must be destroyed, because the second that iPhone is unlocked by an Apple intervention the cyber pathogen could spread through the whole United States and infect everything from your pocket calculator to your android smartphone.
It is a threat that must be destroyed, incinerate that phone right now
(Because I'm just fed up with the whole order to encrypt and denying battle of Apple, that we should all know is a big charrade by Apple, because if it had been requested silently they'd done it.)
Just get it over with!
That phone could also contain:
- The solution to a number of longstanding open mathematical problems
- The answer to the ultimate question about Life, Universe and Everything
- Proof to put Snowden and friends in jail forever
- The undeniable identity of JFK murderer
- A tiny piece of code that could make windows much faster than Linux
We do all need to unlock that phone, definitely!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
The opportunity for journalists to trash future presentations by the people involved in these cases is getting enormous. The FBI director claimed it wouldn't set a precedent, but has now retracted. Sadly journalists, despite their reputation for addressing issues with 'no fear or favour', in practice realise that if they demolish the person they are challenging, there WILL be consequences for their employer. Let's hope that defence counsels up and down the land take the lesson however.
Mr Intel? "Intel claims Apple should unlock the phone". What a waste of good clickbait.
...decrypting the phone releases the pathogen?
"...and only by examining the phone's content can any really be sure."
It could also be aliens, strange gods, spaghetti monsters or the invisible man and only by examining the phone's content can any really be sure.
Then please don't use the
Imperative, then pretend
You didn't. Moron.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
wouldn't opening up the phone not RELEASE that dormant cyber pathogen?
This is the best the government can do? There is no reason to even suspect that these people even considered a cyber attack on anything, let alone tried to use the phone to do it. This is NOT "Live free or die hard".
The US Government has some of the best cryptographers and some of the best tools in the world at their disposal. If the government wanted in that phone that bad, they would have been in it LONG ago. This entire situation is being used in an attempt to weaken consumer grade encryption throughout the digital world. While they have the capabilities to crack anything, it takes time and a lot of computing power to do it. If they can get the courts to agree that they need the help, they can sooner or later convince the courts that there MUST be a back door in all encryption. This would make their data collection much easier because they wouldn't have to waste the computing power for decrypting things that are only encrypted because Mrs. Grandma had a grandson that suggested she select a box saying keep this secure.
This is a new technological development created by the brilliant scientists at ISIS. They used genetic engineering to create a human virus that attacks only Americans. I've read on the dark web that the virus makes the dicks of American men fall off, turning them into even bigger pussies than they seem to be in San Bernadino. Genius ISIS engineers have hidden the virus in the phone and when the battery bursts, as all batteries do with age, it will be released.
This is the biggest threat that America has ever faced. With nothing but dickless American males, not only will Americans be unable to reproduce, but also Hillary Clinton will have the biggest dick(incapable of reproduction) in the country. Obviously, that can't possibly end well.
Our only hope is to burn the phone in Whogivesafuckistan. But, it's only a matter of time before teh masterminds at ISIS figure out that UPS, FedEx and the USPS exist and deliver the virus in a greeting card. We've got to eliminate greeting cards and package delivery services before it's too late! For our safety.
to the idea that probable cause should mean that the cause be near the 1.0 end of probability and not the 0.0 end?
Wouldn't that be a reason to throw it into a volcano instead of removing all safeties and turning it on?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Looky looky - right wing troll who thinks that the court appeal process should be bypassed because safety is more important than the constitution, so we can do whatever we want even when there is zero evidence of a threat in the phone, as opposed to the 2 phones the killers destroyed. Yep - put on your jack boots, fascist.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Unlock the phone...and risk the disease getting out?
No, clearly this DA is clueless as to how technology works.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
OMG! The phone contains systemd!
Have gnu, will travel.
There could beviruses that infct humans on it (HIV, Ebola Zika,etc)
as well as computer viruses.
Destroying it with high enough temperature is the best bet.
For example thermite
I think any cyber threat that exist were purely originated by alien DA's from Uranus.
This DA sounds like he is on a paranoid drug trip, similar to some crazy conspiracy theorist who forgot to take his asenapine saying that the government has implanted listening devices in his fillings. Rizwan was a food inspector and Malik was (educated as) a pharmacist. There is little if any indication that they had any background in advanced programming. And even the FBI seems unable, try as they might to stretch the definition, to tie the two of them to any significant terrorist organization so its unlikely that they received anything that way. As with most of these cases government officials seem happy to play to the idiots who watch too much 24 or similar programs that portray some massive conspiracy at play when in fact most of these cases are a few nutjobs randomly lashing out.
"... and I said to her, no no no, the Spaniards are dagos. These people are wops."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Too much CSI Cyber.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Chuck it in water. If it floats, burn it!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1) Chinese laws are different from American laws.
2) No proof whatsoever that Apple has built such software for the Chinese
3) All the evidence to date indicates you are still a fascist right-wing troll.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The KKK was founded by Democrats and the membership remained mostly Democrats for a long time after the Republicans fought slavery. And there's plenty of racism in the history of the Democratic party after that, such as Woodrow Wilson who segregated the military and federal employees (which was undone by a Republican, Eisenhower).
Associating the KKK to Republicans to paint a racist picture of the GOP is dishonest and lazy.
lucm, indeed.
This dormant cyber pathogen must be some sort of neo-Asherah virus from the terrorists! They will control our minds! Apple must write a nam-shub so that the FBI can protect us!
Your tax dollars at work, folks. Anyone else want to send this DA some of Stephenson's early work to save him the trouble of having to reinvent the wheel?
-Turkey
This is the key. He screwed himself right there. It it's dormant, the best thing to do is to burn the phone.....which they should do anyway.
Cyber Pathogen? The only people who say Cyber-Anything have no idea wth they're talking about.
It's pretty obvious, but it's just another ploy to reach the emotional center of the problem, which shouldn't exist in the first place.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
It could also contain the cure for cancer, world peace or limitless energy supply, you know, while we're just making shit up it might as well be good.
There are a number of Christian terrorists like those who bomb abortion clinics in the US
Worldwide there's been TWO HUNDRED terrorist attacks by islamists with a combined death toll of 1000+ this year alone (and we're barely in March) but there's been ZERO abortion clinics bombing. Actually, in the US there's been no abortion clinic bombing in like 10 years, and most of those who happened in the past had none or very few victims. It's not a fucking secret it's all there on Wikipedia.
So before you tell people that their examples are poor and illogic, check your facts.
Tell me - why is it ok, for example, to say that domestic violence is bad and that it's mostly men who beat up women, but it's "hatred" to say that terrorism is bad and that it's mostly Muslims who commit such acts of violence? In both case EVERYONE knows that it's not the majority of the specified demographic segment that is guilty. Going on Bill Maher's show and warning people against "putting all Muslims in the same basket" is not commendable, it's politically correct bullshit.
There's a serious issue with islamic terrorism right now, there's people beheaded, journalists killed, people tortured, women sold in sex slavery and entire towns decimated, not mentioning the slow but constant destruction of the entire arab and persian civilizations, and it's far worse than what is reported in the liberal media because it's "hatred" to talk about it.
Fuck that hypocrisy. It's like that situation in Rotherham UK where 1,400 children were subjected to a pakistani pedophile ring for a period of TEN YEARS because the authorities were afraid to be called racists if they were to intervene. Look it up and see what the lunacy of politically correct bullshit can lead to.
Yes pick a country under the midst of civil war that has among its participants those who were not from Syria at all.
What's going on in Syria is not a mere civil war, it's the culmination of a 2000 years old fight between two Muslim factions: the Shia (Iran, Hezbollah, Syria's government, Iraq's majority, etc.) and the Sunni (ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Chechens, etc). The extreme violence of the last decades has been precipitated by the overall geopolitical situation and by blunders in the US foreign policy (such as pushing out the pro-Saddam Sunni minority from the Iraq government after the invasion, which radicalized a lot of people). But make no mistake: this war was raging for centuries before America started showing up on world maps. This is a Muslim problem and we're all collateral damage. So save me the politically correct bullshit with the "hatred" and "singling out one religion".
lucm, indeed.