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Encrypted Communications Apps Failed To Protect Michael Cohen (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Within the detailed federal allegations against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty earlier this week to eight charges including campaign finance violations, are multiple references to texts sent by Cohen and even a call made "through an encrypted telephone application." Cohen was apparently a fan of encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp and Signal, but those tools failed to keep his messages and calls out of sight from investigators. In June, prosecutors said in a court filing the FBI had obtained 731 pages of messages and call logs from those apps from Cohen's phones. Investigators also managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents. Those logs, judging by the charging document, appear to have helped document at least Cohen's communications with officials at the National Enquirer about allegations from porn actress Stormy Daniels -- whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law. It's unclear if the FBI actually broke through any layers of encryption to get the data. It's possible that Cohen, who apparently at times taped conversations, stored the conversation logs in a less-than-secure way.
When you just leave the secrets lying around.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
In short: we have no idea, but we can help you become hysterical and in the process bag some click bait cents.
lol
"whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law"
Anyone got the relevant statute on that?
and have a government that spends so much effort on snooping and trying to tear everyone down to the lowest common denominator. /Sarcasm
"The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
You are welcome on my lawn.
3 of the last 5 stories on Slashdot's home page are anti-Trump election pieces. Going for a new record?
Have to consider with encryption or secure apps that the feds probably have deals in place for back doors to gather evidence and do surveillance.
Now Trump resorts to no less than blackmail, publicly declaring that the U.S. economy would collapse if he was impeached. But I would expect no less of such a miserable pathetic piece of shit.
But you know what's even more pathetic ? That his hard-core base will actually believe him. The desperate little scumbag is so disgusting that I expect him at some point to invite his supporters to actually take up arms and try to overthrow the governement. We are seriously looking at the possibility of a civil war.
Putin must be ecstatic right now.
Apps like Signal protect the messages from in transit snooping, mostly from the telco. However, if you leave the messages on your device, in the app, then anyone with access to your phone can get the messages.
The big questions would be did he encrypt the device itself, and did he use a strong passcode? Pattern unlock and 4-digit PINs aren't difficult to figure out.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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You are trusting third party with your enc pub key. Thereby they can do whatever with it. Including using to decrypt your messages
You really don't understand how public key cryptography works.
Been through the lawyer "discovery" period myself - when they image the phone they will ask for all of the pins and passwords to these apps, so unless he refused to provide them they probably had direct access to this info, especially if he is cooperating. Of course, even if you delete a conversation in these apps it might still be recoverable, which the average user might not be aware of.
Investigators also managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents.
WAIT just a minute here...
I was under the impression that the Supreme Court had ruled that intact papers discarded in the trash could be used as evidence, but discarded shreds needed a warrant - BEFORE their seizure - because the person discarding shredded documents had an expectation of privacy.
Am I mistaken? Did they get a warrant before the papers were shredded and discarded (i.e. he was destroying evidence?) Did he shred them and then hang on to the shreds? If not, they're "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree".
(If I'm right, I'd like to see how the Supremes ruled if someone made the same argument about encrypted phone calls. The analogous ruling might protect against seizing logs of encrypted traffic without a before-the-call warrant, breaking the "no expectation of privacy in data stored with a third party" argument for encrypted calls. B-) )
I was also under the impression that such "Fruit" not only can't be used as trial evidence, but can't be used to develop leads without tainting them as well. (Cops routinely work around this by "calling in an anonymous tip" from the next desk over. But that won't work if they ADMIT they got the lead by improper behavior.) Something like this could run like wildfire through the whole investigation's findings, making it useless in court and reducing it to prosecutorial harassment.
Also: What kind of idiot uses a strip-shredder for anything he really wants to keep secret? Have they developed a way to reassemble crosscut shreads? If so, how do they avoid the "ransom note assembled from cut out newspaper letters" risk of reassembling fine shreads into somethig that looks coherent but is nothing like the original.
(Not that any of this matters for Cohen. He already pled guilty.)
Stuff like this is part of why there used to be a big separation between criminal investigation and counterintelligence work. You really don't want to let a spy keep spying if you can identify him and stop him using investigative techniques (short of torture) that would bring a criminal case down in flames.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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Keep whining in defense of a traitor but HE'S GOING TO DIE IN FEDERAL PRISON either way ya dumb SNOWFLAKE FAGGOT LYNNFAG LOL!!! HOW YOU LIKE IT TRAITOR FAGGOT? GET READY, ASSPLAY@LEAVENWORTH!
Ahaha you pathetic Republican faggot traitors all deserve to hang, but TRUMP MIGHT! TRAITORS HANG! LYNCH THE TREASONOUS TRUMP FAGGOTS! AMERICA IS ABOUT TO BE SO FUCKING GREAT!!!! USA! USA!
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"Apparently in violation of campaign finance laws"
I'm confused how paying off Denials was part of Trumps political campaign any more then any of the payments Bill Cosby made to those he was trying to keep silent. I mean, isn't 'protection your reputation' something you can do at any time regardless of running for public office? Aren't those kinds of payments normal for CEO's and various celebrities? He made a bunch of his staff sing NDA's , so does the salary of all of those staffers which was only received on condition of signing an NDA count as a campaign contribution?
Not saying the man isn't dishonest or doesn't deserve what he get's here, but that seems like a real stretch of the law's intent if not it's actual practice.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Too late though, bitch! HAHAA, Trump is prison bound and there's nothing your pooooooor Republican snowflake ass can do about it, faggot traitor Trainfag lol. KEEP WHINING SNOWFLAKE, TRUMP MAY HANG FOR TREASON!
You faggot traitors deserve NOTHING LESS, Trainfag! Ahahaaa you feckless cunt you should flee to Moscow soon! MUELLER IS COMING!!! Hahahaa
He should have used BleachBit. I hear it gets rid of all evidence.
Too late though, bitch! HAHAA, Trump is prison bound and there's nothing your pooooooor Republican snowflake ass can do about it, faggot traitor Train lol. KEEP WHINING SNOWFLAKE, TRUMP MAY HANG FOR TREASON!
You faggot traitors deserve NOTHING LESS.
TOO LATE TRAINFAG! HAHA! Trump is prison bound and there's nothing your pooor Republican snowflake ass can do about it, faggot traitor lol. KEEP WHINING SNOWFLAKES, TRUMP HANGS FOR TREASON!
You faggot traitors deserve NOTHING LESS!!! I can't wait until all Trumps are UNDER THE PRISON!
Looking at the Forbes article I see I misinterpreted two of 'em. But no change:
- Lying to investigators.
Make that "Lying on a loan application". Still just Cohen being an jerk in his own personal dealings.
- Making improper use of corporate money.
The "improper use" was "making a campaign contribution". Same argument as the charges from page 2.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
https://xkcd.com/538/
TOO LATE TRAINFAG! HAHA! Trump is prison bound and there's nothing your pooor Republican snowflake ass can do about it, faggot traitor lol. KEEP WHINING SNOWFLAKES, TRUMP HANGS FOR TREASON!
MUELLER HAS YOU BY THE VAGINA!
You faggot traitors deserve NOTHING LESS!!! I can't wait until all Trumps are UNDER THE PRISON!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-pecker-immunity-michael-cohen_us_5b7ee53fe4b0cd327dfacb11 - TRUMP LOSES HIS PECKER TOO?!? OH NOES!
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What a lawyer may or may not have done with a hooker regarding a several year old alleged private affair when I've been told by the same people out for blood that it's okay to get a blowjob in the oval office and lie about it under oath?
Keep crying snowflake, but your tears aren't going to do anything but LUBE TRUMP'S FAT FAGGOT TRAITOR ASS FOR HIS PRISON ASSPLAY! #UNDER THE PRISON!
You treasonous faggots deserve to be HANGED, and you might get it!
And today, in unrelated news, the document incineration segment of the market had a sharp increase in installations and therefore matching record profits!
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
"whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law" Apparently you have to use campaign funds this way in order to violate law. There is no law against a private individual (Trump) paying someone with their own funds to keep the someone quiet. Whether or not we want a President who paid off a mistress to keep quiet is another matter, but its pretty clear that the law was NOT violated by Mr Trump in this instance, as incorrectly stated by the OP. There are a whole slew of relatively minor and a few major infractions of the law perpetrated by Bill, Hillary, Obama, Susan Rice et al....but of course none of those are worth discussing.
Then it only requires a deal and the police has everything. Not the fault of the software at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
TRAINFAG is having a tough time accepting the reality that Trump is headed to Federal prison to die there, lol. Pity the poooooor snowflake, he can't handle reality any more and has to live in his Fox News faggot fantasy land lol. #Hanged
Indeed. This person does not even understand why this is called a "public" key.....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are trusting them (Facebook) with your PRIVATE key, but everything else said was true.
If you give your private key to a party, that party can decrypt your data.
That's how just it works.
Maybe when Trump dies in Federal prison you can take over his duties of fellating Vlad Putin, eh Whyche crybaby?
That is why you do _not_ give your private key to anybody. The hint is in the name. Are you stupid?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Wake me up when you post the real facts from Fox news, these spurious 80% enemy of the people sources are just making Trump look bad because they haven't MAGA'd their own brains out.
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And here is TruthTrain's simple errors, by which you should frame the rest of his desperate casting about for an excuse, any excuse, for the president's(presumably illegal) behavior.
Stormy Daniels is one of two women that trumps lawyer paid at trumps direction.
Stormy Daniels is not a hooker, but is an adult film star. If you can't get this simple fact right, or even if you don't care about the difference, how can anyone put stock in your other arguments?
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Have you ever heard of OJ Simpson?
when you can break the window ?
Unless there is some undisclosed backdoor ( possible, but unlikely ) in the software he's
using to encrypt his messages, the more plausible scenario is the FBI has more control
over his phone that he does. ( Probably true for all of us sadly )
They need only drop in some sneaky malware ( pick your favorite method up to and including
your telco doing it for you ) and presto!, even the greatest crypto ever made can be rendered
useless.
Moral of this story: If you can't confirm your platform ( in this case, the phone ) is secure,
then you should assume none of the traffic going through it is secure either.
2nd Moral: If you're going to do any criminal shit of any kind, don't be stupid enough to do
it over your GD phone.
What? OJ was found not guilty because some racist cop fucked up the evidence. He was guilty, the cop fucked up.
Have we not learned anything from TrueCrypt? There is always a back door.
Perhaps in addition to a shredder, they can feed the waste into an industrial power plant and burn off the paper evi^H^H^H trail.
The same politics-n-whores crap I've subjected my poor eyeballs to has made it to slashdot. It looks like my computer monitor is going to be joining the remains of the TVs in my front yard that I've thrown out through my living room window. Won't someone please nuke the American media from orbit.
Really? Then how come the hush payment wasn't made in 2006 or shortly after? Even the Trump circle have admitted that the purpose of the payment was to prevent the story going public right before the election. If you're gonna stand up and chump for Trump, you should at least check what their narrative of the day is (I know, it's difficult when the "truth" can change several times before breakfast).
It was not disclosing it during the campaign. There are certain thing you have to disclose as campaign finance. That was the illegal thing.
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visit randi.org
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Ah, you've fallen for Trump's smokescreen of "its not a campaign fund violation if it's not sourced from the campaign". Which is completely orthogonal to the actual issue : money paid for the purpose of influencing the election is a campaign contribution by definition and therefore has to follow the rules. That's precisely why Cohen used that form of words when he said under oath "...for the principle purpose of influencing the election".
The knots you are tying yourself in to justify criminal activities. #shameful.
Trump described Cohen perfectly when he tweeted "Only an idiot or a crook would hire a sleazebag like Michael Cohen as his lawyer".
Putting crooks in jail is "evil overreach" of government, but separating children from their families is merely upholding the laws.
The moral I got from the story is that sleazebag crooks can still sometimes get their comeuppance.
--
[Edit] Capture : "shifty"
Brick fireplace.
I told you all to vote for McAfee...at least he's not a Trump or Clinton.
...when the campaign might be impacted by her revelations. So you are now finally admitting the payment was made in the context of an election campaign, with a view to influencing the outcome. Glad we got there in the end...
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That wouldn't pay off a porn star* who had dick dirt on you in order to save your rep and/or marriage, if you had the wherewithal to afford it.
* Or, for the slashdot crew, read 'hooker'.
Handing your karma bonus over to what is most likely a paid troll also won't help the situation. Please be considerate.
I honestly don't know the details of how whatsapp handles keys. It obviously must handle your private key as... you know.... you can see the unencrypted message in whatsapp.
So, _of course_ you give your private key to Facebook's whatsapp. Duh, don't you know how public-private key encryption works? Are you stupid?
PRISM should have told people all about US big brand crypto standards and efforts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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you're more or less correct. They've already signaled that they're not willing to do act against Trump so long as he supports their agenda of low taxes for corporations, reduced expenditures on social programs and reduced regulations on business. And Trump's all in on those items. His trade war doesn't really concern them. They'll get to pocket the money from the tariffs as tax cuts.
And So far it's looking like the Republicans will hold the House and Senate. Polling shows the election is close with a slight favor to the Dems, but every time that's happened its been a victory for the Repubs in seats while the Dems take the (completely useless) popular vote.
It'll come down to voter turn out, but, well, In Ohio they just closed a ton of polling places in black neighborhoods using the transparent excuse of "but the Americans with Civil Disabilities Act". And they've packed the courts with judges that're letting them do it...
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Look for a number in your environment, and give it to them.
Usually an address.
When they use it, and it doesn't work, say that number is all you can remember.
If they mention that's the address where they arrested you, and asked you for the passcode, just tell them that's all you can remember after how frightened they made you feel when they arrested you.
You just remember the numbers on the wall. Nothing else.
Darpa Shredder Challenge
Once you shred it, and throw it away, it's not yours anymore!
"So, if Trump ordered this and paid Cohen to do it either from his personal or business funds, it's legal all around. "
Not quite.. if it's to influence the campaign, then you are making a contribution to your own campaign, and it must be declared.
Finally. A candidate that publicly does hookers and blow.
"I'll have you know", he sniffed, "I am an official at the National Enquirer".
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You are trusting third party with your enc pub key.
Well yes that's how it works.
And we have way to do it already. [GPG Link]
Well yes that's how it works.
You still don't understand how public key cryptography works.
The "public" or "private" label on the keys is arbitrary.
Facebook does not require that you upload "your private key" or any key.
You are not required to only have one keypair.
These encrypted "chat" programs only protect data in transit. They have never protected data at rest (beyond whatever the OS does for data at rest)
Are you trying to argue that murder is now legal in California because OJ was acquitted?
Well, often arbitrary (some conditions may force you to make a specific assignment based on how the keys are generated), but the important thing is that before any use of the keys, the assignment which one is public and which one is private must be made and it then must be respected in all future use.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So, _of course_ you give your private key to Facebook's whatsapp.
And at that point you have screwed up and all the bad things that result from this are your fault.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Lol. Is my version so very different from Trump's?
Seriously, Trump is advising people not to hire the dodgy "lawyer", the same sleazebag that has been doing his dirty work for a decade. So either Trump didn't know Cohen was a crook (ie he's an idiot), or he does know and is fine with that (because he's a crook).
If you have an alternative explanation, I would love to hear it. Seriously.
All the Sturm and Drang here about the arcana of campaign finance law and Trump's culpability is only the tip of an enormous iceberg. David Pecker the chairman of American Media Inc., a Trump buddy for ~20 years, has a safe full of docs that likely implicate Trump in illegal acts; the CFO of the Trump Org and keeper of the crown jewels has been granted immunity (!); Trump, Donnie John Jr, Eric the Dunce, and Ivanka the Vacuous have been sued alleging illegal acts, such as self dealing, regarding the Trump Foundation, a "charity" and about which Cohen will testify. And we haven't even gotten to Mueller yet. The walls of Trump's impunity are closing in. The guy has skated all his adult life but no more. All his tweets, all his lies and bluster, all his appeals to his brain-dead base won't save him. Even quisling Mitch McConnell is not a miracle worker.
"Everyone has committed a crime, it's about who we decide to prosecute" --KGB
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842
Casteism