Security

OS X security and privacy guide

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This guide dives pretty deep, but is very readable. Chock full of links and suggestions, all designed to help safeguard your privacy.

LAPD hacked into iPhone 5s

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LA Times:

Los Angeles police investigators obtained a method to open the locked iPhone belonging to the slain wife of “The Shield” actor Michael Jace, according to court papers reviewed by The Times.

Legally forcing someone to use their finger to unlock their phone

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The LA Times:

Authorities obtained a search warrant compelling the girlfriend of an alleged Armenian gang member to press her finger against an iPhone that had been seized from a Glendale home. The phone contained Apple’s fingerprint identification system for unlocking, and prosecutors wanted access to the data inside it.

The increasing hackability of your car

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Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, on the hackability of your car and the increasing vulnerability that comes with some recent rule changes.

Apple’s security blind spots

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Glenn Fleishman digs into the differing privacy models maintained by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple. Most important to me is the iCloud blind spot.

California phone decryption bill defeated

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One bill dies in committee, but there are others out there, including Burr-Feinstein, and, on the flip side, a preemptive bill from Ted Lieu.

FBI Director Comey’s speech, Apple, and inevitability

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FBI Director James Comey gave a speech at Kenyon University’s Center for the Study of American Democracy last night. His speech focused on encryption, the divide on privacy priorities, and the issues relating to the recent court case involving Apple and the San Bernardino iPhone 5C running iOS 9.

He made a terrific speech, laying out both sides of the argument. But he made a central point that I believe is flawed. Jump to the main post to watch the speech, read my take, and hear a Q&A exchange with an audience member that addresses what phone models can be broken by the FBI’s recent efforts.

OK Google reads all your emails

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A Reddit user does some searches using OK Google, then gets an expression of sympathy about a very personal and private matter that was pulled from an old email.

The FBI has a choice to make

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Which side is the FBI on? Will they choose to tell Apple how they got in to the San Bernardino phones? Or will they side with a cracking technique that we know is in the wild?

Official: Justice Department to withdraw legal action against Apple

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Kevin Johnson, USA Today:

The Justice Department is expected to withdraw from its legal action against Apple Inc., as soon as today, as an outside method to bypass the locking function of a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone has proved successful, a federal law enforcement official said Monday.

Apple lacks a bug bounty program

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Quentin Hardy, writing for The New York Times:

Timothy D. Cook has found himself in a strange position. It looks like someone knows about an important flaw in Apple’s flagship product, and won’t tell its chief executive what it is.

That could be because Apple doesn’t pay outside hackers who find exploitable flaws in Apple software. Paying so-called “bug hunters” has become the norm at many tech companies, and the United States government does it too.

Would Apple paying for bug reports have made any difference in their battle with the FBI?

Apple vs the FBI: Follow the money

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Charlie Stross homes in on the core problem with an FBI backdoor into iOS . It involves the world’s payment/credit card infrastructure. Fascinating take.

On the FBI’s “alternative” method

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Speculation from iOS security expert Jonathan Zdziarski on the nature of the third party the FBI is calling on to crack the San Bernardino iPhone.

Johns Hopkins researchers poke a hole in Apple’s encryption

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Matthew D. Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University who led the research team:

“Even Apple, with all their skills — and they have terrific cryptographers — wasn’t able to quite get this right,” said Green, whose team of graduate students will publish a paper describing the attack as soon as Apple issues a patch. “So it scares me that we’re having this conversation about adding back doors to encryption when we can’t even get basic encryption right.”

The rules for Tuesday’s Apple, FBI court hearing are posted

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To address the limited space available in the Riverside federal courthouse, as well as other logistical issues, the court has posted a set of what they call Order Setting Procedures.

The main rules are listed in the post, including the one about recording devices.