Headline July 28, 2018/ " ' CELL PHONE COOL ' "

" ' CELL PHONE COOL ' "

WHATSAPP - SIGNAL - TELEGRAM - AND FACEBOOK MESSENGER offer end-to-end  encryption, meaning that messages can be read only by the sender and the receiver-

They cannot be intercepted in transit, nor an the companies themselves can read them. The easiest way for law enforcement to read encrypted messages is to gain access to the phone of the sender or receiver.

"Crime scenes in the past were about fingerprints and footsteps," says Mr. Ben-Peretz. "Today it's  digital mobile devices, connected cars and tablets. Our digital footprint : this is is the strongest  indicator what really happened.

The spread of such technology - more than 10,000 law enforcement agencies in 150 countries use  Cellebrite's services - raises profound privacy concerns.

One response is encryption, which has grown from a niche market to s standard feature of a digital life.

USERS can protect mobile phones by setting passcodes that restrict access. And not all phones are created equal.

"Your best bet for default privacy is, hand down, getting a modern iPhone," says Mr. Ghetti. "There's no close second."

What sets Apple part is not just the quality of its encryption but also its commitment to user security. After a mass shooting in San Barnardino, California in 2015, the  FBI asked Apple to build an  operating system to install on a recovered iPhone in order to bypass its encryption.

Fearful of setting a precedent that, as Tim Cook, Apple's  chief executive wrote, "would hurt only the well-meaning and law abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data."

The company fought the order in court. A six-week battle ended when the FBI found another way to extract the data.

What that method was and to who did it [a source outside government, according to the FBI] remains a mystery.

But by bypassing encryption appears to involve tricking a phone's co-processor - the part that limits the number of times a user can guess a passcode - into allowing unlimited guesses without triggering the phone's security measures.

Those measures may involve destruction of its encryption keys, which makes accessing the phone's data impossible, or exponential increase in the time required between each guess, makes brute-force  guessing not worth the time.

The method required for physical extraction varies with each phone. Cellebrite has a large research department and a laboratory filled filled with thousands of  different  mobile-phone models stacked in drawers, floor to ceiling.

Some are easier to crack than others. Over the past few years iPhone models have included an upgraded co-processor with an additional level of encryption.

Celebrite may have found a way to bypass it but, if so, Apple will no doubt patch the weakness, and encryption-bypassers will hunt for another.

Pulling metadata from a phone is much easier. Police can use fake mobile-phone towers  {colloquially known as "Stingrays"}, which trick mobile phones into connecting to them rather than to a real tower.

Police can then learn which websites a user visited, and whom he texted and called, as well as the  International Mobile Subscriber Identity, a unique number associate with the phone.

It can also give the police a precise user location.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union { ACLU }, a watchdog, at least 73 agencies in 25 states in America use Stingrays, though the true number is probably much higher.

Police rarely seek approval or admit to using them, and indeed agencies that buy them generally  keep them secret, on the basis that the public knowledge of their use will render them ineffective. 

The Honor and Serving of the latest Global Operational Research on Encryption, Wireless, and Privacy continues.

With respectful dedication to the law enforcement agencies, Wireless Operators, Cell phone manufacturers, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. 

See Ya all ''register " on : www.wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter !E-WOW! - the  Ecosystem 2011:

"' Sting Tail "'

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless