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Twenty-six years after the death of Jeanne Ann Childs, Jerry Westrom went to a hockey game and ate a hot dog. After mopping his face with a napkin and throwing it in the trash can, he secured his own arrest for her murder. Childs, 35, was found dead in the shower of her south Minneapolis apartment, naked but for socks. The water was running and there were multiple stab wounds on her body, some of which were inflicted after her death, the Star Tribune reports. Evidence was scarce. But for a towel, a washcloth and a bloodstain on the sink, no other leads were found, and the case went cold. Twelve years later, in 2005, the case was reviewed by the Cold Case Task Force, the FBI, and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension due to advances in DNA testing since her death, CBS Minnesota reports. In 2018, samples from the crime scene were sent off to a private online genealogy company, which is often used by members of the public to find lost relatives or find out more about their family history. As luck would have it, either Westrom or one of his relatives had themselves submitted DNA to that company. Using evidence from the new DNA available, the FBI now had two suspects in what was a very cold case. Police followed Westrom, 52, to a hockey game in January 2019 in an attempt to obtain a DNA sample from him without tipping him off. Here, he idly wiped his mouth and then threw his napkin in the trash. Investigators collected it without him being any the wiser, and the DNA was a match. He was subsequently arrested and charged with murder last Monday. Since 1993 Westrom has had several convictions for drunk driving and has been on probation for soliciting a teenager for sex. He denies all charges against him, as well as being in Childs' apartment, according to a probable cause statement seen by the New York Times. This isn't an isolated case of the FBI using DNA information from a private company. Last month, Buzzfeed reported that Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies in America, allows database access to the FBI in order to aid them in solving violent crimes. Source: https://www.iflscience.com

Summary Nickolas Sharp was arrested and charged by the DOJ for hacking Ubiquity Network in December Sharp worked for Ubiquiti between 2018 and 2021 and was part of the internal team who was charged of responding to the hack Sharp used internal AWS and Github credential to access the data behind a VPN, falscifying logs and evidences of the data theft. Sharp tried to extort 50 BTC ($2 millions) in January in exchange of the stollen data and details on the vulnerabilities used, which Ubiquiti refused. Sharp then went to the press as a whistleblower in March to reveal the extend of the hack after having been interogated by the FBI as his VPN & Paypal account had been shown to be used by the attacker The reports by the press lead to Ubiquiti losing over 4 billion in market capitalisation. Sharp was fired by Ubiquiti a few days after and is now facing 37 years in prison. Quotes My thoughts It really feels like a story out of a movie. Employee of the company steals information, goes to the company under a false identity to claim money then when the police comes to him tries to go all in and poses as a whistleblower which works. But also it clears quite a bit of what exactly happened at Ubiquiti around this hack, making them look better than they were back in fall where there answer to the whistleblower claims felt quite weak. Sources https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/former-ubiquiti-dev-charged-for-trying-to-extort-his-employer/ https://therecord.media/former-ubiquiti-employee-charged-with-hacking-and-extorting-company/ https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-employee-technology-company-charged-stealing-confidential-data-and-extorting

Source Friday, January 27, 2017 | By Elizabeth Banker (@elizabethbanker), Associate General Counsel, Global Law Enforcement [21:48 UTC] https://blog.twitter.com/2017/transparency-update-twitter-discloses-national-security-letters Transparency is important, this is too little too late. It's important to keep in mind these are just gag orders were lifted on expiration, not by new administration.

Judge: It's OK If Best Buy's Geek Squad Nerds Search Your PC for Illegal Content A judge presiding over a child pornography case that was set in motion in 2012 has ruled that users have no legal expectation of privacy when they hand over their computers to Best Buy's Geek Squad IT technicians. (synopsis) A Geek Squad technician working on a doctor's computer discovered a small thumbnail image containing a nude child. The file was discovered on the hard drives unallocated space, an area where a file was deleted but still exists until new data can write over it. The Geek Squad called the FBI and the doctor was arrested. The Judge decided that without the file's metadata there was no way to determine when the file was saved to the HDD, deleted, or where it came from. The judge ended up ruling to suppress all of the evidence. Read the entire story here. (MY THOUGHTS) Is it just me or does this sound like the Geek Squad employee went out of their way in order to find this file? Replacing an HDD and transferring files does not require you visually inspect each and every file.

Sources: Business Insider, CNET, Twitter (John Paczkowski) My first reaction was "Oh Shit!". But then I don't do any crime so I guess I'm safe but to be fair, Apple didn't say that they will not cooperate with law enforcement agencies. In their own privacy statement, Apple says the following. In another document, Apple does accept subpoenas, search warrants and court orders as well [here]. For requests outside the US [here]. At the moment, the FBI can't unlock the iPhone because Touch ID is disabled immediately after 48 hours of not being used. The FBI won't risk to brute force the iPhone because Apple implemented an anti-brute force method where after 10 failed passcode attempts, it will wipe out all data. Here's another statement from Apple: I guess this is why local backups are still better. Also, Apple didn't say that they'll create an encryption backdoor nor would they help unlock the iPhone but only the iCloud contents. Which made me think Apple is operating in the US and they have to follow the law. It's odd that Apple offered to help first rather than having the FBI harass them just like in 2014. The Texas shooting is by no doubt atrocious and good thing that the shooter is dead. Apple in 2014 received an amicus curiae from the tech industry and non-government organizations in support of them refusing to create an encryption backdoor. Since little information has been revealed, I don't know what kind of aid will Apple give to the FBI. But why didn't the FBI unlocked the iPhone within 48 hours using the corpse's finger? This post will continuously be updated as more reports and statements are posted online. To be honest I'm surprised and disappointed.

Anonymous Officials talked to Cyberscoop of the confrontations received from Moscow intelligence towards US intelligence companies for poking into Kaspersky capabilities as the tool itself was marketed to be capable as a spy tool to US intelligence agencies. This sales pitch caught the FBI's attention and as all things with backdoors can leave information to be open to other intelligence agencies or malicious actors. With the insisting nature of the Moscow Intelligence agency, FSB, US intelligence stance of Kaspersky is clear that the Anti-virus firm may have a one way relationship of being an intelligence asset for the agency without Kaspersky knowing. This pushed the FBI to urge US industries to cut ties with the firm, being unsuccessful in some, presented it's privately sourced and open intelligence to congress. Similar to how Google was operating without knowing that the NSA had been snooping on their internal traffic during the NSA glory days, this does not mean Kaspersky actively allows this to happen. The result of this unconfirmed news can lead to the fact that large information companies are at the mercy of their own government intelligence agencies. As an average consumer, this may not affect you to keep using their product, as a corporate entity, you will have to factor in the government agency that has government jurisdiction because of the software's origin. Source: https://www.cyberscoop.com/kaspersky-fbi-cia-fsb-demarche-2015/

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is one of the most powerful agencies in the US with their history of success and failure littered with controversy The newest one seems to be caused by a single warrant that would basically encompass and insurmountable amount of "suspects" There have been previous news circulating about the FBI using child pornography websites as bait for criminals I personally don't know how to react to this given that there has been so much unrest in the sphere of politics lately that this seems like a story I would expect to pop up The interesting about the said case is how massive of an operation was partaken by the FBI with 120 countries involved There are of course some concerns in the future regarding something called Rule 41, it basically gives the judge power to issue warrants The said Rule has been tweaked in order to give more power to the judges which brings in the question of how the power will be used Source: Motherboard, RT

But they couldn't unlock it with a password afters it's locked again, that would mean if it was someone's job to keep the phone in wake state enough to get the information they needed before it locks again. Apple probably faced a huge deal of pressure last time when they refused to I mean there was no backdoor to open users phone without thier password being encrypted on the device, adding a face unlock made the job easier for the authorities, ofcourse if people have nothing to hide won't have any problems but I wonder if people would avoid face unlock feature altogether from here on out. Source : https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-unlocked-an-iphone-x-by-forcing-the-suspect-to-use-face-id/

Best Buy's Statement: Part of the Geek Squad Terms of Service: Immediately, after this section, they state by agreeing to the terms of service that you waive any "right you may have to a jury trial, and the right to participate in any class action, private attorney general action, or other representative or consolidated action as either a representative or member of a class, including any class arbitration or consolidated arbitration proceeding. The parties collectively and you, individually, acknowledge and do not agree to arbitration of any claim hereunder on a class-action, collective or representative basis under any circumstances." I am honestly, not that shocked at all in the actions of the FBI nor Geeksquad, I am however more than surprised by the way that Geek Squad seems to proactively search for this, while covering them selves completely for any thing plausible. It will be interesting especially if any Customers were blackmailed by Geek Squad employees over other acts such as nudes that they took themselves since Geek Squad has it set up in such a way to shield all the employees from any acts of Data Intrusion. It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays about. Sources: EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/geek-squads-relationship-fbi-cozier-we-thought ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-documents-reveal-fbi-paid-geek-squad-repair-staff-as-informants/ PCMag: https://www.pcmag.com/news/359710/the-fbi-paid-geek-squad-employees-as-informants Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/04/03/records-show-deep-ties-between-fbi-and-best-buy-computer-technicians-looking-for-child-porn/?utm_term=.60b6e2e05fbc GeekSquad TOS: http://storage.bestbuy.com/geeksquad/terms/total_tech_support/tts_2017_04_23_to_current_v1_english.pdf

Source: https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/19/unlock-texas-shooter-iphone-se/ But how long can Apple ignore a search warrant? Wouldn't that be obstruction of justice if Apple denied the request of the authorities? It's pretty much San Bernardino all over again. But then, why did the authorities back then just used the dead person's finger and unlocked the phone while the dead finger is still warm? Why ship it to Quantico? After they unlocked the iPhone using the finger, they can set the iPhone to not lock itself automatically. Are they afraid of a sliding a dead man's finger to his own iPhone while it's warm? Settings>Display & Brightness>Auto-Lock>Never I don't think Apple will comply but who knows? Maybe if the authorities have put enough pressure then Apple might unfortunately comply. When the FBI under former director James Comey hired a third party hacker to unlock the iPhone 5c of the San Bernardino shooter, they also found nothing. I have a feeling it will be the same case of "nothing" again. They may hire another hacker again to break the iPhone's protection but bear in mind that Apple is tightening the bolts of its security features for the every iOS iteration. UPDATE (11/21/2017, 5:25 pm): Apple formally asked to release Texas shooter’s iCloud data https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/apple-formally-asked-to-release-texas-shooters-icloud-data/ #14 is kinda creepy.

FBI sued by news organizations for information on San Bernardino iPhone hack - The Verge https://apple.news/Aq8GlAWHyTD2vLRfLm0QHoA So the FBI has apparently finally found a way to get into that iPhone from months ago, and according to the article, has supposedly paid more than one million dollars for this solution, although in the terms of hovernments and corporations, that's hardly anything. Three news organizations ("The Associated Press, Vice Media, and USA Today parent company Gannett") are now sueing the FBI for the information on how this was done. The FBI has thus far refused to comply.

Put on your tinfoil hats boys and girls. And here's the GAO summary of the program. Why be concerned you ask? If you live in one of the following states, and have a drivers license, you are in their database: With a large number of other states currently "under negotiation for memorandum of understanding with the FBI (for access to drivers license photos)", whatever that means. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/smile-youre-in-the-fbi-face-recognition-database/ Personally, I find this to be quite concerning. Particularly because most of the images collected were not collected for criminal or national security purposes. We really need to start fighting back against this government attitude of "because we want it". Just for fun

-I don't have reason to be really concerned about this ... Or should I? SOURCE: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11536348/supreme-court-approval-fbi-anonymous-hack MORE DETAILS SOURCE: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/supreme-court-fbi-extraterritorial-hacking,31708.html#xtor=RSS-100

Update: Got a new video from TMZ website. I put it in Soundcloud. Here it is: For people with Hearing Impaired: Update 1: Source: NBCBayArea, Mashable, TMZ.

Goddamn! is DJ khaled running the FBI? #AnotherOne BBC is reporting that FBI has agreed to unlock another locked iphone to access it's data to assist in a criminal investigation case of a homicide & Guess what? the FBI agrees to unlock it using the same method that was used to unlock the San Bernardino case i-phone which was rumored to been hacked using a third party software made my an Israeli Mobile Forensic Firm Cellebrite , there was a rumor whether this third party assisting the agency found a flaw across Apple devices or found a workaround only to the specific phone. this means it's a generic one , pretty much without apple not knowing what it is to even consider patching it, every other device in the planet is literally vulnerable to this! FBI so kawai! 'Willingness to help' Although this is the case there was an official statement from their attorney for Mr Drexler saying that he was "not concerned" about any data on the phone.(geez , i wonder why they are even making the statement in the first place) In case of the first unlocking event there was an official statement from A senior federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said "it was possible that law enforcement might not find anything useful on the phone" obviously followed up with refusal to reveal what they actually found out it always starts with just one.. The New Case: The New case is for an iPhone 6 and an iPod that may contain evidence in a murder case that belonged to two teenagers accused of killing Patricia and Robert Cogdell in Conway, Ark., in July in 2015 the original case that feds were after was for a San Bernardino case in which Syed Farook and his wife were shot dead after killing 14 people in December. this lead the feds to ask the phone manufacturer apple to write a new software that would allow it to gain access to Farook's iPhone. However, Apple refused, arguing it would be wrong to compromise the security of one of its devices since that might lead to vulnerabilities in many other iPhones. And Ladida, it's happening! Option that prevented FBI to attempt Brute force on the iphone The company was ordered by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym to offer its technical assistance, including if required, provide signed software to bypass or disable an auto-erase function on the phone. The FBI was apprehensive that if the function had been turned on, the auto-erase function would delete the data on the phone after 10 unsuccessful tries. Apple somewhat bravely decline that offer & went into legal battle to counteract it , alas atleast extending the time taken for the phone to be unlocked, but no hopes now.. Justin Olsson, product counsel at security software maker AVG Technologie said that "The responsible thing for the government to do is privately disclose the vulnerability to Apple so they can continue hardening security on their devices." Pretty sure that would not happen Quote from an open letter to it's customers & public from the Apple CEO Tim cook So..the ethical dilemma! , what are your thoughts on this? Post what you think & how far should this continue in your opinion or should this be a norm to keep bad guys away & in check? What do you think? post your opinions down below... Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35933239 http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/31/472497468/fbi-to-help-arkansas-prosecutor-unlock-iphone-linked-to-murder-case http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/fbi-may-unlock-iphone-in-ark-murder-case/112793333 WWLTV link Cort(@SansVarnic)

Now with FBI successfully (at according to their claims) have figured out how to bypass iPhone pass-code lock, they are welling to share their methods with some senators These sentors have been involved with an anti encryption bill, but the reason of the briefing still remains unclear Well I guess some people have already called, wouldn't be surprised if some senator eventually decides to abuse their knowledge unless some serious secrecy is kept. Source:http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/06/FBI-briefing-senators-on-iphone-hack/?sr_source=Facebook

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/07/fbi-director-unlocking-iphone/ So this is good news and bad news in the same way. Good news is that newer iOS devices with the Secure Enclave chip in them (everything from the iPhone 5s and up) can't be cracked willy nilly by any 3rd party. Bad news is that it sparks speculation that the FBI knew it could crack this specific iPhone 5c all along, and the only reason they went public with the case is because they also wanted to get in to the newer iOS devices with the Secure Enclave, only to call off that plan at the last second when they were about to lose the entire case because of the (for them unexpected) way Apple went full nope.avi on them. It's just a matter of time before another big event happens that the FBI (or any other short-sighted entity like a congress person or other governmental body) will then abuse in order for their will to become way. And then we're all boned.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/2/11540962/iphone-samsung-fingerprint-duplicate-hack-security Above is a clickbaity article that I don't like whatsoever, in fact don't even read it, it's just the source of my inquiry. The article starts out by talking about how easy it is to spoof someones fingerprint to get into their phone. It goes on to tell you it's only that easy if the person with the fingerprint is physically present and willing to put their finger in a clay mold for replication. This whole intro is stupid on the surface but does help solidify a valid point that I've never really thought about. Main takeaway from the article, what if someone has access to the public's fingerprints and can replicate them to remotely login to people's devices? I've always thought of biometric's as an extremely secure alternative, but now it seems unsettling to me. What do you guys think? -TidaLWaveZ

John McAfee went on national TV and explained in simple instructions how the FBI could open the iphone in 30 minutes with two people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG0bAaK7p9s (forgot how to embed video) Not sure how I feel about him revealing this to the public as there are people out there with the smarts to pull it off. That's of course assuming what he claims actually works. I don't have the technical background to verify or falsify his claim. Also, had no idea this guy was running for president in the fringes of the political spectrum. Does he seriously think anyone would elect him? Update 1: Here's an update to the whole thing from Ars provided by @Kloaked: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/john-mcafee-better-prepare-to-eat-a-shoe-because-he-doesnt-know-how-iphones-work/ Supports the notion that McAfee is talking out of his ass as usual, just trolling. Update 2 3/3/16: John McAfee squares off with former FBI officer Steve Rogers about the iPhone backdoor demanded by the FBI on CNN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqI0jbKGaT8 TL;DW Basically McAfee is solely against a backdoor method of cracking the Iphone.

In an interview on "Bloomberg Go" with Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin, Bill Gates was asked by Mr. Westin, "Were you blindsided a bit by headlines that say 'Bill Gates Backs FBI?'" Bill's response was "Yea, I was disappointed because that doesn't state my view on this." He continues to say that there should be a discussion about how much Government should be able to view people's personal digital data. To me it sounds like Bill Gates is saying that Governments do need to be able to view some people's personal digital data in cases with certain people like terrorists and such but he probably doesn't think a government should be able to see anyone data when ever they wanted or in any case. Watch the video of the interview from bloomberg.com Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-23/bill-gates-disappointed-by-reports-he-backs-fbi-over-apple

On the issue of "The Fappening," I question Linus' assumption that the "hack" took place solely via social engineering. Either more than 100 individuals (many celebrity-status) were dumb enough to be duped by someone using an email username "appleprivacysecurity" (a court document description), or, there was an exploit present in the "Find My iPhone" service that allowed unlimited attempts at brute-forcing a password...and if "hackers" got a hold of legitimate Apple iCloud usernames, they used a pre-compiled tool that guessed the associated weak passwords (or weak security answers.) The wiki is ambiguous about the exact route but Occam's Razor is telling me there was a flaw and "appleprivacysecurity" wasn't able to successfully dupe so many celebrities into giving away their password to unknown sources. Some have speculated the information was collected months before over insecure MitM wifi hotspots at high-profile events, but that can be dismiss-able given proper authentication methods (and not some incredibly-retarded old Bluetooth implementations that Bluesnarfing and "Linkkeys cracking" exploit which may or may not have gained access to Paris Hilton's pics on her phone back in 2005.) Now, "guessing" people's security answers can be a different story -- this was how Sarah Palin's personal "Yahoo!" email account was "hacked" by some kid (David Kernell) of some state-level democrat and subsequently changed the password to "popcorn" and posted it on 4chan back in 2008. The court battle was a huge mess. 4chan creator Christopher Poole was called in to testify about the most basic internet terms like "OP" and "lurker." Prosecutors were clearly technologically-inept and accused the proxy operator that Kernell used ("Ctunnel" operated by Gabriel Ramuglia) of ridiculous plots of collusion for political gain in that election year -- which unsurprisingly never held up in court. Ramuglia was PISSED after that and subsequently stopped all of his logging which previously aided the case. As some of you may know, this is when "Yahoo!" changed their security questions to whatever you want versus a small list of drop-down questions that are relatively easy to guess the correct answer. Back to the fappening, I honestly suspect that after 4chan implemented a more "takedown-friendly" system of pics...because people kept spamming the same pics over and over again, Poole was fed up with the mess, didn't want to be involved with another court battle, so he quit. I seem to recall reading about similar stories of some of the employees over at Imgur -- twitter posts like "Welp, my entire work day consisted of nothing but taking down pics" during the frenzy of threatening lawsuits against a wealth of individuals and organizations. Apple eventually officially stated that it was "a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet." Now, that's some weasel wording if I've ever read such a statement. It doesn't claim negligence while appearing to offload most of the blame on "the evil internets." It's factually accurate for both situations: there was a flaw in the "Find My iPhone" service since "weak passwords" is a factor, OR Apple's security was in fact bullet-proof at the time and it was "appleprivacysecurity" accounts duping 100's of individuals. The resultant FBI investigation was unsurprisingly lackluster and provides very little information other than, "people are still being investigated," dated October 2014 -- the latest update thus far, 16 months ago. My theory: Apple screwed up in a way that most of us don't know about and it was determined henceforth to not let it happen again; they quietly re-designed their security implementation to the point where, if it wasn't bullet-proof before, it sure as hell will be 99.̅9% bullet-proof from now on. Hence the present "we're not budging" stance on re-writing our intellectual property (because we potentially got burned once and outright refuse to implement Pandora's Backdoor.) I despise the fact that so many people think this is nothing more than an uninformed conversation like, I expect this to get all the way to the Supreme Court and will ironically get a tie vote. Instead of giving the lower courts the winning decision in the case, wouldn't a simple coin flip that determines if future devices now turn into Telescreens from 1984 (watch the movie)...be more interesting? And yes, that was a /s. Summoning @jmart604 for mandatory law discussion.

Source: http://theusbport.com/facebook-twitter-google-join-apple-encryption-fight-fbi/5419 So we already know about the fight between Apple and the FBI: Big companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others start to back up Apple saying: Looks like the FBI stepped on the wrong foot. I'm taking Apple's side. Its idiotic to ask a company that is trying to make a safe and secure device then the FBI wants them to make a backdoor. That's so stupid...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/apple-fbi-encryption-battle-san-bernardino-shooting-syed-farook-iphone This article shows how the US government is becoming the most powerful and influential group of people in the world. This would be a demand that has never been seen before and could potentially ruin Apple if they were forced to create a "backdoor" because as Tim Cook said, it could potentially get into the wrong hands and then anyone could gain access to anyone's Apple devices.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34920557 Holy crap that is a ton of user info. I really hope I'm not affected by this although that seems unlikely. It would be helpful to know which sites were hit, but given the sheer amount of credentials and affected sites, its likely many of the sites i and other people use are affected. I hope nothing too bad comes of this and that the FBI catches who did this.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook has responded to the order from the FBI to help them unlock an iPhone recovered in the San Bernadino shootings. Another user, 13CA350, has posted about this, post linked below. Tim Cook talks mostly about data encryption and need for it. He also talks about what would happen if they were to create such a tool to unlock devices. Cook also talks about how data is handled by law enforcement and companies and there needs to be a public discussion about what is a risk. People pour their personal data into their mobile devices and entrust it to Google, Apple, Microsoft and other companies. The need for a strong encryption and privacy is becoming more and more important with the amount of personal data we give to companies. OP: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/17/tim-cook-apple-wont-create-backdoor-to-unlock-san-bernardino-attackers-iphone/ Full letter: https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/