A Device to Grab Data From Cell Phones 161
what about writes
"Apparently there is a quick, simple, and undetectable way to grab all of your cellphone data. CNet reports on the Cellular Seizure Investigation (CSI) Stick, developed for law enforcement but available to the public, which 'connects to the data/charging port and will seamlessly grab e-mails, instant messages, dialed numbers, phone books and anything else that is stored in memory. It will even retrieve deleted files that have not been overwritten. And there is no trace whatsoever that the information has been compromised, nor any risk of corruption. This may be especially troublesome for corporate employees and those that work for government agencies.' I use mobile knox, a secure storage application, for my important data, but I would be very upset if somebody grabbed my telephone list, SMS, or anything else from my locked phone."
How much? Where? (Score:3, Interesting)
Synch vs snarf (Score:2, Interesting)
Umm, why is it easier for them to steal my data than its for me to synch my phone to my computer? :(
why are you letting strangers have your phone (Score:3, Interesting)
Of all the things you can worry about, this seems to be one of the sillier ones - a phone is one thing pretty much never out of sight or touch in public. How is anyone going to plug in anything without your permission?
Look to your Bluetooth stack if you are concerned about data leakage.
Re:oye! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This only works on SOME phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Whilst this is getting better pretty damn rapidly with newer smartphones, I wouldn't have thought most phones would be able to handle that much encryption. Tis rather processor intensive, killing the battery. Although I guess they could add in extra hardware for the purpose, again killing the battery.
For a lot of people phones should be basic things that make calls, send texts, and not die on them, enryption doesn't even enter their head. With the phone makers, it not about not allowing you to have strong encryption, it's encryption being too resource intensive. Of course not all phone makers have this issue and the likes of the jesus phone should be providing such critical function.
I do agree with you though, so bring on the openmoko, or possibly android...
Re:unfortunately, I use a blackberry! (Score:3, Interesting)
Where all the content is strongly encrypted with AES. Maybe you shouldn't have bought that iphone if you were concerned about security!
They have a model for the Blackberry in the works. Since this device is designed for forensic investigation by either law enforcement or corporate compliance investigators, I would not be surprised if it hooks into low level OS calls put in place for this purpose. The NSA has a back door into virtually all systems out there.
Re:Probable Cause and Warrants (Score:3, Interesting)
The border has always been an exception to enforcement of government protections of our rights, even when unjustified by any actual risk response. This decade has seen those exceptions turn extremely abusive, even on totally legitimate US citizens and visitors.
We have to fix our border to protect us from both foreign threats and domestic abuses. And we especially must reverse the trend of finding any exception to protecting our rights as an excuse to violate them elsewhere.
You have NOTHING to worry about.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Plot Device Failure. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used this device, physically. Had the csi sticks in the lab and attempted to seize cell phone information via this device...
Your data is perfectly safe. It couldn't acquire data from any phones more recent than 3 years old and even then, a quick click through your cell phone would yield just as much results. (doesn't retrieve deleted items).
Put your tinfoil hats away, I've had better methods to acquire cellphone information than this POS device that didn't work on new phones or even unlocked phones in general.
The tech support is lacking and their programmers are all from the ukrane, which means that if I have to acquire a phone *right now!* and it won't work, it'll take a month and a half to patch the software to get the phone data.
Moral of this story: Your data is perfectly safe, its a condensation of the tech that i've been using for years, except it doesn't work nearly as well.
I returned it for a full refund, so at least i got THAT value back...
No Nextels (Score:1, Interesting)
If you look at the list of supported devices, you will notice that not a single Nextel phone is on there. Motorola makes the Nextel phones just like they make the phones that comprise almost 80% of the phones compatible with the CSI stick.
Why is this? Were the Nextel phones designed differently? Were the non-Nextel phones designed this way on purpose (with a back door)?
I know when I try to back up my contact list on my Nextel I have to enter the PIN. (I don't recall if it is the SIM PIN or the phone PIN.) Do the other Motorola phones require this?