Patrick O’Neill writes: A year after the battle between the FBI and Apple over unlocking an iPhone 5s used by a shooter in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, smartphone cracking company Cellebrite announced it can now unlock the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for customers at rates ranging from $1, 500 to $250, 000. The company’s newest products also extract and analyze data from a wide range of popular apps including all of the most popular secure messengers around. From the Cyberscoop report: “Cellebrite’s ability to break into the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus comes in their latest line of product releases. The newest Cellebrite product, UFED 6.0, boasts dozens of new and improved features including the ability to extract data from 51 Samsung Android devices including the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, the latest flagship models for Android’s most popular brand, as well as the new high-end Google Pixel Android devices.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Cellebrite Can Now Unlock Apple iPhone 6, 6 Plus
An anonymous reader quotes Mashable: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Thursday that he wants Apple’s encryption to go back to how it was in early 2014. Back then, police could basically extract any information they wanted after getting a warrant. “Doing nothing about this problem will perpetuate an untenable arms race between private industry and law enforcement, ” Vance said on Thursday. “Federal legislation is our only chance to lay these arms aside.” Vance said he’s got 423 “lawfully-seized Apple devices” that his employees can’t do anything with. Forty-two of those devices “pertain to homicide or attempted murder cases” according to the district attorney’s office, and a similar number “relate to sex crimes.” The argument, of course, is that the district attorney’s office would have an easier time solving crimes if they had access to these phones… Apple believes being forced to hack into phones at the government’s will is an unreasonable burden. ZDNet adds that “the call for federal legislation could be given a popular boost by president elect Donald Trump, who previously called for a boycott on Apple products when it refused to help the FBI.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes CNN Money: An American vigilante hacker — who calls himself “The Jester” — has defaced the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in retaliation for attacks on American targets… “Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message, ” he wrote. “Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed.” In early 2015, CNN Money profiled The Jester as “the vigilante who hacks jihadists, ” noting he’s a former U.S. soldier who now “single-handedly taken down dozens of websites that, he deems, support jihadist propaganda and recruitment efforts. He stopped counting at 179.” That article argues that “the fact that he hasn’t yet been hunted down and arrested says a lot about federal prosecutors and the FBI. Several cybersecurity experts see it as tacit approval.” “In an exclusive interview with CNNMoney this weekend, Jester said he chose to attack Russia out of frustration for the massive DNS cyberattack that knocked out a portion of the internet in the United States on Friday… ‘I’m not gonna sit around watching these f—-rs laughing at us.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.