After all the bad press, it amazes me how people continue to have such an enormous amount of blind faith in their own abilities, thinking that they can determine whether or not a piece of high tech hardware is behaving properly. Most recently, the pols of the DNC showed us that they don't understand the security ramifications of using any kind of technology.
Any monitoring device that is contemplated should be independent of both the software and the hardware of the tested device. This is because the hardware can be just as compromised as the software. Just like with people, we now have the scenario of having watchers for the watchers.
People continue to believe that when they turn their phones off, that they're really "off" - when that's not a true thing to believe. Phones sleep. Heck - the journalist they cite may have had her phone "woken up" by a 911 reverse call (which is built into all US phones). I don't know how reverse-911 is configured over there in the mid east. Anyway, many people have bluetooth turned on and don't realize it. Bluetooth devices can advertise their unique "addresses" all day long, if hit with a query signal. With WIFI it's a similar, but reversed, situation. Most of these things, including the regular phone-to-tower communications, have heartbeat transmissions ongoing even when they're supposedly idle.
Journalists should be aware of these things. Many people continue to use TOR, when in the past it has been an excellent source for Wikileaks (though not with proper use nor with TOR's approval). Now the DNC can't keep track of their emails. Good grief.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here. So .... never mind.
Last edited by rons; 25th July 2016 at 03:37 PM.
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