We shared a report on Monday regarding the controversial Israeli hacking service: Cellebrite. As a reminder, this is a company that offers forensic services to governments around the world, except those blacklisted by the USA, in particular by infiltrating the phones of terrorists or criminals.
For comparison,NSO (Pegasus) specializes in espionage, while Cellebrite specializes in remote data extraction, which often requires no action from the target. The goal is to find evidence that can potentially advance certain cases.
The operations of this type of company raise ethical questions, particularly with regard to human rights and data privacy. Previous cases have revealed instances of abuse by NSO (Pegasus). Regarding Cellebrite, there are concerns about its use, but cases of abuse are not as widely documented as with NSO's Pegasus.
Bloomberg states that: “Cellebrite says its software is only used to unlock seized phones in legally permitted cases and never for surveillance purposes»
If we are talking about Cellebrite again today, it is becausethe Israeli company's tools allowed the FBI to access the phone of the terrorist who recently targeted Donald Trump.
First failed attempt
Shooter Matthew Crook was shot dead following the assassination attempt by American law enforcement. The FBI then investigated to determine the attacker's motives. To do this, they called on Cellebrite, which provided afirst version of its forensic software, but attempts to unlock the terrorist's phone were inconclusive.Unable to get our hands on any evidence with the initial version at the moment.
Cellebrite subsequently provided a software update to the FBI, still under development. This time,extraction took 40 minutes. It is interesting to see the evolution of the forensic tools that Apple is constantly fighting against. Matthew Crook owned a recent Samsung, whichdoes not offer a level of security that comes close to the iPhone.
i-nfo.fr - Official iPhon.fr app
By : Keleops AG
