Two Advanced iPhone Forensics Workshops are scheduled for 2010. Both workshops are open to both private sector and law enforcement personnel, and as usual with discounted ticket prices for active duty, vetted law enforcement. Please contact me if you have any questions about the upcoming workshops, and hope to see you there!
| April 19-20, 2010 Peel High-Tech Crimes Unit Mississauga, Ontario Canada [ Register Here ] |
May 4-5, 2010 Chicago Police Training Academy Chicago, IL USA [ Register Here ] |
A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music
“Boy, do I have a lot to learn!” Anyone who’s ever picked up a musical instrument of any kind-from the first caveman banging rocks to that little kid at the guitar shop-has thought that. I know I did. I’d been trying for years to break into the music scene, to show everyone my chops, to make my mark. And I was good. But I wasn’t great. I knew that there was something missing.
Then the teacher showed up. I didn’t ask for him. I didn’t think I needed him. And all he said he could teach me was “nothing.”
From Grammy® Award-winning musical icon and legendary bassist Victor L. Wooten-an inspiring parable of Music, Life, and the difference between playing all the right notes…and feeling them.
Ballistic has come quite a long way since version 1.0. The victim of a $5.99 theft in the App Store, Ballistic was the antidote to a headache created by what was, at the time, the only iPhone app that had the gaul to call itself a ballistics calculator (and inaccurately, mind you). Today, Ballistic is beloved by avid hunters, top competition shooters, and even the military. And unlike some of the competing applications in the App Store, we didn’t have to fuglify Ballistic with olive drab green themes to make it look more commando-fashionable, add silly pictures showing the user how to hold their gun, or cutesy icons to show you which way the wind was blowing. Why? Because Ballistic is an application for shooters. Ballistic’s success has shown that shooters are smarter than your average consumer, and demand a rugged, high performance ballistics computer – not a toy app. Ballistic has led the way in new and revolutionary features the competition has sought to copy to stay afloat. With version 2.x, Ballistic incorporated the world renowned JBM ballistics engine, which is the gold standard other ballistics applications use to measure their own performance. Ballistic’s best days are still to come. So my question to the intelligent and experienced crowd out there using my application is: What do you want next?
Here are the rules. Whatever features you ask for have to be something a large portion of the user base would use; it can’t be a personal preference feature. Features must increase a shooter’s capabilities, rather than decrease them by dumbing the shooter down (for example: no pretty pictures). Features must overall make the application something more usable in the field, but without making the application more complicated to use. Finally, all features must be useful, and not just “cool”. Have at it and post your comments here!
I’ve finally gotten around to ditching the old, static blog and have replaced it with WordPress. Given that I frequently defile Twitter space with most of my current sentiments and literary fodder, I thought it more productive to share my longer rants here, on my website, and save Twitter for more brief outbursts of sarcasm and inflammatory remarks. Also, I’ve gotten a number of requests for an RSS feed, so those of you who would like to subscribe to my frequent nonsense can now receive me in the full glory of your daily aggregate drool. Welcome to 1995, Mr. Zdziarski, welcome.
Would you let a priest share your confessions in a government database? Or everything you confided in your therapist? Well, your doctors are about to share all of your priviledged medical information with the federal government.
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Law enforcement agencies have the toughest challenge in mobile forensics: not only do they have to get data off the phone of a pedophile, rapist, or murderer, but they have to do it in a forensically sound manner that can be reproduced and explained in a court of law. I have created a new site, iphoneinsecurity.com to make all of my latest research and automated tools to iPhone forensics available to law enforcement agencies. I require that those with access be full time, sworn officers with agencies having arrest and search and seizure powers. A contact address also exists to request access. In addition to the restricted content, many public articles and announcements are also posted by law enforcement officers and other experts in the field, so head on over and check it out.
Andrew Hoog, Chief Investigative Officer at Via Forensics, put together a good summation of the available forensics techniques for recovering data from the iPhone. This paper is a few months old, so it doesn’t cover my latest USB method (which is much faster and easier), but he does cite my original method from the book, along with some other useful methods. Depending on what kind of information you want to get, there are different techniques you can use. Andrew has informed me this paper will be updated shortly so keep an eye out for a new edition.
“Respect for religion must be reestablished. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of public officials must be curtailed. Assistance to foreign lands must be stopped or we shall bankrupt ourselves. The people should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence.”
- Cicero, 60 B.C
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omeone sent me a copy of this MacWorld article in which Charlie Miller makes the claim that jailbreaking is a threat to ecurity (I left off the ’s’ because apparently they stole it for the new iPhone). Does Charlie really believe that DRM is healthy for a computer system? It seems that having disclosed the SMS vulnerability, he should know more than most that application signing provides more copyright control than it does actual security. Ironically, most exploits such as SMS and Safari exploits have the potential to affect every single iPhone user with a vulnerable version of firmware – whether it’s jailbroken or not.
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“SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”