Tag: surveillance

Chinese Institute Claims It Cracked Apple’s AirDrop to Uncover Sender Email Addresses, Phone Numbers

China’s government has announced that it can now uncover the identities of Apple device owners who send messages and content using AirDrop, the company’s wireless sharing protocol. A Chinese institute has found a way to decrypt the device log of an iPhone to reveal both the email address and phone numbers of users who send content via AirDrop. In the past, activists and dissidents have relied on AirDrop to anonymously send messages to other users in a manner that cannot be easily monitored.

According to a post shared on a Chinese government website (via Bloomberg) an institute in Beijing found that Apple stores the phone numbers and email addresses of users who have shared content via AirDrop on an iPhone’s log files, which are encrypted. The Chinese institution was able to extract and analyse records from phones provided by law enforcement, according to the post.

Apple stores details such as an AirDrop sender’s device name, their email address, and phone number in the form of hash values, according to the Chinese government. The institute used a detailed rainbow table — a table of reversed hashes — to access the encrypted data, which would then reveal the identity of the sender via their email address and their phone number.

Images shared by the Chinese government show details captured from an iPhone
Photo Credit: Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice

 

The Chinese government also says that law enforcement has managed to identify “multiple suspects” in a case. The institute managed to achieve this by analysing both the sender’s device and the receiver’s device. It is currently unclear whether Apple plans to issue a patch that fixes the flaw identified by the government.

Bloomberg reported in 2022 that Apple limited the capability of its AirDrop wireless sharing feature as part of the iOS 16.1.1 update in China. While the US firm previously allowed users to receive files from all users, their contacts, or no one, the first option was reduced from an always-on mode to a limited 10-minute window. This limitation was later expanded to all iPhone models globally.

The detection method listed by the Chinese government suggest that both the sender’s and receiver’s smartphones are required in order to confirm the user identities. AirDrop wirelessly transfers data between Apple devices without requiring an Internet connection, while both devices do not need to be on the same Wi-Fi network. As a result, the cracking of AirDrop would allow the government monitor transfers that are difficult to track as they work without access to the Internet.

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Dozens of demonstrators protest NYC Chinese police station

Dozens of demonstrators protested outside a Chinatown building housing a foreign police station accused of harassing and spying on Chinese nationals in the city.

More than 60 protestors gathered Saturday morning outside 107 East Broadway where the ChangLe Association Inc, a non-profit, owns and operates a “service station” above a noodle shop where security experts say operatives conduct surveillance against dissidents in the Chinese community.

“It’s a very serious problem in the Chinese community,” said Toni Cai, one of the protestors. Cai is a pro-democracy activist imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party twice in China for promoting free speech. He immigrated to the US in 2000, he told The Post.

“The CCP has coerced the Chinese community severely and has a large influence on them here in the state, through American and Asian-American politicians,” he said. “I am very worried, but I want to support the community leaders who are honest and openly against what the CCP is doing.”


More than 60 protestors gathered Saturday morning in Lower Manhattan.
William Farrington

Jing Zhang, founder and executive director of Women’s Rights in China, echoed the thought as she joined the protesters outside the Lower Manhattan building. “People need to support each other,” she said “We all came here to be free.”

The Manhattan station is part of a web of more than 100 such law enforcement offices set up around the world by the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly to help Chinese nationals renew their government-issued identification and drivers’ licenses.

But the stations have more “sinister” purposes, such as spying on the Chinese diaspora for the Chinese Communist Party, according to a recent whistle-blower report.


Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher attended the demonstration.
William Farrington

“Openly labeled as overseas police service stations … they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese,’” according to a September report by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based human rights group that documents Chinese repression around the world.

The stations also participate in “intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment” to spy on dissenters and return migrants to China, according to the report.

“We Chinese are very angry at local government for their appeasement policy,” said Quiam Jiu, who was at the protest with his daughter, Zhao Yue Auiam. “They let the CCP repress freedom and human rights activities. We want local government to have high pressure policy on CCP agents.”


“CCP agents are everywhere,” said Ziyun Huang, who was also at the Saturday protest.
William Farrington

Last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams was a guest of honor at a gala dinner sponsored by the charity that operates the Chinatown police station, The Post revealed.

“CCP agents are everywhere,” said Ziyun Huang, who was also at the Saturday protest. “When all the human rights groups have protests and demonstrations, the CCP will come and harass people.

“The CCP affects the average Chinese American tremendously,” Huang continued. “The party is always in the back of their mind. Everything they do is psychological. CCP to the Chinese is like the weather — they are always in the background,”

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Indian Hackers Reportedly Used by Israeli Private Investigator in Job for Russian Oligarchs

An Israeli private investigator currently in U.S. custody used Indian hackers to conduct surveillance operations for ultra-wealthy Russians, a reporter said in a court filing late Wednesday.

Independent journalist Scott Stedman told a court in New York that jailed private detective Aviram Azari worked “on surveillance and cyber-intelligence operations at the behest of Russian oligarchs,” citing a mix of public reporting and confidential sources.

Stedman said in a declaration that one of the Russian oligarchs concerned was aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, whom he said indirectly employed Azari in connection with a business dispute in Austria.

Deripaska’s spokeswoman said in an email that the allegations were “blatantly untrue.” A lawyer for Azari, who last month pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit hacking and aggravated identity theft in a separate case, did not return messages.

Stedman made his declaration in support of his request to subpoena Azari for evidence to fight a US libel suit filed against him by British-Israeli security consultant Walter Soriano in 2020.

In a series of articles for his publication, Forensic News, Stedman claimed, among other things, that Soriano was a middleman between wealthy Russians and surveillance firms.

Soriano denied the allegations and sued over the articles, accusing Stedman of mounting a campaign of defamation, invasion of privacy, and harassment.

Stedman’s lawyer told the New York court that “multiple confidential sources” told the reporter that Azari “worked closely with Soriano for years” and thus the jailed private eye’s testimony and documents could “corroborate the truth of Forensic News’ reporting.”

In an email to Reuters, Soriano’s lawyer Shlomo Rechtschaffen said that Stedman’s claims were “false and unfounded” and that the reporter “has no evidence” that his client and Azari worked together as alleged.

In a statement to Reuters, Stedman said he had “very strong reason to believe that Mr. Azari worked with Mr. Soriano on cyber-related projects for multiple Russian oligarchs and other billionaires” and that he was subpoenaing Azari as part of an effort “to defend my journalism and my business.”

Azari is currently being held in federal prison in Brooklyn awaiting sentencing in relation to a hacking campaign tied to the defunct German financial technology company Wirecard AG, his lawyer said last month.

Reuters reported last year that Azari was accused of hiring the Indian hacking firm BellTroX on behalf of powerful clients. BellTroX, which has also been accused of hacking by cybersecurity researchers at Facebook and elsewhere, could not be reached for comment.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

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