WikiLeaks says it has obtained trove of CIA hacking tools
March 7, 2017 | Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post
Press
“At first glance,” the data release “is probably legitimate or contains a lot of legitimate stuff, which means somebody managed to extract a lot of data from a classified CIA system and is willing to let the world know that,” said Nicholas Weaver.
Want to chat securely? Here’s what to look for in an app
March 7, 2017 | CNN Wires
In short, use Signal or WhatsApp, according to Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley.
Don’t Let WikiLeaks Scare You Off of Signal and Other Encrypted Chat Apps
March 7, 2017 | Brian Barrett, Wired
“It isn’t about ‘defeating encryption,’ despite the hype,” says Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute. “If you compromise a target’s phone, you don’t care about encryption anymore.”
WikiLeaks: The CIA is using popular TVs, smartphones and cars to spy on their owners
March 7, 2017 | Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Ellen Nakashima
Some of the tools are based on “zero-days,” which are software vulnerabilities that have not been shared with the manufacturer. So “some of these descriptions will allow Apple to fix the vulnerabilities,” Weaver said. “But at the same time, they’re out in the public and whoever stole this data could use them against U.S. interests.”
WikiLeaks Releases What It Calls CIA Trove Of Cyber-Espionage Documents
March 7, 2017 | Camila Domonoske
Weaver calls that story "implausible," and raises the possibility that someone from outside the U.S. government compromised the CIA's systems to acquire the documents. And that, he says, would be a big deal: "Spies gonna spy, that's dog bites man. Spy dumps data on Wikileaks, proving that they exfiltrated it from a top secret system? That's man bites dog."
New IEEE 5G Activities Designed to Help Connect Unconnected and Fuel Decades Long Innovation Wave
February 25, 2017 | Yahoo! Finance
“One of the most important aspects of progressing the 5G narrative is that we are collectively thinking about the concept with a common global understanding of what it is and what it is not,” said Gerhard Fettweis, co-chair of the IEEE 5G Initiative, senior research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute, and Vodafone chair professor at TU Dresden.
If Trump hates leaks, he needs to give up his phone
February 19, 2017 | John Naughton, The Guardian
“Without exaggerating,” writes Nicholas Weaver, a computer security expert at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, “hacking a Galaxy S3 or S4 is the type of project I would assign as homework for my advanced undergraduate classes."
Hacking the President’s Phone is Straightforward, Weaver Says
February 17, 2017 | Bloomberg Radio
Nicholas Weaver, a security researcher at the International Computer Science Center at Berkeley, says it would be simple to hack Donald Trump’s phone.
How to Build Donald Trump a Trump-Proof Phone
February 14, 2017 | Jake Swearingen, NY Magazine
In order for this to work, President Trump would need to be able to carry out his job. “We have to still allow him to conduct his workflow,” says Weaver. “And for him, his workflow is sending tweets and receiving phone calls from people off the books. And we need to be able to preserve that functionality while removing the functionality that could make a compromised phone a bug sending all the data to the Kremlin.”
Trump ran a campaign based on intelligence security. That’s not how he’s governing.
February 13, 2017 | Philip Bump, Washington Post
“Donald Trump for the longest time has been using a insecure Android phone that by all reports is so easy to compromise, it would not meet the security requirements of a teenager,” Weaver told NPR, and while he couldn’t say for sure, “we must assume that his phone has actively been compromised for a while, and a actively compromised phone is literally a listening device.”