• Off Topic

  • The FBI says it ‘gained access’ to the Trump rally shooter’s phone

I first want to remind people of the no politics rule on the forum. Same goes for any discussion of violence, etc. Discussion should be about mobile security.

Any posts that break those rules will be removed. Anyone who consistently breaks those rules can be banned or temporarily suspended.

horde Related reading: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12848-claims-made-by-forensics-companies-their-capabilities-and-how-grapheneos-fares/ and important quotes are:

XRY and Cellebrite say they can do consent-based full filesystem extraction with iOS, Android and GrapheneOS. It means they can extract data from the device once the user provides the lock method, which should always be expected. They unlock, enable developer options and use ADB.

Cellebrite's list of capabilities provided to customers in April 2024 shows they can successfully exploit every non-GrapheneOS Android device brand both BFU and AFU, but not GrapheneOS if patch level is past late 2022. It shows only Pixels stop brute force via the secure element.

So, while it is definitely possible the FBI has access to exploits that these famous companies don't know about, it is still less likely that they'd be able to find an exploit on GrapheneOS than the stock OS (see https://grapheneos.org/features#exploit-protection).

    A higher resolution picture https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/www-wpxi-com-news-local-85579418.jpg?quality=75&strip=all

    source: https://nypost.com/2024/07/17/us-news/thomas-matthew-crooks-cell-phone-and-transmitter-found-next-to-trump-would-be-assassin-body/

    It looks like a Samsung device. You can adjust the image saturation etc and see that there's a shade of Samsung logo at the bottom of the phone.

      https://www.theverge.com/24199357/fbi-trump-rally-shooter-phone-thomas-matthew-crooks-quantico-mdtf

      This article from The Verge says that a backup of his phone was done via Icloud six weeks before the shooting suggesting it is an Iphone. That picture of the Samsung phone might have just been a stock photo.

      Most articles said there was not a lot of digital evidence but I suppose he could have used a live USB type OS where everything was mostly kept in memory.

        wh1t3fang This article from The Verge says that a backup of his phone was done via Icloud six weeks before the shooting suggesting it is an Iphone

        I'm pretty sure this was from the past incidents https://www.wired.com/story/the-time-tim-cook-stood-his-ground-against-fbi/

        wh1t3fang That picture of the Samsung phone might have just been a stock photo.

        Doubt, I have reversed image search it on https://yandex.com/images/ and it didn't find any matches.

              horde Yeah your right I am sorry that was my bad :). I was reading too many articles at once. What happened was I think I thought they had moved onto a different topic in the article but they were still talking about the California shooting. My apologies.

              https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/us/thomas-crooks-trump-rally-shooting-invs/index.html

              I did find this interesting though, it is still early in the investigation but they have already revealed he had an interest in computers in some way.

              "Instead, the evidence they have found appears to show typical online activities including an interest in computer coding and gaming, the sources said — and that has raised more questions."

              I am actually not sure I would characterise an interest in computer coding and gaming as "typical online activities" like this article did.
              The average computer user is not involved in those activities especially not coding anyway. The reason I mention this is just because I wonder if some evidence was not recorded in the first place. I could be totally off base and reading way too much into that one paragraph though.

              The interest in coding and gaming does not mean that he would have been knowledgeable about anti forensics topics though. It is possible they are still finding more and it has not been reported on of course. A counter point to what I am saying is that if he had been that knowledgeable about anti forensics in the first place he would likely have either wiped the phone and PC or used encryption with a strong passphrase which would have likely taken far longer than it did to get into these devices to collect evidence because you never know what evidence you forgot. I can see both sides of that and I mainly mentioned the live USB thing as a possibility, but it is pure speculation and we will likely not ever know. I just wanted you to know the reason why I thought he may be slightly more sophisticated than the average computer user but that was based on a part of an article that I might be slightly too focused on.