Is what he tweets a secret?
President Trump tweets from insecure Android, security boffins roll eyes
President Donald Trump is still using a conventional Android phone to post on Twitter since moving into the White House. The New York Times reports that the USA's newly installed president is using his old phone mainly to post to Twitter rather than make calls. Security experts nonetheless warn that Trump's use of a personal …
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Friday 27th January 2017 19:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @DavCrew
You do realize that they make boxes (cases) that will stop snoopers being able to use his phone as a listening device...
Yeah, they are used by US government agencies all over. They are called "lockers" and individuals entering into secured spaces are supposed to leave their mobile devices in them before entering those areas. This was one of the things that Hillary and her cohort rightfully caught hell over: she pushed back very hard against this requirement. That our current CiC is headed down the same route is no surprise, either, given his love of Twitter.
A phone case that prevents it from being used as a listening device will also disable it from being used as a phone while in the case. This is actually handy as it can be used as an indicator for the device being infected with malware. If you put it in airplane mode or turn it off and the battery drains at about the same rate as when in normal use, the device is providing a false status and trying to phone home.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 16:40 GMT Voland's right hand
So, let's suppose for a second that the kid down the street hacks it and posts a "I will now nuke France's sorry a***" in his name on Twitter.
Or let's look at something more subtle. Someone hacks it, shorts company X stock, then tweets. His tweets have moved shares of multi-billion capitalization public companies by 10% up or down in 10 minutes so that is a very nice tidy sum right there.
As long as he is carrying that phone and emanating Trumpishness through it he has TARGET written all over him.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 19:25 GMT bombastic bob
"Is what he tweets a secret?"
apparently not, but it might be a better idea to get something that's deliberately "secured". As an example, having a cracked phone in your pocket while discussing security-related things, "listening in". THAT would be bad.
President Trump: Have the NSA secure your phone, please. k-thx.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 21:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
He doesn't need to use it for government calls and business. It is problematic if he uses it only for tweets if it is compromised and turned into a listening device. That may be above the garden variety hacker level, but such hacks are well known to be possible by nation states. You know, countries like Russia and China who would obviously benefit greatly from having a bug that Trump carries around with him wherever he goes.
He doesn't even need to visit a dodgy web site or install an app. The phone's baseband can be hacked silently via exploits that spy agencies claim exist in nation state toolsets but aren't publicly known, all they need is to know the phone number. Pretty sure that Russia and China already have the phone number of his Android.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 20:01 GMT JimboSmith
Re: "Look if I want to listen in on the rants of a fricking nutter.. out time on a Friday night!!!"
Well if we're being pedantic El President Trump doesn't have the codes either. What he has are a series of codes one of which will positively identify him as the Commander in Chief in the event that the release of nuclear weapons is required.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 14:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: hang on...
Yes, it's a bit strange he's not using a gold-plated iPhone with a rococo cover with rubies, sapphires and and diamonds - maybe just because he couldn't hire Fabergé to make one...
Or maybe the only US-made phone he found was an old gadget running some old version of Android...
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Thursday 26th January 2017 17:51 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: It's quiet... too quiet!
"nothing different... Private email, insecure phone"
Actually, since "private" and "insecure" have no particular relationship to one another, I'd say there was quite a big difference. The common factor is that the NSA are unhappy in both cases. Since one of their core functions is knowing about that kind of shit and another is being on the same side as the US government, I'd have thought that such advice was worth taking. But hey, I'm just some doofus who posts to the internet. I'm not as smart as the leaders of the world.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:04 GMT Alan J. Wylie
Sean Spicer too
He's White House Press Secretary, and has just tweeted "n9y25ah7". His password perhaps?
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:11 GMT Dan 55
Re: Sean Spicer too
They got the greatest security advisers. The smartest.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:12 GMT Gis Bun
Meanwhile, according to WauchulaGhost [who claimed to have hacked 500 pro-ISIS accounts], the Twitter accounts for Trump, Melania Trump and Mike Pence are more vulnerable to hackers because of a basic Twitter security setting they're not using. With a little bit of work "he" figured out that the Twitter account for Pence is a associated with a less secure Gmail account and both Trumps also use Gmail accounts.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:53 GMT Steve Davies 3
Re: What's up, El Reg?
We are watching someone who's obviously read 1984 and watched Dr Strangelove work out their fantasies on the unsuspecting citizens of the USA.
Newspeak is the order of the day in his world.
America is at war with Eurasia (The Moslem part) and he'll invade Mexico just so that they'll pay for the wall.
What's not to like eh?
Now where is that ad for a Nuclear Bunker that was for sale??????
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Thursday 26th January 2017 18:00 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: What's up, El Reg?
Compared with twenty years ago, issues around lousy IT security are far more mainstream and probably far more important. Over the long term, I'd expect El Reg to be covering more political stories. At the same time, US politics seems to be going through a terribly divisive period, so what stories do occur are likely to annoy one side or the other. Possibly something for the editors to keep an eye on.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:49 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Douglas Adams nailed it
Those who most want to rule people are ipso-facto those least suited for the job. If anyone is vain enough or stupid enough to get himself elected president, he must at all costs be prevented from wielding any real power. Thus, the president's job is to draw attention away from power.
We clearly urgently need to find some harmless recluse with a cat he calls "The Lord"
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Thursday 26th January 2017 15:51 GMT Palpy
Not to worry!
Mr. Trump is well aware of the security implications of using Android. He knows a lot about hacking, he said so himself. And he never lies.
OK, never mind. In the world of real, non-alternative facts, Trump's expertise appears to be about that of a typical grandad-with-a-smartphone. It's the job of his handlers to make sure he is using secure channels. Of course he has his cybersecurity czar Giuliani to consult... he of the woefully insecure website.
Meta: El Reg is reporting here on matters concerning network and computer security; it seems to me this is within their journalistic purview.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 16:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Otherwise without any of this, this is a total non-story
Why's that? The fact he tweets from an Android device makes him insecure whatever version of it he's using. Android's a bigger target than Windows now, there's millions of them and they all have much more personal information than your average Windows PC. And he's POTUS, surely worth a go for all kinds of crims.
What's with the AC Trump support squad? Don't you want to be associated with your great leader?
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Friday 27th January 2017 00:52 GMT Andrew Jones 2
Re: Details please.
Android Central (I think) that ran this yesterday did a bit of sleuthing from the photos that are floating about showing him using the phone and have determined from the position of the "home" button and the position of the rear camera and the position of the microphone hole and the fact that Trump has apparently previously mentioned he uses a Samsung Galaxy - that his phone is in fact a Samsung Galaxy S3 - and as such - incredibly out of date and running Android - Ice Cream Sandwich.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 17:14 GMT Alister
Re: But not Facebook
I can just imagine the Department of Agriculture run to reflect Trump's YUGE success at playing Farmville.
Ooh, this could work!
Department of Transport run along the lines of GTA3
State Department as envisioned by Age of Empires
Department of Defence done like Call Of Duty
...
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Thursday 26th January 2017 17:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
'not the most powerful man in the world'
Can we discuss that a little? In the Reagan vs. Russia and the Clinton / Bush Jr years, it did feel like it was us versus the 'most powerful man in the world'.
But now? Its become clear every POTUS is just a figurehead for special interests, and Trump is really just the result of a lacklustre Obama legacy as he failed to deliver on 'yes we can'.
But nobody believes that Trump can fix anything, its only about moving pieces around on a gigantic chessboard. Its all sleight of hand etc....
If Trump did really does go rogue expect him to be Kennedy'd out, or like with the park rangers this weak, expect his own people to defy him / isolate him.
Honestly Bush Jr / Rummy worried me more. On Twitter you get to sound a lot mightier than you are. Whereas the reality of DC is its just a big set of cogs that turn slowly not a ME kingdom with tyrannical dictatorship machine.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 17:52 GMT Pen-y-gors
Re: 'not the most powerful man in the world'
Being fair to Obama, the US system stopped him from delivering, as it is designed to do. The Prez can do little without a majority in both houses of Congress, and the generally corrupt pork-barrel system means that wasn't going to happen. Unusually there is now a Prez whose nominal party does have Congress majorities, so he can, in theory, change things. Pity it's happened at a time when the Prez is quite a few olives short of a pizza.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 18:01 GMT MSmith
Trump doesn't tweet
You do realize that that person that posts those tweets is not Donald Trump, right? It was covered early on in his campaign that he doesn't personally post those tweets. So, it makes sense that the same Android phone posting his tweets in the past is still posting them now. The NSA doesn't give secure phones to low-level twitter posters.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 23:37 GMT InNY
Re: Trump doesn't tweet
If Trumpelthinskin didn't approve of what was/is being tweeted in his name, wouldn't he put a stop to it? As he doesn't, and they carry his identifier, then they are, de facto, from him; whether he actually physically writes, dictates or approves them before broadcast.
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Thursday 26th January 2017 20:48 GMT Palpy
Re: ...And he hasn't been hacked already?
He has. Or, rather, at least some of his business concerns have been. From back in April of last year:
"For the second time in six months, the Trump hotel chain is dealing with an attack on its computer systems, potentially exposing information about its customers."
Reffie: Money.cnn
Opinion on Trump Organization server security:
" A computer security expert finds that Trump Organization email servers use software that hasn’t had a security update in 13 years. The Trump Organization could be wide open to email attacks based on the findings of Kevin Beaumont, a cyber security expert and researcher."
Reffie: RT.com back in October of last year.
Beer because I need one. You can have one too.
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Monday 30th January 2017 01:21 GMT Al Black
Twitter is public
"The New York Times reports that the USA's newly installed president is using his old phone mainly to post to Twitter rather than make calls." Twitter can be sent from anywhere, including internet cafes: the only security is the account password, regardless of the platform used. There are no secrets at risk here: everything he tweets is consumed by millions of Trump-watchers worldwide. Could the faux outrage about the insecure mobile phone be a sign of job insecurity among the Print Media as Trump by-passes them and goes direct to the public?