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'I tried hooking up the micro-usb cable to an older android phone I had sitting around and it goes "OH YEAH THAT'S AN HTC ONE. WHICH MODEL IS IT?" Scary.'
USB vendor/product ids: very spooky? http://www.the-sz.com/products/usbid/index.php?v=0x0BB4&p=0x...
Wait until he finds our that you can figure out manufacturer from MAC addresses too.
Cellebrite in an Israeli company that specializes in extracting data from phones. The device bought in the thrift store appears to be a device to copy data from phones already unlocked and open, in other words, not the most interesting device they have, and it's from 2014. Still a nice read though.
Used to work at Best Buy in Mobile. and used this POS all the time. It was good when it worked. A lot of the time it was not working because it had to get flashed by connecting to the Ethernet port.
We used it to transfer information from one phone to another. It did work with almost any phone. You just had to
Find the right kind of cable for every phone back then. Sometimes it would even connect and transfer via Bluetooth.
Good times.
One thing caught my eye any clue what a Microphone is doing on a device like that?
I'd guess they simply reuse some tablet hardware design (and those usually incorporate a mic) instead of coming up with their own.
We never used the mic functionality. But maybe some kind of audible way to detect phones on a different pitch? Like they do with Alexa now a days.
You already answered this question earlier. It’s just some off the shelf Chinese computer that’s used for multiple different products.
Maybe cops can use it to record hidden convos?
i heard about these things but never used one myself (although i had access to a similar if ess user friendly data extraction tool called a DM3 used for nokia and blackberry forensics etc)
they were mainly for forensic or data recovery and sometimes unlocking or password removal. i can tell you that the left side will almost certainly be for various data clips/cables (usually over UART) which usually use an RJ45 although some older ones used the serial connector and a 3.5mm jack, use of RJ45 cables is still fairly common as some models can only be unlocked via UART
im also not sure the sim card slot is actually for sim cards as such but more likely a smartcard auth token for software licences, most unlocking solutions etc are sold as a "box" which is essentially a USB>UART and a USB smartcard reader with a card for the software licence, it may even have accepted 3rd party licences such as infinity etc as i believe they were meant to be a sort of all in one solution. although it may have been for sims if it was recovering contacts and messages stored on the sim
as for why it was there i guess its just ended up unused then gotten chucked out in a clear out, old kit tends to fall by the wayside in this game despite it initially being quite expensive (ask anyone in the mobile biz for any decent amount of time and they almost certainly have an MTbox/MXbox laying about) generally by the time its obsolete its more than paid for itself and is really pretty useless unless you work on a lot of very old stock
places ive worked at had dozens of old unused unlocking boxes and the like which eventually ended up in various tote boxes etc and when the business moved the majority ended up in the skip (where people soon came to try and dig out any potentially worthwhile bits) i suspect this found its way to the store in a similar fashion
it may not actually be much use in this day and age but its an interesting find
>im also not sure the sim card slot is actually for sim cards as such
One of the choices under "phone vendor" was "simcard".
Presumably it was for dumping the address book off of the simcard.
This was way more interesting than the title suggests, so if you don't know what a Cellebrite is (like I didn't), keep reading the thread. For people who do know what it is, the real question is "what the hell was that doing in a thrift store?!"
Back in the day you'd find random gear like this just thrown in dumpsters when it became obsolete or replaced. Rarely was data wiped correctly. I can see a misguided intern thinking, "someone else must be able to use this!", or it just getting into a donation pile by accident.
My assumption is dumpster -> dumpster driver -> pawn shop/thrift store
Come to thrift stores in Silicon Valley, you'll find all kinds of neat stuff!
This device is used in commercial apple stores for transferring data off customers old, non-apple phones. Pretty straightforward service, hardly a curious device.
"Not news to you personally" is not the same thing as "not interesting."
Cellebrite makes devices for forensics, and they make devices for cellphone stores. This is the latter. Definitely not interesting.
It's like saying "I found a Diebold fountain pen, can I learn about ATMs from it?". No. It's not the same thing.
But with a drip of whodunit the thread made the product seem quite mysterious.
I used to work in a mobile phone shop and we had these to transfer data between old and new phones. With regards to the SIM slot, SIM cards can store around 100 phone numbers and many people that swap phones regularly do keep their contacts on a SIM card. SIM cards can wear out over time so this was useful for swapping phone numbers from an old SIM to a new one or a nanoSIM etc.
Up the build quality, but keep the hyper rugged design philosophy, round things off so it slides into a backpack easily, make sure there's plenty of ports, and I'd consider buying tablet PC with about this form factor. (Yes, yes, I could just buy a tablet PC and put it in a paranoid-level ruggedized case.)
If it's telling you to configure settings on the device, can it be considered forensic? Something about that feels off.
At the end of the thread, Foone posts this:
'correction, which explains some of the weirdness like the "buy-back" thing. This isn't a Cellebrite UFED Touch, it's a Cellebrite UME (Universal Memory Exchanger ) Touch. This means it's designed for phone stores to transfer data off old phones onto new phones and such. This is why it can't hack the phones, just copy data off them. It just seems they built their UFED platform and UME platform on the same hardware base.
It also makes a lot more sense why this ended up in a thrift store.'
that could be either for data recovery or sim unlocking both of which often require a diag mode or debug port to be enabled on the device
Grady Booch even gets in on the action: https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1135459629658329090?s...
These devices are used heavily in telecommunications for transferring data from almost any model device to another. Very useful when customers transfer from an old Nokia to say a brand new iPhone.
You can find these on ebay...
What a ride.
Before people complain (like last time) on why Foone doesn't just blog...
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338
> Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?"
> CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I have bad ADHD that is being treated, and the treatment is NOT WORKING TERRIBLY WELL. I cannot focus on writing blog posts. it will not happen.
> if I try to make a blog post, it'll end up being abandoned and unfinished, as I am unable to edit it into something readable and postable. so if I went 100% to blogs: You would get: no content I would get: lots of unfinished drafts and a feeling of being a useless waste
> but I can do rambly tweet threads. they don't require a lot of attention for a long time, they don't have the endless editing I get into with blog posts, I can do them. I do them a bunch! They're just rambly and twitter, which some people don't like.
> so given this is a choice between two options, I can either: 1. make rambly tweet-threads that some people hate and wish were blogs 2. make no blog posts
> I am sorry that I am picking #1, but it's really best for everyone.
... and so on. So, it's apparently due to ADHD...
Self awareness helps, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating or easier to read because of vis chosen format.
It’s a free world and whatnot, but Twitter is a poor medium for these kinds of stories. It took me at least twice as long due to scrolling, squinting, etc.
Let's not go through this again. Many people disagree with you and find no problem reading tweetstorms, which are becoming more popular, not less.
Also every 2 seconds twitter has a full screen popup saying to use the app or to sign up or that I have been rate limited.
If it helps you, there's this:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1135354815259656192.html
And a bookmarklet:
Anyone with ADHD: is there a difference between writing a hundred of lines in Twitter, and writing the same amount of text, but published in one piece? Just curious.
This is one of those subthreads that show how offtopicness is preserved under negation.
We need a client that formats a series of twitter posts into a single blog post
Seriously though, if you are one twitter, Foone is one of the best people you can follow.
tl;dr he had ADHD. So he can't ever finish a blog post, but twitter works for him. Which is fair enough.
Does anyone have the link that turns a twitter thread in to a blog post? This is unreadable.
Thanks. Fascinating article.
Thank you for the TLDR.
Terrible writing and Twitter is a fatal combo.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20080987 and marked it off-topic.
Anyone else read this and think "Celibate Touch"?