Google Confirms Android Camera Security Threat

The security research team at Checkmarx has made something of a habit of uncovering alarming vulnerabilities, with past disclosures covering Amazon’s Alexa and Tinder. However, a discovery of vulnerabilities affecting Google and Samsung smartphones, with the potential to impact hundreds of millions of Android users, is the biggest to date. What did the researchers discover? Oh, only a way for an attacker to take control of smartphone camera apps and remotely take photos, record video, spy on your conversations by recording them as you lift the phone to your ear, identify your location, and more. All of this performed silently, in the background, with the user none the wiser. . .

The security research team at Checkmarx has made something of a habit of uncovering alarming vulnerabilities, with past disclosures covering Amazon’s Alexa and Tinder. However, a discovery of vulnerabilities affecting Google and Samsung smartphones, with the potential to impact hundreds of millions of Android users, is the biggest to date. What did the researchers discover? Oh, only a way for an attacker to take control of smartphone camera apps and remotely take photos, record video, spy on your conversations by recording them as you lift the phone to your ear, identify your location, and more. All of this performed silently, in the background, with the user none the wiser. . .

When the Checkmarx security research team began researching the Google Camera app, on the Pixel 2XL and Pixel 3 smartphones that were to hand, they found several vulnerabilities. All of these were initiated by issues allowing an attacker to bypass user permissions. “Our team found a way of manipulating specific actions and intents,” Erez Yalon, director of security research at Checkmarx said, “making it possible for any application, without specific permissions, to control the Google Camera app. This same technique also applied to Samsung’s Camera app.” The implications of these vulnerabilities, given the footprint of Google and Samsung smartphones alone, presented a significant threat to hundreds of millions of users.

The vulnerabilities themselves (CVE-2019-2234) allowed a rogue application to grab input from the camera, microphone as well as GPS location data, all remotely. The implications of being able to do this are serious enough that the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) specifically has a set of permissions that any application must request from the user and be approved before enabling such actions. What the Checkmarx researchers did was to create an attack scenario that abused the Google Camera app itself to bypass these permissions. They did so by creating a malicious app that exploited one of the most commonly requested permissions: storage access. “A malicious app running on an Android smartphone that can read the SD card,” Yalon said, “not only has access to past photos and videos, but with this new attack methodology, can be directed to take new photos and videos at will.” (Read more from “Google Confirms Android Camera Security Threat” HERE)

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‘Let the Baby Die’ Signs Target Family with Sick Infant

The parents of an infant diagnosed with two rare birth defects said last week that they have been told to stop asking for money to cover medical bills and to just “let the baby die,” according to a report.

KC Ahlers said he posted six signs around the Franklin Park Mall in Toledo, Ohio, to spread awareness about an upcoming fundraiser for his 4-month-old son, RJ. The father told WTVG on Friday that he discovered three additional signs posted next to his that read: “Stop asking for money. Let the baby die. It’s called Darwinism. Happy Holidays.” . . .

Ahlers said his son was born with two rare birth defects. He was diagnosed with Agenesis of the Corpos Callosum, which affects brain development, and Mosaic Trisomy 9 Syndrome, a rare chromosomal disorder. Only about 50 percent of infants born with Mosaic Trisomy 9 Syndrome survive to age two, the father said.

The family raised $4,000 in an October fundraiser to pay for an expensive genetic test. Ahlers’ signs were meant to advertise a December 15 fundraiser to cover the cost of his son’s additional medical bills. The family’s GoFundMe page has raised more than $20,000 to fund treatments and tests from various specialists, some of which they say insurance has deemed “not medically necessary.” (Read more from “‘Let the Baby Die’ Signs Target Family with Sick Infant” HERE)

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Mike Huckabee: Chick-Fil-A ‘Surrendered to Anti-Christian Hate Groups’ and ‘Betrayed Loyal Customers’

Mike Huckabee has long championed Chick-fil-A in the face of attacks from the left but after the company’s announcement Monday to stop donating to two Christian organizations, he has changed his tune.

The company announced it was donating to initiatives that further its “mission of nourishing the potential in every child.” It said that in 2020 it would stop donating to two Christian organizations, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and The Salvation Army, that have been accused by gay rights activists of having anti-LGBTQ views.

“In Aug. 2012, I coordinated a national Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day after they were being bullied by militant hate groups,” the former Arkansas governor tweeted Monday. “Today, Chick-fil-A betrayed local customers for $$. I regret believing they would stay true to convictions of founder Truett Cathy. Sad.”

The prominent conservative Christian leader added that the popular chicken chain’s move was seen as “surrendering to critics and betraying loyal customers to appease those who despise them.” . . .

Billy Hallowell, the author of “Pure Flix,” a Christian production company, said “the fact that the mainstream media has reduced the Salvation Army — one of the most important humanitarian groups around — to an ‘anti-LGBTQ organization,’ tells us everything we need to know about our current culture.” (Read more from “Mike Huckabee: Chick-Fil-A ‘Surrendered to Anti-Christian Hate Groups’ and ‘Betrayed Loyal Customers'” HERE)

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Outlets Retract Stories After Realizing Report Actually Cites How Many Children the Obama Administration Detained

Multiple outlets deleted entire stories Tuesday after falsely reporting the number of children in migrant-related U.S. custody.

Outlets including Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), NPR and Aljazeera jumped on a report from the United Nations, writing Monday that the country has the world’s highest rate of detained children. The outlets reported that there are currently more than 100,000 children in immigration-related custody, which violates international law.

A day later, Reuters and AFP deleted their stories after the U.N. clarified the numbers were from 2015, when former President Barack Obama was in office. AFP did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it no longer felt the numbers were newsworthy after being informed they were from 2015.

“Reuters decided to withdraw its story after the United Nations issued a statement on November 19 saying the number of children in detention was not current but was for the year 2015,” a Reuters spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. . .

Aljazeera updated its article, which is now headlined “UN expert corrects claims on children in US migration.” The article notes that the data is from the Obama administration, but a large portion of it is still dedicated to scrutinizing illegal immigration under Trump. (Read more from “Outlets Retract Stories After Realizing Report Actually Cites How Many Children the Obama Administration Detained” HERE)

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REPORT: Foreign-Born Researchers at U.S. Agencies Were Secretly Working for China and Recruiting Others

Foreign-born researchers working at U.S. agencies secretly joined China’s payroll, sending sensitive U.S.-funded research to the country while U.S. government agencies took almost no defensive measures against a major recruitment operation, a Senate investigation found.

Researchers linked to the Chinese government formed a Chinese cell within the Department of Energy, attained access to American genomic data, and recruited other U.S. researchers to join, the bipartisan report stated.

China’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) aims to get foreign governments to finance the communist power’s military and economy by buying off researchers who are doing work abroad. The experts apply to the program, and if approved by the Communist Party, they join China’s payroll and sign secret side agreements that the experts will share their research with that country, according to the investigation.

Some of the information captured by TTP had significant military value. For example, in 2016, Dr. Long Yu, a Chinese citizen and U.S. permanent resident working for a U.S. defense contractor, applied for Chinese talent plans and was arrested for attempting to give hundreds of gigabytes to China, including design info on military jet engines, according to the investigation.

“China wins twice. First, the American taxpayer funds China’s research and development. Second, China uses that research to improve its economic and military status,” Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement. (Read more from “Foreign-Born Researchers at U.S. Agencies Were Secretly Working for China and Recruiting Others” HERE)

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‘Christmas Ornaments, Drywall, and Jeffrey Epstein…Three Things That Don’t Hang Themselves’: Senator Demands Answers (VIDEO)

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday that the American people deserve answers about the circumstances surrounding the death of billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while detained in a federal prison, and used a joke about “things that don’t hang themselves” to make his point.

Speaking to Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Sawyer during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Kennedy said, “How can I put this…Christmas ornaments, drywall, and Jeffrey Epstein — name three things that don’t hang themselves. That’s what the American people think.” . . .

Kennedy acknowledged that Sawyer was not in charge of the investigation into Epstein’s death, but asked her to pass along “a very respectful message” to “tell the American people what happened.”

The Washington Examiner reported that “belief that Epstein was murdered has become a cultural phenomenon which is partly a meme and partly based in real skepticism.” Jokes and memes claiming “Epstein didn’t kill himself” have spread like wildfire since the convicted pedophile’s jailcell death in August, as questions remain unanswered about how the well-connected financier could have taken his own life as such a high-profile prisoner.

Last week, Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, told the Miami Herald that after reading the reports by two renowned forensic pathologists he hired to observe his brother’s autopsy, he believes his brother was murdered. (Read more from “‘Christmas Ornaments, Drywall, and Jeffrey Epstein…Three Things That Don’t Hang Themselves’: Senator Demands Answers” HERE)

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Claim: Obama Staffers Left Behind Hateful Notes to Trump Aides

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham revealed this week that when President Donald Trump took office, his aides found hateful notes left behind by President Barack Obama’s staffers. . .

Speaking to WHKT-AM at the White House on Tuesday, Grisham — whose first role in the Trump administration was press secretary for First Lady Melania Trump — said, “We came into the White House — I’ll tell you something, every office was filled with Obama books. And we had notes left behind that said, ‘You will fail,’ ‘You aren’t going to make it.’ And in the press office, there was a big note taped to a door that said, ‘You will fail.'”

Former Obama administration alums were quick to accuse Grisham of lying, including Obama’s former Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice.

But The Daily Mail’s David Martosko reported that he spoke with “four former Trump officials who were there on day one,” who “all confirm” Grisham’s claims.

One former Trump aide told Martosko, “It was a mess that first week. Yeah, there were mean notes left in odd places. One in a deputy press secretary’s office, one inside a desk drawer in upper press, another on a bathroom mirror. They were all about how we were doomed for failure.”

(Read more from “Claim: Obama Staffers Left Behind Hateful Notes to Trump Aides” HERE)

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7 Key Moments from Alexander Vindman’s Public Impeachment Testimony

As part of the ongoing impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the House Intelligence Committee heard public testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council staffer and one of the Democrats’ star witnesses.

Here are some of the key moments from Vindman’s Tuesday public testimony:

At one point, Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman — whose background as an anti-Trump NBC pundit is detailed here — appeared to imply that it’s the president’s job to follow the foreign policy lead given to him by the unelected people working under him. He asked about talking points Vindman prepared for the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Vindman clarified, “The president can choose to use the talking points or not. He’s the president.”

Despite the fact that his job is to handle Ukraine policy, Vindman appeared really uninformed when it came to the relationship between one of the country’s energy companies and the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter. He also said that the younger Biden “didn’t seem to be” qualified to sit on the company’s board, but “I don’t know his qualifications.”

Vindman — who testified that the publicly released call transcript was “accurate” — said that he heard the word “Burisma” mentioned on the call. He explained that, even though it wasn’t on the transcript, that the word’s absence was “not a significant omission” since it was mentioned as “the company” anyway. This admission serves to bolster the anti-impeachment position that the American people have had access to an accurate, public transcript of the July 25 phone call that they can read for themselves, regardless of what opinions some in the foreign policy world might hold.

The White House is sticking to its guns on the position that the claims here are more about policy disagreements than anything legitimately impeachable. “The President is in charge of setting the foreign policy of the United States, not unelected bureaucrats,” the White House said in a Tuesday statement. “The president has every right to conduct American foreign policy in whatever way he sees fit and is not in any way obligated to follow bureaucratic talking points written by staff.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., really doesn’t want Republicans to find out whom Vindman told about the July 25 phone call outside the White House. During questions from both Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., about whom Vindman told about the phone call, Adam Schiff felt the need to remind lawmakers not to try to out the identity of the federal employee whose whistleblower complaint started the current impeachment effort, giving the strong impression that Vindman was indeed a source of information contained in the complaint, despite his claim that he doesn’t know who the individual is.

There’s been a great deal of discussion about why Vindman didn’t raise his concerns about the July 25 phone call with his supervisor, Tim Morrison. When asked why he didn’t go to Morrison on the matter, he said that he was instructed by National Security Council legal adviser John Eisenberg not to discuss the matter with anyone else after he had already talked to other people about it and tried, unsuccessfully, to talk to Morrison.

At one point, Vindman corrected Ranking Member Nunes for calling him “Mr. Vindman,” insisting that “it’s Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please.” He later explained to another member of the committee, “I’m in uniform wearing my military rank; I just thought it was appropriate to stick with that” and cited “attacks” in the press and social media that “marginalized me as a military officer.”

The full hearing is available here:

(For more from the author of “7 Key Moments from Alexander Vindman’s Public Impeachment Testimony” please click HERE)

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Anti-Prison Anarchy Is Spreading: It’s Way Beyond ‘Soft on Crime’

Stathos Hugunnie was wanted in connection with two stabbings in a housing project in Long Island City one day in April 1997. When police showed up, Hugunnie fired eight shots, striking NYPD officer Peter Bueti three times in the chest, which would have killed him if not for his protective vest. After being released from prison two years ago, he was picked up again on drugs and firearms charges. Yet he was released on just $5,000 bond. This, folks, is the real criminal justice dysfunction that needs “reform,” but victims and law enforcement don’t have the same lobbying power criminals do.

Although New York’s new law abolishing cash bail won’t be enacted until January 1, judges are already getting a head start by either applying it now or setting bail at a very low rate, even for repeat violent felons. Hugunnie was charged with attempted murder, assault, criminal weapons possession, and criminal use of a firearm for the 1997 incident. Back then, criminals were actually locked up, so he served 20 years in prison.

According to the New York Post, “On Nov. 7 at 6 a.m., detectives from Queens North carried out a search warrant and found the would-be cop killer in another apartment in the Queensbridge Houses, loaded down with multiple firearms, ammunition, and grams of both heroin and crack cocaine.”

Liberals always say they want to combat gun violence, but they love to let out the most violent gun felons of all on the streets. Consequently, someone like this, who almost killed a cop and was then caught illegally possessing firearms, was let back out on just $5,000 bond. “This is the type of person New Yorkers are going to be encountering on our streets in increasing numbers: vicious criminals who are being spit back out by our criminal justice system,” said Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch, as quoted by the Post. “We must fix our broken parole system before perps like Hugunnie create more victims.”

This is the sort of “criminal justice reform” the public wants, but the political class, including so-called conservatives, think even the current weakened system is not weak enough on criminals. Two weeks ago, the American Conservative Union, the same organization that hosts the supposed annual conservative conference of record, held a jailbreak conference where 100 percent of the focus was on the needs of the criminal and not on all the victims needlessly harmed by repeat offenders let out of prison. . .

Who needs Soros electing anti-prison prosecutors in San Francisco and northern Virginia, when “conservatives” seem to agree? We see how harmful the Soros prosecutors have been in their quest to decriminalize public order laws, a big project of AOC’s “squad.” How much more so the release of drug traffickers and gang-bangers?

Many so-called conservatives are motivated, in part, by the assumption that they will somehow pick up new voters from the felons who are released. Jared Kushner reportedly told a group of donors as much at a GOP summer fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s akin to their suicidal and circular logic that if Republicans out-left the Democrats on amnesty for illegal aliens, they will somehow pick up more votes. A recent jailbreak story from New York demonstrates the laughableness of this view.

José “Catano” Jorge was originally held without bond after he was charged with killing someone by distributing fentanyl-laced heroin in NYC. Last week, though, he was released without any bond pursuant to the new bail law, and according to the NY Post, he announced in Spanish as he left the courthouse, “Cuomo for president!” According to the New York Daily News, when Jorge’s lawyer tried to hush him up, Jorge said, “It’s in my heart, man. It’s in my heart, bro.”

Yes, indeed, there are a lot of vices incorrigibly embedded in the hearts of violent career criminals. Voting Republican is not one of them. This is the army of violent punks that “conservative” criminal justice deform will unleash on our streets.

Ironically, people who actually understand crime, even Democrats, comprehend the consequences of jailbreak more than supposed conservative organizations. A pair of law-and-order Democrat prosecutors in northern Virginia who were defeated by Soros candidates in primaries were recently profiled by the Daily Caller Foundation about their concern with this growing anti-prison movement and their shock that even Republican politicos don’t seem to care or understand what’s happening.

“The weird thing is, as a result of Soros pouring money into low-turnout primaries, center-left voters are unquestionably more closely aligned to the Republican candidates than they are to these radical challengers,” said Jonathan Fahey, the independent who was defeated by Soros accolyte Steve Descano in the Fairfax County DA race. “If the citizens were informed they’d never vote for this.”

The longtime incumbent Democrat prosecutor who was defeated by Descano, Ray Morrogh, endorsed the independent Fahey, but voters upset with Trump simply voted party line up and down the ballot.

Descano “is completely unqualified for the office of commonwealth attorney,” Morrogh said in a video. “The only case he tried, he disgraced himself when the judge reversed the conviction because [he] lied in closing argument. This man is not fit to hold office in Fairfax County.”

Unfortunately, citizens are not being informed of what is quietly happening on all aspects of criminal justice because all of the monied GOP interests agree with the false Soros premise about race and incarceration. Thus, rather than running endless soft-on-crime ads against the Left, which would appeal even to center-left voters disenchanted with Trump’s personality but who still want stable and safe suburbs, the host of CPAC joins with the Soros agenda. We now have a radicalized Democrat Party and a compromised Republican Party. Where does that leave the average citizen? (For more from the author of “Anti-Prison Anarchy Is Spreading: It’s Way Beyond ‘Soft on Crime’” please click HERE)

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Hilarious: Here’s How ACLU Is Celebrating International Men’s Day

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union decided to offer their own interpretation of what it means to be a man, since International Men’s Day is celebrated annually on November 19.

Although International Men’s Day (IMD) focuses on six pillars: highlighting discrimination against men; supporting male health issues; improving gender relations; promoting gender equality; celebrating male contributions to society; and promoting male role models, as Yahoo acknowledged, the ACLU had its own leftist identity politics view, writing on Twitter: “There’s no one way to be a man. Men who get their periods are men. Men who get pregnant and give birth are men. Trans and non-binary men belong.#InternationalMensDay.”

In the United States, International Men’s Day is recognized in Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa (Luther College in Decorah, Iowa), Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, Florida, California, Arizona, Alabama, and Michigan; Washington, D.C.; Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia. . .

The ACLU statement on International Men’s Day precipitated some mockery on social media.

Mark Krikorian of The Center for Immigration Studies: “Our primitive ancestors believed all kinds of silly things about the physical world, like leprechauns and bodily humours and whatnot. But even *they* had a more sophisticated understanding of reality than today’s woke knuckleheads.”

(Read more from “Hilarious: Here’s How ACLU Is Celebrating International Men’s Day” HERE)

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