What is Hackers' Pub?

Hackers' Pub is a place for software engineers to share their knowledge and experience with each other. It's also an ActivityPub-enabled social network, so you can follow your favorite hackers in the fediverse and get their latest posts in your feed.

About 1.5 years ago my friend was (wrongly) accused of terrorism.

All of their electronic devices were seized, plus my stash of hard drives (stored at their place for reasons).

Of course police didn’t find any evidence. Culprit that framed my friend (and many others) got arrested recently (article in Polish).

Police returned the hardware few months ago and I found that all of my drives are now e-waste thanks to their carelessness, which made me (understandably) furious. I even considered suing them.

Said very good friend of mine entrusted me with their personal phone and pattern to unlock it. I charged and booted it for the first time since February 2024 and were curious how it was pwned. I knew police used cellebrite on it.

My crime is that of curiosity

As it turns out, police forgot to clean after themselves (there was an attempt) and left payloads, logs, and backdoor intact.

Took a peek at the first-stage payload but it’s too complex for me to reverse-engineer on my own. It’s relatively well obfuscated, but I can tell it’s using RNDIS (likely spawning a server?) and TLS-encrypted connection to talk to Cellebrite box.

If you’re a security researcher (or just curious nerd with more spoons than me) and you would like to take a look - here you go.

Payload was uploaded onto the device on 2024-02-21. If you want to re-create the environment it was executed on, you will need a:

  • Samsung Z Flip3 5G (SM-F711B)
  • Android build SP2A_220305.013.F711BXXS2CVHF

Rough execution flow:

1. USB device plugged in (Cellebrite Cheetah)
2. USB controller switches to host mode
3. Gadget switching USB VID/PID to load kernel modules
4. Module 'hid_akeys' leaks memory
5. Screen unlocked
6. ADB key '82:E5:EA:F3:DC:D1:7D:CA:65:3C:D4:58:65:CD:81:8E' added to trusted keys on the device
7. First-stage payload '/data/local/tmp/falcon' copied onto the device.
8. Second-stage payload (seemingly) executed as root:
	- /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line
	- /data/local/tmp/android-webview-command-line
	- /data/local/tmp/webview-command-line
	- /data/local/tmp/content-shell-command-line
	- /data/local/tmp/frida-server-16.1.4-android-arm64
	- /data/local/tmp/init
9. Data extraction (photos, telegram, firefox, downloads)

# Unanswered question: What the hell is "jtcb.sdylj.axpa" running as root? Seems to have been dropped around the same time...

Have fun!

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선호 불호 에 대해서 좋아하는거면 좋아좋아 하면 되고 싫어하는거에 대해서는 거친 표현만 안했으면 좋겠다구 생각합니다 특히 당사자 앞에서 이걸 왜 먹냐..ㅇㅅㅇ 으.. ㅈㅈ 못 먹을거 먹는 사람 보듯 하면 기분이 좋지 않지요 먹는거 이해 못 할 수는 있는데 그걸 면전에다 대고 뭐라 하면 좀 그렇죵.. 그냥 너는 그걸 조아하는구나 나는 이거 그다지 좋아하진 않아 하면 될텐뎅 ㅎㅎ..ㅎ 누가 억지로 먹어먹어 하지 않는 이상 그냥 부드럽게 말해주면 좋겠어용

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직장에서 성장하는 5가지 비결

1. 실수를 두려워하지 않는다
2. 배움의 자세를 잃지 않는다
3. 긍정적인 태도로 임한다
4. 의사소통 능력을 키운다
5. 스스로를 지속적으로 개발한다

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theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/n

I'm really pissed off with yesterday's budget, and not because they put up my taxes - I'm glad they did.

No, my problem is they pussied out, didn't put them up enough. They touched everything except VAT, income tax (on wages) and national insurance.

A few pennies on those would have raised money to spend on infra we need.

I'm all for conservativism, but we need bold spending, it's why Labour is in power. And I say that as a conservative. Labour should act like Labour.

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