[Infowarrior] - San Bernadino DA made up the 'dormant cyber pathogen' thing

[Richard Forno]

What is a “lying-dormant cyber pathogen?” San Bernardino DA says it’s made up [Update]

by David Kravets - Mar 4, 2016 8:11pm EST

One day after the San Bernardino County district attorney said that an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters might contain a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen," the county's top prosecutor went on the offense again. DA Michael Ramos said Apple must assist the FBI in unlocking the phone because an alleged security threat might have been "introduced by its product and concealed by its operating system."

Ramos' office said the "Companies that introduce dangerous products, and it can be argued that the iPhone with its current encryption is dangerous to victims, are required to fix them. Companies that create  environmental damage are required to clean it up," the prosecutor said in a filing Friday afternoon.

The fact no one has heard of a pathogen that might carry devastating qualities has us and others wanting to know exactly what is a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen?" We asked Ramos' office to elaborate. Ars' e-mail and phone messages, however, were not returned.

As the chatter on Twitter and elsewhere could attest, security and forensics experts have never heard of this type of threat. Online commenters called it everything from a "magical unicorn" to a make-believe plot that we might see on the broadcast TV show CSI: Cyber.

But late Friday, Ramos told The Associated Press that his cyber doom suggestion was out of thin air.

"This was a county employee that murdered 14 people and injured 22," Ramos said. "Did he use the county's infrastructure? Did he hack into that infrastructure? I don't know. In order for me to really put that issue to rest, there is one piece of evidence that would absolutely let us know that, and that would be the iPhone."

Ramos had been tight-lipped on exactly what security threat may be on the passcode-protected phone of Syed Farook, a county worker who was one of two shooters in the Dec. 2 massacre that killed 14 and wounded scores of others. The prosecutor suggested in a court filing yesterday that the iPhone—a county phone used by Farook and recovered after the shooting—might be some type of trigger to release a "lying-dormant cyber pathogen" into the county's computer infrastructure. On Friday, the district attorney again demanded that a federal magistrate presiding over the dispute command Apple to help decrypt the phone.

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/what-is-a-lying-dormant-cyber-pathogen-san-bernardino-da-wont-say/

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