Protect yourself from legal hacking tools

Financial records show that Champaign and Urbana police actively purchase and use the hacking tools created by Cellebrite and GrayKey to break into phones without consent.

These companies find vulnerabilities in our phones that allow them to hack into our phones and access our digital information. Companies like Cellebrite keep the vulnerabilities they discover secret so they can profit off them at our expense. Even if you trusted these companies, they put everyone at risk to hackers who would be happy to steal everything you have in the event of a leak or informant. 

Here's how to protect yourself against this dangerous practice: 

1. Disable biometrics: Face ID and Touch ID can be taken from you without consent when under arrest and are much easier to break into than a password. 

• Change the settings on your Apple device in the following: Apple menu > System Settings > Touch ID & Password
• Change the settings on your Android device in the following: Settings>Security>Biometric ID

2. Update your phone: Tools like GrayKey consistently struggle to real the latest operating system releases, so update your phone early and often.

3. Use a newer phone: Cellebrite and GrayKey both try to keep their list of hackable phones secret, but based on security leaks, we know they struggle to hack into newer phones. 

For more information check out CU Muslim Action Committee's statement on Cellebrite and the IMC's Instagram post on this same topic.