I have a few devices with no public drivers of any kind. Thinking about how to develop drivers on Linux, I’m guessing I should lookup into the chipsets used on the board and see if those companies have drivers I can use as a starting point?
Does it have Windows drivers? If it does, you can set up a VM, set the device as passthrough, and sniff the traffic to it. Then it's not really any different than reverse engineering a network protocol or file format.
You misunderstand how end to end encryption works and what the vulnerabilities were. These are not MITM attacks. I suggest you read the article or the affidavit, they do a good job explaining what happened.
Sometimes you can do a deal for a smaller dollar value, less intense legal / financial hurdle. Get on the approved vendor list, receive income while you negotiate a larger more complicated approval process for a larger deal.
It was staged to make it look hectic. Based on a quick google search of all other similar photos they tuck in the cables. It appears they probably gave away intel too. The photo gives clues as to how the networks are setup.
In government funding you ask that they set the money aside for your specific use. So it’s better to get that set aside for as far out as possible so you don’t have to go back to congress every year and risk political machinations. The 12 year funding is likely a 6 year contract with two optional 3 year renewals or one 6 year optional renewal. There may also be a way to move that money into a new program in 6 years more easily than if you had to go back to congress for a totally new budget.
Browser Fingerprinting is also used for fraud detection and identify verification. There is often overlap between persistent tracking and security verification services.
Professional thieves are professional enough to not waste time on the foreigner that was probably broke since you were staying in their neighborhood. And professional thieves need a level of anonymity to work, which goes out the door when they rob someone in front of their aunt.
