FBI Gets Court Order for Apple to Hack Terrorist's iPhone
 

and Apple is resisting. My prosaic question is this: If the phone is encrypted, how could one load a new OS into it? And if the encryption only covers part of the phone, and you replace the OS (which is currently set up to wipe encrypted data after 10 incorrect passcode entries), doesn't the FBI still have to guess the passcode?


I'm assuming that the FBI doesn't see that (breaking encryption) as a problem given the short length of passcodes in iPhones.

I'm with Apple on this one. "F* the police"
else tomorrow, "terrorist" could be you or I for any reason they deem "necessary".

Stupid FBI. Needs to hire some real Linux users.
I'm with Habitual on this.
Law enforcement is known for being lazy and taking the easy way out.

That phone belonged to one of the terrorists who murdered 14 people. Naturally they need to know who his contacts may be. They'll have searched his home. Why shouldn't they search his computer and phone?

Policework was done before phone tracking was invented, introducing backdoors to our gadgets is the price too high to pay.

I'm rather surprised to see people condemning Apple here. Apple isn't resisting demands to search a terrorist's phone. What Apple is resisting is the demand to create a special version of iOS with a backdoor. Because Apple believes, quite wisely IMHO, that "create this for us and it will only be used this once, this one time" isn't a promise that the FBI can be trusted to keep or be able to keep.

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
http://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/...i-court-order/

moxieman99: the second link should answer your technical questions.

Also, one reason I wouldn't want Apple to do this for the FBI, is because the wall between the FBI and the CIA (which pretty much exists exclusively to do illegal stuff) has been demolished by the Patriot Act.

I'm with dugan on this. I'm troubled by how what was asked for by the FBI is being described by the media. The headlines are all along the lines of "FBI wants Apple's help hacking a particular phone". That is not actually what the FBI has asked for. The FBI has asked Apple to develop an alternative iOS that can bypass iOS's security for ANY phone. That is substantially different from asking for assistance in brute-forcing a particular phone.

My even bigger concern is that Apple already has a backdoor iOS and would prefer not to acknowledge that fact.

I though the FBI had the resources to break or bypass any encryption as they claim in the pass, or ws that the NSA? Not sure, I guess they were lying through their teeth.

I'm with apple on this.

I will never buy mac, will they $py on you :scratch: plus w\don't vote for :rolleyes: people! I say bring on "gods eye." For me and mine nothing to hide and will be long gone before real change on dirt. :banghead:

Do note that if the motive had actually been to get data off the phone, then the court order would just have been "get us the data off this phone." It would not have demanded (and certainly not in such detail) how Apple does it.

Is there any doubt that Apple could unlock that phone in less than a few minutes?

Yes.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700031374678499329

If there's always a way in, isn't it true there's always a way to block that new way in? ;)

I think this article is relevant.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02...dvocates_view/

The short version is this: the FBI is not asking for a back door. They have a warrant and want Apple to open the front door.

Whether or not you agree with it, I think the writer's argument is worth taking into account. The concern is normally about "warrantless" searches, not "warrant-full" searches.

Please note that I am not taking a position; I've been too busy doing other things today to research this fully. I just happened to see this and thought it interesting.

Afterthought: Given that the person who owned the iJunk did indeed kill folks in the presence of witnesses, I think the authorities meet the test of "probably cause" for a warrant.

What I don't know is whether Apple could open that front door without giving away its encryption.

That's a backdoor.

Note that the "but it will only be used once! In this case!" argument has been addressed extensively, including by Apple themselves.

The rest of the Register's editorial is too mind-torturingly stupid to analyze in any more detail. I don't know why the Register (or Phoronix) even exists.

Personally, I'm with those who think the FBI is trying to set a precedent to make demands like this easier in the future. The warrant is not to search the phone.

In this case, any publicity is not good publicity Attachment 20885 with a $

Speaking of requests for phone backdoors: does anyone else remember this weird thread?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...pp-4175436876/

"Money Mike" LOL

Murder is one of those things that can't be undone. The nuts that murdered innocent humans have no expectation of privacy and anyone who helped them have no expectation of privacy.

Hiding information that prevents further murder can't be protected in any society.

While I will agree that trivial requests should be refused. The greater good to the public at large is greater than any personal secret.

The court can force you to provide information or sentence you. This is a very clear case and has been used over and over for 250 years. Since these scum bags were killed they can not provide the information.

If someone murdered Apple employees, I'd bet they cough up the (easy) hack.

Oh, Jefro. Is that what Fox News said? ;)

Even with the smile, that's still a cheap crack.

What I fond astonishing with most of the people in this thread is that
1. they cannot see the similarity between opening a criminals safe and opening his phone;
2. they consider combating indiscriminate murder less important than restricting government.

Of course, (2) could be explained if they are the sort who consider combating indiscriminate murder less important than restricting the right of private individuals to own military weaponry.

If that's all you see the demand as, then that would be where our differences come from.

Since you presumably know both my general political views and Jefro's general political views, I'm mystified as to why you'd say that. It actually took me a while to realize that you were talking about the American Right, even though you were replying to me, and even though you had just defended an American right-winger who'd agreed with you.

Looks like one of my main points has proven incorrect is less certain than I thought. The FBI did actually make a sworn declaration that there was no other way to search the phone.

This is my first time using storify, so let me know if there are issues with the link.

https://storify.com/duganchen/fbi-sworn-declaration

UPDATE: I've just updated the storify, and I'll continue to do so as needed.

If you had read the links that I posted on from Fox news you wouldn't have gone berserk. You would have learned that you have to read other things than the Curling News and Hockey Stick Gazette.

You do realize you are making personal attacks on me. Can you be more civil?

I had a different reply (that jamison responded to), but....

Okay, fine.

Look out they've a mind drone "100%"? :scratch: ALL "NEW$" $UCK$! :p

Thanks for the link, but I'm not sure how this helps the FBI. From what I understand (wrongly?), the passcode is entangled with hardware/firmware codes and identifiers, but the actual files are not. So what prevents the FBI from removing the hard drive, copying it (with dd of course) to a flash drive of some kind, mounting the flash drive as an inert storage device, and attacking the encrypted files that way, safe from the ten-strikes-you're-out wipe?

I heard today (on the "news"...</grain_of_salt>...
Apple has done this 70 times in the past.

I'm sure that's a summary and certainly does not explain the situations behind them, if it's true.

Then they would have to brute-force the encryption key, which is much harder than brute-forcing the pin, no?

The encryption key on the files themselves had better not be just a few digits (and the corresponding number of bits) long.

Not necessarily agreeing that the claim that there is no other way to search he phone is true, but mounting and brute-forcing the hard drive would seem to me to be the worst possible way to try.

Obviously, there are not only "a tangle of legal problems" here, but also maybe "pragmatic problems" as well. It seems to me that it is very easy, maybe too easy, for you to "lose your data forever" with Apple's uber-secure system as it stands right now. It might well be overkill for dealing with the basic issue of "someone stole your phone or you accidentally left it on the bathroom sink." We are not dealing with James Bond here.

We do have in the United States, as in most countries, the concept of "search warrants" and a legal duty to disclose keys (in proper confidence) when served with one. The complication in this case is of course that the "perp" is dead. Search warrants are a very important consideration in the grand scheme of public justice ... as is privacy.

This, therefore, is not "hacking" the phone: a court of law has issued a search warrant for an indisputably-valid reason, to help solve a heinous and hideous crime. The legal justification is at the highest possible level: It cannot be argued that the warrant was lawfully issued, and that "the place to be searched," which has already been "seized," is a phone, which there is "probable cause" to believe does contain evidence relating to a capital crime. While no one can claim that Apple is "obstructing justice" (unless they do), it certainly seems that their engineering has frustrated the purpose when the owner is six feet underground.

Okay, well, what about pragmatic issues? "Business associates get hit by taxicabs, too." What then? Extremely important business data might be on that phone, and the original owner's funeral was last week, and now the business ... for entirely legitimate reasons ... needs to get to it. Can they? It certainly sounds like, with Apple's present system, they could not. Has Cupertino, in its zeal for information security (and recognizing that phones are "none too secure" in any case), built a system that is too strong?

A lot more thought needs to be put into this, by a lot of people: lawyers, judges, legislators, and hardware and software engineers.

It would certainly be funny if there was nothing on the phone.
The idiot wiped, or destroyed everything at the house.

I think they have all the "contacts" leads they need, or likely to get...Enrique Marquez
Birds of a feather...

Here's another technical analysis.

http://darthnull.org/2016/02/19/apple-backdoor

And what they'll find on the phone is Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up

Good article.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is a courageous man. He has got to know full well what he is risking by saying no to the federal government’s demand that he sell out the interests of Apple’s customers by effectively becoming an agent of the United States national-security establishment. He deserves the thanks of every American who still places a high value on the principles of liberty and privacy.-Jacob G. Hornberger

It escalated while you were writing that.

Reuters: U.S. files motion to force Apple to obey iPhone order

(And I agree with you).

Why do they need to go to the phone? Can't the FBI get the info from the NSA prism program. I mean, the NSA prism is supposedly to record every form of communication i.e phone meta data, emails, SMSs, etc.

I feel bad for the victims of the awful terrorist attack. But the FBI and/or the NSA is just using terrorism as a catalyst to collect more data on people and playing the encryption is bad game. I guess the NSA prism program isn't good enough for them, they need more and more out of everybody and every device.

Some folks are believing the FBI and NSA are the same thing. Well, they're not.
They may not even like each other, or co-operate, even in matters of "National Security" without a direct order from "on high" to do so.
There's a lot of pissing contests between agencies.

No wonder there's so much FUD.
No wonder some folks are in fear of the unknown boogie-man de jure.

The over reach of the United States government, in violation of our constitution, is just going to force even more companies to relocate to other countries or quit doing business here altogether as Lavabit and other email services did!!

There's a few other points that could be made:

(1) The "street value" of the proposed hack would probably be about $1 million, at a guess, which the FBI wants for free. Perhaps compensation would be appropriate.

(2) In a way, the standoff is similar to the virus/antivirus race. Assuming the government prevails, it will be extra incentive for Apple and other manufacturers to make encryption schemes available without any ability of Apple or anyone else to open them. To use something like that will be less convenient for the average user than a simple pin or password protected by firmware, but surely there will be a market for it. So the eventual future outcome doesn't look good for decrypters, regardless of the current case.

(3) There is a certain appeal to "the greater good" for justifying anything. Usually there are other unpleasant consequences. 14 people lost their lives, but decrypting the phone will not change that. Many others, dissidents, human rights workers, intelligence agents, could also lose their lives if there is no way to protect secrets.

I'm not sure that I have a position on this one.

Is there anything wrong with the idea that if you want to be encrypted why not learn how to do it yourself? There will always be free open source tools available that noone can control, and Apple is selling a lot of phones to bad people. Plus I suspect it would push more people to use GNU/Linux the free open source platform..

It's more than just a pin. My phone passcode is over a dozen characters. Biometrics means I only need to enter it some of the time. Using stronger passcodes is an optional feature.

Also, regarding the argument that encryption shouldn't be available to normal people: the argument is nonsensical. It's simply not possible for a normal American consumer to have "open source" encryption on current devices. Apple did good by that one for making encryption widely available even if it is proprietary. I question the morality of anyone who supports weakening encryption. They either don't fully understand the implications or have an ulterior motive.

The real publicity nonsense is being performed by the Justice Dept.

Being an American myself it's a shame to see Apple move it's companies outside US. However if DIY encryption is not possible on current mobile devices,then I would have to agree that encryption shouldn't be tampered with.. But how do we know if Apple hasn't say gave it's keys to China already?

Er, did you read either of the two technical articles I linked to? As is standard practice, each device (not model, device) has its own unique key. Someone talking about getting into DIY encryption should be aware of that. :P

I have a different article, but I think I see what you mean..

I think it's hilarious that people are defending the US government at all. The US government are likely responsible for far more innocent people being killed than any terrorist organisation on the planet. The US has a human rights record which would make Pol Pot happy.
OK, these policing bodies have a job to do and some of it is protecting innocent people from criminals but, come on, why the hell should any company ever allow them access which could in any way weaken anybody else's privacy?

Well, then it looks like Apple is right: the FBI seeks a door (back/front/side/whatever) that would render encryption moot on all Apple devices because Apple would have to deliver to the FBI an operating system that enabled the FBI to brute force a short user password. The link you gave me said that the Secure Enclave had a key that could "never" be read (I don't believe that, but whatever), so the FBI simply seeks to brute force the shorter user password/code.

How long can a user-defined passcode be in an Apple device?

Given that CIA/NSA/FBI password try rates are measured in the thousands of trillions of passcodes per second (Snowden told his journalist contacts to prepare their systems for brute force attacks at 100 trillion guesses per second, and that was several years ago), then forcing Apple to weaken its encryption system (de facto, of course) on a universal basis is exactly what the FBI is trying to do. What disturbs me isn't the FBI going to Apple for assistance on this phone, but the FBI's insistence on being given an universal and permanent solution to encryption on ALL Apple products.