221–230 of 364 posts
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That would be terrible
Why?
If encryption cannot be broken it means it has been done right, and engineers should have the highest respect.
Govts, on the other hand, should use appropriate policies, not orders or force or backdoors.
I thought this was an excellent write-up regarding how the iOS security platform (recent iPhone models) works from someone obviously in the know, as posted in the forums of Apple Insider. (Source: http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/191851 ) " Apple uses a dedicated chip to store and process the encryption. They call this the Secure Enclave. The secure enclave stores a full 256-bit AES encryption key. Within th…
https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
If it's possible to make such a "backdoored" build of iOS, then there are state actors who will be throwing $Millions at doing it already, with or without any willing help from Apple.
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The users password goes through a password based key derivation function, that function spits out an key that is use for the AES crypto used for the file system. Now, the PBKDF requires a secret that is only stored within the iPhone itself (within the CPU even, where it can't be read out directly). So if we instead grab a copy of the data, all we get is an AES encrypted file system. We have 2 choices. 1. We can attac…
I guess that's my question...is there really no way to get the secret off of the hardware so that the function can be reproduced "offline".
A thought experiment: Let's say the government makes hardware encryption standards in the style of FedRAMP that sets standards for preventing tampering by foreign governments. Then, imagine that a consumer electronics company voluntarily makes all devices comply with this standard. Could a court attempt to compel the company to defeat the standards which the government set as tamper-proof against governments? A secon…
1: Yes. 2: Yes. 3: No, but they will probably be the ones asked anyway, and then yes, they would be legally required. 4: Apple. 5: What's the question? Is the question will they be compensated? Then yes. 6: They can't. They don't own their stock. Bad PR is not a good enough reason. You are treating the court like a mathematical proof and finding edge cases. I used to as well. But courts don't work that way at all - t…
I always wondered why more people don't go around bricking iPhones by entering the wrong pin several times. Same goes for any other lockout. Why not do this to someone famous by constantly logging in as them from a botnet?
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Yes, and that's effectively the same thing. Bypassing controls counts as a "backdoor".
Brute forcing a password could take more time, with today's technology, than we have left on Earth depending on complexity and if there are known vulnerabilities. I'm not sure I would effectively consider this order an order to "unencrypt".
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That's true. In fact, if it's possible for Apple to accomplish what DOJ is demanding of it, the best outcome would be for DOJ to succeed, and do so publicly: * There is an authentic need to get at the data on that phone * There's no likelihood at all that other users will be impacted by the backdoor * We'll all be on the same page about how secure these phones are versus the USG. It's possible that they can prevail a…
> There is an authentic need to get at the data on that phone What is the authentic need? The shooters are dead. Do we have reason to believe that there is evidence of any pending crimes or any old unsolved crimes on the phone?
14 dead people and a stack of unused guns and bombs.
So, Apple says that "the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation." https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ If it's possible to make such a "backdoored" build of iOS, then there are state actors who will be throwing $Millions at doing it already, with or without any willing help f…