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Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

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Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#41

Post by sangnoir »

DanBC wrote: post #39
tobylane wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they made it, locked for that device, the FBI knows Apple can make it again, locked for another device. The tool is for any user's data, via a court order on Apple.

But Apple would still need to have the court orders for each user. Some people are suggesting that Apple would create this back-doored code, and hand it to the FBI, who would then use it to access any data they want without bothering with court orders. That doesn't seem to be what the FBI are asking for.

> But Apple would still need to have the court orders for each user.

Yes, and Apple doesn't want this as a precedent. It does away with one of their go-to selling points these days: security/privacy.

If device security can be surreptitiously undone by an OTA upgrade, what's really the point? I'm sure the brilliant legal minds at the DoJ can come up with creative interpretations to enable the next stage, which would be to do this in bulk as a special point-release.

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#43

Post by tzs »

tomp wrote: post #37

> We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism. Do we? Crime rate has been falling. Terrorism is a statistical bleep. The majority of "crime" is government's own invention (non-violent drug-related offenses, prostitution, civil forfeiture, arresting people because they don't pay their student loans [1] [edit: not actually true,…

Your list of government-invented crime includes not paying student loans [1], but the article you cite for that is an article about how someone's arrest was not for not paying student loans and how many other articles misreported it as being for not paying student loans (it was for failure to appear in court).

[1] Well, actually, what you said was that arresting people because they don't pay their student loans is a crime, not that not paying student loans is a crime, but I'm assuming that was just an error of phrasing.

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#44

Post by csrm123 »

Is there literally no other way that the FBI could get the data off the phone?

I'm sure they could download the memory, stick it all in some kind of iOS VM and try every 4-digit PIN in no time, all without worrying that the phone would self-destruct.

Couldn't they?

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#45

Post by uptown »

How long would it take, given the immense computing capabilities of the government, to try every possible permutation of Apple's signing keys in order for them to be able to sign their own home-grown version of iOS? With over a billion devices at stake, isn't that what intelligence agencies would actively be targeting?

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#46

Post by tomp »

tzs wrote: post #43
tomp wrote: post #37

> We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism. Do we? Crime rate has been falling. Terrorism is a statistical bleep. The majority of "crime" is government's own invention (non-violent drug-related offenses, prostitution, civil forfeiture, arresting people because they don't pay their student loans [1] [edit: not actually true,…

Your list of government-invented crime includes not paying student loans [1], but the article you cite for that is an article about how someone's arrest was not for not paying student loans and how many other articles misreported it as being for not paying student loans (it was for failure to appear in court). [1] Well, actually, what you said was that arresting people because they don't pay their student loans is a…

Yeah, I was wrong, he was arrested for not appearing in court (although it's not clear that he actually received the summons to appear in court). This was blatant spreading of FUD on my part. Props to you for actually reading the sources others post, and I am ashamed of myself and will try be more like you and read articles fully, not only skim them, in the future.

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#47

Post by weinzierl »

csrm123 wrote: post #44

Is there literally no other way that the FBI could get the data off the phone? I'm sure they could download the memory, stick it all in some kind of iOS VM and try every 4-digit PIN in no time, all without worrying that the phone would self-destruct. Couldn't they?

No. Flash memory is encrypted with a key that is derived not only from the PIN but also an ID that is fused into the device when it is manufactured. If we exclude the possibility of a backdoor there is no way to retrieve this ID expect from the silicon itself.

Encryption keys are stored unencrypted in RAM, but only as long as the device is active. RAM loses it's content quickly when it is not refreshed every few micro seconds. Moreover the RAM in the iPhone is a package on package design which makes it hard to connect to it.

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#48

Post by jeff_marshall »

uptown wrote: post #45

How long would it take, given the immense computing capabilities of the government, to try every possible permutation of Apple's signing keys in order for them to be able to sign their own home-grown version of iOS? With over a billion devices at stake, isn't that what intelligence agencies would actively be targeting?

Using brute force (i.e. "immense computing capabilities") for properly sized keys is unlikely to ever be practical with classical computers. With quantum computers, many currently deployed key lengths that would be impractical to brute force with classical computers would become vulnerable to attack, but nobody is currently known to have quantum computers of sufficient power. See Wikipedia for basic details[1].

IMO, an intelligence agency would be more likely to invest in other methods (algorithm implementation weaknesses, software bugs, insider access, etc), due to the higher liklihood of sucess.

That said, it's interesting to note that the NSA is moving towards "post-quantum" cryptography[2], under the assumption that suitably powerful quantum computers will be, or have been, built. Whether the NSA already has such suitably powerful quantum computers is anybodys guess.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size#Brute_force_attack [2] https://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/

Re: Sundar Pichai Responds to Apple and the FBI Hacking Request

#49

Post by rayiner »

tomp wrote: post #37

> We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism. Do we? Crime rate has been falling. Terrorism is a statistical bleep. The majority of "crime" is government's own invention (non-violent drug-related offenses, prostitution, civil forfeiture, arresting people because they don't pay their student loans [1] [edit: not actually true,…

The majority of crime is not government invented. The majority of prisoners in prison are not there for any of the crimes you list: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

Besides that, the crime rate has been falling during a period coincident with aggressive policing, more incarceration, and more legal measures (RICO) to fight organized crime. While people have alternative theories for that decrease (e.g. banning leaded gasoline), aggressive policing cannot be ruled out as a reason for the decrease in crime.

Finally, tape recordings and wire taps are the backbone of investigations of sophisticated crime. It's disingenuous to pretend that pervasive encrypted communications doesn't dramatically change the landscape law enforcement is dealing with.

I happen to think the privacy benefits of encryption outweigh the cost to law enforcement, but I think it's ridiculous to pretend like there isn't real crime out there or that encryption doesn't make it harder to fight it.

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