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U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#141

Post by f47h3r »

jsolson wrote: post #49
georgespencer wrote: post #3

One of three things is true: 1. The FBI is lying to save face, 2. Someone -- but probably needs to be some people -- from Apple is willing to help them, 3. There is an undisclosed vulnerability in iOS which Apple is unaware of. I find it really hard to believe that someone would disclose a zero day exploit to the FBI without charging significant $ for it. Am I missing something obvious?

Sure, there's an extremely well known vulnerability in the iPhone 5C hardware. Lacking the features introduced in later ARM releases it has an unsecured AHB or AXI bus allowing any device that can connect to perform arbitrary DMA (which can in turn allow arbitrary code execution). It would require a certain degree of technical sophistication to execute that attack, but the resources required would be well within the…

Do you have a link to the paper? I have a friend that was commenting about something similar the other day, but he couldn't find the sauce.

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#142

Post by rms_returns »

wool_gather wrote: post #125
rewrew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last week the former US "cyber czar" Richard Clarke called the FBI out directly for doing it solely for legal precedent, and stated that virtually no one even in the gov't were on their side: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/former-cyber-czar... >>Clarke noted that Comey and the Justice Department were not getting support in their case from the defense and intelligence communities. "The Justice Department a…

I find it more likely that this is simply a tactical decision: they already knew about this "new method", and were holding it in reserve so that they could cancel the proceedings if necessary (i.e., if Apple put up too much of a fight). They will keep trying until they get the precedent.

> They will keep trying until they get the precedent.

Don't they already have a precedent when they shut down Truecrypt some years ago?

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#143

Post by msbarnett »

Splines wrote: post #135
msbarnett wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that the intelligence and law enforcement communities are afraid that if this case goes to the Supreme Court the All Writs Act may be scaled back or ruled unconstitutional. It's not that the act is unconstitutional, it's that the interpretation of it that the DoJ has been selling to magistrate judges in ex parte hearings is extremely broad and would never survive appeal. The Supreme Court has made it very…

IANAL. Why does the existence of the AWA allow such things that the FBI is trying to do? The AWA seems to be a very small piece of law, and using it in the way it's being used seems against the spirit of it. It's frustrating enough that code impact is completely unrelated to code size. I would rather our law not be the same way, but who am I to criticize.

> IANAL. Why does the existence of the AWA allow such things that the FBI is trying to do?

Short answer: It really doesn't.

But if you can talk fast and convince magistrate judges to issue writs ex parte (no one is there to oppose you), you can get a lot of mileage out of writs that wouldn't survive an appeal. Most people won't have the time, money, or inclination to challenge them.

Even then, magistrate judges have been pushing back. The FBI's going to get slapped for this in the long run. But the long game here is that Comey was hoping public outrage against Apple would convince them to fold and play along with the writ, or nudge congress into giving it the powers it wants. The former clearly isn't working out, but the latter still may.

> The AWA seems to be a very small piece of law, and using it in the way it's being used seems against the spirit of it.

Bingo. It's also against established case law in the opinion of a very large number of people.

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#145

Post by joering2 »

studentrob wrote: post #88

Beautiful. Congrats to the DOJ for seeing the light. Will Obama now stop seeking "middle ground" as he mentioned at SXSW? Will Burr-Feinstein halt their work on a backdoor bill? Nothing has changed on this front, and there are still a host of reasons why a backdoor law is a bad idea.

Knowing both Burr and Feinstein past how little good their bills ever did, I would highly doubt they ever stop wasting tax payers money.

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#146

Post by BashiBazouk »

a3n wrote: post #97
TillE wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a very good smoke screen, since the most probable interpretation of the filing is that the NSA has an exploit. At least one security expert reported they were rebuffed by the FBI when they offered to help, so I seriously doubt the "outside party" is outside the government.

> It's not a very good smoke screen, since the most probable interpretation of the filing is that the NSA has an exploit. I've wondered if the NSA already had the phone cracked, and Apple's help was just parallel construction to not reveal capabilities.

Could the NSA crack the phone in a way that Apple engineers would not be able to tell the phone had been cracked?

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#147

Post by zmmmmm »

abecedarius wrote: post #75
valine wrote: post #18

So basically they're saying, "This isn't going according to plan. Let's wait for another opportunity and try again."

"Heads I win, tails we flip again" -- how can we counter this? How does it become a game they can lose?

Apple sues the government for putting them through a frivolous law suit? Then as evidence they demand full details of the exploits, all internal FBI communications, etc etc.

Probably just a fantasy on my part.

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#148

Post by aioprisan »

rms_returns wrote: post #142
wool_gather wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it more likely that this is simply a tactical decision: they already knew about this "new method", and were holding it in reserve so that they could cancel the proceedings if necessary (i.e., if Apple put up too much of a fight). They will keep trying until they get the precedent.

> They will keep trying until they get the precedent. Don't they already have a precedent when they shut down Truecrypt some years ago?

Truecrypt is still active in the sense that it is both something that can be downloaded and the last security audit showed that there aren't any major flaws. Are you referring to a different service, perhaps?

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#149

Post by RussellDussel »

Can somebody please point out to me the obvious fact I am missing. Don't Apple design their security such that even they themselves can't crack it? Like storing hashed passwords, they don't want that kind of accountability. The media keeps suggesting that Apple won't do it, I thought it would be the case that Apple can't do it...

Re: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

#150

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #133
uxp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative available to Apple, or any other technology company, when given a valid warrant for someone's data that isn't blatantly ignoring the law? I'm honestly not sure what you are suggesting. Apple has already given them Farook's iCloud backups, just not recent ones since they don't exist. If Alice was murdered, and Bob was circumstantially implicated, but had an iPhone that had some kind of data rec…

This discussion is a bit confused. There are plenty of "valid" subpoenas or search warrants which are squashed after being opposed in court. I'm not sure if the other commenters really believe that no company should ever oppose a search warrant, or if they think "valid" search warrants can't be opposed, or what. But opposing an over-broad or otherwise screwed up "valid" subpoena or search warrant is a necessary part…

[deleted]
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