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Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#121

Post by dreamfactory2 »

r00fus wrote: post #26
w1ntermute wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you use a strong alphanumeric password to unlock your phone, there is nothing Apple has been able to do for many years to unlock your phone Is this true even if you use Touch ID?

If they have access to a live finger for the TouchID, sure they can bypass - but they could do that with the $5 guaranteed coercion method as well [1]. Copying a good fingerprint from a dead finger or a randomly placed print is not easy [2]. It's hard, doable but you get 5 tries so if you screw up, you have thrown away all the hard work of the print transfer. All bets are off if the iPhone is power-cycled. Best bet i…

Given the 6 tries, is there any benefit to a strong password?

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#122

Post by zaroth »

guscost wrote: post #62
FussyZeus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wiping the phone doesn't help you. Using the strong password renders the information inaccessible, at least as inaccessible as your phone backup is. Touch ID isn't re-enabled until the phone's passcode is used. Presumably if the authorities have access to your phone's memory they also have access to your laptops, and neither will do them any damn good. And it's paranoia if there's a legitimate threat, that's just cal…

> Touch ID isn't re-enabled until the phone's passcode is used. Do the docs confirm that there is no way around this? I'd guess generating the encryption key requires the passcode, which is discarded immediately, and Touch ID can only "unlock" a temporarily re-encrypted version which never leaves ephemeral storage?

From the iOS Security Guide - How Touch ID unlocks an iOS device;

  If Touch ID is turned off, when a device locks, the keys for Data Protection class
  Complete, which are held in the Secure Enclave, are discarded. The files and keychain
  items in that class are inaccessible until the user unlocks the device by entering his
  or her passcode.

  With Touch ID turned on, the keys are not discarded when the device locks; instead,
  they’re wrapped with a key that is given to the Touch ID subsystem inside the Secure
  Enclave. When a user attempts to unlock the device, if Touch ID recognizes the user’s
  fingerprint, it provides the key for unwrapping the Data Protection keys, and the
  device is unlocked. This process provides additional protection by requiring the
  Data Protection and Touch ID subsystems to cooperate in order to unlock the device.
  The keys needed for Touch ID to unlock the device are lost if the device reboots
  and are discarded by the Secure Enclave after 48 hours or five failed Touch ID
  recognition attempts.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#123

Post by aianus »

cromwellian wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't limited to 10,000 possibilities. You can use an alphanumeric passphrase. The passphrase is run through PBKDF2 before being mixed with the device hardware key. On phones after the 5C, nothing you can do with the AP helps you here; the 10-strikes rule is enforced by the SE, which is a separate piece of hardware. It's true that if you can flip bits in the SE, you can influence its behavior. But whatever you d…

I'm speaking the case of the San Bernardino killers. Using strong alphanumeric pass phrases are anti-usability, the vast majority of people won't use them. Hell, the vast majority of people don't even have strong alphanumeric passwords on desktop services. So it falls to either 2-factor or biometric to avoid PINs. Biometric of course has it's own problems. Perhaps people should really carry around a Secure Enclave on…

You only need the strong alphanumeric pass phrases on device startup, then you can use TouchID. I bought an iPhone 6 for exactly this reason (employer required strong passphrase, was too annoying to type in on the Android device I had at the time).

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#124

Post by thomaspurchas »

cromwellian wrote: post #64
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple issues: * Decapping and feature extraction even from simpler devices is error prone; you can destroy the device in the process. You only get one bite at the apple; you can't "image" the hardware and restore it later. Since the government is always targeting one specific phone, this is a real problem. * There's no one byte you can write to bypass all the security on an iPhone, because (barring some unknown re…

No, the chief protection against the PIN code hacking comes from the retry counter. The FBI doesn't need the crypto keys, it just needs the PIN code. So it needs to brute force about 10,000 PIN codes. Any mechanism that prevents the application processor from either a) remembering it incremented the count b) corrupts the count or c) patches the logic that handles a retry count of 10, is sufficient to attack the phone…

You seem to make the assumption that corrupting the secure enclave firmware is easy, or that its RAM is exposed of chip.

The entire point of an secure enclave is to completely enclose all the hardware and software needed to generate encryption keys in a single lump of silicon.

This means that all of its processing requirements (it's a complete co-processor) are on chip, it's RAM is on chip (not shared with it the main CPU, and probably has ECC), and it uses secure boot to cryptographically verify that it's firmware has not been tampered with before it starts executing. Additionally it may even be possible to update it bootloader in the future to prevent further updates without a passcode.

The end result means that attacking a secure element is very difficult. There are few, if any, exposure points that would allow you to fiddle with its internal state, and any attempts too should result in the secure element wiping stored keys, making further attacks a moot point.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#125

Post by noir_lord »

schoen wrote: post #82
tptacek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, at least, not by the DOJ, and not for any use in a court of law.

We wrote about this in our border search guide and concluded that there is a risk of being refused admission to the U.S. in this case (in the border search context) because the CBP agents performing the inspection have extremely broad discretion on "admissibility" of non-citizens and non-permanent residents, and refusing to cooperate with what they see as a part of the inspection could be something that would lead th…

One reason I'll never visit the states.

If I absolutely had to I just wouldn't take a phone/laptop with me.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#126

Post by kevinnk »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #74

My last write-up on smartphone risks applies to this discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906999 Apple is far from having a secure phone right now. NSA certainly has ways to bypass this based on my attack framework and their prior work. They just don't want them to be known. They pulled the same stuff in the past where FBI talked about how they couldn't beat iPhones but NSA had them in the leaks & was p…

> They pulled the same stuff in the past where FBI talked about how they couldn't beat iPhones but NSA had them in the leaks & was parallel constructing to FBI.

Do you have a link to a leak that shows this? I couldn't find anything with a simple google search.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#127

Post by ecobiker »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #121
r00fus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have access to a live finger for the TouchID, sure they can bypass - but they could do that with the $5 guaranteed coercion method as well [1]. Copying a good fingerprint from a dead finger or a randomly placed print is not easy [2]. It's hard, doable but you get 5 tries so if you screw up, you have thrown away all the hard work of the print transfer. All bets are off if the iPhone is power-cycled. Best bet i…

Given the 6 tries, is there any benefit to a strong password?

It's my understanding that the current battle is about the request to bypass the retry cap.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#128

Post by zaroth »

jarcoal wrote: post #7

Don't they just need to tell people to switch away from 4 or 6 digit pins and use longer passwords?

On my wish list is for the iPhone to effectively support multiple concurrent users. You login with your simple PIN for most cases or when the kids are using it, and you can login with a passphrase and are now working on a completely separate partition, with its own apps, settings, Apple ID, etc. I guess they could even support TouchID in this case as long as you enroll different fingers for each.

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#129

Post by gonzo »

jonathankoren wrote: post #92
deegles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can non-US citizens be coerced into giving up their passcode?

Depends on if they're at a border crossing or in the interior of the country. Laws apply to citizens and non-citizens alike. If you haven't been admitted to the country, about the most they can do is turn you away at the border checkpoint and put you on the next flight back to your home country.

and if you're a citizen of the country you're trying to enter...

Re: Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

#130

Post by JustSomeNobody »

A lot of the comments on that article burn me up. People in the U.S. really think there's a terrorism problem here. The only problem is that government spending so much money on a non-issue! Politicians love to "debate" it because they know it is one of those things that looks good to the naive citizens but they really don't have to do anything because there's nothing to be done.
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