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Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

nytimes.com

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Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#21

Post by [deleted] »

sopooneo wrote: post #18
flavor8 wrote: post #8

> Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take “more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes.) Uh, what? Surely the journalist has missed an important technical detail here, rig…

I had the same thought. If we allow upper, lower, and digits, that's 26+26+10 = 62 possible characters per space. With six spaces, that gives 62^6 = 56,800,235,584 possible passwords. Now if we take their figure of 5.5 years to crack a phone's files and divide, we get 327 seconds (more than 5 minutes ) per password they check. Something is off, though perhaps it's my math so please do double check it for me. Edit: Ar…

[deleted]

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#22

Post by adam12 »

ghshephard wrote: post #5
1457389 wrote: post #3

>“We’re using a locker that actually has a combination on it, and if you don’t know the combination, then you can’t get inside. Unless you take a sledgehammer to the locker, there’s no way we get to the files.” ~Jonathan Zdziarski, a security researcher who has taught forensics courses to law enforcement agencies on collecting data from iPhones, These people literally think on the level of schoolyard bullies.

Are you referring to Apple who is locking investigators out of phones, or Investigators for trying to track down evidence of crimes? "These people literally think on the level of schoolyard bullies." - That statement could go either way.

It sounds like he/she is referring the the investigators who are saying that the only way to unlock the phones is to beat the hell out of the person who knows the password.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#23

Post by privong »

Fundlab wrote: post #12

Locking out intrusion is a huge value proposal for cellular manufacturers. I wonder why encrypted conversations are not already norm.

> Locking out intrusion is a huge value proposal for cellular manufacturers.

Is it though? The implementation can be tricky to get right, building it in takes resources, and (perhaps until recently) most consumers do not seem to value that kind of safeguard for their communications. Enabling encryptoed encrypted increases the cost to the manufacturer, all for something that most people did not think was important (before there was strong evidence that there was a lot of warrantless wiretapping going on).

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#24

Post by pyrophane »

Ntrails wrote: post #20
praptak wrote: post #4

Well dudes, you screwed it up for yourselves with illegal wiretapping, the perhaps legal but still outrageous secret court orders and the attitude you presented when all this came to light. Fuck you.

"I'd hate to have people look at me and say, 'Well how come you can't save this kid?' 'How come you can't do this thing?'" said Mr Comey in a briefing. [1] A separate article on the same sort of thing. But, I can't help but laugh at how the instant canned response from the FBI was "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN". It's pathetic, even more so because it keeps working. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-2937…

Yea, that caught my eye as well. More particularly, the fact that he resorted to playing on the audience's emotions with a hypothetical situation rather than sharing any actual data about the number and types of crimes have been solved by having Apple and other companies decrypt devices.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#25

Post by lozf »

sopooneo wrote: post #18
flavor8 wrote: post #8

> Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take “more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes.) Uh, what? Surely the journalist has missed an important technical detail here, rig…

I had the same thought. If we allow upper, lower, and digits, that's 26+26+10 = 62 possible characters per space. With six spaces, that gives 62^6 = 56,800,235,584 possible passwords. Now if we take their figure of 5.5 years to crack a phone's files and divide, we get 327 seconds (more than 5 minutes ) per password they check. Something is off, though perhaps it's my math so please do double check it for me. Edit: Ar…

6 randomly selected characters out of the 62 available gives less than 36 bits of entropy, which anyone with even a passing interest in any kind of cryptography will instantly recognise as pretty poor.

This issue is compounded by the fact that humans are notoriously bad at randomness. I really don't think many users will be typing the 22 random characters required for just over 128 bits of entropy every time they want to use their phone.

But maybe the 5.5 year figure includes the incrementally increasing delay that Apple insert between tries after x wrong guesses -- assuming a manual brute force, which is pretty much not how it would play out in reality.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#26

Post by Ntrails »

sopooneo wrote: post #18
flavor8 wrote: post #8

> Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take “more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes.) Uh, what? Surely the journalist has missed an important technical detail here, rig…

I had the same thought. If we allow upper, lower, and digits, that's 26+26+10 = 62 possible characters per space. With six spaces, that gives 62^6 = 56,800,235,584 possible passwords. Now if we take their figure of 5.5 years to crack a phone's files and divide, we get 327 seconds (more than 5 minutes ) per password they check. Something is off, though perhaps it's my math so please do double check it for me. Edit: Ar…

5.5 years is ~173563000 seconds or my maths and google are both wrong.

For pure brute force you'd want to make some assumption about the mean time taken to find the correct password, but lets argue that you find it after checking exactly 1/2 of the possible combinations.

2.8400e+10 passwords checked in 1.7300e+8 seconds => ~0.6 milliseconds per check. ish. I think.

Edit: as comment below points out, humans are crap. In reality any hack would use dictionary attacks rather than pure brute force. I was just addressing the maths.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#27

Post by 1457389 »

ghshephard wrote: post #5
1457389 wrote: post #3

>“We’re using a locker that actually has a combination on it, and if you don’t know the combination, then you can’t get inside. Unless you take a sledgehammer to the locker, there’s no way we get to the files.” ~Jonathan Zdziarski, a security researcher who has taught forensics courses to law enforcement agencies on collecting data from iPhones, These people literally think on the level of schoolyard bullies.

Are you referring to Apple who is locking investigators out of phones, or Investigators for trying to track down evidence of crimes? "These people literally think on the level of schoolyard bullies." - That statement could go either way.

yes.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#28

Post by unknownBits »

0x0 wrote: post #17

Or is it a plot to fool users into thinking their secrets are safe on a phone now?

Plot or not, it is naive to think your personal data is safe at a super commercial company like Apple. I see it as the typical 'Apple' way of selling things; pretending what they make is better, faster, more secure bla bla bla. Apple targets a huge market of people not understanding technicalities, this is a typical example.

Re: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, New iPhone Locks Out N.S.A

#30

Post by freakonom »

silentOpen wrote: post #19

FTA: At a news conference on Thursday devoted largely to combating terror threats from the Islamic State, Mr. Comey said, “What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law.” The state and the law are separate entities, Mr. Comey. It concerns me that, in your mind, you have conflated the power of the state with the normativity of the law. In the t…

You have it backwards.

The state and its avatars recognize that they can and must have the ability to exercise absolute power over citizen's thoughts, computations, and communications if they wish to fester in society.

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