Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 415 posts

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

#241

Post by throwaway1666 »

zobzu wrote: post #235
tptacek wrote: post #2

They're presumably already 99% of the way there. If the Secure Enclave can be updated on a locked phone, all they need to do is stop allowing that, right? To me, the more profound consideration is this: 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. The AES-XTS key that protects data on the device is derived from your pas…

Secure enclave as per their docs sounds just like their implementation of trust zone.. err "Trust Zone", most likely following ARM specs. The main difference would be that everyone knows trust zone through Qualcom's implementation and software - as it's been broken many times. At the end of the day "its just software" though, which runs on a CPU-managed hypervisor with strong separation ("hardware" but really, the li…

Secure Enclave is explicitly not TrustZone per Apples iOS Security Guide. It's a separate core in the SoC running on L4.

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

#242

Post by greendestiny_re »

inopinatus wrote: post #140
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…

We can still imagine a state actor spending the megadollars to research a reliable chip-cloning process, to bring parallel brute-forcing within reach. I wonder if the NSA have been on a SEM/FIB equipment buying spree lately. The ultimate way to defeat physical or software attacks is to exploit intrinsic properties of the universe, which suggests finding a mathematical and/or quantum structure impervious to both.

Your reply is the kind of comment I come to HN for - we've started off talking about mobile device security and ended up discussing unbreakable quantum encryption.

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

#243

Post by FussyZeus »

rimantas wrote: post #239
FussyZeus wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an App Developer, we cannot touch stuff like that. We're allowed to ask Touch ID to verify things and process the results, but we don't actually get to use the Touch ID system. It's similar to how the shared keychain is used: We can ask iOS to do things, but then must handle any one of many possible answers. We don't actually see your fingerprint in any way. Now Cydia and 3rd party stuff? I have no clue.

iOS itself does not see fingerprints, it refers to SE.

Wouldn't surprise me if true, iOS as a whole is built in a very modular fashion when it comes to the different components of the OS and developers only get access to what Apple deems us worthy of, hehe. Not that I want access to Touch ID, I much prefer to not have access to that...

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

#244

Post by aljones »

robhu wrote: post #9
condour75 wrote: post #6

that's the endgame of government surveillance requests: it's increasingly in a company's best interest to have the best security possible so they can't be compelled to hack their own devices.

Surely it is a company's best interests to have 'good enough' looking security to serve their PR purposes while also secretly providing government access to maximise government kudos and all the benefits that would entail?

So that you're vulnerable to a whistleblower?

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

#245

Post by skeptic123123 »

drewcrawford wrote: post #201
tptacek wrote: post #2

They're presumably already 99% of the way there. If the Secure Enclave can be updated on a locked phone, all they need to do is stop allowing that, right? To me, the more profound consideration is this: 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. The AES-XTS key that protects data on the device is derived from your pas…

The real lynchpin here is not hardware, but iCloud. Apple can pull data out of an iCloud backup, and the only reason the San Bernadino case even got off the ground is because somebody at the county screwed up and effectively prevented the backup from occurring. iCloud backups can be secured so not even Apple can get in them, but it is fundamentally much harder to secure (can't be hareware-entangled and still restore…

call me a cynic, but I'm not buying "somebody at the county screwed up"

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

#247

Post by startupljackson »

throwaway1666 wrote: post #241
zobzu wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure enclave as per their docs sounds just like their implementation of trust zone.. err "Trust Zone", most likely following ARM specs. The main difference would be that everyone knows trust zone through Qualcom's implementation and software - as it's been broken many times. At the end of the day "its just software" though, which runs on a CPU-managed hypervisor with strong separation ("hardware" but really, the li…

Secure Enclave is explicitly not TrustZone per Apples iOS Security Guide. It's a separate core in the SoC running on L4.

Aww shit.. embedded crypto hypervisors all up in this hood.

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

#248

Post by jedberg »

ikeboy wrote: post #93
jedberg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know if it re-encryptes the data after I change my passphrase? In other words, am I immediately more secure if I switch from a 6 digit pin to a passphrase?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: There's a key that encrypts the actual data, and that key is stored on disk, but encrypted with your passcode along with a hardware key. The hardware key cannot be read, only used to decrypt. Changing your code just changes the key stored to disk, but not the encryption key, so it's quick, but preserves security. Longest and most accurate answer: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/i…

Awesome thanks! Exactly what I was looking for.

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

#249

Post by kbart »

jarjoura wrote: post #157

Hmmm... this absolutest attitude by Apple begs the question for me, are we SURE we want to have phones that absolutely cannot be unlocked when the owner is no where to be found/dead? It's such a grey area and I will probably get down voted for commenting this way. I 100% agree that the power, in the wrong hands, is horrible, but can't we talk about this in a way where there's some kind of middle ground? All I've been…

Of course we want! Then only I am in the power to chose who can access my personal data. What forbids you from leaving your private keys and passcodes to the next of a kin? Furthermore, if information in your phone is important to more people than you only (family photos etc.), it should be backed up somewhere else anyway, you don't keep all eggs in a single basket. The real problem is that cryptography is very powerful tool and we need to educate people how to use it properly. Of course, it's naive to hope that it can be done overnight, but small, incremental changes might be done imho. For example, before asking user to create it's master passcode, emphasize in big, bold letters, that it's your reponsibility to keep this password safe and accessible, because if you lost it, there's nothing can be done to bypass it. Keeping user key/password backup (aka MS style) is a sloppy security tactics.

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

#250

Post by jfoster »

tptacek wrote: post #180
jfoster wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything preventing them from imaging the parts of the device that store data? The data in the image would be encrypted, of course, but wouldn't this give them essentially unlimited (or up to their budget) attempts at getting to the data?

It's encrypted against an effectively random 128 bit AES key. Unlimited time is not enough.

The method I'm thinking of is:

1. Get a dump of the encrypted data.

2. Try to probe the hardware, potentially destroying it.

3. If the probe works, we're done. If not, put the encrypted data dump onto a fresh iPhone and repeat from step 2.

This way, you effectively get unlimited shots at an otherwise risky hardware probe.

Post reply on HN