31–40 of 90 posts
This makes me extraordinarily happy, perhaps this is the first major step in the struggle against government spying on innocent citizens? On another note, is anyone disturbed by how even the idea of people being able to store their private data securely being seen as inherently criminal by high level officials? What does that say about these people in power, they literally view your right to privacy as dangerous. Sic…
> 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…
There could be truth in that number depending on what encryption algorithms are used. Some take significantly longer than others to apply. On a tangent, I trust Apple's competence but I have seen no information on the technicalities of this feature. I would like to hear specifics so we can estimate how secure the design is based on facts.
The computational burden likely cannot be too high, as it is running on mobile hardware and people expect rapid access to their data after entering their passcode.
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…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2014/09/25...
This one's even more pathetically blatant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
"The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense."
The whole point of our system is that this guy can be as ignorant and disrespectful of our liberties as he likes, without actually endangering our society.
Which isn't to say that attitudes like his won't do damage. Really we ought to have officers -- in ALL stations of government -- with a far better understanding than this. Who, exactly, appointed this guy?
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…
This sounds lovely, except it's just absolute nonsense. For many thousands of years states have maintained the power to restrict citizens communications and almost since the invention of the telegraph they have been able to be monitored in some form. Despite this we are freer than ever.
Healthy and free societies are not built upon a base of unlimited freedom, that is all but anarchy.
James Comey, head of the FBI: "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened — even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order — to me does not make any sense." The whole point of our system is that this guy can be as ignorant and disrespectful of our liberties as he likes, without actually endangering our society. Which isn't to say that attitudes like his won't do…
People at high levels of government (Director of FBI, US Attorney, etc) should at least spend some time on the other side to better understand how the whole system works.
Of course it won't happen - all the career paths to the top are through the prosecutorial side. That leds to people like Comey, the AG for Swartz case, etc have such overbearing attitude about our rights.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
> “Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. “The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2014/09/25... This one's even more pathetically blatant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.