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Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

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Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#61

Post by equdi »

jMyles wrote: post #3

First of all, to give words to the obvious question here: what leads a group of people to flaunt their insanely unethical desire to profit from ? They are literally trumpeting the ability for their clients to forcibly copy data without the permission of the owner of the device in question. Is it just money? Is it that simple? Annnyway, more importantly: are there any details about how their claims are even possible?…

>First of all, to give words to the obvious question here: what leads a group of people to flaunt their insanely unethical desire to profit from ? They are literally trumpeting the ability for their clients to forcibly copy data without the permission of the owner of the device in question. Is it just money? Is it that simple?

If you ask around I'm sure most people think LE should be able to do this for security reasons. Not saying I agree or disagree but that's the way it is.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#62

Post by AsyncAwait »

jMyles wrote: post #3

First of all, to give words to the obvious question here: what leads a group of people to flaunt their insanely unethical desire to profit from ? They are literally trumpeting the ability for their clients to forcibly copy data without the permission of the owner of the device in question. Is it just money? Is it that simple? Annnyway, more importantly: are there any details about how their claims are even possible?…

> Is it just money? Is it that simple?

For many, I bet the answer is yes. Plus I bet they sleep at night justifying their actions as helping to hunt down criminals and terrorists, (which I think some of them may be thinking of as having a close experience with).

Of course these are all post-hoc justifications for the primary motivator, money.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#63

Post by grumdan »

equdi wrote: post #60
grumdan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the difference? Why are phones such a security nightmare? At least in terms of encryption at rest on a cold device, isn't this a solved problem? One horribly annoying decision of Android is that the encryption passphrase cannot be different from the unlock pin, leaving users with two choices: - Have a long, secure password that actually makes Android's encryption worth a damn. They then have to enter this pa…

You are only forced to enter your passphrase when you turn on the mobile and once every X days. The rest of the time you can use your fingerprint to unlock the mobile. Seems like a good compromise.

True, except that fingerprint sensors can often be fooled and you cannot change your fingerprint once it becomes "compromised". For instance, anyone who ever visited the US, at least as a non-citizen, will have given their fingerprints to CBP.

I think this only works for an attacker model that excludes reasonably sophisticated attackers. I expect this to thwart pickpockets or muggers, but not the police or anyone more sophisticated than that.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#64

Post by polar »

jMyles wrote: post #26
earenndil wrote: post #18

Most users have 4-digit or 6-digit numeric passwords, which can be trivially brute-forced. The only reason they can't generally is that SEP rate-limits decryption attempts. They probably have a way around the rate-limit. Meaning: if you use an alphanumeric password, you're fine.

I can't immediately find the methodology by which a pattern is converted to a pin. For example, what's the degree of entropy for a non-trivial 6x6 pattern? (And why is my search fu not availing me of the answer to this question? :-) )

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#65

Post by kalleboo »

nikanj wrote: post #33
jMyles wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific about the nature of the exploit you are imagining? For example, how can a radio interface have "enough" access to facilitate decryption of an encrypted volume?

The radios quite probably use DMA to blast bits to/from main memory. Get code execution on the radio chip, use that to harvest the decryption keys from RAM and the rest is pretty trivial.

From the iOS security whitepaper:

> To protect the device from vulnerabilities in network processor firmware, network interfaces including Wi-Fi and baseband have limited access to application processor memory. When USB or SDIO is used to interface with the network processor, the network processor can’t initiate Direct Memory Access (DMA) transactions to the application processor. When PCIe is used, each network processor is on its own isolated PCIe bus. An IOMMU on each PCIe bus limits the network processor’s DMA access to pages of memory containing its network packets or control structures.

Of course there's always the chance that there's a bug in one of these interfaces

And on Android: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Even for the Google Pixel I can't find a security whitepaper, just a blog post with a couple of vague bullet points.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#66

Post by polar »

mullingitover wrote: post #16

Interesting that this company is able to do this without threat of being sued into a smoking crater by Apple. They'd have to use Apple's software to build their product, and to do that they'd be bound by the license agreement. Apple could forbid the research in the license. Oracle created the DeWitt Clause that forbids researchers from publishinging benchmarks for their products, and this apparently stands up in cour…

> Interesting that this company is able to do this without threat of being sued into a smoking crater by Apple.

Consider whether a company such as https://www.blackbagtech.com/ (specifically products like MacQuisition) can exist without active support from Apple.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#68

Post by mcny »

jasonhansel wrote: post #67

Can apple just add to their Terms of Service that private firms like Cellebrite are required to disclose any security flaws they find?

I don't understand. Why would celebrate be bound by these ToS?

We talk about how we want to abolish the CFAA so we can't (morally) turn around and use it when it suits us.

EULA is not the law. Terms of service is not the law. It is absurd to say that Apple should have the legal authority to (in a practical sense) legislate. Yes, theoretically speaking we don't need an iPhone to stay alive but still. You could have argued we didn't need Carnegie steel to stay alive either.

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#69

Post by javagram »

boredishBoi wrote: post #48
pas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMCA? How, they don't do this to access protected music/movie files. Or is that statute also covers other kinds of data?

It is my understanding that under the DMCA the security measures themselves are copyrighted works and breaking them is a violation of the DMCA in and of itself. That’s why breaking DRM, even if it’s to access public domain works is still illegal.

I don’t think that understanding is correct. Content in the public domain is not “protected under this title [copyright law]”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

> (A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title

Re: Cellebrite claims it can unlock any iPhone, many new Android phones for police

#70

Post by jMyles »

danarmak wrote: post #54
Jonnax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day you live in a global world. Is it acceptable for this company to sell it to Saudi Arabian police where it's a crime for a woman to run away from home? https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-imei-track-runa... Or how about Australia raiding journalists for whistleblowing on abuses conducted by their arm forces in war: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48522729 Perhaps you agree or pe…

I'm not saying "everyone" should help the police. I do think it's alright that a few companies, in specialized professions, exist to help the police (and other governmental organizations). Yes, a lot of the effect is harmful, including in helping police do harm. But an argument that no-one should help the police is basically an argument the police shouldn't exist.

> basically an argument the police shouldn't exist.

Many reasonable people do indeed take the position that the recent development of a paramilitary force, professionally tasked with keeping domestic peace, has been a bad way to achieve law and order.

So sure, I'll make an argument that today's police - and the private companies who enable them to perform end-arounds on quintessential rights - are contrary to the western common-law tradition and that society will be better when we end this short experiment and move on to a different approach.

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