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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

#71

Post by tptacek »

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 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 do to extract or set bits in SE needs to not cause the SE to freak out and wipe keys.

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

#72

Post by FussyZeus »

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?

TouchID I believe unlocks the passcode so the phone can use it to login, but TouchID itself is not enabled until you enter it once, presumably because it isn't actually stored on the device in a readable way.

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

#73

Post by tptacek »

deegles wrote: post #70
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All bets are off if the iPhone is power-cycled. Best bet if you're pulled over by authorities or at a security checkpoint is to turn off your iPhone (and have a strong alphanumeric passcode). Excellent advice. Even better, if you're about to pass through US customs and border patrol, backup the phone first, wipe, and restore on the other side. Of course, this depends on your level of paranoia. I am paranoid.

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

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

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

#74

Post by nickpsecurity »

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 parallel constructing to FBI. So, the current crop are probably compromised but reserved for targets worth the risk.

That said, modifying CPU to enable memory + I/O safety, restricting baseband, an isolation flow for hardware, and some software changes could make a system where 0-days were rare enough to be worth much more. Oh yeah, they'll have to remove the debugging crap out of their chips and add TEMPEST shielding. Good luck getting either of those two done. ;)

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

#75

Post by tptacek »

petra wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. If you're dead, they probably have your fingers. If you're alive, they can compel you to unlock the device with your fingerprint. The only point I'm making is that Apple already designed a cryptosystem that resists court-ordered coercion: as long as your passcode is strong (and Apple has allowed it to be strong for a long time), the phone is prohibitively difficult to unlock even if Apple cuts a special…

Using a strong pin is pretty annoying, and a relatively visible signal when using the phone on the street etc, So it can be a good filter(maybe via street cams) to filter suspicious people - which isn't a bad goal for law enforcement.

That sounds good until you remember the Bayesian Base Rate Fallacy: there are very few terrorists (the base rate of terrorism is very low), so filtering on "people with strong passphrases" is going to produce an overwhelming feed of false positives.

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

#76

Post by studentrob »

wahsd wrote: post #3

One aspect of what all this comes down to is that governments don't want to have to do real work or even prioritize their tracking and surveillance. What encryption and security really does is create scarcity of access to information and data in order to force a market solution where government groups have to prioritize their efforts and apply them deliberately.

Yes. The DOJ is looking for the easy way to do their job. It's not the only way.

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

#77

Post by guscost »

FussyZeus wrote: post #72
guscost wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

TouchID I believe unlocks the passcode so the phone can use it to login, but TouchID itself is not enabled until you enter it once, presumably because it isn't actually stored on the device in a readable way.

OK, I guess the effect is the same (as long as the passcode isn't recoverable until after startup). Thanks.

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

#78

Post by sounds »

jellicle wrote: post #68
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All bets are off if the iPhone is power-cycled. Best bet if you're pulled over by authorities or at a security checkpoint is to turn off your iPhone (and have a strong alphanumeric passcode). Excellent advice. Even better, if you're about to pass through US customs and border patrol, backup the phone first, wipe, and restore on the other side. Of course, this depends on your level of paranoia. I am paranoid.

If you're paranoid, making a complete copy of all your secrets on some remote Apple or Google "cloud" where the government can get at it trivially is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing.

Well, yeah, if you back it up with a 3rd party backup tool, you are trusting the 3rd party.

I recommend you make a backup to your laptop, which you then encrypt manually. That way the trust model is: you trust yourself. Then you can do whatever you want with the encrypted file. Apple's iCloud is perfectly fine at this point.

The real challenge is to find a way to restore that backup, because you have to be on a computer you trust. If you decrypt the backup on a "loaner" laptop, your security is broken.

If you decrypt the backup on your personal laptop but the laptop has a hidden keylogger installed by the TSA or TAO, your security is broken.

It would be necessary to backup the phone on the _phone_ _itself_. Then manually encrypt the file (easy to do). Then upload to iCloud. At this time, no such app exists for iOS.

Since you plan to restore the backup to the phone anyway, it's no problem to decrypt a file on the phone before using it for the restore.

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

#79

Post by Crito »

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…

> "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."

You get plenty of tries to perfect the technique, before using it on the actual device.

You acquire identical hardware and "dead finger countermeasures" (does the iphone employ any? Some readers look for pulses and whatnot, I don't know if the iphone does). You then practice reading the fingerprint on that hardware until you are able to reliably get a clean print and bypass any countermeasures. Only then do you try using the finger on the target phone.

You might still fuck it up, and you only get 5 chances on the target hardware. But with practice on the right hardware, I see no reason why you couldn't get it.

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

#80

Post by rdancer »

newjersey wrote: post #48
rdancer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the has been switched off or if >48h passed since the last unlock. Also remember that rubber-hose cryptanalysis is always an option.

Can you be convicted in the US based on evidence obtained with physical torture? Edit: Looks like the answer is it depends and not a resounding no http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/evidence-obtained-thr...

Of course you can. As long as the courts can be persuaded that there is no causal nexus between the torture and the evidence, or if the torture actually isn't legally torture. That assumes that the defendant can show (or is even aware) the torture actually took place.

Examples:

* prolonged solitary confinement: not legally torture

* fellow prisoner violence: not legally torture, no nexus

* prolonged pre-trial confinement: not really torture, but we may as well include it

* waterboarding/drowning: not legally torture? (Supreme Court declined to rule)

* stress positions: cannot show it took place

* parallel construction: cannot show / not aware

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