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I imagine Cellebrite is very picky about who gets to be there customer. Wouldn't want someone sending a trojan device that reveals their secrets.
I would think Forbes Magazine would be a great customer for them.
Forbes would unlock one phone and then alert Apple by way of their story. Celebrite’s ideal customer pays for lots of iPhones to be unlocked.
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>The story I hear is that Cellebrite hires ex-Apple engineers and moves them to countries where Apple can't prosecute them under the DMCA or its equivalents. Crazy if true. Doesn't this also create a weird incentive problem where the FBI (or any other law enforcement agency) who would normally be tasked with helping Apple with this doesn't actually want to?
It’s absolutely untrue that ex-Apple employees are helping them break in. Apple employees do not have an advantage in creating this type of thing.
Also don't forget the hardware. Like with most/all other phone vendors, iPhone chips aren't made in the US; most of the design maybe is, but the chips themselves are not, and finding a Chinese hardware engineer happy to help would be even easier because all he should implement is a covert channel to tunnel sensitive data (passwords?) to a known place. If you have access to the hardware that should be trivial to do: just implement a small undocumented flash memory space anywhere, then when the user taps a password an also undocumented firmware routine (that's hundreds of bytes, very easy to conceal) would add the password in that small memory that can be read only in certain conditions (say connecting power+tapping a bossa rhythm while with the phone screen is facing down+disconnecting power - that seems crazy but you get the idea: every sensor is a switch and any switch can be used to enter a code). A few spare kilobytes of memory here and there would allow this and other spying mechanisms, so I would't be surprised at all if some big agency would attack the hardware/firmware rather than the software.
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It's been many years since I've even glanced at an iOS jailbreak, but since when can you jailbreak a locked device?
There's been a number of ways to bypass a locked iOS device throughout the years[1]. This hardware box worked up until iOS 11 beta[2]. I imagine Cellebrite is using something similar, but gets around the fix Apple released. [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=everything+appl... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXglwbyMydM
Jailbreak requires a reboot of the device and after a reboot the encryption key for the useful data on the device is not available. If the device uses a strong passcode (as opposed to a numeric code) it cannot practically be brute forced even if you force the device to allow you to enter many attempts quickly.
How is chain of custody maintained if the process is a secret? Couldn't a person argue that the data obtained was planted?
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>That doesn’t work as well because the counter is kept in the Secure Enclave so it’s not part of the flash contents I skimmed the secure enclave documentation at https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf (page 5, 14, 15), and I can't find anything to confirm that.
It makes the most sense that it's in the Secure Enclave. Once you have control of the counter, you can run through the passphrase space in no time.
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This is not true. You cannot just clone the data and run passcodes against it, because the data is not encrypted by your passcode. Instead, each file on iOS 11 is encrypted with a different AES 256-bit key, and cracking even one 256-bit key through exhaustive search is thought to be out of reach of humankind ( https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/6141/amount-of-... ). The file keys are wrapped by, among other…
Is there no chance that Apple and/or the FBI have the list of phone serial numbers and matching AES key? (If that sounds sarcastic it's not meant to, genuine question as I don't know much a about this stuff!).
How is chain of custody maintained if the process is a secret? Couldn't a person argue that the data obtained was planted?
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So Israel is like a high tech Guantanamo where our government goes when those pesky laws get in the way.
The DMCA is applicable in Israel via the bilateral trade agreement with the US.
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>The story I hear is that Cellebrite hires ex-Apple engineers and moves them to countries where Apple can't prosecute them under the DMCA or its equivalents. Crazy if true. Doesn't this also create a weird incentive problem where the FBI (or any other law enforcement agency) who would normally be tasked with helping Apple with this doesn't actually want to?
So Israel is like a high tech Guantanamo where our government goes when those pesky laws get in the way.
Listen carefully to the choice and emphasis on words.
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It’s absolutely untrue that ex-Apple employees are helping them break in. Apple employees do not have an advantage in creating this type of thing.
I don't know if that's true, but if I had the same power as a government agency, which would allow way higher salaries than Apple's or any other hi tech corporation, that's the first thing I'd attempt to do: find ex/unhappy/disgruntled engineers and offer them 5x pay plus a luxury home and lab in some tropical island. Also don't forget the hardware. Like with most/all other phone vendors, iPhone chips aren't made in…
5x pay sounds quite regruntling, as in P.G. Wodehouse's "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."
[ https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26678-i-could-see-that-if-n... , https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regruntle ]