helloresolven
Member
I guess the NSA isn't that powerful if the government couldn't figure out how to do this without forcing Apple to do it.
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Court orders Apple to help unlock iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter
- Thread starter Syriel
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The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
It's off by default.
Also, I could have sworn the iPhone lets you use the camera when the phone is locked. It just doesn't let you view already taken photos. I'll have to check for myself... Edit: Yep. You can use the camera without unlocking. Swipe up on the camera icon in the bottom right corner. It just hides all previous photos. Once again, another safety feature. Imagine asking a stranger to take a photo of you and your girlfriend in Italy and you unlock the phone and hand it to them. They run off and keep the phone awake until they get to a hiding place. This way you can keep it locked but still let a stranger use it for that purpose.
http://www.cnet.com/news/dont-worry-your-severed-fingers-wont-unlock-your-iphone-5s/
Guys this was an issue brought up when the Touch ID was introduced, it's not as easy to fool as people might think.
Guys this was an issue brought up when the Touch ID was introduced, it's not as easy to fool as people might think.
Yep. No thanks to whatever the cause is, I'll take privacy over all.
That right there is the real question.
If Apple keeps its past stance and claims it has no special access to the device, then ordering it to work on cracking it is essentially the government ordering custom programming work to be done for free.
If Apple can easily do what the government asks, then its past public stance is shown to be false.
At this point, only Apple knows if it "has the gps location" so to speak. Or if it would be akin to telling MasterCraft "hey, a boat you made sunk in the Pacific. Tell us where it is."
GoldenEye 007
Member
GPS is licensed and regulated by the government. Completely different!
Edit: I mean what if that company is out of business? Track down former employees and force them to potentially develop new code to maybe research a new way to circumvent something that may or may not be circumventable?
It's actually 5151. Upside-down it spells ISIS.
7151. Get it right.
(With what normal people use as passwords, I legitimately would not be surprised if it was one of the two.)
The only reason that Apple have gone down the path of hardware encryption is the US government playing fast and loose with privacy, and strong arming US tech companies to provide access.
Apple needs to hold steadfast on this, and hopefully have been smart enough in their implementation that the 10 wrong attempts safeguard can't be disabled. The court order is effectively demanding a security backdoor, which is the very reason Apple have made encryption.
Encryption is an all or nothing thing. As soon a anyone introduces backdoors or methods to break it, it's pointless. It's not Apple's place to assist the FBI.
I'm also dubious of what value to the FBI an unlocked phone would be. They would have other methods to know what calls were made, the geolocation of the phone, even what websites and data had been used. None of which need access to the phone itself.
Apple needs to hold steadfast on this, and hopefully have been smart enough in their implementation that the 10 wrong attempts safeguard can't be disabled. The court order is effectively demanding a security backdoor, which is the very reason Apple have made encryption.
Encryption is an all or nothing thing. As soon a anyone introduces backdoors or methods to break it, it's pointless. It's not Apple's place to assist the FBI.
I'm also dubious of what value to the FBI an unlocked phone would be. They would have other methods to know what calls were made, the geolocation of the phone, even what websites and data had been used. None of which need access to the phone itself.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Why not 1515 then?
KernelPanic
Member
I'm personally of the belief that they can't, but this doesn't prove that they can't. Remember, if they can break encryption like this, if they do so in a criminal case, they reveal that fact. It becomes a matter of public record in the trial.
If they could break the encryption, but rely on that for foreign intelligence or homeland security matters, that never get exposed to the public, they wouldn't necessarily want to give that fact away, and have their targets all change security measures.
Because this guy's crafty.
Because that's obviously ISIS, duh.
You hide it by making it only readable upside down.
It's the perfect disguise.
Unlocking by printing a cast of of the fingerprint from photos has been proven to work:
http://www.ibtimes.com/hacker-demon...int-sensors-using-regular-photographs-1769408
eyeball_kid
Member
It's a slippery slope, and is exactly what Tim Cook has been talking about publicly. You provide a backdoor to get the bad guys, and that backdoor can also be used against everyone else. Apple is on the side of privacy first, of its customers first. I believe Apple is on the right side here. Making some criminal investigations harder is a fair tradeoff to protect individual privacy of all its customers, whether that protection be from criminals or from a government run amok.
Yes, but which finger is registered? Get that wrong four times and the iPhone requires a passcode to unlock.
What a waste of a guess. It's obviously going to be 5138008.
The Faceless Master
Member
how are they going to update to this new software if the phone is locked?
The Albatross
Member
This would be a very Petty hill to die on for Apple. If apple decided not to help the government with a terrorism case because that same government found them guilty of price fixing, that'd be a very shitty thing to do.
In all likelihood, there isn't a backdoor for this. Although I figure an apple engineer could develop one... It's a company that released an update that bricks phones with screens installed by 3rd parties, so I suspect they could break this if need be.
But I don't know if they should..
dreamcastmaster
Banned
This is the real issue, it can be justified right up until it does not work n the favour of the greater good. It's not like crimes could not have been solved before iPhones existed anyway.
It wouldn't be considered a slippery slope. The next time it will just be the equivalent scope--another court order. One court order is legally equivalent to another court order. And then a Chinese or Russian court order asks for Apple to backdoor into another iPhone, citing the precedent of Apple complying to court orders in the past, with the threat of curtailed market access for only complying to US court orders.
The best move is to tell the courts they cannot do anything about it, it was designed this way.
Gentleman Jack
Member
So Apple shouldn't cooperate in a federal investigation into a brutal mass murder because lol petty bullshit? Really?
andythinkpad
Member
NSA is probably holding it back.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
You can turn it off, like I did, cause I have a two year old that likes pushing buttons and such. haha
Mac the KNife
Member
Or the price of a cheese pizza and a large soda at Panucci's.
Let's look at this as if it were not data, but a physical thing.
Apple builds a secure safe with a boobytrap mechanism that destroys the materials inside. The police confiscate this safe from criminals and believe there may be documents inside that may or may not have have information regarding other crimes. They get a court order for Apple to disarm the boobytrap to preserve the documents so that the police can force their way into the safe -- not for the key or how to crack the safe, just disarm the destruction mechanism.
I don't think most reasonable people would have an issue with this.
It's the same thing here. The slippery slope argument is overused -- that's why court oversight was required. It prevents the slide down that slope.
Apple builds a secure safe with a boobytrap mechanism that destroys the materials inside. The police confiscate this safe from criminals and believe there may be documents inside that may or may not have have information regarding other crimes. They get a court order for Apple to disarm the boobytrap to preserve the documents so that the police can force their way into the safe -- not for the key or how to crack the safe, just disarm the destruction mechanism.
I don't think most reasonable people would have an issue with this.
It's the same thing here. The slippery slope argument is overused -- that's why court oversight was required. It prevents the slide down that slope.
Crimson-Death
Member
Poor terrorist boogeymen and their beleaguered rights and freedoms.
But hey, Apple users all over the world could be next in the indiscriminate hunt of government prosecution. Then, Allah forbid, all Android users could be next, and Armageddon ensue after the government or some hacker exposes our naked pictures and raunchy texts all over the place for all to see online.
But really it is a legitimate concern. Apple promised privacy for their customers ($$$), and the customers expect a certain quality of product ($$$), and Apple can't go back on their sacred corporate word regarding customer service and marketing ($$$), they'll stand up for what is right and proper ($$$).
That is why, after the FBI waits two months to crack their phone, then going to court for more warrants and an unlikely-to-exist backdoor program from Apple, and who knows what other legal wranglings, a person would have to kill 14 people and injure 22 to justify the whole spectacle and the assault on their basic civil liberties. Except it doesn't, because fuck-you-I-got-mine, privacy over all, no matter the individual case. It would be oh such a devastating and perilous snowball from here on out.
Court oversights probably won't prevent other related mass murders anyway, so why give it a shot anyway.
But hey, Apple users all over the world could be next in the indiscriminate hunt of government prosecution. Then, Allah forbid, all Android users could be next, and Armageddon ensue after the government or some hacker exposes our naked pictures and raunchy texts all over the place for all to see online.
But really it is a legitimate concern. Apple promised privacy for their customers ($$$), and the customers expect a certain quality of product ($$$), and Apple can't go back on their sacred corporate word regarding customer service and marketing ($$$), they'll stand up for what is right and proper ($$$).
That is why, after the FBI waits two months to crack their phone, then going to court for more warrants and an unlikely-to-exist backdoor program from Apple, and who knows what other legal wranglings, a person would have to kill 14 people and injure 22 to justify the whole spectacle and the assault on their basic civil liberties. Except it doesn't, because fuck-you-I-got-mine, privacy over all, no matter the individual case. It would be oh such a devastating and perilous snowball from here on out.
Court oversights probably won't prevent other related mass murders anyway, so why give it a shot anyway.
Courts throughout the world operate differently, but they are considered equal in the eyes of the law.
This isn't really about disarming a boobytrap--if the iPhone is secure as Apple says it is, then the tool to "disarm the boobytrap" does the same job as a key or the mechanism to crack the safe.
Where is the warrant issue? The phone is already in the hands of the authorities.
BlastProcessing
Member
I agree that this is a reasonable request from the judge, but I don't know if Apple engineers can actually remove the "boobytrap".
It seems like a pretty difficult problem if the device really is end-to-end encrypted. It also calls to question what Apple does if they were able to find a way to meet the judges request. Whatever they found would be a huge security hole and they would be obligated to fix it in a software update. I doubt the FBI would be particularly pleased with that.
GoldenEye 007
Member
I don't think that's the issue. A legitimate warrant is fine for anything for a house or a phone. The issue is forcing an uninvolved 3rd party to participate in or develop methods to get somewhere law enforcement have failed to. And if Apple is right in that they have no method of recovering a locked phone, there is nothing they can do anyway.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
The problem is that Apple wants governments, law firms, doctor's offices, banks, law enforcement etc. to use their phones. All of these sectors have very demanding security requirements, and Apple wants to be able to meet them.
Now they government is saying, okay, now break this thing for us.
Apple is saying, hey, we've got billions in contracts from around the world so that Japanese nuclear scientists can't get hacked by North Korea, the whole point is locking this down.
Now they government is saying, okay, now break this thing for us.
Apple is saying, hey, we've got billions in contracts from around the world so that Japanese nuclear scientists can't get hacked by North Korea, the whole point is locking this down.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Wouldn't it be an option to obtain all saved data (including encrypted data) from the phone, try it ten times, restore the data on the phone and try again? If there are only 10.000 combinations, this seems like a viable option and I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do that, afterall all data must be stored on the phone somehwere and given a few hardware buffs it shouldn't be a problem to copy all this data (though accessing it in a meaningful way would of course mean having to break the encryption, which would not be worth the effort if guessing the code 10.000 times is sufficient).
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
You'll still need the Apple ID password.
The great thing about the locking mechanism on an iPhone is that it is absolutely humanly impossible to break through the door. Not so much with the locking mechanism on a house.
I need Apple to stand its ground. It doesn't matter if this is for a terrorism investigation. They've built a beautiful platform that protects your privacy against any intrusion, government or otherwise. It should stay that way.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
They are only asking for being given the leeway of trying the code as often as they want though, no?
That being said, Apple can probably help with that by giving them the hash they must have stored somewhere and then they "only" need to find a collision. Which should make it easier for them.
Apple should hold steady. Security is only as strong as its weakest link. If the company behind iOS's security itself helps to circumvent it, then the basic kernel of trust at the center of all of Apple's encryption is gone, and with it the security of the entire platform is compromised.
This terrorist misused iOS's security for evil, but that does not suddenly make it okay to put the other billion iOS users at risk, the vast majority of whom are normal people who rely on the platform's security for legitimate purposes.
This terrorist misused iOS's security for evil, but that does not suddenly make it okay to put the other billion iOS users at risk, the vast majority of whom are normal people who rely on the platform's security for legitimate purposes.
Let's dispel with the fiction that you know anything about how encryption works.
You're right. You'll have to pardon my ignorance and my post was slightly in jest, but it's not like we have nothing to worry about:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...has-total-access-to-your-iphone/#1565bf6a1604
MisterFalcon
Member
That's not really relevant for this case as it deals with software that needs to be installed covertly on the iPhone.
345triangle
Member
touch ID requires a password after 48 hours without unlocking, and the phone in this case is a 5C anyway, which doesn't have a fingerprint sensor.
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