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iPhone Attack Reveals Passwords In Six Minutes
angry tapir writes "Researchers in Germany say they've been able to reveal passwords stored in a locked iPhone in just six minutes and they did it without cracking the phone's passcode. The attack, which requires possession of the phone, targets keychain, Apple's password management system. Passwords for networks and corporate information systems can be revealed if an iPhone or iPad is lost or stolen."
Give them a break! It's not like they have billions of dollars in annual profit which could help them do some serious security R&D.
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In IOS >4 with a modern device (3GS or better, iPad included) this article is blatantly incorrect.
"The attack works because the cryptographic key on current iOS devices is based on material available within the device and is independent of the passcode, the researchers said.". Not true. In iOS4 they use a variant of PBKDF2 to generate an encryption key that is used along with the device key alluded to in this article to decrypt "class keys". The class keys are then used to access data at the various protection levels (Never, After First Unlock, Only When Unlocked). Each of those levels of data has a separate key. Those keys are required to decrypt the individual keys on each file. Each file has an encryption key set on it in the meta data (which means you do have to reformat your system and set a reasonable passcode).
Because of the PBKDF2 variant brute forcing is infeasible. Because of the device key you have to try this IN the device and are limited to Apple's hardware for forcing.
All of this is possible because Apple has an AES-256 hardware chip that blazes through crypto for that algorithm.
Remote wipe uses yet another key (the file system key). So each file encryption key requires a "Class key" and a "file system key" to be decrypted. Lose either one and the file system is history. So remote wipe is accomodated in newer versions of iOS by just forgetting the file system key.
In short, this article is not providing an accurate portrayal of "current/latest" devices. Though I am not sure how many people: Have the newer hardware, have iOS 4 AND have reformatted their filesystem to accomodate the required metadata.
It's easier to steal or loose your phone than it is to break into your home and steal your desktop and considering the majority of people use the same passwords for email, Facebook, Amazon shopping and online banking, I'd consider this a serious security breach. Yes you can call people dumb for not being tech savvy but isn't that the target audience for apple products? (I don't mean dumb, just non-technical minded folk)
Of course I do. Any real geek probably has a password set, and a suitably short timeout. Still, physical access to any device trumps almost any security measure. The headlines scream "iPhone" but this can be done with any mobile device, once you have it in your possession.
Caveat Utilitor
For a buddy's bachelor party we went white water rafting, and rented a huge cabin for the weekend. When we first arrived, we were all staking out beds (18 of us), and some of them were of the slide under the couch futon variety. While we were pulling one out, we found a woman's wallet from the previous occupants. It belonged to a girl in her early 20's that was clearly there partying it up. Her wallet contained everything, ID, credit cards, iPhone, etc.. (even a little white baggy of nose candy). Anyway the iPhone was locked, but one of the guys took it and said (his words not mine) "lets see how dumb this bitch is...". He typed 1,2,3,4 into the iPhone and nothing. Then he said, hey hand me her ID (which all the guys were checking out as she was rather hot), and then typed in her birthday as found on her ID into the iPhone... Click. Two tries. Her phone had plenty of photos of her and her girl friends which we all checked out. Anyway in the end we flushed her baggy, and using the contacts of her iPhone called up her Mom and some of her friends to get hold of her, told her we found her stuff, got her address and at the conclusion of our weekend mailed her stuff back to her. When we talked to her on the phone, we suggested she change her password to something a little stronger.
Moral of the story, 1) People pick stupid passwords anyway, you hardly need some sophisticated password cracking system in many cases, 2) don't loose your iPhone with a stupid password at a party resort unless you want a bunch of stupid guys ogling your photos... We also may have taken a photo of one of the guys on the toilet using her phone, not sure if that ever got erased or not...
Nobody says they're unhackable. I think youre thinking about the classic "macs are more secure" debate, which is much different. But nobody with an ounce of geek in them would stretch so far to say something is unhackable. Anything can be hacked when an appropriately skilled person is given enough patience, physical access, and the right tools.
The key is that, apparently, the iPhone has enough information onboard to decrypt the passwords. This is a huge mistake. It's like leaving the key in the lock on your house. I'm hoping this story is bullshit, or if it's true Apple can resolve this quickly in the next OS release.
Assuming the assertions in the article are true...
I can only compare this to the Blackberry, since I own one and have researched its security model. All information in the filesystem as a whole (including the keyring) is encrypted by a key that is itself encrypted by the passcode you set to log in to the device. The password has strength parameters set in (minimum 8 chars, one number, etc). The phone locks itself after 15 minutes of non-use. My company sets all of these parameters and I can't override them.
I can choose optional portions of the filesystem that can be outside the encryption (all or portions of any SD chips you install, your address book so you can make calls when the phone is locked, etc). But email and passwords and such are protected (unless you're stupid enough to put passwords in your address book and not encrypt the address book, of course).
So if you get your paws on my Blackberry and it's locked you have to figure out the password in order to decrypt the key that allows access to the filesystem and keyring. After 10 bad tries, the phone overwrites the decryption keys with garbage and then starts formatting the filesystem.
That's not to say it's 100% secure - if you pull the SIM the phone can never receive the "wipe" command (so you have 10 tries or you can attempt to copy the contents of internal soldered memory), and of course you can pull the SD chip and copy it so you can decrypt that at your leisure.
But, hell, it's at least difficult.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
OR you could read the PDF which states CLEARLY:
"The results were taken from
a passcode protected and locked iPhone 4 with current firmware 4.2.1. "
That is the latest iOS and the latest iPhone, mind you.
http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de/en/Images/sc_iPhone%20Passwords_tcm502-80443.pdf
The data decrypted isn't arbitrary. It's information the phone requires when it starts up. Therefore the phone itself has to have some way (usually protected by root privileged objects) to unlock that information.
Any phone, or computer for that matter, that has automatic login enabled has to make this sacrifice. The iphone auto logs in as user "mobile". OS X (and therefore iOS) has a very convoluted/obfuscated way to unlock the user keychain based on automatic login, but of course no matter how much they obfuscate it, it can be defeated given enough time and dedication, by people that are capable of reverse-engineering your binaries.
This isn't a security blunder by Apple, it's a necessary tradeoff made by any operating system that features auto login. The only way to strengthen this is by encrypting the actual key with the unlock code, but four digits isn't enough entropy to even be worth the effort. You might turn a 6 minute hack into a 7 minute hack if you're very lucky. And as others have pointed out, that's about as much inconvenience as users will tolerate in an unlock code.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
>>>I sure am glad that my right to pay steve 30% To be fair, Microsoft and Ubuntu linux password systems are not any more secure. Apple is no worse than they.
Bzzt... the correct answer is both operating systems are more secure.
If windows syskey is used properly via startup storage device, TPM or startup password the nt hashes are stored in an encrypted database.
Ubuntu uses salted sha512 for password encryption by default. The length of time it takes to crack a password depends entirely on the security of the password.
In neither case will either Windows or Linux operating systems give up the has material without credentials or bypassing the OS by accessing the storage device directly.