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Apple's iOS 4 Hardware Encryption Cracked

Posted by samzenpus on from the what-took-so-long? dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Russian company ElcomSoft is claiming to have cracked the 256-bit hardware encryption Apple uses to protect the data on iOS 4 devices, and is offering software that allows anyone to do it. ElcomSoft can now gain full access to what is stored on a gadget such as the iPhone 4. This includes historical information such as geolocation data, browsing history, call history, text messages and emails, usernames, and passwords."

2 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Re:History repeats? by pandrijeczko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's a case of "damned if they do and damned if they don't" for Apple currently.

    This is precisely what happens when you turn yourself into an "evil" company like Sony did and Apple are a long way through the process of doing - you will attract the hacker community and there will be thousands of people simultaneously trying to shame that company.

    It's "infinite monkeys & infinite typewriter" syndrome - the majority of hackers will have no success with breaking into the systems or devices, but because there's *THAT MANY* doing it *ALL OF THE TIME*, eventually some will be successful.

    As someone who works in security, I can tell you honestly that no company reveals successful or failed hack attempts on their systems unless they really have to - in the case of the Sony credit cards, they *HAD* to because of the potential fraud on those cards that could take place.

    So you can pretty much guarantee that Sony, Apple and other "Evilcorps" are being pounded & hacked all of the time, but they hush it all up as best they can.

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  2. TFA, TFA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Looks like TFA didn't read TFA.
    Or misunderstood it big time. All of the comments are also about their OLD TOOLS which are related to brute forcing and analysing the BACKUPS and have nothing to do with this hardware encryption getting cracked.
    If you read the blog post they say there that there is some data that's not included in the backup that you can access with the hardware encryption keys.
    Also they're saying they don't want this ending up in the "wrong hands" and will only offer it to governments and such.