DOJ Says iPhone Is So Secure They Can't Crack It

zacharye writes "In the five years since Apple launched the iPhone, the popular device has gone from a malicious hacker's dream to law enforcement's worst nightmare. As recounted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review blog, a Justice Department official recently took the stage at the DFRWS computer forensics conference in Washington, D.C. and told attendees that the beefed up security in iOS is now so good that it has become a nightmare for law enforcement."

Comments

Government Computer Skillz

[ryanov]

I've never been too impressed with government agencies and their knowledge of computing.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[Sparticus789]

I was at this conference, the running joke was "If it's encrypted, forget about it!" Everyone knows this. FDE and utilities like TrueCrypt will always prevent data recovery, save for the human factor of giving up the password.

Also at the conference was the strong difference between American and British/Australian law. In the U.S., the 5th Amendment prevents someone from being required to turn over their password. The Brits and Aussies do not have this problem, as the 5th amendment doesn't exist for them.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[Anonymous Coward]

The burden of proof is on you, not them, under UK law, provided they can prove you ever had access to the password.

Or to put it another way, you are responsible for maintaining accurate records of every encryption passphrase you ever use.

Enjoy your SSH session keys.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[Migraineman]

They don't need to. That's what "Contempt of Court" is for - toss you in the clink until your memory improves.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[pluther]

Technically, in the US, under the NDAA, they can just decide you must be a terrorist if you're hiding something, and shoot you.

(Well, technically, they'd have to turn you over to the military and have them shoot you...)

This is unlikely to happen in very many cases, however, even though it's legal.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[Hatta]

In the U.S., the 5th Amendment prevents someone from being required to turn over their password.

This is still unsettled. The 11th Circuit Court has ruled that passwords are protected under the 5th amendment. However the 10th Circuit has chosen not to intervene in a lower court decision that forced a woman to decrypt her laptop.

This is going to have to go to the Supreme Court eventually, and I think you can guess how the fascist majority of justices will decide.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[Hatta]

Wikipedia sez:

In civil contempt cases there is no principle of proportionality. In Chadwick v. Janecka (3d Cir. 2002), a U.S. court of appeals held that H. Beatty Chadwick could be held indefinitely under federal law, for his failure to produce US$ 2.5 mill. as state court ordered in a civil trial. Chadwick had been imprisoned for nine years at that time and continued to be held in prison until 2009, when a state court set him free after 14 years, making his imprisonment the longest on a contempt charge to date.

Re:Government Computer Skillz

[mark-t]

So.... if you really *DID* forget the password, you could be looking at spending the rest of your life in prison, even if you never did anything wrong... simply because somebody thought you were guilty, and you had a faulty memory?

Welcome to my Nightmare

[carrier lost]

Gee. The government can't spy on you using your own hardware?

This is truly frightening.

Re:I don't believe it

[TheLandyman]

I believe, as of iPhone 3GS, it does.. but I'm too lazy to google and confirm.

sounds like a challenge

[circletimessquare]

(also article is a little too breathlessly enamored of apple: PR astroturf?)

Re:sounds like a challenge

[wonkey_monkey]

Any sufficiently rabid fanboy is indistinguishable from a shill.

And if you believe that...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I've got some "moon" rocks I'd like to sell you.

Honestly, this seems like a way to trick dumb criminals into thinking their information is secure just because they use an iPhone. If this were truly the case, and the DOJ does really have problems in dealing with iOS devices, I'd expect them to remain tight lipped about it.

Obligatory tinfoil-hat quote

[RabidReindeer]

Well, yes, that's what they'd like you to believe, isn't it?

Re:Completely false

[hawks5999]

That video is over 2 years old. Re-read TFS.

Re:I don't believe it

[TheLandyman]

As an iPhone user since the first model, I've never been penetrated through my back door... willingly or otherwise.

TWO WORDS

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

iCloud Supoena.

So, the "remote control" is uncrackable? iCloud and Siri and "location awareness" with GSM, WiFi and GPS make the security of the actual device nearly an orthoganal proposition to any enforceable protection for the user or data.

When this is so clearly a form of misdirection, I can't help but wonder the purpose of a DOJ statement like his being made public. Which perception and behaviour are they trying to influence, and by whom?

Re:TWO WORDS

[Baloroth]

Isn't the iCloud stuff (specifically, the device backups) also AES encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? I will have to dig up the article, but I'm pretty sure I saw that.

No.

Re:TWO WORDS

[poetmatt]

quite the opposite, apple holds the key - so all it takes is a gov't request to apple and they have the master key.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/apple-holds-the-master-key-when-it-comes-to-icloud-security-privacy/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/can-apple-give-police-a-key-to-your-encrypted-iphone-data-ars-investigates/

Given their policies regarding a number of things which are dinosaur-era, we don't have an answer to whether or not they will give it away or not. I don't know that an official statement has ever been made by apple. The question is - do you want to trust that information with apple? Specifically: 100% uncertainty? That's not a "apple is evil, apple is not evil".

Re:TWO WORDS

[CanHasDIY]

When this is so clearly a form of misdirection, I can't help but wonder the purpose of a DOJ statement like his being made public

Setup for a false flag operation:

- DOJ publicly claims Device X is secure from their snooping
- Suckers fall for the ploy and migrate to Device X, assuming it's safe from prying gov't eyes
- DOJ forces Device X's manufacturer, via NSL or similar devious means, to turn over user information.
- Device X's user has no idea what's going on, thanks to draconian EULA and ToS, until jackbooted thugs kick in the door.

It's quite brilliant, really. Or, would be, if not so obvious.

Re:TWO WORDS

[blueg3]

I can't help but wonder the purpose of a DOJ statement like his being made public.

It was a higher-up in the DoJ (specifically, Ovie Carroll) discussing challenges in digital forensics (at a conference on digital forensics). It was a brief mention in a larger talk and a fact that does not surprise anyone in the field. It's well-known that pulling data off of an iPhone can be a real pain in the ass. (IMO, I would consider Android worse, as there is not yet a reliable technique that can pull data off of an unrooted phone without modifying the phone's data, and data modification -- even when justified and documented -- is a big problem in some jurisdictions.)

Re:TWO WORDS

[Kjella]

Except what you're describing is not a false flag operation.

False flag (also known as black flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities.

This may be a disinformation campaign but unless the DOJ is posing as someone else, it's not a false flag.

Re:TWO WORDS

[NatasRevol]

I wish I could anything I wanted in broad daylight.

College would be so much more fun.

Re:TWO WORDS

[GrumpySteen]

You forgot possibility #4...

An Apple fanboy writes an article praising the iphone using out of context quotes from the CEO of Paraben (not the DoJ) saying there have been cases where Paraben couldn't defeat iPhone encryption and a a DoJ official talking about hard drives (not the iPhone) saying that "if you pull the power on a drive that is whole-disk encrypted you have lost any chance of recovering that data" (which isn't true, btw). Then a second fanboy reads said article and translates it to "iPhone is the DOJ's worst nightmare" and submits it to Slashdot where samzenpus demonstrates the usual lack of even the barest hint off fact-checking and gives us a headline like this one.

Re:TWO WORDS

[93 Escort Wagon]

OF COURSE they have a key. Any cloud-based data you can access through a web browser requires as much - whether it's with Apple, Amazon, Dropbox, Google...

And per one of your links, right after they say "of course Apple has a decryption key":

Still, vice president of products for cloud security firm Echoworx, Robby Gulri, noted that Apple is following best practices used throughout the industry. "Apple has taken the right steps to protect users' data and privacy as far as a widely public service like iCloud goes," he told Ars. "For example, data is transmitted using SSL, data is encrypted on disk using 128-bit keys, and Apple has stopped letting developers use individual UDIDs."

Re:TWO WORDS

[Pieroxy]

Well, bummer. One more reason not to move stuff over to iCloud (besides the use case issues).

Mind you, it's the same reason to not move your data anywhere.

Re:TWO WORDS

[DJRumpy]

FYI, this is the source of the summary quotes (adhoc as they are) and also addresses other questions regarding device security as opposed to iCloud security which has nothing to do with the linked articles.

"I can tell you from the Department of Justice perspective, if that drive is encrypted, you're done," Ovie Carroll, director of the cyber-crime lab at the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the Department of Justice, said during his keynote address at the DFRWS computer forensics conference in Washington, D.C., last Monday. "When conducting criminal investigations, if you pull the power on a drive that is whole-disk encrypted you have lost any chance of recovering that data."

At the heart of Apple's security architecture is the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm (AES), a data-scrambling system published in 1998 and adopted as a U.S. government standard in 2001. After more than a decade of exhaustive analysis, AES is widely regarded as unbreakable. The algorithm is so strong that no computer imaginable for the foreseeable future—even a quantum computer—would be able to crack a truly random 256-bit AES key. The National Security Agency has approved AES-256 for storing top-secret data.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment on this story. But the AES key in each iPad or iPhone "is unique to each device and is not recorded by Apple or any of its suppliers," the company said in a security-related white paper. "Burning these keys into the silicon prevents them from being tampered with or bypassed, and guarantees that they can be access only by the AES engine."

It also notes the key here, that while the device is powered on, it is still possible to obtain the key from memory, but once the device is turned off, the key is lost. It also notes that the decryption key itself is encrypted by the device pin, meaning an easy pin is an easily decrypted device. This is true for any mobile device, and a good reason to enable a strong ping instead of the default 4 char code seen on most devices.

What I found curious about the article is that they didn't emphasize this point. Video's of police decrypting a device due to a weak 4 pin character lock within a matter of seconds are available for any number of devices. I am curious how much additional computing power is needed to decrypt a device for each character added to the unlock sequence.

Now you know for certain

[turbidostato]

The iPhone sports a master encryption key and DOJ has access to it.

Re:I don't believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.
It uses full disk encryption. However, that can be circumvented quite easily with a jailbreak (if one exists).

However, there is a second encryption system. This system derives the keys from your passcode and a key that is stored within a secure element on the iPhone. Thus, you need to know the Passcode of the iPhone in order to decrypt those files. Since, the key derivation function is tied to the passcode and the key within the secure element you cannot offload the brute-force attack to external machines, you need to do it on the iPhone. This means that a brute-force attack on a 4-digit PIN takes about 20 minutes (ok, that's not much), but when you consider complex PINs with 5 or more characters you are soon at 50 days (don't have the exact numbers in my mind right now, but there is a good presentation on that).

Downturn: You must rely on the app developer to chose the right protection class for the files. If he doesn't then you are down to the rather insecure full-disk-encryption, and you need to chose a longer Passcode...

Re:I don't believe it

[Anonymous Coward]

> "As far as I know the iphone doesn't use full disk encryption."

And because you don't know if it does that means it doesn't, right?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4175

Full device encryption has been available since the 3GS, when they added in hardware encryption support to their iOS products.

Before speaking on a subject you know absolutely nothing about you should do a little research on it first.

Umm.. what?

[Vellmont]

5 minutes ago I knew nothing of Apples full disk encryption. Now I find an article that states:

The release of the iPhone 3GS (and later iPod Touch 3rd Generation) brought hardware-based full disk encryption (FDE) to the iPhone. This was designed to accomplish one thing: instantaneous remote wipe. While the iPhone 3G had to overwrite every bit in flash memory (sometimes taking several hours), disk wiping on the 3GS worked by simply erasing the 256-bit AES key used to encrypt the data.

Unfortunately, disk encryption on the iPhone did little beyond enabling remote wipe. Mobile forensicator Jonathan Zdziarski found that the iPhone OS automatically decrypts data when a request for data is made, effectively making the encryption worthless for protecting data.

http://anthonyvance.com/blog/forensics/ios4_data_protection/

So I'd say I'm just VERY skeptical that the DOJ can't crack something that wasn't really designed with any security in mind in the first place. Either that, or the DOJ has nobody with any skills whatsoever.

mod TFS

[AliasMarlowe]

TFA and TFS should be modded +5 Funny.
One suspects that there are back doors all over the iPhone, in addition to the various apps that have access to remarkable amounts of stored material and regularly send it home (or elsewhere). Otherwise its alleged impenetrability would hardly be promoted by law enforcement. It's like Brer Rabbit pleading "please don't throw me in the briar patch".

Re:mod TFS

[Anonymous Coward]

OT, but since song of the south was *banned* by disney, you could only get a copy if you went to where pirates hang out.

it was a great classic movie but disney capitulated to pressure (their own, in fact!) and banned the film.

uncle remus is not fit for modern audiences. it 'offends their sensibilities'. or something like that.

oh, btw, FUCK DISNEY.

Wrong, american audiences are offended. The rest of world is not offended by this B-series film.
And frankly speaking, if Song of the South is banned, then they should also ban Gone with the Wind and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Stupid country, unable to cope rationally with your past.

Re:mod TFS

[Just Some Guy]

This is purely anecdotal, but... I was recently on a flight next to a highway patrolman flying back from a conference for computer detectives (my words, not his; I don't remember what the actual job title was). He showed me the modified Ubuntu distro DVD they were passing out - "Look, it has a password cracker!" "Is that John the Ripper?" "You've heard of that?!?" - and we had a pretty nice chat.

During the conversation, I mentioned that iPhones are encrypted now. I asked, "OK, hypothetically, suppose I'm a mafia drug dealer and you get my encrypted cell phone. How screwed am I?" He said that they'd get a subpoena for my house, show up with a search warrant, and read the backup off my Mac's hard drive, "and then we run this app [opens it to show it to me] and have full access to all your data!" I told him that was pretty impressive, "but... what if I turn on FileVault and encrypt my whole hard drive?" He looked like I'd kicked his puppy and said that most criminals aren't smart enough to do that, but in that case, yeah, there was nothing he could do.

Feel free to take that with a grain of salt, but I had a detective tell me - in an unguarded two-geeks-talking moment with no apparent motive or visible sign of deceit - that the only way they could recover an encrypted iPhone's contents was through examining the unencrypted backup from an unencrypted hard drive. Now this was a state highway patrol guy and not an NSA analyst, and maybe the higher-up guys have access to emergency use stuff they're not talking about, but my takeaway was that the state-level police really don't have any way to defeat the encryption.

Re:mod TFS

[Shakrai]

Now this was a state highway patrol guy and not an NSA analyst, and maybe the higher-up guys have access to emergency use stuff they're not talking about, but my takeaway was that the state-level police really don't have any way to defeat the encryption.

Without talking about bad implementation (e.g., weak passwords) or side channel attacks (keystroke loggers and the like) it seems exceedingly unlikely that any law enforcement agency would have the ability to defeat modern encryption algorithms. Even if the NSA has such an ability (the math geeks can comment on the likelihood of this) it would be far too valuable to waste on something as mundane as a criminal prosecution. National Security concerns trump the incarceration of child molesters, drug dealers, murderers, and other common criminals.

Far more interesting than the technical aspect will be the evolution of 5th amendment case law as it relates to encryption. There is no definitive legal precedent in the United States as to whether or not you can be compelled to disclose an encryption password. There have been a few cases that have danced around the edge of this question, but none have directly addressed it, nor have they made it to SCOTUS.

Nicely done, but lacking in subtlety.

[Minwee]

I look forward to Ovie Carroll's next few breathless announcements:

"Hooh, boy, that YouTube is soooo secure, a person could sign up for an account using their real name and home address, then post videos of them committing crimes online and law enforcement would never ever be able to track them! Honest!"

"You know where the safest place to hide stuff is? Underneath the welcome mat at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW in Washington, DC. Really! We did a study and figured out that once that mat is pushed down on top of something, whether it's drugs, cash or big file folders full of industrial secrets, there's NO way that any one can get into it."

"My biggest nightmare is someone committing a crime, then emailing a detailed confession to ovie.carroll@usdoj.gov. Once something gets into those email tubes it's IMPOSSIBLE to get it back out and figure out what happened. Really. You can trust me. I'm with the government."

Re:Oblig xkcd

[cpu6502]

Hitting people with wrenches is forbidden by the Bill of Rights.

Re:I don't believe it

[wvmarle]

According to TFA, encryption and decryption is now available and built in in the hardware even. So it's become computationally cheap. The AES key is also burned in silicon, making it impossible to get to.

But as usual the weakest link is the user's password, in this case a PIN. A typical 4-digit PIN can be cracked (using special software to prevent phone from wiping itself after ten failed attempts) in a matter of minutes; one needs an 8-digit PIN to be reasonably secure (average 15 years for a brute-force attack).

Easy

[Dcnjoe60]

DOJ Says iPhone Is So Secure They Can't Crack It

I dropped mine off the balcony to the pavement below. It seems that it is very easy to crack an iPhone.

Re:Easy

[Minwee]

You're just not holding it the right way.

Re:I don't believe it

[mshenrick]

Unlike Android (when enabled), it doesn't prompt for the key before booting the OS, so it's only partly encrypted. Yes the OS is mounted read only on iOS (as on Android by default) jailbreaking changes this, as does rooting, but you can't if it's fully encrypted

encryption laws

[Sebastopol]

Can somebody explain how if the iPhone is so uncrackable/breakable that Apple can still export it? I seem to recall some kind of PGP problem where exporting something that was too secure was a violation of US laws. Or maybe I'm mixing reality with a bad Nicholas Cage movie, which is entirely possible.

Re:I don't believe it

[dgatwood]

That's because the password-protected encryption doesn't encrypt the whole disk. It encrypts individual files. There is a full-disk encryption key, but its purpose is to make wiping the device a single block write operation (overwrite the key) instead of a complete wipe of tens of gigabytes.

Re:Oblig xkcd

[Hatta]

Only if done as punishment. According to Scalia, as long as it's not punishment, torture is constitutional.

STAHL: If someoneâ(TM)s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person â" if you listen to the expression âoecruel and unusual punishment,â doesnâ(TM)t that apply?

        SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think â" Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I donâ(TM)t think so.

        STAHL: Well I think if youâ(TM)re in custody, and you have a policeman whoâ(TM)s taken you into custodyâ"

        SCALIA: And you say heâ(TM)s punishing you? Whatâ(TM)s he punishing you for? ⦠When heâ(TM)s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldnâ(TM)t say heâ(TM)s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

Re:Umm.. what?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Last time I checked, the government can't lie. It can only deny.

Sorry, incorrect. Go watch "Don't talk to police" on YouTube. Required viewing for US residency.

Political Correctness Censorship...

[cayenne8]

Wrong, american audiences are offended. The rest of world is not offended by this B-series film. And frankly speaking, if Song of the South is banned, then they should also ban Gone with the Wind and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Stupid country, unable to cope rationally with your past.

Amen!

In the US, this is another example of political correctness gone overboard.

What the old saying about people not learning from mistakes in the past are bound to repeat them in the future?

Then again...look at Germany, banning most anything Nazi connected....I believe similar type bans happen in other EU countries too?

But seriously....this is a part of US history, and should not be suppressed. I remember seeing old Bugs Bunny cartoons...people got blown up into 'blackface'....if they even show these episodes on tv, these parts are usually edited...

Why? This is part of history, and people should know what attitudes were publicly held and presented to see how much we've changed over the years.