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Apple Deluged By Police Demands To Decrypt iPhones
New submitter ukemike points out an article at CNET reporting on a how there's a "waiting list" for Apple to decypt iPhones seized by various law enforcement agencies. This suggests two important issues: first, that Apple is apparently both capable of and willing to help with these requests, and second, that there are too many of them for the company to process as they come in. From the article:
"Court documents show that federal agents were so stymied by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a Kentucky man accused of distributing crack cocaine that they turned to Apple for decryption help last year.
An agent at the ATF, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 'contacted Apple to obtain assistance in unlocking the device,' U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote in a recent opinion. But, she wrote, the ATF was 'placed on a waiting list by the company.' A search warrant affidavit prepared by ATF agent Rob Maynard says that, for nearly three months last summer, he "attempted to locate a local, state, or federal law enforcement agency with the forensic capabilities to unlock' an iPhone 4S. But after each police agency responded by saying they 'did not have the forensic capability,' Maynard resorted to asking Cupertino. Because the waiting list had grown so long, there would be at least a 7-week delay, Maynard says he was told by Joann Chang, a legal specialist in Apple's litigation group. It's unclear how long the process took, but it appears to have been at least four months."
If they're going to expect Apple to spend time doing their work for them are they are least compensating them for the time and energy necessary for this?
The summary talks about decrypting the data on the phones. The articles talk about getting past the lock screen on the phones. Those are two entirely different things. On my phone, I have to first enter the decryption code before I'm presented with the lock screen.
Most phones aren't encrypted and usually the company can bypass it. For example with Android phones tied to a Gmail account, Google can bypass the lock screen. So if you forget your password, that is a recovery mechanism. Also data can be accessed if you physically removed the flash chip from the phone and put it in another reader. Lock screens are protection against most kinds of attacks, not high level security. Most people don't need high level security though, so it works well.
You can also encrypt your phone. Well I presume you can encrypt iPhones, having not owned one I don't know. You can encrypt Blackberries and Androids. There you set a key and it does basically a full-disk encryption type of thing. You have to enter the key to access the device at all (whereas lock screen lockouts will allow some stuff to happen) and there is no recovery. If you forget the password, you're boned, flash the device and start over. Few people do that because it is not pushed and is inconvenient.
It is also more security that is generally useful. Most people are worried about someone running up a phone bill, or getting at your account information or something if they steal a phone. A lock screen stops that. Device encryption is needed only against more serious threats, hence most don't use it.
Court documents show that federal agents were so stymied by the encrypted iPhone 4S of a Kentucky man accused of distributing crack cocaine that they turned to Apple for decryption help last year... Because the waiting list had grown so long, there would be at least a 7-week delay...
As soon as they are able to get these phones decrypted, this war on drugs will be won!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Unless the iPhone has a backdoor - the effort required for either Apple or others should be the same. Does this mean that the iPhone has a backdoor?
Brute-forcing an iPhone's lock code is relatively trivial with freely available tools. This puts the device in DFU mode, so "Erase device on X unlock attempts" doesn't take effect. That version of the tools only bruteforces lockcodes, but there's no theoretical reason you couldn't try at least a dictionary attack on a password, too. Since it's also possible to dump the hardware key and a complete (encrypted) image, I imagine an offline attack on the image is possible, too. You wouldn't have to rely on the relatively slow hardware in the iPhone.
Using those tools I have successfully bruteforced the 4-digit lockcode to an iDevice running 6.0.2, and that's with no prior experience with or knowledge of iOS. I even used an emulated Mac to compile the necessary firmware patch. And that's just what I was able to do in with a few hours of fiddling. There are people who do this for a living, and tools dedicated specifically to extracting data from mobile devices. Are these PDs really saying they can't get into devices with simple lock codes?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Until now, there is no way to safeguard our secret stored in i-Device from the prying eyes of Apple Inc
If you want something kept secret, you're a fool if you put it on your phone.