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Apple Can Extract Texts, Photos, Contacts From Locked iPhones
Trailrunner7 (1100399) writes "If law enforcement gets hold of your locked iPhone and has some interest in its contents, Apple can pull all kinds of content from the device, including texts, contacts, photos and videos, call history and audio recordings. The company said in a new document that provides guidance for law enforcement agencies on the kinds of information Apple can provide and what methods can be used to obtain it that if served with a search warrant, officials will help law enforcement agents extract specific application-specific data from a locked iOS device. However, that data appears to be limited to information related to Apple apps, such as iMessage, the contacts and the camera. Email contents and calendar data can't be extracted, the company said in the guidelines."
MS on the other hand, really don't know how to build a filemanager for their phone, so they gave up.
All the things listed, are synced to the iCloud. Sounds to me like they are not accessing the phone, but the contents of the cloud server, which have push/pull access to selected apps. Wonder if this is true if you disable cloud access or simply don't sign into it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Those are my freedoms you're browsing through!
Is anyone surprised?
It's not a bricked phone we're talking about, it's just locked. It can be unlocked, where is the news in this?
How about google, hotmail, facebook etc passwords from Safari's settings? Thats what law enforcement always look for. That is cop gold right there. Who gives a crap about the data in the calendar app, thats all hosted on apples cloud anyway.
If you want real, audited & certified security, get a blackberry.
Based on sales for the last few years, it looks like the market just doesn't care about security. As people put more & more of their life on their phone, you might think people would care.
Sad.
Ah, I can do this also. It was helpful during my divorce. If the device is locked the encrypted data is unreadable without a recovery key. The encrypted is still accessible if you can get to it. (through jailbreaks, exploitable boot-loader, or physically reading the ram chips.)
It's their phone after all.
How much is threat post paying timothy to drive up their traffic with these half ass stories?
The summary fails to mention that the phone must be in their possession and the both the phone and the search warrant must be delivered to Apple's headquarters which is the only place Apple will perform the extraction.
If anything I applaud Apple for both publicly disclosing their policy for dealing with law enforcement and requiring a search warrant with more detail than "suspect's phone". They require the model number, phone number, serial of IEMI number and FCC ID number.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Whoever owns the system, owns the system.
modern technotopia devices leak data like a sieve and at so much as a passing interest, their providers will gladly ferry away any and all data youve entered into them directly into the hands of advertisers and government security agencies. It is, as RMS said, Stalins dream come true.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"iMessage" is a message transport. The app is "Messages". The document from Apple specifically says "SMS": it does not mention either Messages or iMessage. While it's possible that Apple leaves iMessages unencrypted on the device, it would be surprising given how much trouble they go through to protect then in transit. So while this document doesn't explicitly say iMessages are safe, it also doesn't say they're vulnerable.
"Law Enforcement" is doing their damnedest to kill the future of personal technology.
Given that Apple, like Google, can push apps to the phone, what's to stop them from just pushing a custom app that just copies everything to a designated place?
When the police knock throw your phone in the toilet with it on to short it out. Then call insurance claim in after you do your 50 years in jail lol..
Taking apart an iPhone 4(S) is fairly straightforward and the various connectors on the boards inside appear to be pretty much "standard". The various flavors of 5 shouldn't be too far off. I would expect some levels of the law enforcement to even have the know-how and equipment to connect to those ports and access an iPhone's internals beyond the device's standard operation - and I don't think it's anything wrong with that. By the user experience it seems that the iPhone's memory is not scrambled.
Assuming anyone would use that, at least we can hope now that such an expensive phone will still be functional when the process is done.
It's been known for a while that their "Filevault" has a corporate key (allegedly for employees but wouldn't it work for anyone?) to unlock it.
Of course if you're a smart criminal you aren't using this sort of tech or if you are you have a second level of protection.
Considering the timing of the Apple "bugs" such as the SSL fiasco why would anyone think they are protected in any way while using using Apple gear?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
http://daringfireball.net/2014...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Hey, let's link to the actual document in question! What a novel concept!
http://www.apple.com/legal/mor...
Good news:
- Apple cannot track a phone via GPS, nor forcibly enable Find My Friends/Find my iPhone
- Apple cannot monitor FaceTime or iMessage conversations since they are end-to-end encrypted
- Apple cannot provide third-party app data that is encrypted since the files are encrypted with the user's passcode.
- It appears if the user does a remote wipe before law enforcement can get a warrant and ship the phone to Apple (or fly it there), then there is nothing that can be done. I wonder if they power up the device in an anechoic chamber so it can't receive the remote wipe signal? I would guess no because most people aren't smart enough to do an immediate wipe.
- We already knew the only trick they have as far as encrypted files goes is a custom firmware that bypasses the max attempt auto-erase and rate limit feature, so it can attempt to brute-force passcodes quickly. However it requires the attempt be made on-device, since the keys are stored in the secure storage with no facility to get them off-device. So even a moderately complex passcode is effectively unbreakable, let alone a good strong password.
Questionable:
- user generated active files (this is what SMS/call logs/photos/etc are listed under). Normally if a device is powered off and rebooted, I was under the impression that these things were not available because the files are encrypted. It seems that iMessage is at least encrypted here, but I would be curious to find out what the situation is. Everything except photos, videos, and recordings is a moot point because you can get stuff like SMS history and call logs from the carrier anyway so those are the only ones I'd be concerned about.
There are some definite good points here - Apple has chosen not to build themselves backdoors or workarounds, presumably because they can't be ordered to disclose information they don't have access to... same reason they built iMessage the way they did. A court would have to order them to refactor their software before it could order them to intercept messages, and at least in the US there is no precedent or law that can compel them to do so.
However I would expect the âoeuser generated active filesâ to be encrypted after a device reboot until the passcode is entered. If that is not the case, Apple should fix it pronto.
I would also expect Apple to refactor the storage of those things to be segmented, given the NSA revelations and increasingly authoritarian behavior of law enforcement; for example, photos pending background upload could be kept unencrypted, but once uploaded they should be rewritten as encrypted so they require the passcode to access. They already have the ephemeral key tech and per-file key support so you can generate a key for the unencrypted file while the device is unlocked, then toss the passcode key when the device locks and only hold onto the file key until the upload is finished, then toss it. Thus no risk to the main key but you can still encrypt the file in the background.
I won't bother discussing Android phones - they are almost all trivial to break and access all the user's data, when people like Samsung aren't coding back doors directly into the firmware.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
If at this point people are still surprised that this is possible then they are just naïve. Privacy in public forums (internet being the biggest forum of all) is not possible in this current age. Other than my personal information I don't care what people know or get from me. Some people have a dark past and don't want information to leak but I honestly have nothing to hide so I don't care.
Think of it this way: We are all Truman in the Truman show. The public is watching and so are the officials. Crooks will be caught and honest people LOLd if dumb moments make it online...
The AC nailed it; this is an utter non-story. Last time I checked, locking an iPhone does not enable full -disk encryption. Raise your hand if you thought the iPhone contains some magical Steve Jobs fart that would prevent someone with hardware access (leave alone Apple with hardware access!) from ripping the unencryped data (which, in a default setup, is essentially everything except your e-mail) from the flash chips. And yes, hardware access is necessary even if it isn't explicilty stated in the summary. Anyhow, those that did raise their hands earlier, please hand in your geek card and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
If Apple can get at it, that means anyone can get at it.
If all companies would detail how they deal with LEA's then everyone would be the wiser. And, if it's as simple and direct as this, even better. This is about the same as a search warrant for a private container (which might be how a phone is seen in court). I really like this approach via Apple, they'll have LEA but only if there is a valid and legal reason. Not just witch hunting or easter egging.
i wonder how much data did Apple steal to give to their cronies and partners for profit
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
And I STILL don't own any Apple products, because I've always thought they were closed-source shitheads. I guess they're way more than that after all.
At least not trivial task. Per the iOS Security white paper:
"The device’s unique ID (UID) and a device group ID (GID) are AES 256-bit keys fused into the application processor during manufacturing. No software or firmware can read them directly; they can see only the results of encryption or decryption opera- tions performed using them. The UID is unique to each device and is not recorded by Apple or any of its suppliers. The GID is common to all processors in a class of devices (for example, all devices using the Apple A5 chip), and is used as an additional level of protection when delivering system software during installation and restore. Burning these keys into the silicon prevents them from being tampered with or bypassed, and guarantees that they can be accessed only by the AES engine."
Hence, needing some specialized equipment, ergo, ship to 1 Infinite Loop to get the data.
I just did this on a locked iPhone i Found Yesterday to try to identify the owner.
It was locked from too many bad PIN's entered and I was able to access Photos, Call Log, TXT Messages, etc.
Didn't give me access to every single thing on the phone, but that is still a lot considering this is a shareware limited app anyone can download.
There are more advanced Forensic programs that are available, but they can get more pricey.
But if anyone with google can find a shareware app, what hope to you have against the government with all their money and resources.
http://www.easeus.com/mobile-t...
ff
By mounting their drives as a file system on my laptop, as long as its not encrypted.
Very interesting...especially considering that iOS 7 no longer has the email encryption for attachments.
I had someone give me an iphone 4 last year where a child playing with the phone had accidentally deleted all the pictures. My task was to recover all the deleted pictures. It took me a few hours, mainly because I had never done anything with an iphone before. The process that worked invovled booting the phone with a different bootloader and breaking the encryption key. Most of the information and software to accomplish this can be found with a few minutes of searching.
I'm truly amazed that some people thought there was a time when Apple did not have this ability. This is why I will never buy a smart mobile device from any company, even though I work as an iOS developer right now. No, I'm not RMS. Yes, I think the surveillance conducted on me via my feature phone is just too great -- moving up to a "smart" device demonstrates pure lunacy.
The real issue here is one of device loyalty. If I purchase a piece of equipment then I own that equipment. If it's programmable, then my equipment should do what I want it to, not what somebody else wants it to. Since that's never been the case with phones, doesn't appear to be the case with tablets, and vehicles appear to be joining this party, I find that I really can't trust any of them with any personal data.
Looking to the future, as a proper implementation of IPv6 rolls out across the world and all our electronics become addressable and accessible over the internet, these electronics that I supposedly own but demonstrate loyalty and provide data to others, I think I'll become a collector of 20th century appliances.
I was thinking about the FROST attack against Android devices. Sounds like something similar here - lower the temperature enough to get the phone to reveal its encryption key in RAM, then just read the key off the RAM chips. Now you have the key to decrypt all of that lovely cloud data yon LEO has been after.
Why would they want to kill the future of personal technology, when there's so much in there for law enforcement?
And in the enterprise setting, your local admin can set a company-wide key and propagate that to all Macs. There's a tech-note (too lazy to look it up again) on Apple's website explaining how to set and which files to copy from "master" to all other machines.
See http://www.cellebrite.com/mobile-forensics. Every Apple store has Cellebrite phone forensics software and so do a every police agency who can afford it.
F=ma
what hope to you have against the government with all their money and resources.
Given that the App you mention and Apple's list of what they can extract amount to the same thing, it's probable the government also can access the same things. Basically anything that not encrypted on the device or backup can be accessed by all (with physical access). Things that are encrypted can't be. Even by people working for scary 3 letter acronyms.
I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but this describes the iOS security mechanisms in excruciating detail, including the full-disk encryption, etc. etc. Note that it does vary by hardware platform (3GS, 4, 4S, 5, 5S) and iOS version, so this is the "new hotness". There's a lot of incorrect information in the comments.
http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf
Because it does.
since apple needs the device in cupertino.. is some deputy or marshall going to escort the device from wherever it is to california, be allowed in apple hq (getting permission has to be right up there with the difficulty for a russian or iranian to get a u.s. visa), and wait and watch while uncle steve's ghost violates the device's owner, understand the methods used, know for certain that apple did not and could not plant any files (well, other than what the government representative wants put on it, that is), then carry the device and supplied content back?
Correction: what I wrote is not fully correct but my main point remains valid.
That's a publically facing legal document, not their engineering docs. Means absolute shite. Even if it is of any value from an engineering perspective, is that document the real policy document, or the one that the average employee, cop, journalist and slashdotter get to see?
They have done a deal with the Devil. Do not forget this.
A phone that puts security first. No ifs, and, or, buts about it. Not to mention 2-day battery life and a seamless OS experience.
If you have to use their email client, camera-app and messenger they have control on your data.
This really sheds light on this lack of freedom.
I was able to access Photos, Call Log, TXT Messages, etc.
Thats a configurable option, to allow those things to be accessed from the lock screen.
Disable access to those and the silly little app you used would't have worked either.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Mmell: Yer bein' called out. Why ya runnin', "forrest" http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ?
Keep those spamposts comin' - I need to tweak my email filters.
Who are you?
I'm sorry - you post as A/C everywhere. No wonder nobody takes you seriously.
But I think he's living at his mother Jan Kowalski's basement at:
At least, that's where he wants users of his hostfile manager to send him money.
Mmell: Yer bein' called out. Why ya runnin', "forrest" http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... ?