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Apple Will No Longer Unlock Most iPhones, iPads For Police
SternisheFan writes with this selection from a story at the Washington Post: Apple said Wednesday night that it is making it impossible for the company to turn over data from most iPhones or iPads to police — even when they have a search warrant — taking a hard new line as tech companies attempt to blunt allegations that they have too readily participated in government efforts to collect user data. The move, announced with the publication of a new privacy policy tied to the release of Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, amounts to an engineering solution to a legal dilemma: Rather than comply with binding court orders, Apple has reworked its latest encryption in a way that makes it almost impossible for the company – or anyone else but the device's owner – to gain access to the vast troves of user data typically stored on smartphones or tablet computers. The key is the encryption that Apple mobile devices automatically put in place when a user selects a passcode, making it difficult for anyone who lacks that passcode to access the information within, including photos, e-mails, recordings or other documents. Apple once kept possession of encryption keys that unlocked devices for legally binding police requests, but will no longer do so for iOS8, it said in a new guide for law enforcement. "Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data," Apple said on its Web site. "So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."
No, you can, and should, use a much longer (and with more varied characters) passcode than that on iOS. The device actively tells you you should if you set up touch ID.
The pass code is limited to four numbers, but you can switch it to a longer pass phrase which may include any number of alphanumerical characters.
No because encryption is derived from passcode and device key which is in the cryptochip sillicon. You have to brute force those things 'online' due to this as anyone who has done iOS forensic will tell you. Now if you want to break that full key out of the blue offline then... hm. yeah.. see you in a million years.
Key escrow laws have been attempted before. And failed.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...
Aren't you rewriting history a little bit there? The USA didn't crack German codes. That was a bunch of Polish mathematicians, followed by British mathematicians and engineers. And when Americans make movies, three British sailors of whom two died getting secret materials out of a sinking German U-Boot suddenly become Americans!
Standard data forensics procedure is to write-protect any storage device which contains evidence, copy it bit-for-bit, and do all the decrypting and data analysis from the copy. The 10-try limit may protect your data from a random thief who lifts your phone, but the only way it's going to protect you from the government or any other technically-capable hacker is if Apple baked the limit into the flash memory-reading hardware.
And there's always this.
You can put a complex password on your iPhone:
1) Settings->Passcode, enter your 4 digit passcode.
2) Flip the "Simple Passcode" switch.
3) Set your new arbitrary length complex password.
4) Enable the "Erase Data" setting which wipes the device after 10 incorrect password inputs.
5) Enjoy entering your complex password every time you want to access the phone.
The encryption on these iDevices and the Macs is non trivial to crack. Combine this encryption with a properly strong password and that wipe feature and even the Police would be shit out of luck. I know of a case where a guy resolutely refused to provide police with the password and crypto-key for his MacBook. The cops shipped the laptop to Cupertino who sent it back after a few weeks having failed to crack the drive encryption. The cracking would take longer than the expected lifespan of the universe. Your only hope of getting into a properly password protected and encrypted device be it an iDevice, an Android device or a Windows phone is if there happens to be some software vulnerability that enables you to bypass the login screen.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
On Android, you can use dm-crypt to encrypt your /data partition with a passphrase of a real length, which is separate from your screen unlock PIN/password.
You do need to root it, and type in a command similar to this:
vdc cryptfs changepw newpass
or to enable encryption via the command line:
vdc cryptfs enablecrypto inplace
With /data encrypted, it will prompt for the long passphrase at boot, then from there on, just need the short screen locker password.
I like this part of Android -- you can easily pack your own parachute when it comes to encryption.
You can do that. You can enter emergency contact info in the health app which is available from the lock screen with no password. It can also include allergies, insurance information and other things useful to first responders.
Mike Mangino
mmangino@acm.org
When you speak of 4096 bit encryption, you are generally talking about RSA keys. RSA keys do not share the same "strength per bit" as symmetric keys like AES-128.
Most folks say that AES-128 is about equivalent to RSA/3072, and Elliptic Curve would need to be 256 bits to be roughly equivalent to AES-128.
The big upcoming problem with RSA is that the number of bits needed per key goes up rapidly as you need to get to stronger key sizes. To get something equivalent to AES-256, you would need a 15360 bit RSA key. Which makes Elliptic Curve crypto more interesting because you only need about a 512 bit EC key to match AES-256 strength.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
You can also set it to erase everything if the passcode is wrong more than ten times.
Case law is slightly conflicted in different US Federal districts, but the majority are that you can’t be compelled to provide your decryption keys. They’d need evidence to throw you in prison for 30 years, and your lack of providing the key is NOT evidence.
Recent statements made by several SCOTUS justices relating to warrantless phone searches suggest that as cases involving compelled key disclosure reach the Supreme Court, they will likely be decided in favor of the defendant. IE that the 5th Amendment protects you from being compelled to turn over an encryption key to information that would be used against you.
The legal situation outside the US is of course different. In the UK in particular, you CAN be compelled to provide the key under penalty of indefinite detention.
If you believe you may soon be under arrest, power off or hard reset (hold power & home) your device.
Only the OS itself is accessible immediately after reboot. All user-level flash is secured with a different key than the OS, and that key is secured by your passphrase, not your TouchID. That’s why you need to enter your password every time you reboot & can’t TouchID unlock until you do. If you reset your phone, the cops can hold it against your thumb all day long, and it won’t do them any good.
For an in depth discussion of how the crypto in iOS is implemented, see:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/busi...
I think you meant to say:
But it isn't linear, it is exponential...
FOR GOD'S SAKE.
I know you guys hate Apple, and that's fine. But do try to use your brain a little bit. Do you honestly believe that the flash storage is encrypted with a 4-digit numeric key? Of course it isn't, it's encrypted with a 256-bit AES key that's generated using a per-device hardware key and the passcode (which can be much longer than a 4-digit pin if you can be bothered to type it in every time you use the phone). If you pull the hardware out of the phone, then this is the key you're going to be cracking.
Good luck with that.