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Apple Tells US Judge It's 'Impossible' To Break Through Locks On New iPhones (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple told a U.S. judge that accessing data stored on a locked iPhone would be "impossible" with devices using its latest operating system, but the company has the "technical ability" to help law enforcement unlock older phones. Apple's position was laid out in a brief filed late Monday, after a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York, sought its input as he weighed a U.S. Justice Department request to force the company to help authorities access a seized iPhone during an investigation. In court papers, Apple said that for the 90 percent of its devices running iOS 8 or higher, granting the Justice Department's request "would be impossible to perform" after it strengthened encryption methods.
1) If the phone hadn't been seized it would have been trivial for Apple to get the password since it controls the software running on the phone remotely.
2) Why they want to avoid compelling the owner to unlock the phone is not stated. Is he likely to challenge the demand on legal grounds as an illegal search? Isn't that his right? Why the attempt at a reach-around here?
Really think of Carrier IQ, think of its ability to capture everything you do from key presses to app usage to files, to log everything. That is still present on every handset. Samsung in particular absolutely load their phones with spyware that can be run simply from the GSM connection remotely. Apple will have exactly the same. Because behind the scenes Apple was just another company that signed up to PRISM, and so their handsets will be exactly the same, even if they can't reveal that to a Judge.
Made in USA = backdoored, Snowden showed us that.
And for convenience sake it only affects OLDER devices. Seriously, Troll? OS is software, Apple could patch it to a similar level of encryption, or better for the stock price - advise you to upgrade the hardware.
There is a military axiom about not defending indefensible positions. What would you have Apple do? Patch ancient 2nd and 3rd gen iPhones. Should Microsoft still be patching Windows 2000? Should Fedora still be patching FD12? And don't tell me that old phones being obsoleted because they are unable to run a new OS is some sinister plan by Apple to force users to buy new phones. I have a small pile of old Android phones and tablets that were orphaned (as in: Your device is incompatible with this version of Android) long before the end of their useful life because they could not handle the bloat of the new Android OS. Operating systems get upgraded, hardware becomes obsolete and some people do not bother to upgrade and that is a platform independent fact so if you want to rag on Apple try finding something better to complain about.
It's a straight up application of Schneier's Law:
-- Bruce Schneier
Someone might be able to break it, but if they can I doubt they'd talk about it.
Log in or piss off.
I see this as a marked strengthening of Apple's platform. If truly not even Apple can unlock or decrypt the phones, then that's a huge benefit to using the platform.
Of course this reminds one of TFA from last week, where it was claimed that the NSA had made some sort of computing breakthrough and could decrypt even standards that are thought to be secure today.