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Judge Tells Apple To Help FBI Access San Bernardino Shooters' iPhone (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: After a couple shot 14 people in San Bernardino, CA before being killed themselves on December 2nd, the authorities recovered a locked iPhone. Since then, the FBI has complained it is unable to break the device's encryption, in a case that it has implied supports its desire for tech companies to make sure it can always have a way in. Today the Associated Press reports that a US magistrate judge has directed Apple to help the FBI find a way in. According to NBC News, the model in question is an iPhone 5c, but Apple has said that at least as of iOS 8 it does not have a way to bypass the passcode on a locked phone.
"Judge orders arsonist to unburn-down house"
Good luck with that.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was nothing more than a joint PR stunt to mislead people into assuming privacy on their cellphone so they wouldn't be afraid to use it for sensitive information. Government has nothing to win by disclosing they have a backdoor, neither does the cellphone manufacturer. Even thinking lo-fi decryption, how long must the passcode be before brute-forcing gets more inconvenient for the government than for the user?
to revive the dead people.
Unlock code: 072 (Virgins)
All you gotta do is put the password here and it opens right up. What's that? You don't know the password? Neither do we.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Is it contempt of court to refuse to try and do something that one already knows they cannot possibly do?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It stands to reason that the purpose of trying to decrypt the phone after the event, and after the death of the perpetrators, is to see if there might be any information that might implicate other individuals as accomplices or sympathizers, so that those individuals can be investigated. But if it is not possible for Apple to decrypt the phone, then other avenues of investigation will need to be considered.
Of course, mathematics being what it is, and lawyers and judges being who they are, it is not the least bit surprising that the latter should be ignorant of the former. It's a unique form of hubris to think that one can somehow circumvent a secure cryptographic system by the mere force of law, as if jurisprudence supersedes mathematical truth.
Or you know the FBI can look through all the phone records and use their other sources of information. These people had twitter, they know that, they can also easily find their email accounts.
It's the FBI being whiney.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You mistake an iPhone's unlock code with the iPhone's encryption key. the iPhones do typically use a 4-6 digit pin as an unlock code. The user also has the ability to create a full alphanumeric password for the unlock code as well. However, that is simply the code that's used to unlock the actual full encryption key that is stored within dedicated crypto hardware. Apple uses a dedicated chip to store and process the encryption. They call this the Secure Enclave. The secure enclave stores a full 256-bit AES encryption key.
Within the secure enclave itself, you have the device's Unique ID (UID) . The only place this information is stored is within the secure enclave. It can't be queried or accessed from any other part of the device or OS. Within the phone's processor you also have the device's Group ID (GID). Both of these numbers combine to create 1/2 of the encryption key. These are numbers that are burned into the silicon, aren't accessible outside of the chips themselves, and aren't recorded anywhere once they are burned into the silicon. Apple doesn't keep records of these numbers. Since these two different pieces of hardware combine together to make 1/2 of the encryption key, you can't separate the secure enclave from it's paired processor.
The second half of the encryption key is generated using a random number generator chip. It creates entropy using the various sensors on the iPhone itself during boot (microphone, accelerometer, camera, etc.) This part of the key is stored within the Secure Enclave as well, where it resides and doesn't leave. This storage is tamper resistant and can't be accessed outside of the encryption system. Even if the UID and GID components of the encryption key are compromised on Apple's end, it still wouldn't be possible to decrypt an iPhone since that's only 1/2 of the key.
The secure enclave is part of an overall hardware based encryption system that completely encrypts all of the user storage. It will only decrypt content if provided with the unlock code. The unlock code itself is entangled with the device's UDID so that all attempts to decrypt the storage must be done on the device itself. You must have all 3 pieces present: The specific secure enclave, the specific processor of the iphone, and the flash memory that you are trying to decrypt. Basically, you can't pull the device apart to attack an individual piece of the encryption or get around parts of the encryption storage process. You can't run the decryption or brute forcing of the unlock code in an emulator. It requires that the actual hardware components are present and can only be done on the specific device itself.
The secure enclave also has hardware enforced time-delays and key-destruction. You can set the phone to wipe the encryption key (and all the data contained on the phone) after 10 failed attempts. If you have the data-wipe turned on, then the secure enclave will nuke the key that it stores after 10 failed attempts, effectively erasing all the data on the device. Whether the device-wipe feature is turned on or not, the secure enclave still has a hardware-enforced delay between attempts at entering the code: Attempts 1-4 have no delay, Attempt 5 has a delay of 1 minute. Attempt 6 has a delay of 5 minutes. Attempts 7 and 8 have a delay of 15 minutes. And attempts 9 or more have a delay of 1 hour. This delay is enforced by the secure enclave and can not be bypassed, even if you completely replace the operating system of the phone itself. If you have a 6-digit pin code, it will take, on average, nearly 6 years to brute-force the code. 4-digit pin will take almost a year. if you have an alpha-numeric password the amount of time required could extend beyond the heat-death of the universe. Key destruction is turned on by default.
Even if you pull the flash storage out of the device, image it, and attempt to get around key destruction that way it won't be successful. The key isn't stored in the flash itself, it's only stored within the secure enclave itself which you can't remove the stora
The problem is that cryptography is mathematics and doesn't know the difference between criminals and innocent people.
It also doesn't know the difference between law enforcement requests to unlock the phone and criminal requests.
If they can get into a criminal's phone, they can get into anybody's phone. If they can get into anybody's phone, any criminal who gets the key can get into anybody's phone. As to "how likely is it for the criminals to get the keys?"... well, pretty much every system (FBI, DHS, Apple, etc) that could theoretically hold the keys has been breached at some point. Holding that capability also makes a huge target. So "Very Likely", even to the point that when things were previously unlockable, hackers were doing so already.
Thus it comes down to "Do you want to allow criminals to access your iPhone so that law enforcement can also access a criminal's iPhone?" at that level. And in the event that a smart criminal had an indication that Apple could defeat the encryption and lockout, they'd just store the important data in a place that no company controlled or had access to.
@Whee
No problem. 0000. Nope. 0001. Nope. 0002. Nope...
0009. Too many invalid password attempts. Full disk encryption key has been erased. Initiating factory reset of device...
> Except for the Criminal Rights crowd
You mean like the Son's of Liberty? THAT "criminal rights" crowd.
You're such an ignorant moron.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Haha well... have you seen any APK spam lately?
Just so that the debate here is a little more well-informed:
The government is not asking that Apple give out the user's password, or decrypt the phone, both of which they cannot just do (i.e. are incapable of performing). The request is that Apple produce a piece of iOS software or boot image (as I understand it), that would:
1) Disable the auto-erase feature
2) Allow the FBI to brute force submit password guesses to the phone, and
3) Disable or reduce the increasing-delay-between-guesses feature of the passcode lock.
I would be curious to know whether for this iPhone 5c (with iOS 9) this is even possible for Apple to do.
You can see why Apple wanted to get very far away from the business of being in a position to be asked constantly by law enforcement to help decrypt its phones, just for the sheer volume of requests that will be coming if they do....
The right to encryption and by extension privacy is more important than any one crime. The State has to accept its limitations, not wail and moan about how its 'not fair' they cant have absolute control over humans. Some things are beyond government's reach, accept it.
Good-bye
Apple devices from the iPhone 5s and onward use a "Secure Enclave" which is basically tamper-proof hardware key management.
This phone in question is the 5c, so Apple might actually be able to attack it. Unfortunately, this will make the judge think any iPhone can be attacked by Apple.
Although, I'm really not clear under what authority the Judge believes he has the power to compel Apple to do all this work against their business interests. It used to be they'd have to threaten, in secret, to put the CEO in prison to get this kind of cooperation. Now a judge just commands it? #ussa
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That isn't correct, according to the white paper:
"The backup set is stored in the user’s iCloud account and consists of a copy of the user’s files, and the iCloud Backup keybag. The iCloud Backup keybag is protected by a random key, which is also stored with the backup set. (The user’s iCloud password is not utilized for encryption so that changing the iCloud password won’t invalidate existing backups.)
While the user’s keychain database is backed up to iCloud, it remains protected by a UID-tangled key. This allows the keychain to be restored only to the same device from which it originated, and it means no one else, including Apple, can read the user’s keychain items.
On restore, the backed-up files, iCloud Backup keybag, and the key for the keybag are retrieved from the user’s iCloud account. The iCloud Backup keybag is decrypted using its key, then the per-file keys in the keybag are used to decrypt the files in the backup set, which are written as new files to the file system, thus re-encrypting them as per their Data Protection class."
The relevant sections begin at page 38, in which the paper discusses iCloud, Apple ID, and general Internet Services security. Your misunderstanding stems from the mistaken belief that you can just "restore" the iCloud backup of your phone to a new device. But to do this, you need access to the user's Apple ID password. If two-step verification is turned on, Apple definitely has no way to circumvent this.
After reading Apple's iOS Security Guide white paper, it is doubtful that Apple can write any kind of software to load onto the device to permit any of those options. This is because once the device is locked, it will not install any updates to the operating system. The boot firmware is already installed and automatically runs when the device is turned on. Updating the operating system requires the device password. These functions are cryptographically secured. See the section "Keybags," subsection "Escrow Keybag" in the paper. The auto-erase and time delay features are enforced by the Secure Enclave in hardware, and cannot be circumvented.
If the iPhone 5c had Touch ID this wouldn't be a problem, they could just use the persons finger to unlock the device. This illustrates why Touch ID is a bad idea if you care about your privacy. Since we only have ten fingers and the auto erase doesn't activate until after 10 failed attempts, the only thing needed to get into a Touch ID phone is a court order. The Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination only applies to the contents of your mind, it's established precedent that it doesn't apply to your body (i.g. blood, DNA, finger prints, etc.) or property.