Slashdot Mirror
Edward Snowden Calls For Google To Side With Apple On Encryption Debate (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader writes: Edward Snowden, the most famous whistle blower in the world, is calling for Google to side with Apple and against the FBI in the "most important tech case in a decade." On Tuesday, the FBI asked Apple to help it crack the password on an iPhone belonging to a shooter in the high profile San Bernardino case. Apple CEO Tim Cook quickly responded with a public letter denying the request, calling it "an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers." Google creates Android, the most-used mobile operating system for smartphones in the world. Google has been nowhere near as firm as Apple about its stance on un-compromised encryption - Android is famously an open sourced platform that anyone can modify. Snowden issued his message in a tweet.
Will never happen. Cooperating with the the government/FBI just comes natural to giant corporations like Apple/Google. Not cooperating means that the only entity more powerful than themselves (the government) is now angry at them. Cooperating means they might get special favors and special treatment in the future.
I don't have a problem with the specific thing that Apple is being asked to do. They aren't being asked to break the encryption they are being asked to change the firmware on the device to one that doesn't have an artificial throttle on the number of brute force attempts per second; and to disable the wipe command that is engaged with 10 wrong guesses.
You think it sucks having a government mandated backdoor in your phone? Just wait until we are all forced into self-driven cars by insurance costs for non-self-driven cars...which feature government mandated backdoors/pullover/override functionality. I for one can't wait for some teenager to hack my car with me in via some firmware hole that the FBI strong-armed Google into putting in.
My question is a side one. Apple has described that for every secure enclave in its iPhones (region of the core processing chips), they inscribe a unique ID -- completely unknown and irretrievable by Apple or its suppliers -- that serves as a private key during encryption operations. This way you cannot unlock an iPhone's contents without the correct passphrase/passkey and the phone's unique ID in your possession.
How does a chip manufacturer inscribe a unique code into every chip? As I understand it, chips are produced by successive masks (film) with the circuit pattern layered on each mask.
Is one of the masks getting printed with the unique set of codes? Are the masks printed and changed with every wafer, after the unique codes are changed and discarded? Seems like a very intense way of having to put a unique code on each chip.
Or, if you remember film cameras from like the 80s/90s, where they could burn a date into the corner of the negative, do IC making masks have the ability to dynamically burn a changing code during exposure of the wafer??
Thanks for any knowledge you can offer on this point!
That is the case (USA) of the government today. You either COMPLY with what WE tell you to do, or we will sick the: IRS, FBI,CIA, NSA, etc on you. Look how they got MS to play the game in the 90's? They went after MS for their integration of IE, "locking out" other browsers like netscape. I seriously don't think that was the reason. Back then, MS had ZERO lobbyist in DC. Congress LIVES off lobbyist. With MS not lobbying, the "fat cats" on K street, & politicians weren't getting their palms greased. Now, MS has a HUGE presence in DC, tossing money around to get their way.
Ok, maybe this will be overstating it a bit for effect, but here goes:
In a sense, Google as an organization is a bit more conflicted in its mission, because its mission is/was to make the world's information free and available. Along the way it came up with services that customers liked, and they found that customers also benefitted from not being hacked, so they have some good security along with those services. But from the start it's mission wasn't the front line of being a secure service.
Apple is different. It designs and puts devices in people's hands which they come to regard as personal, inviolable, and private modes of communicating, and keeping information to themselves.
Merely from a practical view, I would say that Google should support Apple, just because in the future, if this case falls, they may find themselves in the same position of having to help the government over and over with increasingly mandatory tasks...
Couldn't the chip just have an NVRAM/Flash section?
Get out of bed, Ed! Back to McDonaldski's for you!
"Google has been nowhere near as firm as Apple about its stance on un-compromised encryption - Android is famously an open sourced platform that anyone can modify. "
The way that sentence has been structured, there is an implicit suggestion that an open-sourced platform implies weak encryption.
What would you rather have? Security through obscurity?
I am very surprised that Apple have taken a stance like this. I expected all companies to simply "bow down" to a governments requests and threats and expected all my phone data to visible by almost any government; regardless of how much I personally oppose it. Im happy I have an iphone now.
The fact is that open source is much more secure, simply for the fact that hiding things makes it easier to incorporate known bugs as well as more difficult to find them because there are less people reading the code.
Now that goes against encryption, as the point of encryption is simply to hide things... however we are talking about a method to allow privacy and security and the road which the message takes (the protocol and endpoints) must be open to be secure.
This talk explains it all quite well - https://archive.org/download/3...
Really, listen to it you'll probably learn something novel if you can think the whole way through it.
I dont know how Apple does it on its chips but other companies have done it via one-time-programmable fuses.
I'm not certain about Apple but the way similar tech does this is to have read/write nvram but then burn an addressable fuse on the write line so it cannot ever be written again.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The government is not going to pay the true cost of this operation. Suppose the developer ordered to create this code quits instead, as indeed he must do, to protect his personal integrity. Yes developers can be bought on the market but it takes months to years to bring a developer up to speed on a particular piece of software. This can costs millions. I doubt the government will pay the true cost for this.
This will destroy the trust enjoyed by apple and its OS. The value of this asset can not be estimated. "He who robs my purse steals trash." The government does not intend to pay for this.
By Citizens United, corporations have rights. Therefore anything they do to Apple they can do to you. The government will be able to destroy the honor of any individual with integrity, with a simple court order, turning her into a government fink.
He's one of my better twitter follows
I have long been one of those to poke fun at Apple fanbois and their walled garden. But Tim Cook's ethical stance is making me seriously consider my next phone choice.
Public/government information should be free, but what's mine should stay mine.
Come on Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Cisco, Twitter, Yahoo, Motorola - be Spartacus! Collectively you can face down the Leviathan!
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'd tell the USG where to shove it, and move the whole company to Barbados or Switzerland or something.
There are a couple of options. One would flash or eeprom with a one-time programmable fuse. You can use an ASIC with a fuse. Google for more options.
That makes me sad for you.
I don't use twitter very often, but his tweets are very interesting
I don't know the specifics on how this works in this case but I know enough about electronics that I can speculate.
One means to have a write once memory is with the use of "fuses", the fuse is a small etched wire that with enough current will open like a fuse. This would be done with a write at a voltage much higher than that normally used for a read. I would further suspect that to prevent someone from changing the written value the write function itself would have a fuse, blow that fuse and the chip is incapable of taking on a new value.
So, each chip off the line would have an identical mask. The chip would be tested for function, the crypto key written, tested that the key was written correctly, then the write fuse blown, tested again, and if it passes on all steps it would be shipped for use in a device.
Speculating further the pins to write the crypto key might only be exposed before it is packaged. Probes would be placed on the chip before it is packaged to write a crypto key. The chip verified, and if it passes it would be packaged and used in a device.
What those crypto key values might be depends on the crypto system used. It might just be a sequential number, like a serial number. It might be randomly generated, to prevent attack by somehow obtaining the serial number. It might be created by some crypto algorithm, such as being a large prime number or something.
I do not know of any technology that allows for on the fly changes to the mask used to burn the chips. Trying to retrieve the written value would require destructive evaluation of the chip. This process would seem to be quite expensive and unreliable. As the chip would be destroyed an identical chip would have to be made to recover the data that this chip was used to encrypt.
Depending on the algorithm is it possible the data retrieved could appear as valid but incorrect. What that means is that the person may have encrypted the King James Bible but what came out from the decryption with the wrong key was Moby Dick. With the original chip destroyed from attempting to read the crypto key its not like you can go back and try to read it again.
It is also possible that I have no idea of what I'm talking about.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Just to reiterate a point - the phone in question is an iPhone 5C which doesn't have a secure enclave. A7 SoCs and above with the secure enclave do all the PIN verification in hardware, enforcing the timeouts and the 10 incorrect guess wipes. But since the iPhone 5C doesn't have this, it's a software check that does it. (However, it doesn't mean Apple can just load on a new firmware update to a locked phone - doing so could wipe the phone as well).
So it is theoretically possible to write code that allows unlimited guesses. Whether or not you can load it on a phone is another question altogether (and I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't without wiping the phone).
As for the SoC part - no, they don't pattern the masks with the ID. What happens is in practically every SoC in existence, there is a bit of memory that is one-time programmable. Effectively, it's an array of fuses (we call them fuses, but in reality, they're antifuses). You can blow the fuses which often sets various configuration options (e.g., blow one fuse, and the JTAG interface is disabled, blow another fuse, and you disable some block, or half the cache or whatever). You can also blow fuses that have special properties - e.g., a memory area that cannot be read by software, but hardware can access it. This is often done by initial programming software - you program in a serial number and the software blows the right fuses for that serial number. That software can also generate the hardware keys for encryption - by generating a random key using the key generator block (usually a random number generator) of the cryptographic engine, then using that to blow the key fuses. If the software doesn't report the key to the manufacturing hardware, then no one knows the key, not even Apple.
OTP fuses can be blown during the hardware test phase of chip production as well. Special pads on the die that aren't brought out of the package can be used to access and blow the OTP fuses. This is typically done for the unique identifier portion
For small lots, it's often easier to do it in software during production - customers will buy chips with areas of the OTP unblown to which they can use vendor-provided tools to blow them. Larger runs can be blown at the factory.
The OTP array is not strictly a 2D array of fuses - there's metadata like a valid bit (the row of memory is programmed - used by boot firmware to determine if it needs to engage the encryption unit), a lock bit (to prevent bits from being written - stuff like serial numbers and unique IDs will have the lock bit blown to prevent people from blowing fuses in that row and changing the ID), the bits themselves and special wiring that connects each bit with the appropriate piece of hardware.
Snowden isn't a whistleblower, he's a thief and a traitor. Whistleblowers don't run to China and Russia, two actual tyrannical countries.
I believe that this is possible. Further, before you mount the die, during the automated testing phase you could easily allow the test unit to make connections to the die in order to allow programming of the nonvolatile areas, then "blow the fuses" by application of specific voltages/currents so the device cannot be modified using the same process ever again. If you use a random enough data source for setting the key, it will be logically impossible to do anything but brute force the key.
Of course, it is all academic. If you have access to the physical device, it should be possible, though likely very difficult, to determine what you need to know to access the data on the phone, even without the pin. At the very least, one should be able to attach to the device, dump the encrypted content, duplicate it onto a emulated device and brute force the pin without having to worry about busting the original phone. Apple could do this if they wanted but it's going to take internal knowledge of the device's design and the software that runs it. I don't see this being dangerous to privacy as it's really just an attack that is going to require extended physical access to the phone by an army of people who are equipped with the necessary hardware, software and tools along with the necessary technical data. Surely Apple can do this for ONE phone.
My guess here is that if the FBI really wants to do this, they can easily force Apple to release the necessary technical data with appropriate NDA's and hire it done. My guess is they don't want it that badly but they will do what they can to hold Apple's feet to the fire by asking the judge for sanctions given his orders are not being followed. Apple may eventually find themselves in some seriously uncomfortable situations if they truly mean to press this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1. I know first-hand that he is both uninformed and a little bitch (perhaps slightly more informed now that he has nothing to do with his life but sit in Russia.)
2. That makes me sad for you. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of well-informed security, foreign policy, and individual liberty minds on Twitter. Snowden is a little bitch.
The oldest technique is to just burn some data into flash before soldering the chip onto the board. A more hardcore approach is to put a noise-sampling hardware generator to generate the keys on-chip, store keys in volatile memory with power traces on the top layer to defeat micro-probe attacks (you would have to scrape away the power connections get to the memory cells) and clock-limiting circuits to defeat overclocking attacks, etc. Dallas Semiconductor (now Maxim) has been making chips like this since the 90's, so you can put one in your homebrew secure system. https://www.maximintegrated.co...
I feel sad for you that you don't realize the contributions he's made to privacy rights. Interesting coming from an AC too
the challenge for providers is not how to comply with the law, but how to maintain customer trust while removing themselves from the burdensomme and dangerous position of having to be subject to it in the first place.
apples enclave is...as loathe as i am to admit it as a non-fanboy....genius. The system allows them to protect users and in doing so protect their brand. At the same time, it thwarts legislative intervention because apple has taken such a hands-off approach to the way ios does pki.
sadly though google doesnt have to stand with them on this. in fact it may benefit them not to speak out at all, as this would call attention to their own PKI system and its similar nature: absolve the manufacturer from the legal process entirely.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I respect Apple's stance although I have no love for their business practices.
To me this just says that they have crunched numbers and found this to be the fiscally sound stance to take. They are the richest company - I hope there is a reason beyond faux status symbols and "ooooh shiny".
All of those companies will lobby whatever they think is best for their bottom line even if they're in opposition to everything else - even themselves.
I'm sure Cisco would love to sell you network encryption options while also selling the equipment to allow mass collection of that encrypted data for attempted cracking. Why sell weapons to only one side?
The Apple docs use the word "fused" so I think they're using the same technique as PROM circuits, except they're not directly readable. Essentially every bit is wired to a circuit breaker, you start with all 1s and intentionally trip some to burn in a fixed patterns of zeros and ones the first time you power it up. If they use the on-chip RNG to initialize it it's possible that not even the manufacturing facility knows what value it has encoded, only the chip itself. Looks like a real tin foil hatter designed this system and did it well.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It could be done with efuses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFUSE
The Xbox 360 had a series of efuses that were blown out during software updates that made it possible to disallow previous versions from running. The same technology could easily be used to hard wire a private key into a CPU.
Such a martyr. Now he gets to live in a place where he has no privacy rights. Good move. Smart guy.
Been to Moscow? It's pretty cool, and definitely beats life in prison
I have been thinking about the possibilities of this 'fight'. I suspect the outcome will be 'encryption licences' similar to Gun Licences, except encryption licences will be extremely hard to obtain.
You need to get a licence for a non-backdoored device, otherwise you get a device open to the Gov and anyone who can find the backdoor. Interesting times.
They're too busy eating out of the NSA and FBI's hands.
Didn't say it wasn't cool. Said he has no privacy rights. Maybe they'll pop him with some polonium while he's there. That's the way the Ruskies roll.
Crazy talk.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_read-only_memory
1. Patent the technology
2. Travel to 1955
3. Profit!
Damn right! Exposing private data should be the exclusive domain of traitorous losers!
I think he's concerned about American privacy rights, not Russian
If it can be read, couldn't they create a clone with a new chip? Pardon my ignorance on this.
meep
this will end in congress banning all non-backdoored encryption.
Notice the important words there; operating system, which is software-only; easy to replace or infiltrate. That may not help after the fact but makes it easier to demand breakable security on every phone. Apple provides security hardware and software: Hardware security still exists after the government mandates breakable security inside every operating system.
This isn't an Apple problem, it is the problem of the people who Apple represent the liberties and the freedoms of Americans, and the people of America need to side with Apple before more rights are eroded, fight for your rights people.
> If you have access to the physical device, it should be possible, though likely very difficult, to determine what you need to know to access the data on the phone, even without the pin. At the very least, one should be able to attach to the device, dump the encrypted content, duplicate it onto a emulated device and brute force the pin without having to worry about busting the original phone.
You can't dump the data from the secure enclave and you have to try the PIN against it. The PIN encodes the real key, which never hits memory except in encrypted form, so it can't just be dumped. Half of the key is also paired with the processor, so you can't just attack one piece of it separately.
You can't force a mind. FBI is on their own. If the U.S. government had not been so imbecilic in every way for so long, with ITAR, Stave Jackson Games, Clipper Chip, Phil Zimmerman, etc. then maybe their entire thesis that they are trying to help me wouldn't be so god damn fucking laughable. These people are turning a good country with strong speech freedoms into a security state Putin only wishes he could have. So good luck, FBI. Game on.
I don't see why Apple and the government can't arrive at a mutually acceptable and proportional compromise.
Apple could install an image without wipe limit, run a brute force attack of device and restore original image so government would never be in possession of hack image.
Unless of course there is an ulterior motive like Lava bit fiasco where government forced production of encryption keys that compromised the whole system rather than allow vendor to implement per user data collection capability.
In any event I hope Apple and every other vendor advertising personal device encryption learns something from this experience. Personal device encryption must be able to stand alone on its own merits with no external dependencies or you will be harassed by the courts to provide assistance and nobody will trust the security of your systems.
Paradoxically I'm not so sure this particular lesson is one government prefer vendors or customers learn...
I hope the rest of us learn an important lesson about the age of government mass surveillance of its own people... The age of stingrays, collecting call records, cell site location data and Internet records en masse without a warrant. In an age where any tangible thing could mean private key of any US based CA or software vendor coupled with a gag order.. In an age where the Fourth Amendment is declared null and void (see third party doctrine) due simply to changes in technology.. The lesson is if you want privacy the only avenue to achieve it is via real E2E security without any middleman. The Clouds and googles and facebooks and Microsofts and Apples cannot be made secure no matter what vendors advertise or claim. Even if they actually gave a shit about you and your privacy they must still operate under current US legal regime.
Paradoxically I'm not so sure this particular lesson is one the government or industry prefers individuals and companies (especially foreign ones) learn. It sure as heck is a lesson I hope everyone learns.
Next iPhone release, have the big reveal be instead a large sign at every US carrier and store:
iPhone Not Available In This Country
Please Contact Your Representative in Congress
:insert contact information here:
This next to a live feed of people from other countries buying and enjoying their new iPhones.
Then watch how quickly people who want to get re-elected scramble to let Apple do whatever they want.
I think it's good Apple is standing against this request. It's also a good thing Apple has all that money because they're going to need it to fight this war.
Just the fact that Apple is being asked to DECRYPT a phone tells you it can be done.
Your shit is not secure, and never was on OSX/iOS.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I think he is more concerned with being famous than anything else. Otherwise, he could have followed the procedures laid out in US whistleblower protection law. Then, he wouldn't be in jail or in Russia - but he wouldn't be famous.
Each chip is programmed with random data For the device id. That data is not saved ant where else. They don't know what value got programmed into each devive.
The phone has hardware level encryption, so the random id cannot be read by software, rather you send to the circuit a pin number and data, and it will encrypt them with the random number. Similarly you can send the data back with the pin number for unencrypption.
At no time does any software ever get the number. The only way to get it would be to physically open the chip and somehow scan it at a nanoscopic level. This is extremely hard if not impossible, and/or out has a low success rate due to the damage you do when trying to open the chip and read it.
FBI asking Apple to provide them with a signed OS image which allows unrestricted brute force guesses of the password/pin code on a single phone. This is very different from building a backdoor into encryption so that it can be reversed without knowing the password.
Apple could provide an alternative OS image that checks for part serial numbers on specific phones named in a warrant. FBI would not be able to install that image on another phone, as removing serial check would also invalidate the signature.
I think it's a good compromise, unless one does not believe that law enforcement should be obtain available evidence with a proper warrant. It's different from going out of the way to make evidence available at the expense of law abiding user's security.
1. I know first-hand that he is both uninformed and a little bitch (perhaps slightly more informed now that he has nothing to do with his life but sit in Russia.)
Your just sad because his little bitch is a lot hotter than yours.
If it can be read, couldn't they create a clone with a new chip? Pardon my ignorance on this.
It can't be read. The chip has a few commands, and "read the encryption key" isn't among them.
Do you have ESP?
*You're
Hahahahahahaha (you puny WEB-WALLY - your "filtering script" doesn't work (but my program does))-> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
* That's right - I am LAUGHING @ YOU... fool!
(You're a "web-wally"...)
APK
P.S.=> What's it LIKE being shown for what you are, web-wally? Hmmm?? Hahahahahaha... apk
Or perhaps he did not have faith in the US laws to protect him
See subject Web-Wally from SourceForge & this page http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
* Hahahahahahaha!
(That's right "WebWally" - I am LAUGHING @ U, publicly, right here on /. SHOWING EVERYONE YOUR "WORK"? DOESN'T WORK! HOWEVER, & you as a GREEDY LITTLE WEBMASTER know, MINE DOES, little BOY from "sourceforge" (home of malware))
APK
P.S.=> Puny LITTLE "Web-Wally"... lol!
... apk
See subject: It's NOT POLITE to speak w/ your BIG MOUTH full as you EAT YOUR WORDS http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
* Hahahahahahaha!
(What does EATING YOUR WORDS taste like, web-wally? Like YOUR FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH? Don't worry - just "wash it down" w/ the BITTER TASTE of SELF-defeat!)
APK
P.S.=> You LOSE Web-Wally - you FAIL... get it? Good... apk
See subject & WHAT'S IT TASTE LIKE "EATING YOUR WORDS" web-wally? So much for your script http://slashdot.org/comments.p... - it DOESN'T WORK (but my ware does & GREEDY little webmaster YOU can't stand it).
* Hahahahahaha...
(That's right you effete little BIG MOUTH - you have to EAT YOUR WORDS HERE publicly, as I run roughshod over your PUNY webwally script kiddie scripts, chump...)
APK
P.S.=> You know, of course, that YOU are just MAKING ME have to say THIS, don't you? Ah, but of COURSE you do:
THIS?
This was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" & it always is, vs. INFERIOR WEB-WALLIES like "whipslash" from SourceForge (home of malware)... apk
Nobody has faith in your work that doesn't work bigmouth webwally http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Ooooh, so sorry. We just fat-fingered the update proc and it wiped itself!
(just kidding)
Often the numbers are either a simple serial number incremented by one every time, or have some relation to the manufacturing process like wafer number and X/Y coordinates on said wafer.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Who gives a flying fudgecake what Snowden says. He has no talent except for stealing and running away.
Stop giving this guy air time, you might as well post my opinion as a story.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Why are we even reporting on what he say?
He is a self-proclaimed patriot who chose to spend his late-adolescence working for the US government. In a free country, you're free to choose to stop receiving a pay check if you do not have faith in your employer. However, he chose to continue receiving a US taxpayer-funded pay check from an organization with binding rules. He also chose not to follow those rules in order to seek the attention he desperately craves. One day, he's a mediocre, inexperienced analyst working for the US government, and the next he's an internationally-known somebody who is stuck in a rogue state run by a former intelligence officer.
He's a pathetic little shit who made a bold and illegal move to attempt avoiding a life of mediocrity, but is more of a pawn of international politics than he was in the first place.
Then the FBI forensic analyst can get a microscope, and bridge the fuse, and write whatever the fsck they want.