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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.
Thus far it seems Apple is not cooperating.
and... Enabling a party to defeat all the security measures that implement an encryption method is distinguishable from breaking the encryption, how?
They aren't being asked to compromise security so that the government* can get the data,
they're just being asked to compromise security so that the government* can get the data.
*and totally just the government, no way it would be abused by others
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!
You don't think that the second it's been done, that the government won't attempt to reverse engineer the "firmware update" thus enabling them to do it to anyone? Regardless of whether or not it is POSSIBLE to reverse engineer it, the government will try to.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Then it's just down to hoping they were dumb enough to use a 4 digit pin.
This is why you should have a secure password you can't rely on a password rate/try limit to protect you.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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...
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.
I'm glad you're not the only one judging this then, because I have a problem with this. It would essentially mean that security could be defeated, which means it could be done by corrupt officials or corrupt Apple employees.
Sorry, maybe if Feds wanted info from the San Bernardino "terrorists" they shouldn't have shot them up and arrested them instead for questioning later using the guaranteed $5 exploit: https://xkcd.com/538/
I guess when you just gun down everyone you might lose key data!
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Apple hasn't said they couldn't cooperate, they said that they wouldn't. It seems likely there is at least something they could do if they were willing to cooperate.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The problem is this is how the slippery slope is entered. Today it's a terrorist's phone, tomorrow a drug dealer's, the day after that, a shoplifter's. The day after that, arrested protestors' phones. The day after that, anyone who is arrested for any reason gets their phone swept. And so on. The Supreme Court has already said that a locked phone is protected under the 4th amendment. Just exactly where does the line get drawn on who that amendment no longer applies to?
The problem with that is the tool thats been created can then open every phone of a generation and is been seen as been in gov hands via an open court.
Once a federal gov gets that back door ready OS, so do states, cities, their workers, contractors, other nations that work with the USA.
Former staff, ex staff, the private sector, contractors start walking with the methods and skills to anyone with cash for the OS backdoor.
Once a brand gets to be seen as spy friendly in open court its hard to pull back from the optics as every phone after that will be seen as gov ready as designed and sold.
Its not just one phone, its a method for a generation of phones. If that becomes legal and public, people of interest change their habits and the brand is seen as spy friendly. Interesting people dont have to use a phones. Govs now have signals intelligence as a main tool as they now lack human informants and skilled undercover teams. All the new funding went to signals intelligence that "always" worked as big brands always helped.
The UK had the right idea over decades, never comment, never go to court, never have anything in the press. The public was none the wiser and keeps on trusting cell networks tame encryption, buying from big brands, talking and networking. Collect it all was easy for the UK and the wider legal system never worked out how a case really started.
Now the US is undoing decades of global device access in months in public with requests for OS and product wide backdoors.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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)
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
If it were "possible" why wouldn't they simply reverse engineer the current firmware and remove the restrictions themselves.
As ordered, it would only affect the particular phone in question. Just create a new version of the OS that disables the delays and lock-out ONLY IF the hardware serial number is ABC123. They then sign the compromised binary their cryptographic key* and update the phone** in question. Put it on another phone, the interlocks still work normally. FBI tries to change the hard-coded serial number and the signature no longer matches, so it won't run. Voila, one particular phone is effectively unlocked without compromising security on anything else.
Of course the broader implications are that Apple would then be required to either create a custom OS image for every phone the FBI wants unlocked, or a "master key" edition that would work on any phone (and absolutely be abused). Honestly you could probably make a good argument that the former was okay so long as the FBI has to cover the costs.
* I'm assuming the iPhone is "Tivoized" so that it will only run signed OS images. Otherwise this entire issue is just evidence that the FBI is lazy, incompetent, or intentionally bolstering a false sense of security on the iPhone.
** I'm also assuming it's possible to update the OS without the inputting the unknown PIN. But offhand I can't think of any straightforward way to prevent that - the decrypting software needs to be accessible in order to decrypt the user files, and if accessible, it's almost certainly modifiable.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You don't think that the second it's been done, that the government won't attempt to reverse engineer the "firmware update" thus enabling them to do it to anyone? Regardless of whether or not it is POSSIBLE to reverse engineer it, the government will try to.
You would fairly be within the realm of probable cause if you suspected your government's information gathering acronyms were breakers of rules.
Don't you think Apple is trying to take the high road and regain some integrity on the international market? Many US corporations, especially tech firms, have suffered from their government's exploits.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
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
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?
Apple actually is capable of cooperating (in this particular case), since the relevant device is an iPhone 5c (i.e. three generations old), which pre-dates the protections provided by TouchID and the Secure Enclave. Specifically, because the iPhone 5c and earlier devices lack the Secure Enclave, it means that the OS itself is what's responsible for wiping the device after too many failed attempts and for enforcing the delay between login attempts that limits the effectiveness of brute force attacks. As such, replacing the OS installed on the device with a compromised version that has those countermeasures stripped allows the FBI to engage in brute force attacks against the user's passcode.
Not so in later devices, where the Secure Enclave (which is essentially a separate computer in the iPhone with its own, separate OS and its own, separate memory) manages those features and stores the encryption keys, meaning that even if you have a compromised update for iOS, the Secure Enclave will still deny repeated attempts at logging in, along with destroying the keys after a set number of failed attempts.
The FBI is asking Apple to create a custom version of iOS (which some security experts have taken to calling "FBiOS") that is intentionally and knowingly compromised. The reason they need Apple to do it is because Apple holds the keys used to sign iOS updates. So while Apple can't decrypt the iPhone directly, they are the only ones who can create a version of iOS that allows the FBI to engage in a brute force attack against the user's passcode, which can, in turn, be used to decrypt the device.
All of which is to say, yes, Apple IS taking a stand against the FBI. Were it a later device, you might be right (though rumor in the tech press today seems to indicate that Apple is aware of a similar sort of attack which may be possible against the Secure Enclave), but this issue needs to be a line in the sand, because if the FBI can do this the implications are dire. It would mean that there's nothing stopping them from compelling private software companies to create malware versions of their software that can be used to open backdoors that otherwise wouldn't have existed. And the same legal logic that is being applied here by the FBI (i.e. the use of the All Writs Act of 1789) could be applied just as easily to compel Apple to knowingly compromise the Secure Enclave in new devices, thus creating backdoors where otherwise one would not exist. It's a broad overreach of a centuries-old law, and it needs to be stopped here and now.
Obviously their are mathematical reasons why breaking strong encryption is hard, but security is only as strong as its weakest link which in the case of an iPhone is the 4 digit pin code. Modifying the OS to allow brute forcing of the pin code isn't a mathematical impossibility.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I'll concede I was mistaken about the without a warrant portion, but I still stand by the slippery slope that will be exacerbated by cops wanting expedience. For example, when we first heard about Stingrays various law enforcement said they were only supposed to be used with a warrant. How did that go?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150823/23323932038/police-regularly-use-stingrays-without-warrant-to-find-petty-criminals-then-try-to-hide-that-fact.shtml
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/nypd-used-stingrays-over-1000-times-without-warrants-since-2008/
http://epic.org/foia/fbi/stingray/
Not very well.
Well wipe the phone first of course!