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John McAfee Offers To Decrypt San Bernardino iPhone For the FBI and Save America (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Wondering what John McAfee is up to these days? It's not sniffing bath salts nor is he fleeing foreign countries as a person of interest in a murder investigation and faking heart attacks (been there, done all that) ; instead, he's on a mission to save America. How so? By cracking the code on the San Bernardino iPhone that's causing such a ruckus. McAfee didn't just criticize the FBI; instead he offered a potential solution. Let him and his team of hackers break into the iPhone without any help from Apple. "With all due respect to Tim Cook and Apple, I work with a team of the best hackers on the planet. These hackers attend Defcon in Las Vegas, and they are legends in their local hacking groups, such as HackMiami. They are all prodigies, with talents that defy normal human comprehension," McAfee said. Eccentric rant aside, McAfee's offer is simple - give him three weeks and he will, "free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone" with his team of hackers. He'll do it using mostly social engineering.
Unless he believes Apple has the ability to decrypt the device and plans on socially engineering them.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
The FBI is not asking Apple to decrypt it. They're asking Apple to load a new firmware on it that removes the limit and delay on the number of tries before the device wipes itself so they can brute-force it. They've even told Apple that they can do it in-house so there's no chance the method will be used on anyone else's phone.
Apple doesn't want to admit that they can flash new firmware to the locked device even though everyone knows they can.
You dont get it. This is the FBI's 'Rosa Parks' moment. They are using an incendiary case to force the issue that unbreakable encryption should not be allowed in casual use. They are trying to force the idea that it should be illegal to make an unbreakable lock and they are using this case to ram it home. They dont really give a shit about the data in this case, they want to cow the tech sector into not making their jobs harder.
Good-bye
Apple doesn't want to admit that they can flash new firmware to the locked device even though everyone knows they can.
According to one legal analyst, the FBI and NSA already have this capability. What the government is looking for in this court case is a legal precedent to force companies to do this for them and make the data recovery admissible in court.
That's it in a nutshell.
You are welcome on my lawn.
McAfee's software, which comes loaded by default on millions of PCs, has been instrumental in making OS X more popular.
Close. I don't think he would wipe the phone, that would make too much trouble even for a man with MacAfee's history.
No, he's shedding a light on how absurd the FBI's story on this item is. "Oh my goodness, there's a phone connected to this tragedy and we don't know what the 109 messages say! Even though we know who did it, we know that the messages went to Africa, we know the times and the recipient(s), we have all the meta-data. Oh, and we have the full resources of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD, the Five Eyes, and we've data-mined the entire planet. Yet John MacAfee can break into this phone with a tiny group of volunteer hackers and we just can't figure that out at all."
The only thing the FBI is trying to do here is to cynically use a tragedy to set official, legal precedent. They are attempting to bully the phone makers to give them anything they want, any time they want it. This has nothing to do with the San Bernardino shooting beyond winning sympathy and support for the spying goals of the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover would be proud. Also Niccolo Machiavelli. We've been giving the Three Letter Agencies anything they want since 9/11 and they've grown fat and entitled on the spoils.
If your like me and had no idea wtf this article is talking about, apparently it was used in an american mass shooting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Funny they are so concerned with gaining access to this stupid phone when the real weapons used to commit the crime are sold almost everywhere in america.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Read more history. I dont think the Jews in Germany ever imagined things would ever end up where they did either. Thats not hyperbole or Godwin. History EXPLICITLY AND WITHOUT QUESTION teaches us that these powers can and WILL be abused to hurt and literally enslave people. IF they can do it to 'criminals' they can do it to anyone. Part of you earning and investing is BEING A GODDAMN CITIZEN. You dont get to completely ignore your civic duty. Where did you get that idea that your only function is to be a selfish prick and give nothing back? Paying taxes=!being a citizen or fulfilling your civic duties. Get involved and you will see precisely why people scram about this shit. Did you parents teach you nothing of the sacrifices people made to get us here? Freedom isnt free, it requires an involved and educated citizenry. Be part of that or shut the fuck up. Dont let your apathy strip others of their creator granted rights.,
Good-bye
I've been an Apple certified tech for a decade, and I currently support close to 200 iPads, among many other Apple products. No one can "force an update" on a locked iDevice, without physically tampering with the electronics. Even if they were to do that, and created custom firmware and sign it (which they could, since they have the PK) and upload that and run it. But the security enclave is protecting the key and the firmware is helpless to either extend the password guesses or forceably recover the key, so the entire point is moot. Again you get back to needing to do much more sophisticated hardware hacking, to beat the SE, which was specifically designed to preven this sort of attack. Apple, being the creators of the SE, would probably have the best shot at it, but it's not an easy nut to crack.
(I personally think the FBI already has the information and is just doing some theatrics to try to keep the bad actors convinced that they can't get at data on an iPhone, so they will continue to use it and give the FBI access in the rare cases there are no other alternatives and the need is dire)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Or so they say. They've also said they couldn't break in to phones with the wipe feature at all, but that's very, very clearly not true.
I think you are conflating what is probable with time, research, and resources, with what they have in hand today. Anyone knowledgable about device security would acknowledge that there are flaws that would allow hacking into the phone, but that doesn't mean Apple has them available today to access this device. So it is NOT at all evident that when Apple "said they couldn't break in to phones with the wipe feature" that such statements were "very, very clearly not true." Note I am not saying they may not have the ability, just that your reasoning is flawed. And regarding the "Or so they say", that is just standard conspiracist speak for I choose to believe otherwise even though I have no proof to support it, so there.