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John McAfee Offers To Decrypt San Bernardino iPhone For the FBI and Save America (hothardware.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the mcafee-makes-a-comeback dept.

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.

13 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. What's he on, today? by MSG · · Score: 5, Informative

    McAfee is clearly off his rocker. The only person or persons who he could expect to socially engineer his way through are dead.

    1. Re:What's he on, today? by aaron4801 · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's socially engineering the FBI. He'll just waste the 10 attempts, and get the phone wiped. Debate over.

    2. Re:What's he on, today? by Krishnoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

      McAfee is clearly off his rocker.

      ...

      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,

      Hey, if these hackers are the ones that starred in his last video, and he's going to make another one describing how he plans/executed this hack, I'm all for it.

    3. Re:What's he on, today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:What's he on, today? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:What's he on, today? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple devices have an additional "trick" beyond just PBKDF2 - There's a random AES key burned into the CPU, and it's wired such that it can be set/erased, but not directly read - it can only be fed as the key into an AES engine.

      I am not sure if Apple's PBKDF2 has this AES engine as part of the loop, or if it just feeds the key that comes out of PBKDF2 through the AES engine, but the end result is, on any given device, the AES key that results from a given passphrase is unique to that device and cannot be reproduced off-device.

      So if someone just clones the device's flash contents, they have to resort to brute-forcing AES directly, as opposed to trying to brute-force passcodes.

      So you can only brute-force passcodes on-device (something like 80ms per try on this model, newer models have a 5 seconds per try limitation), and Apple's software doesn't even allow you to do that. The FBI wants to at LEAST get on-device brute-force capability.

      Which might still take years if the user had a reasonably strong passphrase.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    6. Re:What's he on, today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Impressive! by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They must be pretty good if they attend Defcon in Las Vegas!

  3. Seems like a natural fit by scunc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who better to break into a system that's nearly impossible to get into than the man responsible for software that's nearly impossible to get rid of?
    --
    What happens when an unstoppable force meets an irremovable object?

  4. dammit John, FOCUS! by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're supposed to be running for president!

    A Trump / McAfee ticket is the closest thing we can get to having President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in real life.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  5. Re:Can you work with an image? by spire3661 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:Can you work with an image? by j-turkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    THIS! I wish that I had mod points. You are correct, the case is entirely political. The Guardian has an article that explains in depth what you very succinctly stated. The big takeaway is that the actual data in this case doesn't really matter. However, the feds were fishing for the perfect inflammatory case to establish legal precedent (NPR had a great story on it earlier this week with a legal analyst who said that the Justice Department knew exactly what they were doing when they chose this case). Tim Cook is spot on in fighting this as a precedent matter more than anything else.

    --

    -Turkey

  7. Re:Can you work with an image? by spire3661 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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