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DoJ Says Apple's Posture on iPhone Unlocking Is Just Marketing (reuters.com)
New submitter kruug writes: The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion seeking to compel Apple Inc to comply with a judge's order for the company to unlock the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, portraying the tech giant's refusal as a 'marketing strategy.' The filing escalated a showdown between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley over security and privacy that ignited earlier this week. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking the tech giant's help to access the shooter's phone, which is encrypted. The company so far has pushed back, and on Thursday won three extra days to respond to the order. Reader Lauren Weinstein writes of this tack: "The level of DOJ disingenuousness in play is simply staggering."
Assume that every other hardware manufacturer that is NOT getting threatened by the Federal Government has already rolled over.
Tim Cook: thank you. All you other bitches: FOAD.
The data is encrypted using a key fused into the hardware processor. The key is in hardware and not readable. The key is not the 10 digit pin. The 10 digit pin and the encrypted contents are sent to the hardware chip and a decryption attempt is made. The results of that are sent back. If the user fails to decrypt the data within 10 attempts the encryption key in HARDWARE is wiped out making the user brute force AES 256 on the data instead of the 9999 possible pin combinations.
The hardware encryption chip would need to be copied as well as the data. Copying the data alone gives you nothing but random bits of AES 256 encrypted data. Putting that on a phone emulator or another phone will never work unless the unique key in hardware is known and that cannot be read.