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FBI Should Try To Unlock iPhone Without Apple's Help, Lawmaker Says (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and former car-alarm entrepreneur, has suggested that the FBI try unlocking mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook by copying the hard drive and running password attempts until they find the correct password. Bruce Sewell, Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, said during a congressional hearing that, although the company doesn't know the condition of the shooter's iPhone, Issa's approach may work.
It all depends on password strength. If it is based on a PIN number (4 digits), then it is of course very very easy to brute force decryption. If it is based on finger print, it is even easier: a finger print is 1 digit only! /ducks
and watch the phone format itself after they fail.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the answer from a 6 digit Slashdot member. It manages an almost perfect balance between trollish and imbecilic, while leaving no doubt about the fact he didn't RTFA.
At 5 digits, his reply would be a dupe of a previous one, and you'd understand he doesn't even understand the concept of the article.
At 4, the comment would just be an anagram of both "first post" and a bodily fluid.
Reading a 3 digits comment would be akin to hearing the voice of God.
At 2 digits, the words shape the chaos into reality.
Not even Gods speak about single digit comments. And when they do it's in weakly whispers. For such power is better to leave asleep.
He called it a hard-drive, not a hard-disk. Honestly, we're splitting hairs about shit literally no one that does not frequent technology blogs gives a crap about. This is especially true because the HDD/SSD distinction has no bearing on the merits of his suggestion.
The iPhone's flash drive is encrypted. The key is securely stored. If you guess the lock code incorrectly 10 times then it's not the hard drive that's erased, it's the key that is irrevocably destroyed. At that point it doesn't matter if you have a bunch of copies of the disk, you have a bunch of garbage and the only key in the universe was just wiped out.