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Godfather Of Encryption Explains Why Apple Should Help The FBI (bgr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Famed cryptographer and Turing Award winner, Adi Shamir, has an interesting if not surprising take on Apple's current legal tussle with the FBI. While speaking on a panel at RSA Conference 2016 earlier this week, the man who helped co-invent the vaunted RSA algorithm (he's the 'S' in RSA) explained why he sides with the FBI as it pertains to the San Bernardino shooter's locked iPhone. It has nothing to do with placing trapdoors on millions of phones around the world," Shamir explained. "This is a case where it's clear those people are guilty. They are dead; their constitutional rights are not involved. This is a major crime where 14 people were killed. The phone is intact. All of this aligns in favor of the FBI." Shamir continued, "even though Apple has helped in countless cases, they decided not to comply this time. My advice is that they comply this time and wait for a better test case to fight where the case is not so clearly in favor of the FBI."

14 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. What a crock by zieroh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What a crock full of shit.

    --
    People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
    1. Re:What a crock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And from someone who really ought to know better.

      What this tells me is that being the "Godfather of Encryption" is not mutually exclusive with being a dunce on operational security.

      Waiting for a future, better case would sure end up looking foolish when the government argues, "What's the problem? You agreed to do this exact same thing before, in the San Bernardino case..."

    2. Re:What a crock by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well to be accurate he is on the payroll of Weizmann Institute of Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... So rather than being on the FBI payroll he is more likely on the Mossad payroll and actually spends most of his time specialising in "Differential cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis applicable primarily to block ciphers, but also to stream ciphers and cryptographic hash functions. In the broadest sense, it is the study of how differences in information input can affect the resultant difference at the output. In the case of a block cipher, it refers to a set of techniques for tracing differences through the network of transformations, discovering where the cipher exhibits non-random behaviour, and exploiting such properties to recover the secret key." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ie breaking encryption. So yeah, self serving dick wants to make his life easier, so basically what ever he says, do the fucking opposite and do not trust anything from him.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re: What a crock by nytes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, it's about the other 14 iPhones the FBI has lined up behind it, and the 175 iPhones New York city has after those, and so on.

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      -- I have monkeys in my pants.
    4. Re:What a crock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's only one opinion. Ron Rivest, the R in RSA, disagrees with Shamir over this one. As the S in the abbreviation, Shamir is the man in the middle.

    5. Re:What a crock by Shoten · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And from someone who really ought to know better.

      What this tells me is that being the "Godfather of Encryption" is not mutually exclusive with being a dunce on operational security.

      Waiting for a future, better case would sure end up looking foolish when the government argues, "What's the problem? You agreed to do this exact same thing before, in the San Bernardino case..."

      Should he know better? I'm not sure. On one hand, Shamir is really good at math. But math has almost nothing to do with Constitutional law, which is what this is really about.

      There's a big difference between who can create/build a certain technology, and who should be trusted with knowing how and when to use it. A lot of people conflate the two, but they are incredibly different skillsets.

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    6. Re: What a crock by Shoten · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Only if you're an idiot. It's only about the one phone until precedent is made.

      This.

      And Apple's statement to this effect has already been proven true...for there are multiple cases where the FBI has asked for "just this one phone" to be unlocked in this manner. There are literally more than a dozen parallel efforts, in addition to this one particularly high-profile one, to get this to happen.

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    7. Re: What a crock by plover · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Shamir is also being disingenuous when he said, "even though Apple has helped in countless cases, they decided not to comply this time." Apple's cooperation in the prior cases was in recovering unencrypted data. They have never provided a way to decrypt data when they don't have the keys, or recover keys locked in the secure enclave.

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      John
  2. Re:I disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're mistaken in your logic.

    The fact that the tool could exist means that the design of the iPhone is itself compromised, so they could be compelled, or somebody could unlawfully construct a version on their own.

    That means you need to concern yourself with a real secure design instead of fighting over this issue.

    Don't sacrifice a Queen to save a pawn.

  3. There won't be a better test case by penguinoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you comply once, then you greatly weaken any objections to complying again.

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    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  4. Totally BS argument. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The perps are dead, so there is no need to decrypt their phones in that case.

    This is just fishing for information on other people, and it's pretty naive, since they destroyed 2 other phones. Would you use your company phone to plan a terrorist act?

    Also, the phone isn't Apple's property. Let them go after the entity that owns the phone.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  5. Yep. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ability to spy on law-abiding citizens grants an enormous economic advantage to those in power. They can do the financial equivalent of insider trading with impunity, and rake it in. That is just one way of many.

    Strong encryption gives the poor some leverage against the rich; a chance to reclaim and protect some of the wealth that they generate through their labor. I guarantee, the rich will never abide this. Even if Apple wins, subsequent political and technological maneuvering will ultimately result in strong encryption available to the rich, but not to the rest of us.

    This case is a lot like the presidential election: no matter who wins, we lose.

  6. Re:has nobody thought by AchilleTalon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obviously you haven't follow that case very carefully. The iPhone isn't locked using fingerprints, it uses a 4 digit password. And before you ask why they just don't try all the combination, after 10 trials the iPhone may have been setup to delete the data. In addition, there is a delay between each trial which render this method unpractical unless you remove the delay and the 10 trials limit, which is exactly what the FBI is asking Apple to do for this iPhone by flashing a new firmware on it remotely. Yes, this model doesn't require the user to authorize the firmware to be flashed. So, that is totally possible to do. And why do they ask Apple and aren't just do it themselves? Because the firmware must be signed with Apple's private key otherwise the security chip in the iPhone will block the firmware execution.

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    Achille Talon
    Hop!
  7. Re:I disagree by bitingduck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The capability to create it already exists at Apple and so if they do make it, use it for this case and destroy it afterwards, you just end up back at the start, where the capability to create it exists and they are no more or less likely to be coerced into doing it by any other party.

    That shows a profound misunderstanding of how the US legal system works. Once they've done it, then the probability of them being coerced again is identically 1. If the gov't is allowed to compel them to produce software, and especially produce particular features, then the government can:
    a) repeatedly compel them to recreate the software to crack existing phones that can be cracked by that method. Then apple effectively has to either maintain a team to keep recreating and destroying the software (good luck hiring people who want that job. seriously tiresome) or keep the software intact and protect it. But they can't do that, because once it gets used in an actual criminal prosecution then the defendant will have the right to see the software. And every defendant it's used against will have that right. So then it's out.
    b) compel them to create a permanent backdoor in all future versions (the precedent for government compulsion of particular features having been established, despite CALEA's wording to the contrary. And they can do it secretly through the FISA court, and it will be 5-10 years before we hear about it publicly. In the meantime, people will find the holes and exploit them (aside from NSA and FBI exploting them).

    The technical possibility of that particular phone being hackable by sideloading a custom system is almost irrelevant to the case. It's the legal precedent that's important.