How The FBI Might've Opened the San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone 5c (schneier.com)

"Remember the San Bernardino killer's iPhone, and how the FBI maintained that they couldn't get the encryption key without Apple providing them with a universal backdoor?" Slashdot reader LichtSpektren quotes Bruce Schneier: Many of us computer-security experts said that they were wrong, and there were several possible techniques they could use. One of them was manually removing the flash chip from the phone, extracting the memory, and then running a brute-force attack without worrying about the phone deleting the key. The FBI said it was impossible. We all said they were wrong. Now, Sergei Skorobogatov has proved them wrong.
Sergei's new paper describes "a real world mirroring attack on the Apple iPhone 5c passcode retry counter under iOS 9." The process does not require any expensive and sophisticated equipment. All needed parts are low cost and were obtained from local electronics distributors. By using the described and successful hardware mirroring process it was possible to bypass the limit on passcode retry attempts... Although the process can be improved, it is still a successful proof-of-concept project.

Comments

Is anyone really surprised?

[Jester998]

Is anyone REALLY surprised that the FBI was wrong? Government doesn't attract top-tier talent. Never has, never will. When your hiring practices, policies, procedures, compensation and benefits are all at the bottom of the barrel, well... that's what you get. The bottom of the barrel.

Re:Is anyone really surprised?

[Jester998]

Your argument is hilarious due to its fallacies.

Maybe private industry didn't go to the moon because there was no compelling business reason to do so. I guarantee you if the government had said "We will give a 200-year exclusive settlement and mining rights to the first corporation to land on the moon", it would have been done faster and cheaper than the government did it.

Maybe the government insists on maintaining its monopoly on road infrastructure and won't allow private roads to be built. Or maybe private industry has no interest in doing it, because the costs to generate revenue from it outweigh the revenue.

Government responds to different incentives than private corporations do, so of course in many cases they do jobs that private industry won't. Being a monopoly or taking on revenue-negative work doesn't mean that the people doing that work are at the top of their field.

Re:Is anyone really surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe private industry didn't go to the moon because there was no compelling business reason to do so."

There never was, there still isn't, and there never will be. Ever.

" I guarantee you if the government had said "We will give a 200-year exclusive settlement and mining rights to the first corporation to land on the moon", it would have been done faster and cheaper than the government did it."

A Moon landing would have been done easier because of fantasy-level sci-fi mining rights? A bunch of competing companies trying to fuck each over to save a buck?

The Russians tried this approach with their multiple competing space design bureaus.... and after some initial firsts, quickly sputtered and ran out of steam, after which the socialist NASA beat them to the Moon.

Unfortunately for psychopaths such as yourself, humans work better together without the constant threat of losing their job or having to out-brownnose Johnson in the next cubicle over.

You are merely a typical misanthropic Space Nutter dressing up your twisted, dark personality disorder as some kind of Holy Crusade. Like any other lunatic.

Re:Is anyone really surprised?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Calling the moon landing and the space program in general a "pointless political exercise" is pretty ridiculous, when you consider the massive amount of spinoff technologies that we take for granted every single day of our lives.