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FBI Calls Apple 'Jerks' and 'Evil Geniuses' For Making iPhone Cracks Difficult (itwire.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the two-sides-to-every-coin dept.

troublemaker_23 shares a report from iTWire: A forensics expert from the FBI has lashed out at Apple, calling the company's security team a bunch of "jerks" and "evil geniuses" for making it more difficult to circumvent the encryption on its devices. Stephen Flatley told the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York on Wednesday that one example of the way that Apple had made it harder for him and his colleagues to break into the iPhone was by recently making the password guesses slower, with a change in hash iterations from 10,000 to 10,000,000. A report on the Motherboard website said Flatley explained that this change meant that the speed at which one could brute-force passwords went from 45 attempts a second to one every 18 seconds. "Your crack time just went from two days to two months," he was quoted as saying. "At what point is it just trying to one up things and at what point is it to thwart law enforcement? Apple is pretty good at evil genius stuff," Flatley added.

6 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. FBI now providing free marketing! by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Funny

    The FBI is now indicating we should buy Apple devices because the security is good.

    1. Re:FBI now providing free marketing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh absolutely. I once waited for AAA for over an hour and a half when they told me it would be 20 minutes. Talk about feeling like a sucker.

  2. Oh cry me a river dance. by HumanWiki · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're not the first Flatley to stomp your feet about something.

  3. Re:Can they be that stupid? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Maybe they own Apple stock. If they're clever, then they bought a load of Apple shares, announced that Apple devices were too secure for them to be able to crack but that all of their competitors' devices weren't, and then waited for the media to pick this up before selling their shares.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:Can they be that stupid? by dehachel12 · · Score: 5, Funny

    >'genuises'
    STABLE genuises

  5. Re:Not black and white by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    "Law enforcement" hasn't protected the average American in decades

    I see this attitude from time to time, and I think it's proof that the person uses cannabis.
    Regular Americans disagree with you. The cops are on our side, and always have been. You're a weird minority.
    I believe in the Fourth Amendment, which says reasonable searches and seizures are the ones they get a warrant for.
    Judges in this country are liberal. The warrants that get issued are statistically going to be pretty good.