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

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.

3 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not black and white by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1, Informative

    You have way too much belief and trust in the US as a "democracy" and "free society." This kind of society ended after 9/11, if it ever existed at all. We might as well build as many fortresses as possible (even if they contain nothing illegal), just to frustrate law enforcement which has made an industry out of eroding Americans' freedoms.

    You know what we should do to prevent terrorism? Stop pissing off the terrorists. That's right -- stop fighting wars in places where we don't belong. Stop playing favorites in the Middle East and Central Asia. None of the countries there are our problem. You might think of it as capitulation or surrender, but not all fights are worth fighting.

    But you, as a member of the US military, can't be expected to support putting yourself out of a job.

  2. Re: FBI now providing free marketing! by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except after rebooting, panic lock, or 48 hours the PIN is required to unlock the phone first. If you think someone is gonna take your phone for bad purposes, shut it down or panic lock it quick. Then the facial/fingerprint recognition is useless.

    Or just disable the damn thing if you believe there's any reason the police would want to go on a fishing expedition using your phone. You don't have to use it...

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  3. Re: Didn't have to bribe anyone to break every DRM by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're confusing different things. DRM and copy protection are relatively easily cracked because the keys used for decryption have to be available to the software/device in order for it to function; they're just obfuscated in various ways that make them difficult to obtain. On the other hand, when you encrypt a device yourself the encryption key/password does not need to be stored anywhere other than in your head.

    Finding a key which is recorded but obfuscated is not at all similar to finding a key which only exists in the brain of an individual. Especially if you're not allowed to use torture, or if the person in question is already dead.