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.

Comments

Re: FBI now providing free marketing!

[fortfive]

Either that, or they are lulling their targets into believing they are secure with apple products.

â"
Posted from my secure iPhone

Pointless

[nehumanuscrede]

The only brand of criminals the FBI will catch are the stupid ones.

The more intelligent types realize LE focuses on the phones too much and will simply ensure that they do not conduct their business via the devices in question.

They must know this so it begs the question once again: Are they really interested in criminals phones, or the ability to look at anyones phones on demand ?

Though the way LE treats folks these days, we're all pretty much criminals in their eyes.

It did cross my mind that they're simply blowing smoke to cover the fact that they have methods to break into them.

All the acting ensures folks believe they're still secure.

Just a thought.

Not black and white

[daveschroeder]

The question, as always, is whether the good outweighs the bad.

If we could somehow create magical impenetrable *physical* fortresses that cannot be opened or accessed by the duly-empowered law enforcement and judicial powers of a democratic society, would we say that's just the way it is?

Or would we have a discussion about it on the context of public good and the rule of law?

There is no one "right" answer to a question like this save the ones we collectively and imperfectly come to as a society. Absolutist assertions that it is either unbreakable, impenetrable encryption for all, or nothing, are false.

I wrote this on an earlier matter:

Apple believes it is protecting freedom. It's wrong. Here's why:

http://cimsec.org/apple/22159

Re:Not black and white

[b0s0z0ku]

"Law enforcement" hasn't protected the average American in decades -- it's been turned into an industry with its own lobbyists, fueled by laws that allow mass long-term incarceration. Sadly, many Americans support it, but this country would be a better place if police powers were severely curtailed.

You are not Google's customer

[ghoul]

Google's customer are the companies who pay money to Google for ads. You do not pay any money to Google so how can you be their customer? You and your profile is Google's product which Google sells to advertizers. They take care to anonymize the data not because you will stop paying money to them (how can you ? you dont pay anything today) but because if profiles end up in their advertizers hands the advertizers can market directly and dont need to go through Google.
Ditto Facebook.
Apple actually gets money from you and me so it cares what we think .