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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.
If it is easy to crack for the FBI, it is easy to crack for anyone.
Any "back doors" will be converted to front doors ( or windows ) soon enough.
And the timing of such a statement. Meltdown and Spectre still in the news, then this.
emt 377 emt 4
Pre-cracked encryption is worthless. Might as well force everyone in the world to use TSA locks for physical security, where there are only 5 keys in the world that open them, providing no security at all.
The FBI is now indicating we should buy Apple devices because the security is good.
Apple isn't any "smarter" or "evil-genuis-y" than any of the other guys out there. They just decided to take their customer's privacy seriously. Google, Facebook, etc are just as smart or evil genius-y, they just put their targets elsewhere because having their customers' information more public is their business model.
Congress Is About To Vote On Expanding the Warrantless Surveillance of Americans
I think it's hilarious that they don't realize that it's their own insatiable desire to spy on everyone that is the primary driving force behind the spread of encrypted communications. That they don't realize this truth makes it all the more funny.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They don't do it to thwart law enforcement. They do it to thwart criminals, terrorists, foreign intelligence agents (aka spies), etc.
If the law enforcement people happen to use the same techniques as those groups, well......
You're not the first Flatley to stomp your feet about something.
This is theater, and the FBI / NSA / sppok community at large obviously understands what you are describing. Statements like this are in part how these orgs "prove" to the gov't the need to pass laws to give them what they want.
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.
I goes: "Oh please Brer Fox, whatever you do, please don't throw me into the briar patch."
I cannot believe we actually hire allegedly educated individuals to work in the FBI who can't fucking grasp the concept that Apple didn't make good security because of the FBI. Apple made good security because of the actual evil in the world, and to protect their customers.
Wonder how the FBI would feel if we turned around and started asking them the same damn thing about their encryption. How dare they make it very difficult to brute-force. Of all the nerve...
Come back when they're calling them "scoundrels" and "nerf herders".
Hate Apple products.
Hate Apple business tactics.
Hate Apple's complete lack of social responsibility.
Hate Apple design.
Their one redeeming feature: That they don't just make it easy for the FBI (or anyone else).
Tell them off and call them names for anything else, I'll be right there cheering you on. But insulting them because they won't deliberately weaken security just in case their users happen to be a terrorist? Yeah, that I won't just jump on board with.
Yes, this. I hate that people like to try and make it all into sound bites, when it's much more complicated. Everyone wants (or should want) security and privacy, but we also want law enforcement to be able to protect us. When those two conflict, how do we handle it? Everyone wants the simple one sentence, headline-style answer, and there isn't one.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
We at the FBI are a bunch of lazy twats who regard the constitution as a piece of toilet paper if it makes our job harder. We also know perfectly well that any backdoor in encrypted software makes the encryption worthless but pretend otherwise in public because we only care about ourselves.
Basically either this guy is evil or an idiot and I'm pretty sure someone at the FBI understands how encryption works so I'm favoring evil. Either way it isn't a good situation for our civil right to have the cops demanding a master key to everyone's (figurative) house.
"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.
No, that's not a default. Everyone with toddlers would be absolutely pissed if it were
Rooting Android devices to audit them is fairly trivial compared to Apple's stuff. And since 99% of the idiots are unable to secure their own devices, it's also fairly trivial to break in and get the information you want.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A product you can crack in two months with available technology still has essentially broken security.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Of course it is to thwart law enforcement. The FBI likes to pretend that it is trustworthy, history says otherwise. And of course, the US government is not the only "law" enforcement involved. Meanwhile we have yet to see a case they could not prosecute because of data on the iPhone, on the contrary we've only seen them trying to crack iPhones as a side note to an already established case just in case there is something relevant on there.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I hate to defend Apple (literally.. I do HATE to defend Apple), but:
"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."
"Apple believes it is protecting freedom. It's wrong."
Well, that absolutist assertion seems like you have an answer in mind.
You're trying to mask it, but a backdoor is a backdoor. If Apple are capable of creating a version of the OS that will update over an existing version on a targeted iPhone and thus render the encryption on their iPhone moot - then there is NOTHING stopping a person at Apple from, say, reading the president's private bedroom photos from his iPhone.
You can say "it won't happen", you can say "nobody would do that", you can say "you just need to pick people carefully", etc. but the fact is that at the end of the day some small group of Apple employees have some method of access to every Apple device on the planet. To suggest that this could never be misused would be false.
As such, to not even have THE CAPABILITY is to render the possibility moot. No, we won't push out targeted firmware to an individual iPhone identified by law enforcement - we'll design systems such that we CAN'T EVEN DO THAT (i.e. one iPhone is no different to any other and can't be identified by such a system). That's how to secure your customers and your business. A kind of legal self-denial if you like. The best way to ensure you can't get drunk is to not have the alcohol in the house at all.
Your other arguments in that article are literal red herrings;
"Apple is welcome to use every legal mechanism possible to fight this court order â" that is their absolute right. But to start and grow their company in the United States, to exist here because of the fundamental environment we create for freedom and innovation, and then to act as if Apple is somehow divorced from the US and owes it nothing, even when ordered by a court to do so, is a puzzling and worrisome position."
So... because Fuck Yeah America! they are required to kowtow and not use a valid legal argument in a US court? I think that's what that article says there. If the US court wished to sanction them, they could and would. You could literally stop Apple operating overnight if the courts so determined that they were that non-compliant. But they presented an argument, which clearly won enough doubt to not push through such orders to being prosecutions for failing to comply. And the rest of the "because they're in the US, they should give us something" stuff is just a distraction based on national pride.
This is about the only thing Apple have ever done that I approve of. It shows that they have at least some semblance of a principle, and - amazingly - it would be much cheaper and easier to comply. They are literally costing themselves money to secure a freedom. That's the one good thing I've ever been able to say about Apple, ever.
And it is securing your freedom too. How? If a guy at Apple can do it, so can a guy at the NSA order him to do it and also to then never speak of it, and that guy at the NSA could easily be working for a foreign state, or to try to discredit the president, or be someone who wants to set you up, etc.
Literally, a dystopian state would love this... hey, just let me tap into everyone's iPad and iPhone, and by the way you cannot ever say a thing. If you haven't seen, powers - once established - are universally misused for a long time until they're brought back under control (if at all). Some councils in the UK are still using "anti-terror" legislation to get personal details on people who put the wrong bins out on the wrong days. I kid you not.
By not allowing the creep to start, publicly, visibly, legally, at great expense and when they could just kowtow, Apple has done more of a service in this small act than can be countered by stopping a terrorist.
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 ... 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.
This, exactly. In the aftermath of 9/11, I repeatedly said "By all means, hunt down and kill the bastards who did this to you. But then give your heads a shake, do some soul searching, and ask yourself what you did to them to make them so pissed off that they would sacrifice their own lives to fly planes into your buildings". Instead, government took advantage of the attacks, and the anger and fear they generated among Americans, to hugely expand and consolidate their own power base.
As for the security of the encryption provided by Apple and other corporations, and what the TLA's say publicly about that encryption, I consider it all bullshit until proven otherwise. Corporations and governments are close frenemies, and their common enemy / patsy is the public over whom they exercise their dominion. If we want to fix both both terrorism and governmental abuses, THAT is the place to start. Issues like encryption are just smokescreens.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Don't let the FBI know that they have a pool at their new building with "freakin' sharks with lasers" too !
There is a very distinct whiff of nerd resentment here. Don't you just imagine this guy as some popular "sports" kid from high school? It's the same anti-intellectual strain that goes into science denial. Whether or not this particular person feels that way, it's definitely the sentiment he is trying to tap.
Domestic terrorists been coming out of the woodwork literally since the 1800s. The KKK. The Haymarket bomb. Weather Underground. Symbionese Army. McVeigh. The "Sons of Gestapo" train wrecking incident. Not to mention mass shootings.
None of this lead to the kind of expansion of the mass surveillance and security-theater apparatus that's happened since 9/11. We'd be better of as a country if we took the advice "never forget" as sentimental garbage and forgot 9/11 ever happened. Moved on, stopped quaking in fear and thanking over-reaching cops for "keeping us safe."
Mmm yes, cry more sweet tears for me, privacy invaders! Weep at the reality of encryption! Muahahaha!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
You can say "it won't happen", you can say "nobody would do that", you can say "you just need to pick people carefully", etc. but the fact is that at the end of the day some small group of Apple employees have some method of access to every Apple device on the planet. To suggest that this could never be misused would be false.
https://xkcd.com/538/
Just replace 'user' with 'kidnapped Apple developer'.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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?
We would have to. Total strawman you have there but I'll roll with it. To make it tangible the laws of mathematics are not bendable for the convenience of some and not others. Once encryption is broken by one party, it is a trivial exercise to break it for an arbitrary number of other parties or to simply distribute the data being protected. Once you have one key it's cheap and easy to make copies of the key and much more expensive to replace the locks. And once the data is taken there is no point since that would be like locking the door after the thief has already run off with your stuff.
There is no one "right" answer to a question like this save the ones we collectively and imperfectly come to as a society.
Actually there is a right answer here and air quotes are not needed. Your options are either to use encryption properly to keep data secure or to not use it at all and live with the consequences. There literally is no middle ground. Weak encryption or backdoored encryption = no encryption.
Apple believes it is protecting freedom. It's wrong. Here's why:
That article is a complete load of nonsense. The author is either an idiot or has an agenda. His arguments are flawed to their core. The argument is basically that bad guys are lazy and won't be bothered to take advantage of government mandated back doors. That argument is so stupid I barely know were to begin.
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 .
**Life is too short to be serious**
Actually, for most phones the encryption keys *are* kept in the phone and obfuscated; they're kept in tamper-resistant hardware storage (which must be rather effective, otherwise the spies wouldn't be complaining).
The info kept in the user's head is just a short PIN that could be cracked in seconds if they were actually used as the key. The security lies in the phone firmware/hardware only allowing a small number of PIN guesses before it wipes out the real keys.
It's user selectable to have either an increasing hardware-enforced delay between attempts, or wipe-after-X-attempts. iPhone defaults to the first behavior.
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Can the Secure Enclave accept new firmware? If it wasn't designed to get new firmware, and no such facility was built in, how would that work? Code signing keys can get an existing firmware updater to trust the incoming firmware. What if there is no such updater?
As far as I know, Apple designed the Secure Enclave to be secure. It wouldn't be secure if the security could be reprogrammed, would it?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes