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Lawmakers Call FBI's 'Going Dark' Narrative 'Highly Questionable' After Motherboard Shows Cops Can Easily Hack iPhones (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: This week, Motherboard showed that law enforcement agencies across the country, including a part of the State Department, have bought GrayKey, a relatively cheap technology that can unlock fully up-to-date iPhones. That revelation, cryptographers and technologists said, undermined the FBI's renewed push for backdoors in consumer encryption products. Citing Motherboard's work, on Friday US lawmakers sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, doubting the FBI's narrative around 'going dark', where law enforcement officials say they are increasingly unable to obtain evidence related to crimes due to encryption. Politico was first to report the letter. "According to your testimony and public statements, the FBI encountered 7,800 devices last year that it could not access due to encryption," the letter, signed by 5 Democrat and 5 Republican n House lawmakers, reads. "However, in light of the availability of unlocking tools developed by third-parties and the OIG report's findings that the Bureau was uninterested in seeking available third-party options, these statistics appear highly questionable," it adds, referring to a recent report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General. That report found the FBI barely explored its technical options for accessing the San Bernardino iPhone before trying to compel Apple to unlock the device. The lawmaker's letter points to Motherboard's report that the State Department spent around $15,000 on a GrayKey.
Apple is too valuable of a brand, and if people realize Apple, FBI, NSA etc. are all up in your "private" shit, then people would stop buying.
It's a simple case of "let's do and say we couldn't". There is no such thing as secure devices in the U.S., because that's the way government needs it to be, and neither Apple nor Google are above the law.
What warrant process are they abusing to search those phones, one wonders...
The FBI wants a complete (and easy) solution for current and future devices.
The article says Greylock can access "fully up-to-date IPhones".
Can Greylock access Iphones that don't allow automatic updating? If Greylock can't, then Apple has given out an update that allows outsiders to access your IPhone. So much for the Apple claim to be a privacy good-guy. Even more interesting is the possibility that Apple has pushed an OS update to phones which have automatic update turned off, something we usually associate with Microsoft.
Is there anyone out there capable of looking at the stream of bits coming-and-going and reading the flash memory that holds the updated code? And if Apple can push an update, what does that mean for the validity of the phone log when the IPhone shows up as a court exhibit? And do IPhones in Europe and China get the same treatment?
There are suggestions that these hacking devices don't break the encryption, they just defeat the anti-brute-force tricks and allow the devices to be brute forced.
If the devices don't actually defeat the encryption then a backdoor is the only way the FBI and other agencies can get into phones with passwords too strong to brute force.
There is an inferred belief set inside law enforcement that in order to accomplish the greater good, it is perfectly acceptable to occasionally stoop to the level of the dirty criminals. Hollywood and the entertainment industry have consistently reinforced this logical fallacy with hundreds (thousands?) of stories with protagonist rogue cops who do what needs to be done to catch the bad guy.
The problem is, once you stoop to a despicable act, it is so much easier to stoop the next time. (K. Hepburn)
The freedoms we enjoy are quite precious, and the sacrifices made to preserve them do not all occur on the field of battle... sometimes the good guys have to carry the enormous burden of a moral compass during the pursuit of the most immoral.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You sure? Of course they never lie. How could you possibly believe such a thing...
However, in light of the availability of unlocking tools developed by third-parties and the OIG report's findings that the Bureau was uninterested in seeking available third-party options, these statistics appear highly questionable"
FBI: "I wish to plead incompetence."
Ezekiel 23:20
It is their mission statement. They just seem to ignore it now.
McCabe leaked classified information to WaPo (his lawyer says he was authorized to do so, but no one else is claiming that). He then lied 5 times at least when questioned by the FBI if he leaked that information or authorized the leak. He now claims he is the good guy and Trump is the bad guy.
Comey used Russian propaganda to sign off for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign. He failed to verify the information and lied to the FISA judge claiming it was verified. Lied under oath to get a wire tap on a presidential campaign and then lied about it afterwards. Remember Watergate was just a single office break in, not a year long wiretap operation based on lies.
Stroke and Page, collaborated with McCabe to tank the Hillary classified information investigation from the start to give her a better chance of winning. Obstruction of justice, and I'm not sure what falsely running an investigation is called.
Stroke had an "insurance policy" in case Trump won the election. DOJ STILL won't hand over the 2 pages that started this entire mess, Congress is about to impeach Roseinstein and Wrey because they failed to meet the subpoena on those 2 pages.
Comey illegally leaked classified information to be published in the NYT with the intent of getting a Special Council (Muller's investigation) appointed based on lies.
Muller raided Trump's personal lawyer, who never worked on the campaign or administration breaking client attorney privilege. Cohen was working with Muller and giving everything that had been requested. Muller had made it clear that working with Trump is now a crime that he will punish.
FBI = Complete Shit
DOJ = Complete Shit
Not a single thing above had resulted in a singe charge being handed out. Flynn, who didn't lie according to Congressional over-site of Muller, has been charged with lying under oath. Comey, Stroke, Page, McCabe have all lied multiple times, provably, and not one of them has been charged.
1 Justice system for Trump and supporters (You are a criminal no matter what you did or didn't do)
1 Justice system for anti-Trump (You are not a criminal no matter what you did or didn't do)
Anyone seen 'proof' this GrayKey thing actually works?
>"That revelation, cryptographers and technologists said, undermined the FBI's renewed push for backdoors in consumer encryption products."
To me, it is completely irrelevant whether they can or can't unlock consumer devices. The PRINCIPLE remains the same- the government does not and should not have a "right" to ruin security in the name of "safety". I don't care how inconvenient it this makes it for them to do their job. The statements about not necessarily needing it due to hacking products shouldn't distract from the real thing at stake here- personal privacy and freedom.
There simply is no way to have have it both ways. When you have "back doors" in encryption, there will be no security/privacy anymore.
Tiny handcocks arent going to do shit when the gubmint fires at you from 10,000ft with a Predator drone strike, bit they sure do make it easier for your childrens to kill one another or you to kill your wife. Youre garbage Strat. Total garbage.
USA-Amerikans have the bestest education.
A technique that has been used for years to break keyboard-based locks is to dust the keyboard and see where on the keyboard or screen where the user has been touching. In the case of iPhones, unless the user wipes their screen off after every use, it's likely their touches will still be present on the screen.
If you know the passcode is 4 or 6 digits and have a good idea what the numbers are, it makes it a bit easier to brute force, Will they get in under the max count? Maybe.
To combat this technique, secure facilities that utilize touch pads randomly reassign the where on the pad each number resides (yes, there is an indicator and not left for the user to randomly guess). It makes users have to think and much harder for those seeking to penetrate the system.
I once saw such a keyboard on Android, Apple does do it for some reason...probably for ease of use.
That particular technological terror has a logistics chain that stretches halfway to Mars. That is where privately owned firearms will come into play.
Read a book on asymmetrical warfare sometime. It will change your mind.
And it's completely "legal." FBI agents are trained to lie to the public all the time to get what they want, but if you lie to them, it's a felony. That's why you should never trust or cooperate with police, even if you think you're innocent. Don't answer anything and demand an attorney.
gone are the good old days when companies were controlled by the 'right ' people
and were always compliant with the authorities.
Go well
The FBI still has a problem! Don;t you think Apple and others companies who care about privacy and your communication safety will buy one the devices, reverse engineer it, find the flaws that allow the exploit, and then fix it in the next encryption implementation?
These type of "wars"are always moving targets, and its not the cryptography that's flawed, its usually flaws, defects and exploits in its implementation, that maybe can be fixed fo he flawed, but will be fixed in the next. All the grey and blackboxes sold will be useless in one or two iterations of implementations ans we will be right back where we were.
Backdoors hardware or software, are not the answer either, they can be discovered, and work arounds implemented.
In a commerce society we live in, people want to make money from implementations of security, or make money finding flaws or breaking it, and fixing it. Only until you fix the monetization of security, can you get a a reasonable balance.
And AR15s can't shoot an M1 tank or so the argument goes.
Yet after 17 years we can't defeat men in pyjamas and turbans with ak47s and we lost to men in black pyjamas in the jungle 50 years ago.
Sure they can nuke us , but the they'll be lord over radioactive glass not a subservient population
A British Civil servant's contribution in bringing the phrase to public awareness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...