A brute force on the 4 digit pin doesn't work if the phone auto-wipes after 10 wrong tries. You can't brute force it off the phone, due to hardware encryption, it has to be done there.
The iPhone 5c lacks Secure Enclave, what is being proposed would probably work on a 5c, but probably not on a 5s or 6/6s. It for sure shouldn't work on the upcoming 7, Apple is likely designing this ability out as we speak.
And that's all fine. Remind me again why Apple has to provide said help?
A Judge can order a safe broken into, the FBI can hire a safecracker to break into it. If that safecracker doesn't want to do the job, they'll get someone else.
What DOESN'T happen is the Judge directly ordering a SPECIFIC safecracker to do the job against their will, and in the process, damage their reputation for ALL safes.
No one is disputing the FBI's right to inspect this phone. More power to them, crack away... Why exactly does Apple have to help again? Have we become slaves?
It seems like the plan is proceeding nicely. We getting into the "public debate" phase. Soon it will move on to the trade-off phase decided on by a panel of private and governmental experts.
Yea, but part of the challenge is that not everything in the world can be "compromised" or "traded-off".
Encryption either works or it doesn't. Your info is either secure or it isn't. If the government can access it, then it isn't secure.
There just isn't any give-and-take here, either you can make your info private, or you cannot.
I had a '90 240SX and it was a blast to drive. Fortunately in Chicago, where I lived at the time, there is no requirement for cars manufactured in 1995 or previously to meet any emissions requirements or to even be tested.
Why is that "fortunate"?
That is terrible and is part of the problem of pollution, grandfathering...
Does the third party have to reveal their source code? Can the FBI effectively hide behind their contract with the third party?
To the first question, bring the third party into court, ask them for the code.
You might or might not get it, but if you don't, it becomes grounds to question the evidence and you might get it thrown out.
In other words, the FBI might or might not be able to give you the code, but the Judge doesn't have to allow the evidence gathered from the code into court either.
Please understand that this is a 60-year-old or so woman. She grew up with the Cold War. Don't hold this woman to the standards that you would someone who has learned about systems of government from textbooks. To her, communist is a synonym for authoritarian. Communists were all about "papers, please" and preventing their citizenry from critique or even travel.
One of the grand flaws most people have is failing to understand an issue from any point of view other than their own.
You do not have this issue, you have put yourself in this woman's shoes and seen the light from her angle.
To many non-tech people, Apple's stance is bordering on treason.
That is only because most people like to have opinions on things they know nothing about.
I cannot begin to tell you how many non-pilots have strong opinions about aviation, helicopters, and all things flying, while having no idea whatsoever what they are talking about (I'm a professional pilot with commercial and instrument ratings in both airplanes and helicopters, a certified flight instructor in both airplanes and helicopters, with thousands of hours of flight time and over 2,000 hours of dual instruction given). Yet whenever major aviation stuff is in the news, they all like to talk like somehow they have a clue.
As long as the DoJ request is to decrypt this *one* iPhone, and tools to do are not permanently given to the FBI, why would Apple fight against doing good.
1. Do you honestly think the FBI won't end up with their hands on that tool, sooner or later?
2. Do you honestly think the Chinese government, or the Russian government, won't insist on having it, if Apple wants to sell phones there?
But I have gigabit fiber to the home now, in fact both Verizon and AT&T have run fiber to my house, so I have both choices.
If we would simply commit to deploying fiber to every home in the nation, removing all the old cable and phone lines, have you purchase your Internet connection from a regulated utility the way you buy power and water, then let the various companies (DirecTV, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) compete to sell you packs of channels, or channels by themselves, or better yet, programs and seasons, we'd all be better off.
The need for cable/sat existed when everyone was on dialup or DSL, but with high speed cable or fiber growing, I think the days of that are numbered.
I paid the premium for the iPhone 6 Plus, even getting 128GB versions of them (bought 2, one for me, one for my wife).
But we plan to live with them for a long time, well beyond the normal two year upgrade. What happens when they no longer perform remains up for debate.
But just like PCs that used to cost thousands and now cost hundreds, the idea of phones still costing $700+ in a few years is likely to be a problem for Apple.
Mac are expensive, but they have their fans, but it is a limited market. The iPhone is nearly 2/3 of all Apple's gross revenue, that won't continue forever at the current prices.
Side note: If Apple would get real with prices, Mac could be 20+% of the PC market if they wanted it. I'd buy one.
Those things DO exist somewhere, and if Apple can be made to provide a backdoor, then EVERY technology company can, and then ALL our data and information is open to hackers and foreign interests.
This is much bigger than your phone or your credit card.
Apple's point is that you should never be able to override encryption. If something is encrypted and you don't have the key, you don't get access, period.
Ah, but that's not what you first said. And it's not really true - "all the doors and windows are locked" is a perfectly reasonable definition of a secure house, but that still doesn't mean I can't enter. Security just isn't about absolutes.
Now you're just being pedantic about it...
A bank vault isn't invincible, but it doesn't have to be to be considered secure. If it can't be broken into before the bank opens in the morning, then it is "secure enough".
The lock on the front door of my house is enough to keep out the average interested person, the alarm that goes off if they kick it down will address most of the rest. If turning the handle opens the door without effort, then the lock doesn't matter, now does it?
That's the matter of dispute "Secure Enclave" is marketing, and we don't know what's real. Apple rolled their own security with "Secure Enclave", which almost never turns out to actually be secure. Apple of course claimed they can't break it, to avoid bad press. They're now being asked to prove they can't, to prove the FBIs suggestions, such as a firmware update, or just altering the object code directly in RAM, won't work. Those seem like reasonable suggestions to me.
First, you can't prove a negative.
Second, Secure Enclave isn't in the iPhone 5c, so it has nothing to do with this case, since the technology in the 5c is far closer to the 4s than the 5s and beyond.
I suspect Apple could, if they REALLY wanted to, break the 5c and earlier models, due to them being less secure. I suspect Apple could NOT do the same trick with the 5s and beyond. If designed correctly, they would be virtually impossible to break. A new firmware doesn't help with a 5s, because that has nothing to do with the Secure Enclave. If you update the SE chip, you wipe the key in the process (as designed).
How is that relevant? No one ever attacks the math itself, except as an academic exercise. Practical attacks are always about getting the key. The key is on the phone. (But the phone is still "encrypted", regardless.)
No, HALF of the key is on the phone, the other half is the 4 digit pin you have to enter. Just getting the key on the phone won't let you read the phone's contents. Why is it that people miss that key detail?
Without the 4 digit pin, you will never, ever, ever read the phone's contents. Ever.
This is why the FBI needs the override from Apple, the phone will wipe after 10 incorrect tries (I've read in media reports that this was a work phone and it is indeed set to auto-wipe after 10 tries).
My take-away is very different. I don't even have a PIN on my phone. I don't trust my phone provider to keep my data safe. If my phone were lost or stolen, of for that matter the PC in my house (which also doesn't have a login screen), I'd want to change my email password, but that's about it (and if I were worried about a government, I arrange things so that changing my email password was also irrelevant).
If that is your take-away, then you simply don't understand the security implications.
Let me put this another way. Imagine if your wallet was stolen and in it was your drivers licence, social security card, credit cards, and checkbook. Do you think that changing the pin on your debit cards and your password to your online banking would be enough?
That's the problem, and it is a far bigger issue than you think it is.
While those are fair points, and good advice... I still have a concern...
I don't think there is a large enough disclaimer that Backblaze runs their equipment in a 24/7 environment that is quite different than most users. Oh sure, they say it and it is there, but I think it deserves highlighting.
If you look at the percentage failure rates, they are higher across the board than what I've seen. Sure, drives fail, but honestly I have some of those same Seagate drives in a server here and they have been running for years without an issue. They are however, installed in tower cases flat (rather than vertical) and the most I have installed in one tower is 8, each in its own drive bay.
I suspect Backblaze is quite hard on drives and the rates are worse than you'd see outside of that environment. It is also worth noting that those drives are not all installed in the same type of "pod". Backblaze has changed pod designs a few times and now uses an "anti-vibration" system they didn't used to.
Their data is interesting, and I'm glad they offer it. I like how open they try to be, more companies should do that. However, it is just one slant and not the whole picture. I fear that some people will read it and say to themselves, "well I bought a WD, so I guess I don't have to backup". And yes, I've heard such things from real computer users, sadly...
If I enter your house through the open window, that doesn't mean you had a bad door lock.
No, it means the house wasn't locked in the first place. You're only as secure as your weakest link.
Sure, but that's not the question. The FBI doesn't currently have the key. If there's a way to give them the key, that doesn't mean the device is not encrypted.
A four digit pin is not really secure, Apple's attempt to make it secure is to limit the number of attempts to try and prevent a brute force attack, as the FBI wishes to do.
This requires overriding the existing security, something that appears possible on the iPhone 5c, but should not be possible (even for Apple) on the iPhone 5s or later (thanks to Secure Enclave).
Let me put this another way. Try erasing the actual 256-bit AES key on the phone and try to recover the data and see how well that works without the key.
The take away from this is that if you really care about your data, don't use a 4 digit pin, use a long password. Then this request for help wouldn't work. The key embedded on the phone only helps once you enter in your own key that goes with it. If your personal password is 12345 then you really have no protection. If your personal password is DEj28s^%$h3nkdol?EqP then you're 100% secure (or as close to 100% as it gets in this world).
Of course likely no one uses such a password, but "Hello1Goodbye2Tomorrow3Yesterday4Happy5" would likely be pretty darn close the same thing, if a PITA to type in. You could shorten that to H1G2T3Y4H5 and while not as secure, it is a crapload better than a 4 digit pin.
--------
This is ALL missing the point of course... even if Apple unlocks the phone, if the owner of that phone used a third party encryption program, it likely wouldn't matter. The flaw has to be in the implementation of the encryption, since 256-bit AES will never be brute forced (it isn't physically possible in our universe). A $5 wrench might come in handy however.:)
All things fail, including hard drives. The question isn't "if", it is "when".
Picking between WD or Seagate hoping to get a "good drive" is missing the point, what happens when both drives fail?
Do you have your data backed up?
I run both Crashplan and Backblaze, I also have a copy stored on Amazon Glacier and important files on OneDrive. I also have two external drives that I rotate backups on and keep unplugged.
For most people, what I do is "overkill", but I've lost data before... never again...
Clearly not true. It could be encrypted, but Apple could ave a copy of the key hidden away somewhere - a key escrow program. This would protect iThing users from non-government attacks, and is what the government wants to future to be.
If a door can be opened without the key, then it isn't locked in the first place.
If a device can be decrypted without the key, then it wasn't encrypted in the first place.
Proper use of encryption requires that it not be accessible without the key, no exceptions.
The other problem with your comment is that it assumes the US government is the only government on Earth (a common mistake of Americans). It also assumes that a key-escrow is safe against non-government actors. Math doesn't care who you are, it would never stay secure for long.
Also, it could be encrypted, with the key on the device, as appears to be the case, and so Apple just needs to read that key. That may be unduly expensive, but any form of persistent storage can be read by some out-of-band method.
The key is designed to not be readable, not even by Apple. The only possible way to read the key would be to decap the chip itself and use an electron microscope, which would take time and cost a lot of money.
If the chip is designed properly, it will self-destruct when decapped, making even that option not possible.
Depending on your use case, I'd argue that we're more or less there.
While 1TB SSDs are still "pricey" at $250-300, the 500GB level is really nice these days.
A 1TB HDD is about $50, a 500GB SSD is about $120. Yes, that is more for less space, but how often will you use your computer? How much time will you spend waiting for the computer vs. the computer waiting for you?
It isn't right for everyone, but I'd submit that in a $500-1,000 computer, a $70 price difference is pretty minor and most people don't actually need 1TB anyway.
I see a lot of 1TB drives with less than 200GB of data on them.
One thing that our shop does is a lot of 250GB SSD installs, we make the existing 1TB HDD the "data" drive and clone Windows to the SSD.
Yes, I am aware that is the "suggested list price", and that actual selling prices will likely be lower...
However, you can already buy the very good, very reliable 240GB Crucial BX200 drive for $65 at Amazon, and there are other choices for $60 and lower if price is everything.
If Apple can decrypt it, then it isn't encrypted in the first place.
Apple could very well say, "this isn't going to work, but if you want to pay us millions of dollars to accomplish nothing, we'll be happy to take your money".
It is a chance for Apple to get the government to pay for their own security testing. They could well take this chance to really let loose their people at attacking their own systems.
If they are not secure, fair enough, the FBI gets this one, but Apple learns how to make the next device more secure. If it is secure, then so be it, they are doing something right.
A lock doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to prevent someone from gaining entry within a given amount of time. Most safes are this way. All can be broken, even the big walk in one down at the bank. But can it be broken into before the bank opens in the morning? That is the real question.
Can the iPhone's encryption be broken? Probably. Can it be broken in a timeframe that matters to humans? Hopefully not, or the lock is worthless.
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A brute force on the 4 digit pin doesn't work if the phone auto-wipes after 10 wrong tries. You can't brute force it off the phone, due to hardware encryption, it has to be done there.
The iPhone 5c lacks Secure Enclave, what is being proposed would probably work on a 5c, but probably not on a 5s or 6/6s. It for sure shouldn't work on the upcoming 7, Apple is likely designing this ability out as we speak.
And that's all fine. Remind me again why Apple has to provide said help?
A Judge can order a safe broken into, the FBI can hire a safecracker to break into it. If that safecracker doesn't want to do the job, they'll get someone else.
What DOESN'T happen is the Judge directly ordering a SPECIFIC safecracker to do the job against their will, and in the process, damage their reputation for ALL safes.
No one is disputing the FBI's right to inspect this phone. More power to them, crack away... Why exactly does Apple have to help again? Have we become slaves?
It seems like the plan is proceeding nicely. We getting into the "public debate" phase. Soon it will move on to the trade-off phase decided on by a panel of private and governmental experts.
Yea, but part of the challenge is that not everything in the world can be "compromised" or "traded-off".
Encryption either works or it doesn't. Your info is either secure or it isn't. If the government can access it, then it isn't secure.
There just isn't any give-and-take here, either you can make your info private, or you cannot.
I had a '90 240SX and it was a blast to drive. Fortunately in Chicago, where I lived at the time, there is no requirement for cars manufactured in 1995 or previously to meet any emissions requirements or to even be tested.
Why is that "fortunate"?
That is terrible and is part of the problem of pollution, grandfathering...
Most SSDs include free cloning software.
The Samsung and Crucial drives that I usually use, provide such software for free. I have yet to need anything else personally.
Does the third party have to reveal their source code? Can the FBI effectively hide behind their contract with the third party?
To the first question, bring the third party into court, ask them for the code.
You might or might not get it, but if you don't, it becomes grounds to question the evidence and you might get it thrown out.
In other words, the FBI might or might not be able to give you the code, but the Judge doesn't have to allow the evidence gathered from the code into court either.
Please understand that this is a 60-year-old or so woman. She grew up with the Cold War. Don't hold this woman to the standards that you would someone who has learned about systems of government from textbooks. To her, communist is a synonym for authoritarian. Communists were all about "papers, please" and preventing their citizenry from critique or even travel.
One of the grand flaws most people have is failing to understand an issue from any point of view other than their own.
You do not have this issue, you have put yourself in this woman's shoes and seen the light from her angle.
Law has to be learned by reading. It can't be learned by listening to complainers in a tavern.
And a whole lot of lawyers love to ignore the practical world of politics and reality.
Remind me again when the last time a non-military member was charged in the US with treason was.
To many non-tech people, Apple's stance is bordering on treason.
That is only because most people like to have opinions on things they know nothing about.
I cannot begin to tell you how many non-pilots have strong opinions about aviation, helicopters, and all things flying, while having no idea whatsoever what they are talking about (I'm a professional pilot with commercial and instrument ratings in both airplanes and helicopters, a certified flight instructor in both airplanes and helicopters, with thousands of hours of flight time and over 2,000 hours of dual instruction given). Yet whenever major aviation stuff is in the news, they all like to talk like somehow they have a clue.
As long as the DoJ request is to decrypt this *one* iPhone, and tools to do are not permanently given to the FBI, why would Apple fight against doing good.
1. Do you honestly think the FBI won't end up with their hands on that tool, sooner or later?
2. Do you honestly think the Chinese government, or the Russian government, won't insist on having it, if Apple wants to sell phones there?
Road to hell, good intentions, and all that...
Proof before the court of... what?
No one is on trial here... the people who did this are dead...
Ok, I get it, not everyone lives where I do...
But I have gigabit fiber to the home now, in fact both Verizon and AT&T have run fiber to my house, so I have both choices.
If we would simply commit to deploying fiber to every home in the nation, removing all the old cable and phone lines, have you purchase your Internet connection from a regulated utility the way you buy power and water, then let the various companies (DirecTV, Comcast, Verizon, etc.) compete to sell you packs of channels, or channels by themselves, or better yet, programs and seasons, we'd all be better off.
The need for cable/sat existed when everyone was on dialup or DSL, but with high speed cable or fiber growing, I think the days of that are numbered.
I tend to agree with you...
I paid the premium for the iPhone 6 Plus, even getting 128GB versions of them (bought 2, one for me, one for my wife).
But we plan to live with them for a long time, well beyond the normal two year upgrade. What happens when they no longer perform remains up for debate.
But just like PCs that used to cost thousands and now cost hundreds, the idea of phones still costing $700+ in a few years is likely to be a problem for Apple.
Mac are expensive, but they have their fans, but it is a limited market. The iPhone is nearly 2/3 of all Apple's gross revenue, that won't continue forever at the current prices.
Side note: If Apple would get real with prices, Mac could be 20+% of the PC market if they wanted it. I'd buy one.
Those things are not in my phone.
Maybe not, but that continues to miss the point.
Those things DO exist somewhere, and if Apple can be made to provide a backdoor, then EVERY technology company can, and then ALL our data and information is open to hackers and foreign interests.
This is much bigger than your phone or your credit card.
Apple's point is that you should never be able to override encryption. If something is encrypted and you don't have the key, you don't get access, period.
Ah, but that's not what you first said. And it's not really true - "all the doors and windows are locked" is a perfectly reasonable definition of a secure house, but that still doesn't mean I can't enter. Security just isn't about absolutes.
Now you're just being pedantic about it...
A bank vault isn't invincible, but it doesn't have to be to be considered secure. If it can't be broken into before the bank opens in the morning, then it is "secure enough".
The lock on the front door of my house is enough to keep out the average interested person, the alarm that goes off if they kick it down will address most of the rest. If turning the handle opens the door without effort, then the lock doesn't matter, now does it?
That's the matter of dispute "Secure Enclave" is marketing, and we don't know what's real. Apple rolled their own security with "Secure Enclave", which almost never turns out to actually be secure. Apple of course claimed they can't break it, to avoid bad press. They're now being asked to prove they can't, to prove the FBIs suggestions, such as a firmware update, or just altering the object code directly in RAM, won't work. Those seem like reasonable suggestions to me.
First, you can't prove a negative.
Second, Secure Enclave isn't in the iPhone 5c, so it has nothing to do with this case, since the technology in the 5c is far closer to the 4s than the 5s and beyond.
I suspect Apple could, if they REALLY wanted to, break the 5c and earlier models, due to them being less secure. I suspect Apple could NOT do the same trick with the 5s and beyond. If designed correctly, they would be virtually impossible to break. A new firmware doesn't help with a 5s, because that has nothing to do with the Secure Enclave. If you update the SE chip, you wipe the key in the process (as designed).
How is that relevant? No one ever attacks the math itself, except as an academic exercise. Practical attacks are always about getting the key. The key is on the phone. (But the phone is still "encrypted", regardless.)
No, HALF of the key is on the phone, the other half is the 4 digit pin you have to enter. Just getting the key on the phone won't let you read the phone's contents. Why is it that people miss that key detail?
Without the 4 digit pin, you will never, ever, ever read the phone's contents. Ever.
This is why the FBI needs the override from Apple, the phone will wipe after 10 incorrect tries (I've read in media reports that this was a work phone and it is indeed set to auto-wipe after 10 tries).
My take-away is very different. I don't even have a PIN on my phone. I don't trust my phone provider to keep my data safe. If my phone were lost or stolen, of for that matter the PC in my house (which also doesn't have a login screen), I'd want to change my email password, but that's about it (and if I were worried about a government, I arrange things so that changing my email password was also irrelevant).
If that is your take-away, then you simply don't understand the security implications.
Let me put this another way. Imagine if your wallet was stolen and in it was your drivers licence, social security card, credit cards, and checkbook. Do you think that changing the pin on your debit cards and your password to your online banking would be enough?
That's the problem, and it is a far bigger issue than you think it is.
Nothing in that article indicates what version of Windows 10 they are running. If it is Home or Pro, it hardly applies to what the DoD will be using.
While those are fair points, and good advice... I still have a concern...
I don't think there is a large enough disclaimer that Backblaze runs their equipment in a 24/7 environment that is quite different than most users. Oh sure, they say it and it is there, but I think it deserves highlighting.
If you look at the percentage failure rates, they are higher across the board than what I've seen. Sure, drives fail, but honestly I have some of those same Seagate drives in a server here and they have been running for years without an issue. They are however, installed in tower cases flat (rather than vertical) and the most I have installed in one tower is 8, each in its own drive bay.
I suspect Backblaze is quite hard on drives and the rates are worse than you'd see outside of that environment. It is also worth noting that those drives are not all installed in the same type of "pod". Backblaze has changed pod designs a few times and now uses an "anti-vibration" system they didn't used to.
Their data is interesting, and I'm glad they offer it. I like how open they try to be, more companies should do that. However, it is just one slant and not the whole picture. I fear that some people will read it and say to themselves, "well I bought a WD, so I guess I don't have to backup". And yes, I've heard such things from real computer users, sadly...
If I enter your house through the open window, that doesn't mean you had a bad door lock.
No, it means the house wasn't locked in the first place. You're only as secure as your weakest link.
Sure, but that's not the question. The FBI doesn't currently have the key. If there's a way to give them the key, that doesn't mean the device is not encrypted.
A four digit pin is not really secure, Apple's attempt to make it secure is to limit the number of attempts to try and prevent a brute force attack, as the FBI wishes to do.
This requires overriding the existing security, something that appears possible on the iPhone 5c, but should not be possible (even for Apple) on the iPhone 5s or later (thanks to Secure Enclave).
Let me put this another way. Try erasing the actual 256-bit AES key on the phone and try to recover the data and see how well that works without the key.
The take away from this is that if you really care about your data, don't use a 4 digit pin, use a long password. Then this request for help wouldn't work. The key embedded on the phone only helps once you enter in your own key that goes with it. If your personal password is 12345 then you really have no protection. If your personal password is DEj28s^%$h3nkdol?EqP then you're 100% secure (or as close to 100% as it gets in this world).
Of course likely no one uses such a password, but "Hello1Goodbye2Tomorrow3Yesterday4Happy5" would likely be pretty darn close the same thing, if a PITA to type in. You could shorten that to H1G2T3Y4H5 and while not as secure, it is a crapload better than a 4 digit pin.
--------
This is ALL missing the point of course... even if Apple unlocks the phone, if the owner of that phone used a third party encryption program, it likely wouldn't matter. The flaw has to be in the implementation of the encryption, since 256-bit AES will never be brute forced (it isn't physically possible in our universe). A $5 wrench might come in handy however. :)
All things fail, including hard drives. The question isn't "if", it is "when".
Picking between WD or Seagate hoping to get a "good drive" is missing the point, what happens when both drives fail?
Do you have your data backed up?
I run both Crashplan and Backblaze, I also have a copy stored on Amazon Glacier and important files on OneDrive. I also have two external drives that I rotate backups on and keep unplugged.
For most people, what I do is "overkill", but I've lost data before... never again...
Clearly not true. It could be encrypted, but Apple could ave a copy of the key hidden away somewhere - a key escrow program. This would protect iThing users from non-government attacks, and is what the government wants to future to be.
If a door can be opened without the key, then it isn't locked in the first place.
If a device can be decrypted without the key, then it wasn't encrypted in the first place.
Proper use of encryption requires that it not be accessible without the key, no exceptions.
The other problem with your comment is that it assumes the US government is the only government on Earth (a common mistake of Americans). It also assumes that a key-escrow is safe against non-government actors. Math doesn't care who you are, it would never stay secure for long.
Also, it could be encrypted, with the key on the device, as appears to be the case, and so Apple just needs to read that key. That may be unduly expensive, but any form of persistent storage can be read by some out-of-band method.
The key is designed to not be readable, not even by Apple. The only possible way to read the key would be to decap the chip itself and use an electron microscope, which would take time and cost a lot of money.
If the chip is designed properly, it will self-destruct when decapped, making even that option not possible.
All true...
Depending on your use case, I'd argue that we're more or less there.
While 1TB SSDs are still "pricey" at $250-300, the 500GB level is really nice these days.
A 1TB HDD is about $50, a 500GB SSD is about $120. Yes, that is more for less space, but how often will you use your computer? How much time will you spend waiting for the computer vs. the computer waiting for you?
It isn't right for everyone, but I'd submit that in a $500-1,000 computer, a $70 price difference is pretty minor and most people don't actually need 1TB anyway.
I see a lot of 1TB drives with less than 200GB of data on them.
One thing that our shop does is a lot of 250GB SSD installs, we make the existing 1TB HDD the "data" drive and clone Windows to the SSD.
That is true... And if this new 750 EVO ends up being $50 on the street, I'll probably buy 5 of them. :)
I was simply making the point that $75 is no longer "cheap" for this size, but yes, you are correct.
Part of the court order included an order that Apple provide an estimate of their time and charges to be reimbursed for their efforts.
The court is not asking Apple to do this for free, the FBI would be expected to pay Apple for their time and trouble.
Yes, I am aware that is the "suggested list price", and that actual selling prices will likely be lower...
However, you can already buy the very good, very reliable 240GB Crucial BX200 drive for $65 at Amazon, and there are other choices for $60 and lower if price is everything.
http://amzn.to/20ZdOwy
I have several of the BX200 drives in basic machines around the office, they work just fine, no hassles or issues.
If Apple can decrypt it, then it isn't encrypted in the first place.
Apple could very well say, "this isn't going to work, but if you want to pay us millions of dollars to accomplish nothing, we'll be happy to take your money".
It is a chance for Apple to get the government to pay for their own security testing. They could well take this chance to really let loose their people at attacking their own systems.
If they are not secure, fair enough, the FBI gets this one, but Apple learns how to make the next device more secure. If it is secure, then so be it, they are doing something right.
A lock doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to prevent someone from gaining entry within a given amount of time. Most safes are this way. All can be broken, even the big walk in one down at the bank. But can it be broken into before the bank opens in the morning? That is the real question.
Can the iPhone's encryption be broken? Probably. Can it be broken in a timeframe that matters to humans? Hopefully not, or the lock is worthless.