Apple is fighting the FBI
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@Dashrender said:
Who said anything about paying someone? Did I miss that in the article that the FBI was paying someone?
Unless the ex-Apple employee that someone imagined was going to risk their own freedom (because what we are assuming that this imaginary person must have done is enough to send them to Guantanamo Bay for life, way beyond Mitnik level hacking here) just to aid the FBI, we have to assume a lot of money being paid for this imagined crime.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@Jason said:
@Dashrender said:
Personally, it feels like the FBI's backing off with a claim of a third party is every bit as likely that they feel they are loosing the case and want to back away from this before precedent is set.
I would not be surprised if there is a programmer.. maybe one who left apple or was terminated and has it out for the company that can do this.
Interesting - If that's true, I have serious doubts about their entire security model!
Yes, for sure. The question would be.. is there a back door, a known weakness or did someone steal the key. If the later, the FBI can't use it and the evidence would be useless.
Actually is that true? I don't know the law, but if the FBI themselves weren't involved in the theft, are you sure they can't use it?
If they pay someone to steal, they are very much involved in the theft. If you hire a hitman, you still go to jail.
But the US government has made themselves above the law and has Sovereign immunity from being sued in most cases..
Yes, but it is not about being sued, it's about being able to use it in court. The FBI is, without a doubt, going to act like a common criminal given the chance and their total immunity to the law (read: they have suspended all pretence of law.) but even thought they themselves are immune, they can't use that in court as the court still has to use the law.
Yeah I just meant they won't be legally held responsible like they should be.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who said anything about paying someone? Did I miss that in the article that the FBI was paying someone?
Unless the ex-Apple employee that someone imagined was going to risk their own freedom (because what we are assuming that this imaginary person must have done is enough to send them to Guantanamo Bay for life, way beyond Mitnik level hacking here) just to aid the FBI, we have to assume a lot of money being paid for this imagined crime.
you're reading to much into it.
You've assumed the employee did it to help the FBI. What is they stole it for their own reasons, whatever those might be.. and now for whatever reason, is stickin' to Apple by giving it to the FBI for free.
Granted way worse than Mitnik level here...
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@Jason said:
@Dashrender said:
Personally, it feels like the FBI's backing off with a claim of a third party is every bit as likely that they feel they are loosing the case and want to back away from this before precedent is set.
I would not be surprised if there is a programmer.. maybe one who left apple or was terminated and has it out for the company that can do this.
Interesting - If that's true, I have serious doubts about their entire security model!
Yes, for sure. The question would be.. is there a back door, a known weakness or did someone steal the key. If the later, the FBI can't use it and the evidence would be useless.
Actually is that true? I don't know the law, but if the FBI themselves weren't involved in the theft, are you sure they can't use it?
If they pay someone to steal, they are very much involved in the theft. If you hire a hitman, you still go to jail.
I clearly didn't give enough information. If the ex employee stole the key before this case even started, with no influences from the FBI (or any government branch) - and let's assume that to be true - now what?
Same thing, if the evidence wasn't obtained lawfully, and it is brought to light, then the evidence is admissible (certainly in the UK legal system)...hence why they might not ask many questions then they can say "well we didn't know, so it still counts" kind of thing...
But not sure how this would work when it's not a court case (I presume since they're dead they can't be tried...)
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who said anything about paying someone? Did I miss that in the article that the FBI was paying someone?
Unless the ex-Apple employee that someone imagined was going to risk their own freedom (because what we are assuming that this imaginary person must have done is enough to send them to Guantanamo Bay for life, way beyond Mitnik level hacking here) just to aid the FBI, we have to assume a lot of money being paid for this imagined crime.
you're reading to much into it.
You've assumed the employee did it to help the FBI. What is they stole it for their own reasons, whatever those might be.. and now for whatever reason, is stickin' to Apple by giving it to the FBI for free.
Granted way worse than Mitnik level here...
But that would put them at risk of totally losing their freedom. In the US that crime is often met with no court hearing and up to a lifetime in prison. Hacking is a "no law" crime, you don't ever see a court room, they just take your freedom away. It's not something that you would do "to stick it" to someone. Even if the FBI likes you today, they aren't honest people and would throw you under a bus tomorrow. If the winds of popularity shift, anytime in your lifetime, you might go to solitary confinement for the rest of it. Not a chance anyone would take to casually "stick it" to the world's largest corporation who would have an insane level of incentive to encourage a future politician to make sure that you just disappeared.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who said anything about paying someone? Did I miss that in the article that the FBI was paying someone?
Unless the ex-Apple employee that someone imagined was going to risk their own freedom (because what we are assuming that this imaginary person must have done is enough to send them to Guantanamo Bay for life, way beyond Mitnik level hacking here) just to aid the FBI, we have to assume a lot of money being paid for this imagined crime.
you're reading to much into it.
You've assumed the employee did it to help the FBI. What is they stole it for their own reasons, whatever those might be.. and now for whatever reason, is stickin' to Apple by giving it to the FBI for free.
Granted way worse than Mitnik level here...
If someone steals money and gives it to you it's still a crime..
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The FBI is working with Cellebrite to unlock San Bernardino iPhone http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/23/fbi-is-working-with-cellebrite-to-unlock-san-bernardino-iphone-reports-say/
Looks like it is correct https://www.fpds.gov/common/jsp/LaunchWebPage.jsp?command=execute&requestid=66873120&version=1.4
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So as I understand it, if you guess wrong too much it will destroy the data, so... why not dump the memory of the phone? There's got to be a way to start it up and dump the stack to something else and all the data so you can crack it at your leisure.
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@tonyshowoff said:
So as I understand it, if you guess wrong too much it will destroy the data, so... why not dump the memory of the phone? There's got to be a way to start it up and dump the stack to something else and all the data so you can crack it at your leisure.
That's what I have always said... just make a full copy of absolutely everything.
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@Ambarishrh said:
The FBI is working with Cellebrite to unlock San Bernardino iPhone http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/23/fbi-is-working-with-cellebrite-to-unlock-san-bernardino-iphone-reports-say/
So the US completely lacks the skills to do this? Or just no Americans are willing to aid the FBI? It is quite an interesting point that they felt that the solution lay outside of the country.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@tonyshowoff said:
So as I understand it, if you guess wrong too much it will destroy the data, so... why not dump the memory of the phone? There's got to be a way to start it up and dump the stack to something else and all the data so you can crack it at your leisure.
That's what I have always said... just make a full copy of absolutely everything.
This is Apple, I don't know if anyone has figured out how to do that yet, at least on iOS.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@tonyshowoff said:
So as I understand it, if you guess wrong too much it will destroy the data, so... why not dump the memory of the phone? There's got to be a way to start it up and dump the stack to something else and all the data so you can crack it at your leisure.
That's what I have always said... just make a full copy of absolutely everything.
This is standard practice for computer forensics... at least from what I was taught. Also make a copy of the original data and only work on the copy never the original.
This whole thing just sounds like it was a ploy to get a backdoor in iOS for government entities to use on a whim.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@tonyshowoff said:
So as I understand it, if you guess wrong too much it will destroy the data, so... why not dump the memory of the phone? There's got to be a way to start it up and dump the stack to something else and all the data so you can crack it at your leisure.
That's what I have always said... just make a full copy of absolutely everything.
This is standard practice for computer forensics... at least from what I was taught. Also make a copy of the original data and only work on the copy never the original.
This whole thing just sounds like it was a ploy to get a backdoor in iOS for government entities to use on a whim.
This is what I ultimately suspect.
Edit: Government's way of working: If we can't figure it out, make it illegal.
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The problem as I understand it is that the key needed to decrypt the data is a 256 bit code stored in the secure enclave. The secure enclave is part of the processor and there is no way to save the data as it were.
So sure, they could extract all of the encrypted data from the drive, and then attempt brute force decryption. I don't recall the current expected amount of time to try all possible options of a 256 bit code, but I'm sure it's still years if not thousands or millions of them.
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@Dashrender said:
The problem as I understand it is that the key needed to decrypt the data is a 256 bit code stored in the secure enclave. The secure enclave is part of the processor and there is no way to save the data as it were.
So sure, they could extract all of the encrypted data from the drive, and then attempt brute force decryption. I don't recall the current expected amount of time to try all possible options of a 256 bit code, but I'm sure it's still years if not thousands or millions of them.
But they would only need to run through a (presumably) 4 digit pin. What are there 5000-ish different combinations?
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@coliver close 10,000
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@coliver said:
@Dashrender said:
The problem as I understand it is that the key needed to decrypt the data is a 256 bit code stored in the secure enclave. The secure enclave is part of the processor and there is no way to save the data as it were.
So sure, they could extract all of the encrypted data from the drive, and then attempt brute force decryption. I don't recall the current expected amount of time to try all possible options of a 256 bit code, but I'm sure it's still years if not thousands or millions of them.
But they would only need to run through a (presumably) 4 digit pin. What are there 5000-ish different combinations?
No, that would be what they need to run through to be allowed to use the secure enclave to get access to the key. But as I mentioned, there is no way for them to copy the secure enclave out of the phone. So currently they are forced to only do the on the phone, and the iOS version currently running will tell the secure enclave to delete itself after 10 bad tries.
If they had a way to extract the secure enclave from the phone, and then run 4 digit pins against that until they got it right, sure they could try 0000-9999 (10K 4 digit pins), but as I mentioned they can't.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@coliver close 10,000
Now of course, statistics say you'll find the right code after trying about half, so that's probably where coliver go the 5,000 number.
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@Dashrender How does the secure enclave prevent the memory chips being imaged?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender How does the secure enclave prevent the memory chips being imaged?
it doesn't.
But if you're talking about the memory chips that actually store the data that the secure enclave uses to store the encyption/decryption key - it's not that it in any way prevents you from doing that... but it's inside the CPU, and there are no APIs that exist to read those chips (chips inside chips?).
So I suppose if you could disassemble the CPU and get to the storage chips that the secure enclave uses, you would have the key. I guess the chances of that happening currently without damaging said memory chips, is near impossible.
So sure, you can get the standard flash/SSD chips from the phone, desolider them, connect them to a reader, pull the data off, and start applying 256 bit decryption codes to it...and we'll see how long that takes before you guess the right one.
