And did they inform Apple of the security vulnerability that was used? Probably not, but they should as it could be an issue of national security.
They don't have to tell Apple anything...they tried to work with Apple but, Apple decided to make this something nasty in the media...good luck getting the FBI to work with you after a very public bashing
The FBI brought it into the media. Apple responded in kind.
Part of me thinks this is BS and they never got into the iPhone and withdrew because of all the bad press they were getting.
It was done through NAND memory duplication.
Easy way to think about this is like this: Virtual machine, or in this case, vitrual phone. Once they were duplicate the memory, they were able to run a simple password hack algorithm until they got the correct password. When ever the it reach the limit where the content would be deleted. They would just reset the virtual phone and continue right where they left off untill they went through all combinations.
Note this was reported in the news a few days back.
Is there an iOS exploit in the wild? Did the FBI use it or something else? Or did they do nothing at all except this "Gov Promo" because they knew they had no case?
Yes, of course, the DOJ/FBI may come back and say they found that these pitiful San Bernardino killers had the keys to the end of the world on the iPhone - but that's to be expected. Meanwhile, Apple and other tech companies are strengthening their encryption to avoid this sort of unconstitutional (?), certainly unproductive and wasteful, DOJ activity in the future.
Lol! All the comments on them lying is right. They didn't get into the phone. They most probably broke it and now have no way to finish the trial because they broke the evidence they needed to get into. It all smelt like bullshit to me when they started the case and never followed protocol and the law by trying to get into it some other way. Then when they did they brought it out of the country to do it. Bullshit.
I guarantee this is bullshit. I believe the FBI had access all along. They changed the passcode twice while the phone was in their custody. You mean to tell me the FBI didn't know what they changed it to? Give me a break. This was a power play all along in an attempt to use the threat of terrorism to scare ordinary Americans so the government could assume new powers compelling a private entity such as Apple. When experts in the tech industry lined up lock-step with Apple and even politicians originally with the FBI switched to Apple's side they backed down. As the winds shifted and Apple called their bluff, the FBI moved to drop the case so as to avoid embarrassment of a loss in the courtroom.
And did they inform Apple of the security vulnerability that was used? Probably not, but they should as it could be an issue of national security.
No. I heard on NPR this morning that Apple's lawyers had asked for the FBI to reveal the manner of the crack, and were told it would not be revealed to them.
WTF? Isn't Tim Cook already on record as saying that the procedure Cellebrite was planning to use wouldn't work? So if Cellebrite was able to access data on that older phone, presumably other government agencies as well as gifted hackers can do so as well. Hopefully Apple's next iteration will invalidate the process Cellebrite used. Of course, that's assuming the phone was really cracked and the DoJ/FBI isn't just pulling another fast one.
Some have suggested that this whole thing was a big show. True or not, both sides come out looking good.
While that's entirely debatable, there is now a very public perception that Apple's security has a backdoor in it, which can definitely affect Apple's reputation and stock.
That's because they're lying POSs - they had extracted it before the lawsuit, but they wanted the precedent of making the private sector cooperate with illegal snoops - but they called called on their obvious BS by Snowden and others who explained that they could easily extract the information, so they had to back off.
I've had emotionally charged arguments with people elsewhere on this topic, and it amazing just how absurdly misunderstood the subject is.
For example, the article posits that Apple has some kind of PR debacle on their hands. Well, to be sure this has been an emotionally charged case, but to anyone with some knowledge of these devices, it's not a debacle.
I was always disappointed that the FBI had so much trouble hacking iOS, when jailbreak examples on the 5C were out some time ago, and those didn't even assume you COULD open the phone and work more directly with the hardware trying to break in.
Most can't separate the task of hacking iOS and unlocking the phone. One vulnerability is not directly related to the other. We've known for some time iOS could be hacked, and so far every phone from the first to the 5 series has hacks for iOS (not entirely sure about the 6 series yet, but I don't expect it would take much longer). That still doesn't unlock the phone.
So, Farook's phone wasn't of concern to him before he died. It was the one phone they didn't bother to crush, and it was issued by a local county government. It would be laughable for a terrorist to use a government issued phone for secretive information and communications. As such, it is doubtful Farook would have bothered to choose the stronger custom alphanumeric passcode option, and probably chose some simple 4 digit number.
With a hack applied to avoid the kill switch and long delays at the login screen, one could find a 4 digit passcode through automated means within an hour. This wasn't news to most of us familiar with the technology.
Yet, for a lot of people who don't think, this represents some kind of defeat for Apple, by finding a passcode hardly any more secure than "1234".
Brilliant, guys...just brilliant.
Find anything more than was on the older iCloud backup did you?
Did you? Hello?
No need to get all shaken and stirred up about this. It's a known fact that the encryption on these older phones is done all in software, the only tricky (and yes, in this case very tricky) part is to get access to the right hardware without destroying it. Once that was achieved you can simply make up a backup of the flash content and restore back as necessary, load it up to a flash simulator and connect that instead of the real flash, debug the content offline, potentially even emulate the CPU in software...
It's been done very often, even by less sophisticated hackers, so it's a lot more likely to happen by sophisticated tech companies. With newer iPhones this is exponentially harder since the keys are kept in the secure enclave (if Apple is not lying about this) and unlike a regular TPM I have much confidence that there're no backdoors built in.
Still there's a very high change that this is all made up BS by the FBI. They'd be pretty dumb to not think of this possibility very early on and instead let the conflict escalate. Most likely this is just a convincing stunt to show the only nation dumb enough to fall for it to demonstrate that the FBI is still on top of their game; potentially they even destroyed the iPhone in the process of trying to get to the data so they damage wouldn't grow farther if Apple is actually dictated to make it happen by law and they cannot not show the intact iPhone anymore. The only way this was even halfway convincing is if they announced and dropped all the open requests for data extraction and explained how they got into the iPhone. Anyone wager a bet?
As a U.S. taxpayer, I would like to know how much the FBI paid the outside entity to access the data on the phone. For people living places where law enforcement agencies have dozens of phones they want accessed, it would be nice to know what the costs and benefits are to using this technique repeatedly.
As a U.S. taxpayer, I would like to know how much the FBI paid the outside entity to access the data on the phone. For people living places where law enforcement agencies have dozens of phones they want accessed, it would be nice to know what the costs and benefits are to using this technique repeatedly.
$15,278 according to several online stories over the weekend.
I'd love to sue the FBI for misuse of public funds Because before they decided to hire lawyers and file a lawsuit to force Apple to unlock the phone they hadn't done their due diligence in the case their premise was the only way to access the data, was with apples help turns out this was not true, and it only cost less than $20,000 to get the data
They just wanted a back door into the I phone so that it would be easier to nab information off peoples phones without getting a warrant. If you remember the dept of justice wasn't asking just to hack into that particular phone but wanted a back door to get around the encryption all together. Any idiot can hack into an Iphone. They were after a way to get into All Iphones. Thank you Apple for sticking to your guns on this one because there is no reason to have everyones personal information available to browse at will by government agents. People forget that the government is made up of people and people do mean horrible stupid things like steal Identities. and I dont see why I would want to make it easy for someone to use information available to them just because they work for a government agency to get all my credit card and banking information. Talk about dangling a carrot. Build a back door and your just asking for someone to rip you off so they can pay off their mortgage or buy a car. People that work for the government have money troubles too sometimes. Just look at Marco Rubio he has a Ton of credit card debt. anyway thats my rant.
As a U.S. taxpayer, I would like to know how much the FBI paid the outside entity to access the data on the phone. For people living places where law enforcement agencies have dozens of phones they want accessed, it would be nice to know what the costs and benefits are to using this technique repeatedly.
$15,278 according to several online stories over the weekend.
Couldn't celebrite get more money if they handed over their methods to Apple than selling them to the U.S. government? i'm pretty sure Tim cook would have paid more than $15K for this
Comments
Yes, of course, the DOJ/FBI may come back and say they found that these pitiful San Bernardino killers had the keys to the end of the world on the iPhone - but that's to be expected. Meanwhile, Apple and other tech companies are strengthening their encryption to avoid this sort of unconstitutional (?), certainly unproductive and wasteful, DOJ activity in the future.
It's been done very often, even by less sophisticated hackers, so it's a lot more likely to happen by sophisticated tech companies. With newer iPhones this is exponentially harder since the keys are kept in the secure enclave (if Apple is not lying about this) and unlike a regular TPM I have much confidence that there're no backdoors built in.
Still there's a very high change that this is all made up BS by the FBI. They'd be pretty dumb to not think of this possibility very early on and instead let the conflict escalate. Most likely this is just a convincing stunt to show the only nation dumb enough to fall for it to demonstrate that the FBI is still on top of their game; potentially they even destroyed the iPhone in the process of trying to get to the data so they damage wouldn't grow farther if Apple is actually dictated to make it happen by law and they cannot not show the intact iPhone anymore. The only way this was even halfway convincing is if they announced and dropped all the open requests for data extraction and explained how they got into the iPhone. Anyone wager a bet?
Because before they decided to hire lawyers and file a lawsuit to force Apple to unlock the phone
they hadn't done their due diligence in the case
their premise was the only way to access the data, was with apples help
turns out this was not true, and it only cost less than $20,000 to get the data
i'm pretty sure Tim cook would have paid more than $15K for this