Don't buy this for one second. Government knew they would lose this case. Regrouping to hit Apple again.
I think that you are right and wrong at the same time. You are right in that they stopped before it went to trial and tucked their tail between their legs. But it won't be Apple they go after. It'll be Google, Microsoft, or Samsung. And the reason why has nothing to do with the brand, it has to do with the fact those three would be willing to allow it to happen. As such, it sets the precedence. That is what the government is really going after; and then they can force everybody, including Apple, to open up everyone's phones.
nonsense. of course the government answers to us -- they work for us. not he other way round. duh.
if there is no ongoing criminal case, then the FBI has no right to keep it secret. again, they answer to the public.
There never was a criminal case filed because there are no defendants. It is just an ongoing investigation. See exemption (7) of the Freedom of Information Act. They could theoretically keep the information secret forever.
The iPhone wasn't hacked into to get the data. Cellebrite read all the data from the chips and stored it. They try entering a passcode and when it is wrong, they write all the data they stored back onto the chips that accept being written to. Because the code can be changed by the user, it has to be stored in a writeable chip.
This makes the phone forget that an incorrect attempt has been made. Repeat this process until you guess the correct code. Once you are in the phone you can see what you like. They never found the encryption.
So, you aren't now prone to hacking. They need the physical phone and a check for $15,000 made out to Cellebrite. I can't see them wanting to do this unless they have a good reason.
But as it has already been said, there is probably no useful information on the phone at all. His home computer will yield more info.
I think that the government blew their whole objective by going this direction. It also does not matter if the FBI really got into the phone or not. By saying they were able to access the data on the phone, they cannot ask Apple for help in the future, since they have shown they don't need Apple. If Apple changes the encryption so as to lock the FBI out in future versions, then Apple can just say, just access the phone the way you did before. Apple can claim they changed nothing that would break the method that was used before. The only way you could prove Apple changed anything would be for the courts to order that Apple show the code comparison between the new and old version. I don't think the courts would ultimately force Apple to expose it's code to the world like that.
I think that the government blew their whole objective by going this direction. It also does not matter if the FBI really got into the phone or not. By saying they were able to access the data on the phone, they cannot ask Apple for help in the future, since they have shown they don't need Apple. If Apple changes the encryption so as to lock the FBI out in future versions, then Apple can just say, just access the phone the way you did before. Apple can claim they changed nothing that would break the method that was used before. The only way you could prove Apple changed anything would be for the courts to order that Apple show the code comparison between the new and old version. I don't think the courts would ultimately force Apple to expose it's code to the world like that.
Apple doesn't play games like that. They are not liars. That was an old phone. Apple currently doesn't make any phones without TouchID which are already much more secure than the phone the FBI allegedly was able to hack. At least now that the pretense of national security is a little less urgent, Congress can take up the matter of encryption and whether or not the FBI or the courts can compel Apple to provide a backdoor.
Not sure the FBI is being truthful here. If they had broken into the phone then it would make more sense to keep it quiet. Bragging about it will simply make Apple look into fixing it which will make the FBI's job much harder in the future.
Anyone with an itch of common sense would keep such a breakthrough a secret.
The only reason why they had to say they got into it is because they have to give cause when they stopped the whole lawsuit. Remember, this really was never about this phone, but about setting the precedence to get into future phones.
Not sure the FBI is being truthful here. If they had broken into the phone then it would make more sense to keep it quiet. Bragging about it will simply make Apple look into fixing it which will make the FBI's job much harder in the future.
Anyone with an itch of common sense would keep such a breakthrough a secret.
The only reason why they had to say they got into it is because they have to give cause when they stopped the whole lawsuit. Remember, this really was never about this phone, but about setting the precedence to get into future phones.
Well, it is clear that the FBI did not exhaust their options before taking it up to the courts though Comey stated under oath to Congress in the Apple/FBI hearing that they checked with everyone, within the government and outside the government. Next time when Comey is in Congress asking for backdoors or ways to weaken encryption, Issa is going to go after him like a mad pit bull or rottweiler and won't let go of his foot after his 5 minutes are up. This is not precedence setting, but everyone is going to point to this case in the future. I think we won: Apple 1, FBI 0.
I've had a question in my mind since this whole thing began. It may be a stupid question, but I've never worked for the government so I don't know.
If the government had a back door to the iPhone and/or all other phones, wouldn't they be concerned that their government issued phones could be compromised? Or does the government not use iPhones? Are all their phones impenetrable? Does the government not keep any information on their phones that another government or evil doer be interested in? What about Congress...etc?
I've had a question in my mind since this whole thing began. It may be a stupid question, but I've never worked for the government so I don't know.
If the government had a back door to the iPhone and/or all other phones, wouldn't they be concerned that their government issued phones could be compromised? Or does the government not use iPhones? Are all their phones impenetrable? Does the government not keep any information on their phones that another government or evil doer be interested in? What about Congress...etc?
I think they couldn't agree on how to form the government after a disputed election and he was the compromise candidate of the politicians (not the people); they believe he'd be their lapdog... How wrong they were.
I've had a question in my mind since this whole thing began. It may be a stupid question, but I've never worked for the government so I don't know.
If the government had a back door to the iPhone and/or all other phones, wouldn't they be concerned that their government issued phones could be compromised? Or does the government not use iPhones? Are all their phones impenetrable? Does the government not keep any information on their phones that another government or evil doer be interested in? What about Congress...etc?
Why do you think POTUS has to carry a Blackberry? I away thought it interesting to think that the President could have his data stored on Blackberry's foreign servers that may not have to follow the DMCA regulations.
The author of this article stated that Apple will need to recover from the inevitable PR debacle. I don't think that is going to be a problem. If access to the phone was gained, it likely involved some very sophisticated hardware hack using very sophisticated equipment.
Considering it was an iPhone 5c, the DOJ just gave Apple a marketing solution to get customers to upgrade any iPhone without the secure enclave ...
The tactical approach chosen demonstrates that there is someone in the current administration whose has a personal vendetta against Apple that they view as being more important than solving the actual problem at hand.
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.
You can't do that BUD, man I'm tired of this shit, there is a god damn hardware Key that can't be copied out that's needed to decrypt, plus the decryption key that comes from the passcode and is built from the hardware key + passcode combination in a programmatic way.
They'd have to decapp the chip to get the key, reverse engineer Apple's code and create the virtual machine and you think they someone did that in a few fracking days? No chance.
They can copy out the memory, but trying the pins has to occur on this phone unless they want to spend a lot of engineering dollars.
Isn't the GID key only used during system/firmware updates? However the UID is still unique to every device although not technically a hardware key.
Being wrong doesn't stop your yapping proudly does it?
Why don't you just stop talking if you have no idea what you're talking about? The point is that the hardware key in these older generation can be retrieved from the device and thus are not a secret. They're used as an initialisation vector for the generation of the encryption key so that not every device with the same passcode uses the same key. The only secret in the 5c is the passcode chosen by the user.
What hasn't been brought up was what the FBI actually found on the phone when they finally got into it. If it did have all kinds of evil terrorist plot secrets, you know they'd be all over the Sunday morning news programs, crowing about how right they were and reiterating the importance of having backdoor access to all digital devices, and using the San Bernadino phone as a precedent. Most likely, all they found was cat photos.
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There never was a criminal case filed because there are no defendants. It is just an ongoing investigation. See exemption (7) of the Freedom of Information Act. They could theoretically keep the information secret forever.
Cellebrite read all the data from the chips and stored it. They try entering a passcode and when it is wrong, they write all the data they stored back onto the chips that accept being written to. Because the code can be changed by the user, it has to be stored in a writeable chip.
This makes the phone forget that an incorrect attempt has been made. Repeat this process until you guess the correct code. Once you are in the phone you can see what you like.
They never found the encryption.
So, you aren't now prone to hacking. They need the physical phone and a check for $15,000 made out to Cellebrite. I can't see them wanting to do this unless they have a good reason.
But as it has already been said, there is probably no useful information on the phone at all. His home computer will yield more info.
Well, it is clear that the FBI did not exhaust their options before taking it up to the courts though Comey stated under oath to Congress in the Apple/FBI hearing that they checked with everyone, within the government and outside the government. Next time when Comey is in Congress asking for backdoors or ways to weaken encryption, Issa is going to go after him like a mad pit bull or rottweiler and won't let go of his foot after his 5 minutes are up. This is not precedence setting, but everyone is going to point to this case in the future. I think we won: Apple 1, FBI 0.
If the government had a back door to the iPhone and/or all other phones, wouldn't they be concerned that their government issued phones could be compromised? Or does the government not use iPhones? Are all their phones impenetrable? Does the government not keep any information on their phones that another government or evil doer be interested in? What about Congress...etc?