ergosum

kaleidoscope917 said:

The PEW research merely shows support for unlocking in the case of a terrorist attack that has already happened. What the DOJ/FBI is asking for is a permanent back-door. These are two different things. However, once Apple complies and precedent is set, they would most likely be required by the FBI to create a back-door- a la China.

Kudos to Tim Cook for controlling the narrative and getting people to believe this.

The ridiculous thing here is that what the FBI is asking for is hardly a backdoor. The backdoor is the one Apple installed.

In their infinite wisdom, they left a barndoor-sized hole in their security model and that's the following: The device will blindly trust any update that is signed by Apple.

This is backdoor 101: There's a way to make security modifications to the device without the user's key being first used to unlock the device. They could have easily prevented this by making the device unable to accept any updates unless unlocked, but they didn't because they don't really care about their user's privacy - they care about control (and this is, in my opinion, what this argument is really about).

The fact is, had they not installed that backdoor, this whole issue would be completely be moot - Apple could have sincerely said there's nothing they can do.

Sorry, but the violation of privacy and installation of backdoors is on Apple, not anyone else.

tempestteapot1 said:

This entire debate is moot & political theater

http://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

"Each Secure Enclave is provisioned during fabrication with its own UID (Unique ID) that is not accessible to other parts of the system and is not known to Apple. When the device starts up, an ephemeral key is created, entangled with its UID, and used to encrypt the Secure Enclave’s portion of the device’s memory space."

[...]

I know engineering is an uncomfortable thing to consider but all of technology is actually based on it. Apple designed this phone with failsafes.

Close, but no cigar.

What this debate reveals is that Apple already has built in the backdoor (either that, or it's a designed in security hole, take your pick)

All the FBI is asking for is Apple's help to use this backdoor to allow them to brute-force the passcode.

What's revealed by this is that Apple can push an update to any phone at any time that will disable the wiping feature that's supposed to prevent brute-forcing a passcode.

The Secure Enclave is no protection against this type of attack.

It's quite hypocritical of Apple to position their statement the way they have - they're the ones who built in this "feature", and they could use it against the will of any of their users.

slimpotato had it right in the previous post - Apple knows that they have designed in the ability for them to do this. If they really had their users' privacy in mind, they would have provided privacy from anyone's snooping, including their own.