darelrex

gatorguy said:

darelrex said:

I think the hardware devices that hack iPhones (Celebrite, Graykey) don't work anymore on today's fully updated iPhones. Apple figured out what they were doing, and fixed it. Now you get a very limited number of tries before the Secure Enclave wipes itself, erasing the only copy of the 256-bit AES decryption key. Then, even the person who knows the unlock code can't get the data back: all the encrypted personal data in that iPhone is forever unreadable — unless some theoretical quantum computer of the future can crack 256-bit AES.

Celebrite (and Graykey?) are constantly buying new zero-days as they become available as well as crafting their own methods. I'm pretty sure they can gain access to even the latest iPhones with up-to-date firmware. When one door closes....

When you seize a locked iPhone, iOS doesn't even have the strong-AES decryption key for the user's encrypted personal data. Nor does it have the user's unlock code. Only the Secure Enclave has those things.

Zero-days might get you into iOS, but not into the Secure Enclave which is dramatically simpler than iOS and totally separate from it. Apparently there was some flaw in the original Secure Enclave that made Celebrite and Graykey possible for a while, but that is reportedly fixed. Will there be an endless new supply of flaws in the Secure Enclave, to keep Celebrite and Graykey working on iPhones? I seriously doubt it.

But point to you: I keep finding reports on the internet that Graykey works against very recent iPhones. Not sure what to think of that!

I think the hardware devices that hack iPhones (Celebrite, Graykey) don't work anymore on today's fully updated iPhones. Apple figured out what they were doing, and fixed it. Now you get a very limited number of tries before the Secure Enclave wipes itself, erasing the only copy of the 256-bit AES decryption key. Then, even the person who knows the unlock code can't get the data back: all the encrypted personal data in that iPhone is forever unreadable — unless some theoretical quantum computer of the future can crack 256-bit AES.

Just to cite one issue in the suit: Apple is accused of denigrating SMS messages with a déclassé, lower-contrast, green color to make them harder to read and to make people think of non-iPhone devices as inferior. (a) If Apple was doing that, would it even be a crime; (b) that coloration is only for outgoing messages that you typed yourself, so you already know what they say; and (c) Apple's been using that exact, outgoing, color scheme for SMS since the very first iPhone in 2007 when Apple's messages didn't even do any other kind of messaging.

I sincerely hope Apple's lawyers plan to patiently go through things like this with the jury. The DOJ lawyers that filed this case either are very poorly informed, or they're intentionally dishonest and hope they can score with a poorly informed jury, just for the sake of scoring at all against a big, rich company, for no actually good reason.

mikethemartian said:

What other search engine is profitable enough to pay that amount to Apple every year?

Probably any competent search engine would be that profitable if they landed this deal — the money Google is currently paying Apple has been estimated to be only about 1/3 of the ad money Google gets by having this default position.

FYI, Northlake Mall has been dying for some time, and Apple was already planning to move out. This latest shooting just provoked a decision to close the store the very next day, likely for the safety of Apple's employees and customers. I presume that Northlake must have been doing well when Apple first put a store there, but lately it's turned into a has-been ghost town, and sections of the mall are being converted to non-shopping uses.