Apple challenging FBI demand to hack iphone

[Quintus Curtius]

Those following this battle may be interested to know that Apple just presented its arguments in a Motion to Vacate the order compelling them to cooperate.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/do...-Vacate-Brief-and-Supporting-Declarations.pdf

Arguments look well researched. We'll have to see what the court does. My guess is some compromise deal will be reached.

 

[Requiem]

‘That’s horse sh*t!’: FBI can already unlock iPhone without Apple’s help – Snowden

https://www.rt.com/usa/335054-snowden-apple-fbi-fight/

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said that the FBI’s claim to need Apple to unlock the iPhone a San Bernardino shooter is a sham.

The FBI says that only Apple has the ability to crack the work phone left behind by the San Bernardino terrorists, and last month convinced a federal judge to compel the tech giant to write a custom operating system with intentionally weakened security mechanisms.

“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’ to unlock the phone,” Snowden told the audience from Moscow. “Respectfully, that’s horse sh*t.”

Snowden later tweeted a link to an American Civil Liberties Union blog post titled “One of the FBI’s Major Claims in the iPhone Case Is Fraudulent,” which argues that the government doesn’t actually need Apple’s help to bypass the “auto-erase” feature on the iPhone in question.

 

[spokepoker]

Hasn't Snowden been out of the game for a while now? Just cause they could unlock iphones when he was there, doesn't mean they can with the new ones.
I'm sure if they could, they already would have gotten in that shit.

 

[porscheguy]

Hasn't Snowden been out of the game for a while now? Just cause they could unlock iphones when he was there, doesn't mean they can with the new ones.
I'm sure if they could, they already would have gotten in that shit.

It's not about whether or not they have the means to unlock the phone. It's about the federal government using muscle on Apple as a lesson to all of us.

 

[Thomas More]

I'd be surprised if the government has people that can do this. The government primarily uses defense contractors for this kind of work. It also has actual government employees with a technical background, but their job is to provide oversight over the contractors. The government employees are rarely elite technical talents.

The defense contractors can have some very good people, but Apple will have a lot more good people, and definitely has the edge on exceptionally talented people. If Apple set out to make their phones hard to crack, then I believe the government will be SOL. It might not have always been this way in the phone and computer industries, but it certainly is now.

 

[Foolsgo1d]

So Apple is telling us you cannot crack their phone but everything else that has been broken into never happened? Fappening?

Of all the nerds out there there is a group of them who have cracked them and sell their efforts.

 

[weambulance]

Well, there's a big difference between targeting a whole population of devices or accounts and cracking some of them because the users used retarded passwords (or some other poor security practice) and cracking a single specific device.

As I said earlier in the thread, I think the FBI/NSA can crack the phone but this is about establishing a precedent for Apple making it a lot easier on them. If it takes x effort to crack a phone now, and getting Apple to make this custom software means it will take x/10 or x/100 effort in the future, they really want that custom software.

How often do they get a really good excuse for pushing the envelope like "this is a bonafide terrorist's phone, the guy killed a dozen people, and we're worried about more attacks"? Never let a good crisis go to waste.

 

[262]

So Apple is telling us you cannot crack their phone but everything else that has been broken into never happened? Fappening?

Of all the nerds out there there is a group of them who have cracked them and sell their efforts.

To be fair, as I understand, the Fappening was possible because the celebrities synced their phones to the cloud. The hackers then got the photos from the cloud, not the phones themselves.

That being said, that also means the government can do the same, if not more. That's what PRISM is.

Also, if the terrorists had info on their phone, what good would that info be if it was never transmitted in some way? Why would you have a contact on your phone that you've never called, for example?

 

[Paracelsus]

So Apple is telling us you cannot crack their phone but everything else that has been broken into never happened? Fappening?

Of all the nerds out there there is a group of them who have cracked them and sell their efforts.

To be fair, as I understand, the Fappening was possible because the celebrities synced their phones to the cloud. The hackers then got the photos from the cloud, not the phones themselves.

That being said, that also means the government can do the same, if not more. That's what PRISM is.

Also, if the terrorists had info on their phone, what good would that info be if it was never transmitted in some way? Why would you have a contact on your phone that you've never called, for example?

Guilt by association, i.e. nailing anyone who assisted them.

 

[Foolsgo1d]

So Apple is telling us you cannot crack their phone but everything else that has been broken into never happened? Fappening?

Of all the nerds out there there is a group of them who have cracked them and sell their efforts.

To be fair, as I understand, the Fappening was possible because the celebrities synced their phones to the cloud. The hackers then got the photos from the cloud, not the phones themselves.

That being said, that also means the government can do the same, if not more. That's what PRISM is.

Also, if the terrorists had info on their phone, what good would that info be if it was never transmitted in some way? Why would you have a contact on your phone that you've never called, for example?

Apple has this aura surrounding it where they believe they are un-hackable. Ask any Apple fanboy sipping their coffee at starbucks if they could list the number of times hackers (crackers) broke into Apple systems and they'll scream about how Windows gets hacked all the time.

A change has come about where people are after information from Apple devices because it is valuable. Think about it, the last decade has seen Apple grab a market share and this market has $$$ written all over it.

Majority of people used Microsoft and were victims of theft due to hackers having a vested interest in breaching the security. Apple is no different nowadays.

The only difference here though is MS has two decades of experience compared to Apples in-house security know-how. Whats going to last longer against a determined enemy; A garden wall or the Israeli wall?

 

[BassPlayaYo]

The Apple executive told reporters that the company’s engineers had first suggested to the government that it take the phone to the suspect’s apartment to connect it to the Wi-FI there. But since reporters and members of the public had swarmed that crime scene shortly after the shootings occurred, it was likely that any Wi-Fi there had been disconnected. So Apple suggested the government take the phone to Farook’s former workplace and connect the phone to a Wi-Fi network there.

The executive said that Apple walked the government through the entire process to accomplish this, but the government came back about two weeks later and told Apple that it hadn’t worked.

Apple didn’t understand why it had not worked—until the company learned that sometime after the phone had been taken into the custody of law enforcement, someone had gone online and changed the Apple ID that the phone uses to conduct backups.

This means that the government’s best opportunity to get the desired data was frustrated by the changing of this Apple ID, according to the Apple executive. If the phone had indeed backed up to iCloud, the data would have been recovered, and Apple would not now need to resist the government’s attempts to force it to create a backdoor for its operating system.

Wired

 

[Suits]

To be fair, as I understand, the Fappening was possible because the celebrities synced their phones to the cloud. The hackers then got the photos from the cloud, not the phones themselves.

There's a reason why I still use this:

[img=500x500]http://captainflipflops.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/old-nokia-phone.jpg[/img]

Fuck you, technology.

 

[Truck'n]

Hasn't Snowden been out of the game for a while now? Just cause they could unlock iphones when he was there, doesn't mean they can with the new ones.
I'm sure if they could, they already would have gotten in that shit.

So if that was the case, why wouldn't Snowden preface his remarks saying that there is the possibility that the new iphones might be unlockable?

Considering that Snowden is the one person who is the most technically proficient, well connected, and truthtelling person in the whole debate about the securtiy of our privacy, I would think that doubting any part of what he is telling us is very naive, or helping the adgenda of the government intrusion.

Which one are you?

 

[spokepoker]

If he prefaced his remarks saying that there is the possibility that the new iphones might be unlockable, then all his arguments for apple not letting the fbi crack the phone would be useless.

This is just him trying to still stay relevant.
"Hey, look at me, I'm still here guys, remember me?"

 

[Paracelsus]

Looks like there might be some red faces for Fox Mulder and friends:

http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...e/news-story/7c63c1f8a41dd10e8a20e7fe9158e486

IT SEEMS the jig is up for the FBI.
The US law enforcement agency is reportedly on the brink of backing down in a heated battle with Apple after their core argument was exposed as a fallacy.
The FBI has been trying to persuade a US judge to force Apple to comply with a court order to build an iPhone operating software that can be hacked by agents. Despite having the weight and resources of the world’s most powerful government at its disposal, the FBI claimed it was unable to hack the phone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook.
But not everyone was buying it.
Former analyst and NSA leaker Edward Snowden called the FBI’s claim “bullsh*t” to a room full of people at a conference in Washington this month.
Millionaire programmer and the man responsible for the first commercial anti-virus program, John McAfee, also rubbished the apparent admission of technical impotence saying, “The FBI is trying to fool the American public.”
The implication was that the FBI was using the high profile case in an effort to set a legal precedent it could use to enforce tech companies to comply with future investigations.
It turns out, there was probably something to the allegation.
According to court documents from the case released this week, an outside party has shown a way in which the iPhone can be hacked without the assistance of Apple.

“On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone,” the court documents read. “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case.”
The court order that Apple had originally refused to comply with was not a subpoena, but rather an obscure 1789 law invoked by the FBI — the legitimacy of which was at the heart of the current legal dispute.
The law requires that there be a strong necessity for the requested assistance. This latest development means such an argument would be exceedingly difficult to make.
The fact that a third party may have found a way into the phone without Apple’s help appears to contradict every sworn affidavit and filing put forward in the last month by the Justice Department.
“The government just moved to vacate tomorrow’s hearing in Apple v FBI,” US lawyer and digital civil liberties advocate Nate Cardozo tweeted this morning. “Seems they’re abandoning this as a test case!”
“This is a total win for us. This was FBI’s hand-chosen case, and now they’re forced to back off,” he wrote.
Judge Sheri Pym has granted time for the government to determine whether the third party technique is viable and ordered the FBI to file a status report by April 5.
If the FBI does indeed abandon its effort to force Apple to comply, it will be seen as a massive victory for tech companies and privacy advocates alike.

The elites are not all-knowing or all-seeing. Especially at upper-middle-management levels where lawsuits like this are born, the Peter Principle applies.

 

[Phoenix]

Taking it a step further, the whole thing could just be a charade to make it look like there is resistance to government surveillance. Perhaps even a smoke screen operation, whilst they advanced some other intrusion in the background.

 

[AneroidOcean]

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/fbis-new-method-unlocking-san-bernardino-iphone

A short excerpt, you'll have to go to the ACLU for link for the rest:

I recently wrote about how it should be perfectly feasible for the FBI to circumvent the San Bernadino iPhone's much-discussed auto-erase feature. And yesterday the FBI announced that they might have a way to get into the phone without compelling Apple to make any changes. While I have no reason to believe that my earlier blog post was their "third-party source" for this information, it seems likely that their approach will be something along the lines of what I described.

I've also been asked for a more detailed analysis of the attack I outlined. How long would it take? How much would it cost?

The bottom line is that for a functioning investigative agency with a team of experts and an active lab, it would probably take about 2 days. But even if they started from nothing, it would take the FBI (or anyone) no more than $50K and about a month to unlock this phone with the technique I proposed. Below are my rough estimates, with links and details explaining each step.

 

[Easy_C]

Just remember that the entire story is PR bullshit.

Google "DROPOUTJEEP"

 

[Mindless Drone]

Looks like the Feds got into the phone.

The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its contentious weeks-long legal battle with tech giant Apple, prosecutors said Monday, after FBI agents were able to finally break into the smartphone of San Bernardino suspect Syed Farook.

You can read Breitbart's take or the Washington Post's take. The Post story is a bit more detailed. It also notes the FBI has yet to share what they found.

I think this will be one of those 'law of unintentional consequences' moments. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple doubles down and starts pursuing more encryption on its devices and services.

Also interesting is that now the FBI is supposed to tell Apple how they did it.

The FBI’s new tactic may be subject to a relatively new and little-known rule that would require the government to tell Apple about any vulnerability potentially affecting millions of iPhones unless it can show a group of administration officials that there’s a substantial national security need to keep the flaw secret. This process, known as an equities review, was created by the Obama administration to determine if new security flaws should be kept secret or disclosed, and gives the government a specific time frame for alerting companies to the flaws.

You can read more at Bloomberg. Apple may have to sue the FBI to get the FBI to obey this process, apparently.

 

[nomadbrah]

The cutting edge of backdoors is not in firmware but in components.

This story is years behind what really happens. The current 'hacker war' is over backdoors in microchips and such. NSA and their Chinese equivalents go to Intel and similar to plant spy software in components so that the backdoors are essentially impossible to find as they are on an even lower level than BIOS. There was an article in WIRED about this a year or two ago.

It is best to assume the government has access to every electronic device.