Hacker News Reader

Hijacking top comment here but the latest news is that the passcode changed while in government custody.

Also mentioned in the same TechCrunch article is that Apple had provided the iCloud backups. Which begs the question, are local backups of the iPhone crackable too?

If so, the mere presence of having iCloud or local backups means that the government have a way in. So not the latest info but some.

View on HN

For local backups, Apple says [1] that "There is no way to recover your information or turn off Encrypt Backup if you lose or forget the password." so I'm inclined to thinking it's done with a secure symmetric encryption scheme with the key held by the user. If that's the case, since iTunes prompts you for a separate backup password (only used when restoring a backup), a security-conscious user would probably make that password sufficiently long as to be impossible to brute-force, regardless of any help from Apple.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205220

Reply on news.ycombinator.com