Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI
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I see nobody out there capable of bridging it. Not Tim Cook, not the EFF, not Obama, and certainly not the DOJ.
Bruce Schneier's previous coverage from 2015-07 [1] is what first got me interested and up to speed in the recent SB case. Even if Apple isn't demanding the FBI's method at this moment, I respect what Bruce has to say here.
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/07/back_doors_wo...
Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden clearly understands the issues. I saw an interview where he stated that the FBI was correct to want access (it makes their job easier) and that we shouldn't give it to them (he understands that a backdoor will be used in ways other than intended). The point being that people on the government side aren't just naive, ignorant administrators.
I think the problem with a lot of national issues isn't the players lacking an understanding of the nuances, it's that people in general aren't very receptive to nuance. That makes it a losing strategy to try to address it.
There's a definite need for someone to step up and say that on balance, we are more secure without trying to guarantee government access to encrypted data, or vice versa. So far nobody has taken that high level view and been able to convince any of the early major players in this debate.
Lindsey Graham's statement during his questioning of Lynch is the closest we got to a high level player changing sides, demonstrating an understanding of both positions [1].
If you watch some interviews with Michael Hayden, you'll see him saying just what you want, and I think someone who is a former director of both the CIA and NSA counts as a high level player. Autoplay video, but read the text:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/21/ex-nsa-chief-b...
Sure. Then I'd just circle back to my original point which is there is disagreement over how to keep the public safe. That's the cause of the problem, and we're missing someone who can bridge that communication gap.
> If you watch some interviews with Michael Hayden, you'll see him saying just what you want, and I think someone who is a former director of both the CIA and NSA counts as a high level player.
I've watched several. The one you cite is actually a bit old. In more recent interviews, he sides even more with Apple.
Hayden definitely brings a lot of credibility to Apple's side. Unfortunately he's not in a position to call a meeting between the tech industry and the DOJ plus Obama to settle their differences. In fact, nobody is except the public. The public will ultimately decide this through their voice and vote. If we sit back and do nothing, I imagine we would see backdoor legislation pass quickly. So far, we've been vocal enough to prevent Feinstein's bill from being released. Let's keep it that way and start pushing back against the DOJ. We can play offense too by asking the FBI to share its technique with Apple.
In my opinion, the government needs to make some deposits into its emotional bank account with technologists to make up for the damage it has done.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160310/18161233865/we-re...
Actually, this is their oath:
I [name] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Their oath is to the Constitution, and the duties of their office are to investigate federal crimes. The Constitution does not mandate that they share everything they know, but neither does it make it as easy for them to do their jobs as they might like.
The Constitution includes certain rights which make it more difficult for them to investigate crimes than they would prefer; it is also silent in some areas which some of us might wish it spoke more loudly on.
The constitution is first and foremost a document outlining what the federal government is allowed to do. If it is not listed in the Constitution, then by design the government does not have the authority.
I think this has been lost, in part by the inclusion of the bill of rights, which where never intended to be an all inclusive lists of a persons rights.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
That's some pretty broad power that is enumerated right there.
to ... provide for the ... general Welfare
Allow me to Quote Jefferson...
"“[T]he laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose"
Meaning to the founders that section was explicitly about collecting taxes and does not give wide over arching powers to legislate things about the "general welfare" of the population.
"The FBI is trying to compromise your data security, for the sake of their job security."
Ultimately, I don't think governments are designed to deal with corporations that make as much money as a company like Apple does. These companies are the size of governments -- if Apple decided it wanted to hire a bunch of mercenaries and take over a small country, it could probably do so (if it didn't mind getting embargoed by whoever was friendly to the country they took over).
I wouldn't be surprised to see corporate sovereignty become a big international issue in our lifetimes. International law is a huge grey area, and I expect companies to exploit that to their advantage to avoid enforcement actions by individual nations.
Maybe, but I think you're putting the cart before the horse. We're not at that stage right now. Right now we can turn the tables on the FBI and demand they contribute back to our own ability to secure ourselves. It's not too tough to describe the issue to the general public.
The FBI would ordinarily help businesses identify security vulnerabilities in their products, such as a flaw in a bank vault, because it makes the public more safe to enable the bank to secure itself. Law enforcement regularly recommends certain bike locks, car systems (note their recent notification about remote exploits [1]), etc. over others. In this case, due to disagreement about how to keep the public safe, the FBI is refusing to cooperate with the general public who own iPhones.
Which I think is a perfectly rational thing for the FBI to do in the absence of a law stating that they must do so. I don't think it's the best thing for democracy, but if I were a senior-level FBI official, I'm trying to give my organization as many tools as I can get to do their job. He's a man with a small, narrowly defined scope: investigate crimes as effectively as possible. It's not his job to think of the repurcussions.
Which is why our current decade-long legislative deadlock is fucking killing us. The world today is nearly unrecognizable from the one in 2006 - and in the lack of leadership by Congress, the executive branch (which includes the FBI and most other non-military law enforcement agencies) has to step in and take control.
Really, the problem is that a lack of leadership from congress has created a power vacuum that Obama has been publicly very reluctant to fill. But the gap exists, and people in the executive branch under Obama have had no such qualms expanding their power into areas that Congress just hasn't addressed because they're too buy trying to defund Obamacare or ban abortions.
Our legislative process at work, folks.
> Which I think is a perfectly rational thing for the FBI to do in the absence of a law stating that they must do so. I don't think it's the best thing for democracy, but...
I've seen a lot of this "understanding" in the news and online. It is not how democracy works. We have the power, not them. We can literally vote them out of their jobs.
Is this anything new though? I once heard the Dutch West India Company described as "Exxon Mobil with guns."
Apple has an enormous investment in their design team in Cupertino. It would be an enormous impact to their product development capability to start over somewhere else.
It's not enough to say "HQ is over here bro," court orders still work in California. Then again this whole All Writs effort to "build me a tool to help my investigation" seems to break new ground. Maybe it wouldn't even be enough to pack up and move all R&D out of the US (e.g. injunction on US sales until the foreign Apple company complies).
That'd be an interesting possibility. Government, to U.S. consumers: "YOU are not allowed to buy the products you chose, because a foreign company refused to perform work for the U.S. Government." ...
There are already state level bills proposing this in CA and NY [1]. Those bills would fine manufacturers $2,500 for every phone sold in those states that isn't capable of providing decrypted data. The language originally comes from a white paper by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance. Feinstein-Burr are working on a similar federal bill which was supposed to be released late last year, then this month [2]. It has obviously been delayed by the public's response to the SB Apple case.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160122/06200833403/calif...
[2] http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016...
On paper, the right federal agency for this should be the Department of Homeland Security. In reality they have neither the technical expertise nor the political "juice" to compete with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies--who care much more about access than security.
Until this balance is corrected at the federal level, it's going to be a mess. On balance, the government essentially WANTS technology to be insecure right now, so that intelligence and law enforcement staff can do their jobs more easily.
"We recommend that, regarding encryption, the US Government should:
(1) fully support and not undermine efforts to create encryption standards;
(2) not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial software; and
(3) increase the use of encryption, and urge US companies to do so, in order to better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage."
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/nsa-sh...
For example where were the pro-security quotes from NIST in all the FBI-Apple stories? I'm sort of kidding--obviously there weren't any--but the reality is that NIST can't stand up to the FBI and that's not their role anyway. They set standards not executive priorities.
If we think of the federal govt as a multi-armed see-saw, where points of view oppose one another from various agencies, then right now the arms in favor of access have a lot more "weight", so the overall system tilts toward them. This was visible in what the Presdient said at SXSW.
What do we see? Pro-encryption messages come from private groups, but pro-access messages come from federal executives. Why wasn't there a senior federal appointee telling Congress that hacking the iPhone was a bad idea? That the FBI had not fully considered all that consequences? Who would that be? The head of NIST?
I'm not the least bit happy about this, but it's been that way for the entirety of the computer age -- it's not a new development.
I take it that nobody in The White House uses an iPhone, or at least I hope not. Institutionalized ignorance to the degree of shooting oneself in the foot is concerning - far more concerning than the existence of this specific vulnerability.
For weeks, the experts in security had been saying that FBI does not in fact need Apple's help to get into that phone; that they are just posturing in order to obtain a back door.
This was posted on the ACLU website:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-...
The FBI can simply remove this chip from the circuit board (“desolder” it), connect it to a device capable of reading and writing NAND flash, and copy all of its data. It can then replace the chip, and start testing passcodes. If it turns out that the auto-erase feature is on, and the Effaceable Storage gets erased, they can remove the chip, copy the original information back in, and replace it. If they plan to do this many times, they can attach a “test socket” to the circuit board that makes it easy and fast to do this kind of chip swapping.
Maybe the FBI has a secret new exploit --- or maybe they just did the above method, getting the "third party" help with the desoldering and the attachment of a socket, and hardware for reading NAND.
It's just speculation.
Even if the FBI are exploiting some hole, that is better than them having a back door, which is essentially a security hole put in by design.
The article is speculating, and it's conflating security holes with back doors.
I'm always seeing X done to the iPhone.
Just these past few weeks I remember seeing a key extraction done via EM emitted from the phone.
I am not familiar with what Schneier said 15 years ago, though. He might have chastised someone for doing that; he might have changed his mind. If he hasn’t in a decade and a half, I’d be shocked.
I realised this morning that 15 years ago, I was proud of using SAS, “the most powerful analytics software there [was]”. I changed.
The article further states, "There’s no such thing as a vulnerability that affects only one device." Except that I'm pretty sure that whatever attack the FBI used relied on the fact that the phone in question had a short passcode set. I'd bet dollars to donuts that whatever attack they used would not work against my phone with a secure passphrase.
I'm usually a fan of Schneier, but I think he really missed with this one.
I agree that the FBI should inform Apple of the vulnerability they used. I just don't think that failing to do so makes iPhones less secure. Failing to do so leaves them as they are, and informing Apple would make iPhones more secure.
I don't see this as pedantic, because it's the difference between the FBI actively harming us and the FBI merely not helping us.
And perhaps the vulnerability in question wouldn't work against your iPhone, but how many millions of iPhones still use a short passcode? This vulnerability could still affect all of those phones.
Obviously all phones technically have the same vulnerability both before and after the FBI decision. But now there is a larger pragmatic chance of it being exploited. That is the point AFAIK.
ie they may have reasons for not disclosing the vulnerability, and it's a shame that there's so much mistrust of the government [caused by actions of the government] so that we can't assume the best.
The good thing about the exploit market is that it is naturally self-limiting: you don't burn a zero-day on a dragnet; you limit its use to high-value (and ideally court-sanctioned) targets.
That depends entirely upon the nature of the vulnerability. Every TLS vulnerability publicly disclosed and then patched comes to mind. The NSA can use that all day long without anybody knowing - see parallel reconstruction.
Yeah, it "only" sets a precedent that the government can compel a company to reverse all the work put into securing a product, no possible market driven unintended consequences there.
> If Apple decides...
Classic victim blaming, "decision" is the wrong word to use here. Constant negative reinforcement leads to conditioned responses - not decisions.
Have you considered what will happen to the number of such requests as devices continue to become more secure?
If you put a backdoor into your phones, you should expect to have to use it.
That is only true if revoking trust is the only thing left to do to increase iphone security against every potential bad actor. That isn't the case, and that leaves plenty of time to pester Apple with unlocking phones collected in every investigation from now until then.
> If you put a backdoor into your phones, you should expect to have to use it.
What law is that, the All Writs act? That is what was being tested, because not everybody shares your certainty about it. The moral problem of the forced labor of an unrelated party is enough to make me disagree. Also, that logic could easily be used to justify the forced inclusion of a backdoor in an otherwise secure device. You can't have it both ways, a secure device and a device manufactured by a company that can be legally compelled to do whatever the state deems "necessary or appropriate".
I disagree that they can force the inclusion of a backdoor using the same logic. The reason I think they can compel action is that the real thing they want from Apple is information, I.e. the key. Apple can get out of revealing the key by using it themselves.
This is the most important part of the whole thing. Where do you draw the line, is everybody legally obligated to comply with such demands? Well obviously those directly involved with whatever crime is being investigated are exposed to such compulsion, but so are third party service providers. But in the case of these third parties, there are a lot of laws dictating their part in great detail. For its part as a service provider, Apple supplied the user data it had. What the FBI has done is declare loud and clear that they'd like to expand those subject to compulsion to include anyone it designates, for any purpose that isn't explicitly illegal, thanks to All Writs. Now in this case they say, for the victims, they're being exhaustive in pursuing what is most likely a dry hole. But what is to stop them from wielding such authority over every manufacturer of everything that the subject of the investigation touched? How about compelling every luckless individual who lives along the subject's morning commute to turn over all video and image files because it might help them in their investigation. For as crazy as that sounds, consider the fact that there is no logical distinction between any of those scenarios.
> I don't think labor should be forced ... they should have been forced to choose...
You can't believe both of those, because compulsion eliminates choice. That would be like saying "I'm not forcing you to run, it is your choice, but if you don't then I'll kill you".
> ...they want from Apple is information, I.e. the key.
No, they want on demand access - they don't care about any key. Even if Apple were to get rid of the key, there is historical precedent for the state pulling some insane precrimes logic in order to expand authority - see the commerce clause. I'll explain that reference briefly: the federal government has explicitly defined authority over commerce that occurs between states, but it was reasoned that commerce within a state could potentially result in the absence of interstate commerce, therefor the federal government has authority over all commerce... Now imagine that reasoning being applied to a manufacturer who doesn't have the capability to, but could if it wanted, respond to a court order. Oh, and lets not forget the clipper chip, a nice indicator of the state's position on forcing manufacturers to backdoor consumer products in the interested of potential investigations.
If I have a warrent, I can force you to hand over all information allowed by the warrent. That's how warrents work.
They're able to get any data a judge agrees with.
I don't think they're able to compel labor.
>How about compelling every luckless individual who lives along the subject's morning commute to turn over all video and image files because it might help them in their investigation.
If a judge thinks there's probable cause, they can require this, so far as I know.
>You can't believe both of those, because compulsion eliminates choice.
They have the ability to compel Apple to hand over data. They don't have the ability to compel Apple to perform labor unrelated to producing data.
>No, they want on demand access - they don't care about any key.
The FBI explicitly asked for the key at one point in the case.
Could you explain how your commerce example is in any way precedent?
> If a judge thinks there's probable cause...
> They have the ability to compel Apple to hand over data.
Warrants aren't golden tickets, if a warrant exceeds the court's authority then it isn't worth anything. That is exactly what was going to be resolved here, a court ordered Apple to do something that Apple thought exceeded the state's authority - thanks to the FBI the question remain unresolved (which the DOJ prefers to a precedent going against them).
> I don't think they're able to compel labor.
Subpoena to appear immediately comes to mind, NSLs might reach that level as well - they certainly exceed "hand over data". But the point isn't really about court orders during discovery, it is the final interpretation of an existing law that will determine the nature of forced labor. There are plenty of laws that compel labor.
> The FBI explicitly asked for the key at one point in the case.
No, they presented it as an alternative after they met resistance (aka threatened).
> Could you explain how your commerce example is in any way precedent?
"historical precedent" (an example, a demonstration of disposition), not a legal precedent. I'm disappointed that you focused on that and overlooked the point - the use of "precrimes", "potential" and "clipper chip" is the hint.
> That's not blaming anyone.
I guess I misunderstood you because you left out the other potential scenarios, like instead of "Apple continued" the "FBI ceased" - or the "DOJ never attempted to compel Apple under the All Writs act in the first place". Apple had no control over the situation outside appeasing the FBI, the state controlled every other aspect.
> My understanding of your point...
You think it wouldn't come up further down the road as the FBI demands more and more, after they've already built the tools to meet prior demands?
A for-profit entity shouldn’t.
I’m not sure the FBI has the same objectives. If they do, I’m sure Apple would be happy to pay market-prices for that vulnerability.
Isn't that the whole reason the newer phones were upgraded?
Older device fails, newer device with improved security doesn't. That's not a blow to Apple, that's the way the world works.
It's possible this is a actually script-kiddie exploitable vuln, but I highly doubt it.
All that we have learned is what we suspected: Some "outdated"/older phones are infinitesimally less secure in a way that only internationally collaboration between some of the world's most powerful hackers can break. And it's not really the FBI's fault. They're not sharing it with anyone. (Probably).
So it's not a blow to Apple at all. They already moved on before this. This phone/vuln was a stepping stone for them that is already obsolete. In fact, this is a boon to Apple, bc people will be scared into upgrading. (Except for the hopeless sheeple who "have nothing to hide" and perfer to share their personal info with the world's gubmints).
The main security advantage of newer phones in this context is that Touch ID makes it practical to set a more complex passphrase. The flash cloning attack only works if you have a short passcode set, because it relies on brute force. If your passphrase is complex enough that it can't be brute forced even when the software controls are removed, then you're still safe.
I'd wager that when the iPhone 7 ships this fall, it will have an upgraded Secure Enclave with internal storage that can prevent this attack entirely.
Their own whitepaper defines it:
A dedicated area of NAND storage, used to store cryptographic keys, that can be addressed directly and wiped securely. While >>it doesn’t provide protection if an attacker has physical possession of a device<<, keys held in Effaceable Storage can be used as part of a key hierarchy to facilitate fast wipe and forward security
(emphasis mine)
However, it appears that the FBI attack only worked because the people in question used the 4 digit pin. A strong passcode is the way to go and protects you from these kinds of brute force attacks.
And yes, it looks like all of this came down to the short PIN. It's likely a six-digit PIN would still fall, but a proper passcode would have made this whole affair moot. It looks like even the older phones are still totally secure in that case, although the lack of Touch ID can make it somewhat impractical.
This is a major problem I have with the "iPhones got less secure" idea. Apple has gone through heroics to make short passcodes somewhat secure, but there's only so much you can reasonably expect there.
This is all smoke and no fire.
And them knowing their software so well gives them intimate knowledge when tracking down vulnerabilities.
- what the scope of its usefulness is (particular kinds of hardware or software revisions)
- whether it still works on modern platforms
Without even a vague idea where to look or whether it's still there, it's a guarantee that _something_ existed, sometime.
If the answer is zero, they're probably lying.
1. If the vulnerability the FBI used worked because the device was an iPhone without a secure enclave, Apple probably knows how they did it, but they can't really fix devices that have already shipped without the security features. While this obviously hurts users of those phones, every phone going forward won't have this issue, and this won't be replicable on a mass scale.
2. Because this was a vulnerability that was found, not intentionally created, there is a high likelihood that the bug will be found again by security researchers, or at the very least paid for handsomely by Apple. This isn't necessarily true (Heartbleed existed for 2 years without being noticed), but it means that the vulnerability has a timetable that rapidly closes. This is far different from an _introduced_ backdoor/vulnerability, where Apple knows exactly what can be used to get into a device, but has their hands tied by the government, which would _unilaterally_ make our phones less secure. I don't like buying a door lock if I know there's a master key that can open any of the doors of that brand.
3. The author I feel is misleading when he says things like "A vulnerability in Windows 10, for example, affects all of us who use Windows 10". Even if a piece of software has a vulnerability, that vulnerability could perhaps only be exploitable under certain conditions, like software running on certain hardware (eg: without a secure enclave), or under certain conditions (passcodes of less than 4 digits). It also can be highly theoretical or impractical to do on any sort of scale -- if the vulnerability involves reading data off a hard drive using an electron microscope to check for magnetic signatures, I'm not going to be too worried that it will be abused, as the man hours to have it work for a single case would be astronomical and only feasible in the most extreme circumstances.
It's probably very frustrating on Apple's part that the FBI found a vulnerability that they (likely) don't know about, and in an ideal world, governments would disclose those vulnerabilities to make us more secure. But as long as the software and hardware continue to get more secure and not intentionally crippled, any benefit they derived feels short lived at best.
I am curious, however, as to whether this affects only the 5c or if it affects the newer 6/6+/s/s+
What amaze me is the tendency for our society to call for more privacy that favors the more powerful, hence the more likely to be corrupted.
If we want make it easy for our leaders to be corrupted I definitively would call for more cryptography.
Me except the normal "shameful" stuff from the common people I want privacy to. Like anyone I have stuff I want to hide. But, it is okay if I get _caught_. I will not say everything I did is okay, because, I still have hurt indirectly people. There are stuff I want to hide to protect myself from the intolerant crowd.
But guess what, I have as much as I could went to present my excuses, and took responsibility for my own shitty actions. And for the stuff I should not be ashamed of, I don't see the need to hide it, in a democracy we have the freedom to fight for our opinions.
None of my stupid stuff requiring privacy have been leading to blood being shed, exploitation, or making the market noncompetitive.
With greater power/wealth should come greater transparency. And iPhone are definitively more expensive than most phones.
So let's remember that is often the look from the others that makes us more virtuous, and let us all accept to live in an house made of glass (except for the bathroom, and the bedrooms).
In a fair competitive market access to information is symmetrical. In a real democracy government are expected to be openly enforcing the choices of the voters.
In a world tending towards virtue, there is no need for more privacy.
More info can be found in am EFF case: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/01/eff_v_nsa_odni_-_foia.p...
0 - https://www.eff.org/document/vulnerabilities-equities-proces...
Now they claim that a mystery exploit emerged and was put to use between Sunday night and Tuesday. That's not enough time to crack the phone using a pile of chips and brute-forcing the PIN.
Since the FBI started from a dishonest position, and hasn't spent enough time to plausibly have used the know approach, and they have carefully avoided saying they actually got keys and/or encrypted data out of the phone - or that they did anything at all with the phone, there is a more than small chance that the FBI has simply moved their own vague goalposts and declared that they have everything they need.
Not honest or ethical.
Should be https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/04/28/heartbleed-unders...
It's interesting that the government (at least this part: " Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator") recognizes the pros/cons:
> Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that we forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence ... Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest.
While the article's title is misleading, the FBI might as well be taking an active role in making the iPhone less secure. In communicating to the non-technical public, insisting on elaborating the difference is being pedantic.
Or, the FBI managed to unlock this phone and so they can unlock any other devices too, now-and-forever? They don't need a backdoor any more?
Wouldn't the logical next step from Apple's side be to protect their users in their future devices? Wouldn't then the FBI have to sue them again?
Feels like we are missing key facts here, and I wonder why Apple is not talking now.
This conversation has jumped the shark.
Where is the proof? there is no proof.
Sure, but they aren't really stating a fact. They are saying they don't know if it's fact or not.
I agree the title of the post is terrible and inaccurate, but the formatting of your comment is focused on the quote, not the title.
How is it the FBI's fault that this particular iPhone was not secure?
It's mystifying to me how far Apple advocates will go to not blame their favorite company.
The iPhone did not get less secure. It has always had this security hole. I, like many others here on HN, believe the vulnerability to be related to the lack of a secure hardware biometric / encryption module. If this is the case, then your iPhone probably did not get less secure -- such exploits would only work on iPhones prior to the 5S (I think? The 6 series phones are covered for sure). Basically, if your phone supports Apple Pay, you're good.
And if it's the case, it was a design decision rather than a bug. The secure hardware wasn't ready for consumer use when those devices were designed (and even then, the first generation of iPhone fingerprint readers was pretty bad). Apple knew a desoldering attack could be successful, but such attacks are very expensive, require long-term physical possession of the phone, and are impossible to pull off covertly. There may be another way to pull off a direct hardware access attack without actually needing to desolder the flash memory, but that would still only be effective in the absence of a hardware security module. The only defense against this type of attack is a secure hardware encryption module like the one Apple included to support Apple Pay (because the banks likely insisted on this level of security).
The problem here is that we're all just speculating. We suspect this to be the case, but we can't be sure. And we probably never will be.
To take this a step further, the FBI has also learned the lesson to never take this public again. If you are worried about law enforcement attacks against any device protected by they signing keys of a US company, it is only prudent for you to ASSUME that a FISA court has or will soon compromise the signing keys of your device. Jonathan Zdziarski has already shown the enclave to be useless in this case of compromised keys.
At this point, the work being done by Joanna Rutkowska, Coreboot, Purism, and others are our only hope now. And even there, we'll never own our chipsets, ethernet controllers, or CPUs.
May as well give up, we've already lost.
Investigation is either made completely public after the fact or partially marked secret for certain years. Now if someone intentionally hide the investigation details, well, that's a whole different story and I wouldn't be surprised at all. Writer chooses what to write in their investigation log reports.
Anyway, we really don't know what method they used to gather the information and what kind of information they pulled off for sure.
However, I'll defend his point: take the Monty Hall problem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem]. The probabilities change, even when a door you didn't pick [and doesn't hold the prize] is opened.
I think this is a fair analogy. We've now gained knowledge about the existence of a vulnerability, and that knowledge makes everyone's device less secure [for a variety of reasons -- eg others know to look for the vulnerability, others know it can be bought, etc]. It doesn't matter that the vulnerability "has always been there" if nobody knew about it.
It would be a better analogy if they had actually revealed anything, instead of just saying that they had. This was more like telling us which door had a car behind it and trusting us to believe them.
At least then we would know that this isn't just to escape an unfavorable court ruling.
I respect Bruce and he's done a ton of great work, but I obviously disagree with him on this point. I do not believe governments (especially ones engaged in clandestine surveillance operations) have an obligation to share security vulnerabilities with companies. But neither do those companies have an obligation to create vulnerabilities for the governments to exploit (on the contrary; the companies have an obligation to find and fix the holes in their products).
> It doesn't matter that the vulnerability "has always been there" if nobody knew about it.
There's no guarantee that nobody knew about it, and that's the problem. Information asymmetry is a bitch, but the safest assumption is that someone else did indeed know about it, and then told the FBI. If someone was willing to tell the FBI, it's a safe bet the security community knows about this exploit.
Also, if I was the FBI I would intentionally try to obfuscate my capabilities as much as I can. I would want people to think I can hack every iPhone at any time, even if I can't.
How do you determine if a vulnerability was there because it was overlooked in development, or if it was there because the government demanded it from the company but used the law to impose a gag order on the company preventing the public from finding out about it?
You don't; but that's possible today with the way the gag orders and FISA courts work. That's a real problem around transparency in our legal system; which IMO is a different issue from transparency around security issues relating to privately-developed products.
In my opinion the government should be obliged to share the vulnerability for the purposes of the keeping the rest of the users safe from the same exploit, whether executed by the government or executed by somebody else.
In summary, I disagree with you but I'm glad I took the time to ask you about your view since I learned something new.
So I take it then you don't believe in a government "for the people"? Like it or not, Apple is legally a person, and even tossing that aside, we know that many of Apple's customers are American citizens, and this whole idea of "keeping knowledge from you for your own good" just reeks of the patronizing oligarchy that the US government has become known for.
Lest you jump to the argument that this would endanger operations, I would still point out two very salient facts: this information is not intelligence data, and as Schneier pointed out, this attack can be used against many in the US government, including FBI agents in the field. Getting it fixed is the right thing to do.
I agree with you that given the facts we know today, notifying Apple is the right thing to do. But I also think the FBI should have some latitude in deciding what is in its best interest; and if they're making their own agents vulnerable to an exploit they know exists -- well, that's dumb and I hope it bites them in the ass.
Presuming security is what gets people compromised (and in some cases in political trouble as one US presidential candidate is coming to realize).
it's not government "for the persons"
Interesting. What obligations do governments have? On the one hand we have government agencies (the CPA, e.g.) whose entire function is to protect consumers from bad products and marketing. On the other hand there's the many regulatory and standards bodies, which are to ensure orderly marketplaces and discourage anti-competition. Then there's an agency that protects the environment, one that administers health, education....yet there's no obligation to disclose security vulnerabilities? Hmmppf. I'm stumped.
> I [name] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
[1] https://www2.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2009/september2009/oat...
They may swear a oath to the constitution, but they are actually Loyal to the Federal Government, not the Constitution.
"Our mission is to help protect you, your children, your communities, and your businesses from the most dangerous threats facing our nation—from international and domestic terrorists to spies on U.S. soil…from cyber villains to corrupt government officials…from mobsters to violent street gangs…from child predators to serial killers."
Our mission is to help protect ... your businesses ... from cyber villains. The FBI acknowledges right on their home page that they have an obligation to share security vulnerabilities with companies.
Is this view particular to software defects? For example, do government inspectors have an obligation to report food safety violations that they've discovered? In either case, the problem puts the public at risk.
It would also be remiss to think that people aren't looking for the vulnerabilities, people like Stefan Esser have plenty of research documenting the security mechanisms and flaws in iOS, and in the hardware. People have crawled over the hardware and software documenting everything, looking for bugs. People have bugs we haven't heard about because they put the time in to go down the avenues that lead nowhere in order to find them. The people that would find these bugs have a deep knowledge and understanding of the internals of the devices in question, and some suspicion of how they would be applied in this situation. They are not people who would go from zero knowledge to chasing 0day without at least a decent lead as to what the FBI's third party did.
The thing is, the FBI are not obligated to hand over their bugs, nor are the third party. It's the third party's trick, they found it, if they want to keep it it's their right to do so.
Asserting that somehow because someone has specific 0day (designed to bypass unlocks when the phone is in their physical possession for an extended period of time) and doesn't want to share makes us all less secure is incredibly ingenuous and a logical fallacy at best.
That's the common misunderstanding of the problem. Most people think that the probabilities go fro 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 to 1/2, 1/2, after choosing a door and having Monty Hall open one of the others. The probabilities don't change.
The probabilities are 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 at the start. After you choose a door, they're still 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. Or a put a different way: 1/3 (your choice) 2/3 (what you didn't choose). When Monty Hall opens one of the other doors, the probabilities don't change. It's still 1/3 (your choice) 2/3 (what you didn't choose).
However, because he's removed one of the doors from the problem, the 2/3 probability is now applied to the remaining door.
That can be viewed as "probabilities changing" for the remaining door, but it's better described as the probabilities being shared between the doors you didn't choose.
You could run (ed:a similar game with different rules) such that the odds go 1/3,1/3,1/3 to 1/2, 1/2 if you flipped a coin to chose the second door and sometimes show the prize. Alternatively, if you chose when to open the second door, you could make swapping a very good (100%) or very poor choice (0%).
Worse, you could swap what's behind the doors after they chose.
Which IMO is why people find this so confusing. In the real world the odds presented may or may not line up with the actual odds. aka unknown unknowns.
Flipping a coin to "to chose the second door and sometimes show the prize." has no impact on the probabilities. The parent is correct - there is a 2/3 chance the prize exists under one of the other two doors, and if one of them is shown not to have the prize (through random flipping, deliberate selection, whatever) - then the final door now has a 2/3 chance to have the prize.
I'll run the trials here. Assume the first two doors have the goat, and the third door has the car.
Pick Reveal Switch? Outcome
---- ------ ------- -------
1 2 Y 3 Car
2 1 Y 3 Car
3 1 N 3 Car
3 2 N 3 Car
1 2 N 1 Goat
2 1 N 2 Goat
3 1 Y 2 Goat
3 2 Y 1 Goat
1 3 - No chance to switch
1 3 - No chance to switch
2 3 - No chance to switch
2 3 - No chance to switch
You Pick Car Switch?
------- ----- ------
1 1 N
2 1 Y
3 1 Y
1 2 Y
2 2 N
3 2 Y
1 3 Y
2 3 Y
3 3 N
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NotTheMontyHallProblem
The switching strategy is effective because it relies on Monty's avoidance of the car. When Monty isn't trying to avoid the car, his revelation doesn't help you out at all. It just tells you that you either (A) now have a slightly better chance (50%), or (2) you've already lost. (0%).
EDIT: Also see the table on this wikipedia article. It lists probabilities for all the different variants of the MHP. Your scenario is referred to as the Monty Fall or Ignorant Monty variant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#Other_host_...
"Monty Fall" or "Ignorant Monty": The host does not know
what lies behind the doors, and opens one at random that
happens not to reveal the car
(Granberg and Brown, 1995:712) (Rosenthal, 2005a) (Rosenthal, 2005b).
Switching wins the car half of the time.Let us take your approach, and have Monty flip a coin, revealing ANY door at random.
If he flips your door, and you have the prize - You have a 100% chance of winning. If he flips your door, and you have the goat, 0% chance of winning. Those two scenarios are easy, and we can ignore them.
Likewise, if he flips the coin, and shows one of the other two doors, and they have the prize - then, once again - easy - 0% chance of winning. We can ignore these scenarios.
I think up to this point, we can agree on all of the above scenarios. (They are win/lose)
Where it gets complex, he flips a coin, selects one of the doors you aren't on, and reveals a goat.
Given that you had a 1/3 chance originally of winning, and a 2/3 chance of not winning, and given that Monty has now revealed that one of the other two doors (By chance) does not have the car, your 2/3 chance of not winning is still the same, but now it applies to only a single door - I.E. You have a 66% chance of winning by selecting that other door - and the fact that Monty selected that door by chance, is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, despite my (flawed) apparently logical argument - I'm completely wrong, and you are correct.
from random import *
def putPrizeInDoor():
doors=[0,0,0]
door_winner=randint(0,2)
doors[door_winner]=1
return doors
trials=100000
testCount=0
win=lose=0
for x in range(trials):
doors=putPrizeInDoor()
userSelects=randint(0,2)
montyReveals=randint(0,2)
if montyReveals==userSelects: # Monty reveals the door user is on
pass
else:
if doors[montyReveals]==1: # Monty Revealed the prize.
pass
else: # this is where it's interesting - Monty reveals, at random, door not winning that user not on.
revealedDoors=set([montyReveals,userSelects])
newUserChoice=list(set([0,1,2])-revealedDoors)[0]
testCount+=1
if doors[newUserChoice]==1:
win+=1
else:
lose+=1
print ("Tested: {} Wins: {} Lost: {} Percentage: {:.2f}".format(testCount,win,lose,win/testCount))
It's interesting that the deliberate selection by Monty of the goat, increases my chance from 33% to 66% if I switch, but the random selection by Monty of the goat, only increases my chance from 33% to 50% if I switch. I'm not really sure where the argument I made breaks down, but, empirically, it's clearly broken. I'll have to meditate on it a bit to see where I've gone awry.
1/3 of the time you picked correct: 100% of those worlds he shows a goat. 1/3 of the time you picked wrong and he shows a goat. 1/3 of the time you picked wrong and he shows a car.
So your overall odds are 1/3 of winning if you don't change AND 1/3 of the time you don't get the chance to change.
Thus, your overall chances of winning in this case is 1/3. But, if he shows you a goat your odds are bumped to 1/3: 1/3 or 50/50.
I was searching for online simulators that let me tweak the rules of the game, but I could only find those that follow the original rules of the puzzle.
In thinking more about the Ignorant Monty scenario, I realized it's equivalent to having 3 contestants pick doors:
Me
Montgomery
Switchy McSwitcherson
But the classic puzzle is more like a 2-contestant game, where I pick a door, the host selects a goat to reveal (and reveals it), then Switchy McSwitcherson is assigned the remaining door. In that scenario, I'm mad that they made me pick first before the host eliminated a door for Switchy. Switchy enjoys all the odds boosting.
> That's the common misunderstanding of the problem...
You've got a choice here... you can either interpret "The probabilities change" as meaning the probabilities of a given door being correct at the start (which would be a misunderstanding) or you could interpret it from the pragmatic angle; the probability of success if you switch doors after one is taken away.
Given the context I'm inclined to believe that wrsh07 intended the latter.
Another useful exercise is to stretch the number of doors to some large N and suppose the choice was posed repeatedly with a decreasing number of doors. If you can have anywhere from 2 to N guesses and as N decreases the number of bad doors decreases, it seems more obvious that you should always switch.
4 doors, in 8ths to simplify fractions.
2/8,2/8,2/8,2/8 => initial conditions, choose leftmost
2/8,3/8,3/8 => random bad door removed, choose a random 3/8
3/8,5/8 => remove another door.That said, I made a simulation of it where it does the following: 1. Assign random locations behind doors, 2. Player randomly chooses door, 3. Host excludes door (random if both are goats, goat if one is a car), 4. Player either switches, or doesn't switch based on what's chosen for that simulation (the full set gets one or the other)
After running 50,000,000 then dividing success/tries, my number is nearly exactly the same between the two. Is my simulation working incorrectly?
Do you switch? Or do you stick with your original guess? As the parent mentioned, switching gives you a 99/100 chance of being correct, staying gives you a mere 1/100 chance.
Keep in mind I made my choice before we started, and it hasn't changed.
Do you want to change your guess to 437, or stick with 2?
The key observation is that the problem states that Monty Hall opens an empty door. It's not clear whether Monty knows which doors are empty, but it doesn't actually matter, since the problem states that he will always open an empty door.
As others have said, your choice as a contestant is whether to take one door (the one you initially pointed at), or to take the other two doors (at least one of which is obviously empty). Stated that way, it's pretty obvious that taking 2 doors is better than taking 1 door.
Look at it this way: 1/3 of the time, you pick the right door up front. If you switch, you lose.
2/3 of the time, you didn't pick the right door. If you switch, you win.
So switch.
The key to this problem is the behavior of the game host as he will never reveal the door with the car. So, after he reveals the contents of one of the doors, if you choose not to switch, you still only have a 1/3 chance of having chosen the door with the car.
On the other hand, if you choose to switch, 2/3 of the time you will have chosen incorrectly initially, and under the switching strategy, those 2/3ds of the time you are guaranteed to win the car. Hence, you have a 2/3ds chance of winning under the switching strategy, vs a 1/3d chance of winning under the "staying" strategy.
Hope this clarifies things.
The location of the prize and the player choice of door are independent events. Monty's choice is dependent on whether the player choice and the prize location are the same. Monty will never open the door the player picked. Monty will never reveal the prize. Those rules generate exploitable information for the player.
Here is the complete probability tree, and two possible strategies of play:
Prize behind door A; P = 1/3 ALWAYS STAY strategy:
Player picks door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9 P(WIN) = 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18
Monty shows Door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18 = 6/18
Player stays with A; WIN = 1/3
Player switches to C; LOSS P(LOSS) = 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9
Monty shows Door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18 = 6/9
Player stays with A; WIN = 2/3
Player switches to B; LOSS
Player picks door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9 ALWAYS SWITCH strategy:
Monty shows Door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9 P(WIN) = 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9 + 1/9
Player stays with B; LOSS = 6/9
Player switches to A; WIN = 2/3
Player picks door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9 P(LOSS) = 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18
Monty shows Door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9 = 6/18
Player stays with C; LOSS = 1/3
Player switches to A; WIN
Prize behind door B; P = 1/3
Player picks door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9
Player stays with A; LOSS
Player switches to B; WIN
Player picks door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18
Player stays with B; WIN
Player switches to C; LOSS
Monty shows Door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18
Player stays with B; WIN
Player switches to A; LOSS
Player picks door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9
Player stays with C; LOSS
Player switches to B; WIN
Prize behind door C; P = 1/3
Player picks door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9
Player stays with A; LOSS
Player switches to C; WIN
Player picks door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/1 = 1/9
Player stays with B; LOSS
Player switches to C; WIN
Player picks door C; P = 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/9
Monty shows Door A; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18
Player stays with C; WIN
Player switches to B; LOSS
Monty shows Door B; P = 1/3 * 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/18
Player stays with C; WIN
Player switches to A; LOSS
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#Simple_solu...
P(my first choice was right) = P(my first choice was right | given that I've been shown a goat in another door)
It's my second-favorite probability puzzle; my favorite is the one in which the new information has no relevance at all but still changes the probabilities, the "not both daughters" problem.
Your friend tells you that she has two children. They're not both boys, she adds. What are the odds that they're both girls? (Obviously 1/3).
When she tells you that one child is named Mary, the odds that they're both girls change (to 1/2)! Even though you knew that at least one of the children was a girl, and the name might as well be arbitrary, and the new information seems useless... the odds have changed.
It's nontrivial to work this one out; exercise for the reader.
Presuming A and B to be independent events
(first child is a girl, second child is a girl)
P(A) = 1 - P(!A) = 1/2
P(B) = 1 - P(!B) = 1/2
P(A and B) = P(B|A) * P(A) = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
P(A and !B) = P(!B|A) * P(A) = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
P(!A and B) = P(B|!A) * P(!A) = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
P(!A and !B) = P(!B|!A) * P(!A) = 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
But the probability later on depends on how you find out that at least one of your friend's children is a girl. If your friend tells you a random fact about her whole family, the probability is 1/3. If she tells you a fact about a randomly chosen child, the probability is 1/2.
You can presume from "they're not both boys" that the statement is equivalent to "there is at least one girl". When she tells you the name, you now know "a specific child of mine is a girl".
"Not both boys" gives you the precondition "!(!A & !B)" which equates to "A or B".
P(A or B) = P(A and B) + P(A and !B) + P(!A and B) = 3/4
P(A and B|A or B) = P(A or B|A and B) * P(A and B) / P(A or B) = 1 * 1/4 / 3/4 = 1/3
P(A and B|A) = P(A|A and B) * P(A and B) / P(A) = 1 * 1/4 / 1/2 = 1/2
P(A and B|B) = P(B|A and B) * P(A and B) / P(B) = 1 * 1/4 / 1/2 = 1/2
Between pregnancies, I had an accident that resulted in an odd medical condition. The doctors said that after it happened, 50% of boy fetuses that otherwise would have resulted in pregnancy would simply fail to implant, and I wouldn't even know about it.
Now there's an all new ambiguity. How do you decide whether your friend was planning on having two children all along, or if she has two children because that's how many times she got pregnant?
Given the number of ways to mishear "Mary" and the dialectical variant in pronunciation characterized by the Mary-marry-merry merger, I'd tentatively assign the following values:
25% One child is a girl. (Heard correctly)
25% One child is a boy. (Heard incorrectly)
50% No new information. (Incomprehensible or ambiguous)
In the first case P(A and B|A) = P(A and B|B) = 1/2
In the second, P(A and B|!A) = P(A and B|!B) = 0
In the third, P(A and B|A or B) = 1/3
So the odds do change, based on your confidence in what you heard (and your confidence that your friend isn't the kind of parent to name her son "Meriadoc" or something similar).
It amazing how many people still don’t get the Monty Hall problem. Its lesson is that the probabilities do NOT change – until we make a choice!. That’s why it’s better to switch once we see the goat behind door 1. The probability of our having made a good choice, initially (1 in 3), has NOT changed even though there are now only two ‘choices’. But they are not REALLY choices because we’ve ALREADY chosen. The probability can only change if we make a NEW choice, because the ‘probability’ that we’re discussing is the probability that our choice, at the time it was made, would produce a result that we wanted. The iPhone 5 is clearly no less secure now than it was then. But we can switch.
That asymmetry of action leads to the asymmetry of probabilities; your initial choice constrained his choices when he takes action.
If a has the car and b and c have goats, and you pick b, he opens c. And if you pick c, he opens b...
The other 1/3 of the time, you're right, he doesn't care, because he can choose any of the remaining doors at random.
Increasing the number of people who will find exploits on a device, will reduce the security of that device.
Put another way - a platform that no (talented) engineers are attempting to find exploits for is more secure than the same platform if many talented engineers put their time into finding exploits for it.
I would agree with the "less secure" bit if the FBI had uncovered the vulnerability, or asked some third party to do it. But since they just used something that was already known, the "less secure" statement makes no sense to me.
Although given the fact that it was made public that they found a security hole, won't that change the behavior of malicious actors? Now that it's known that a hole exists, more people will start looking for it, reducing security through obscurity.
It's a lot easier to build something when you have a loosely-constrained search space and a guarantee that it's possible, than to discover something entirely new.
I felt the same way when I hit the article link, but changed by mind when Bruce Schneier made the more nuanced argument.
Of course the vulnerability already existed. That's not what he has a problem with: the problem is that now there is a commercially-known but secret vulnerability. Which is a different thing than an unknown vulnerability.
Newer hardware revisions, etc etc, but the biggest issue he takes is that the US government is supporting this practice (and in doing so basically acting like malware authors). Again, that may be realpolitik, but isn't something that we should support as a policy position.
I have no expectations that the relationship between law enforcement and technology companies will improve. I guess I've just accepted this situation as the "new normal".
The main point is, that this should not be acceptable.
One of the central features of democracy is that it's a large ship but does turn toward the majority. You/I/we want that ship to turn towards a right to strong crypto systems enshrined in law? Work on influencing that majority.
Because the fact of the matter is that a majority of Americans don't even understand encryption. And to paraphrase McAvoy from The Newsroom and point at one of the reasons more social change wasn't effected from the 60s, in a democracy an idea being right is less important than it being known and agreed with.
All that is required for cynacism, on the other hand, is to sit on ones couch.
> I have no expectations that the relationship between law enforcement and technology companies will improve.
I absolutely agree with this, but that Brave New World has its own dangers. Apple could technically construct a device to enable secure drug trafficking and place its levers of control over that device outside US jurisdiction. Then begin taking a cut of the enterprise. Control is power, and if we shift it from the US government to corporations, then corporate accountability starts to become a lot more important.
Because that's ultimately what we're talking about now. Imagine in 20 years when we're having the conversation about the poor US government standing up to Apple or Google.
Exactly, and not only that, but (potentially) unknown to Apple.
Hunh? The iPhone 5s and the iPhone 6 both contained the first gen fingerprint reader, and it was universally regarded as one of the best consumer fingerprint readers available on any device.
That is largely irrelevant though, as the secure enclave is not in the fingerprint reader. TouchID is one way to access it, but the secure element can exist without touchID (as on the watch).
More generally, any given version of a piece of software if becoming less and less secure with time, because vulnerabilities are found, although it's the same piece of software.
So basically only the iPhone 5 and older models are easy to compromise, with iPhone 5S and newer it gets a _lot_ harder.
Details here, from the mothership itselves: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
Keep the downvotes coming, lads! They're meant for burying spam and junk comments, not expressing disagreement, but I enjoy them anyway.
If the FBI could rely on Apple to provide assistance when presented with a court order, they would have no reason to keep such a method private -- or to even find and use it in the first place.
Tim Cook does not come across as a sufficiently prescient CEO in this boondoggle.
code = 0000
While code_is_valid not true:
enter code
reboot device
code++
I assumed the code is just 4 digits long but judging by the quick downvotes people aren't even considering this to be a possibility.
I also don't buy the rhetorical come-back about those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. There is a line between the two, and each side must give and take. If the FBI found a way to do it without Apple, bravo. Let Apple figure it out if they want.
This is Apple's fault and they should not get a pass for spinning the PR in their favor.
In theory government is supposed to also be responsive to the will of the people especially with regards to things like privacy from government searches so I guess it's up to the reader to decide for themselves which side they're on here.
I don't see that line used nearly so often against traffic laws, driver's license laws, state medical board doctor licensing laws, laws banning the sale of guns to minors, compulsory education laws, childhood vaccination laws, laws banning lead in gasoline, building codes requiring the use of twelve-gauge wire in certain circuits, laws requiring carbon monoxide detectors in our bedrooms and kitchens, etc.
The government is applying constraints to our lives and freedoms literally _all the time_ in the name of securing us against threats to life and health.
Most people accept those trade offs. But those same people actually _do_ deserve both liberty and security.
It always amazes me when people get on their high horse and start complaining about something when the remedy is quite simple - don't use the iphone. Get an Android phone, or an Ubuntu phone, or a Blackphone or a Windows phone. There's plenty of other devices that haven't been cracked by the FBI.
There's irony in the fact Apple resisted the FBI attempts to crack the phone and now this vulnerability will go unpatched and the FBI now has a zero-day exploit they can use whenever they want.
Furthermore, it's not immediately clear that you're disabling encryption when you do that.
So all in all, and for other reasons listed, I believe iPhone is probably the better bet at the moment for secure hardware.