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Comment by dre85 | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered about the legalities of such things. How is it okay for a company to legally sell a hack of another company's technology? Is it because they only sell to the police? If this is okay, then where is the actual limit? Can they sell hacked access to a company's servers for example?

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This isn’t really a hack, it’s just a tool for brute forcing pin codes. It doesn’t work if you have an alphanumeric code or a very long pin code.

But doesn't that still violate the DMCA that prohibits working around access control technology?

It does seem to violate the CFAA

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

The DMCA only protects works based on copyright, so no.

It is a hack. It shouldn't be possible to test pins via a lightning connection. If it weren't exploiting a bug you would have to enter the PIN via the screen, and then you only get a few attempts.

It seems likely that Apple could just buy one of these, find the bug and fix it. Unless it is using some very low level exploit which I suppose is possible and might explain why it is hardware rather than software (though that might also be to justify its cost and prevent piracy).

> It seems likely that Apple could just buy one of these, find the bug and fix it.

Nobody would ever sell it to them.

I'm pretty sure a company with the resources of Apple could get their hands on one.

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