FBI Cracks California Shooter's Phone

[mikehersh2]

The FBI recently uncovered the password into the shooter's phone. Do you think this was the right choice? Could this be the next step into the invasion of our privacy?

[axxo]

It would be better if they didn't announce this. Unless the government had some special reason for doing so, the bad guys now know that the phone contents are being reviewed.

Why does the government and press tell the world about special operations, drone strikes, and all the secret stuff that we would rather not have bad guys knowing?

[Paultango]

Thats a wrong move for FBI now all people will know that FBI can see their credentials.
Time to go back again to ballpen and paper to send messages, so they cant crack it

[vero]

They are lying, They didn't break into it. they are just opting out of the fight because they had already lost.

[Fortify]

Well, the floodgates have opened against the iPhone. There has been a second case since then where the same technique was used to unlock a phone used by someone in a murder case. It just means the next wave of Apple tech will be further hardened and encrypted. They are going the BlackBerry route with impenetrable security above all else, but BlackBerry was primarily a business crowd.

[Moloch]

The problem with encryption is it can be broken...

Apple had some hardware/software which erases the data after 10 failed login attempts

But, anything they add, can be removed... If you remove the software/hardware that does the deleting... you can proceed to brute force crack the password all day long

I assume this is what the FBI did...

It's like taking the platters out of a Hard Drive, and putting them in a new drive to read the data... you bypass the security

[Hirose UK]

The FBI recently uncovered the password into the shooter's phone. Do you think this was the right choice? Could this be the next step into the invasion of our privacy?

I think they did it because they have some reasons we don't know. hope they use their skills to do something wisely and they won't do invasion of privacy.

[countryfree]

It's good this news was revealed, with everybody's talking about it. It just shows the world how unsafe a smartphone is. There are some good tools like Truecrypt but standard, easy to use encryption coming large manufacturers like Apple are bound to fail.

[witsie]

I'm glad. Fuck Apple.

[bryant.coleman]

Not much of a surprise. A few weeks earlier, FBI sought the help of John McAfee to crack the cellphone. Anyway... I am glad that it took them so long to simply beat the encryption system. Imagine this. Thousands of experts working for two months to decrypt just one cellphone. The Apple guys must be proud of their encryption system.

[ColderThanIce]

It's like taking the platters out of a Hard Drive, and putting them in a new drive to read the data... you bypass the security

I'm not sure you understand how encryption works. Even if you took platters out of a HDD and read them with special tools, that wouldn't crack the encryption. The data on the drive itself is encrypted, so you'd just be reading the encrypted data off the drive. You'd need decryption tools to try  decrypting the drive (and if a modern encryption technique was used in combination with a strong encryption key, chances are you wouldn't be decrypting that drive).

[mikehersh2]

It would be better if they didn't announce this. Unless the government had some special reason for doing so, the bad guys now know that the phone contents are being reviewed.

Why does the government and press tell the world about special operations, drone strikes, and all the secret stuff that we would rather not have bad guys knowing?

This is always a big issue. It is less of the government's fault, and more of the press. The press is always looking for the smallest bit of information to release to the public through media. I totally agree though, the government has no benefit from announcing this to the public.

[jassii]

Fat chance! apple doesn't want to help the FBI, but now they want cooperation? too bad. apple set the tenor of their relationship, and it is unlikely that apple would help the next time the FBI needs apple's help, so tough luck apple.