Apple is Now Free to Encrypt as it Chooses

[OROBTC]

...

The good news is that the FBI was able to crack the iPhone belonging to the terrst [sic] is California.

The good news is that Apple can now redouble its encryption efforts so that the FBI cannot break the NEXT generation of iOS.

I have a Bitcoin wallet on my iPhone.  Now that Apple has (apparently) NOT been coerced to backdoor its OS, I think that we can all feel a little bit better.

But who really knows.....

[Scream]

i can't trust apple 100%
in fact if you watch movie like 007, Mission Imposible, etc. i can feel comfortable with my privacy. \
i think if IOS upgrade his OS and make IOS more stronger from cracker, im still doubt FBI can't crack it 

[exstasie]

Unfortunately, I think the feds will play the next round against someone smaller, easier to push around, in order to set precedent. They didn't expect Apple to play hardball and didn't want to risk setting precedent against its heavy resources. Maybe next time, they go after Android encryption developers. Easy peasy. Then Apple won't have any legs to stand on.

[NorrisK]

Good thing that no precedent has been set, however it is quite clear that more cases like this will pop up in the future.

I'm also quite interested to hear about how they have been able to unlock the iphone. Did they really break the encryption? Or did they find a way around the limited number of pin entries? That makes a huge difference as well. Breaking the encryption would be really really bad, but finding a way to try more pincodes is quite easy to patch up later.

[Fortify]

You can't trust that apple didn't crack. If they did give the police access to the phone, they would need a damn good story to put out to the press. Apple may be the richest company in the world, the people at the top mostly live in America though and if you upset uncle Sam you will pay dearly.

[CryptoDatabase]

Could just simply be a cover story from the feds to hide the fact that Apple gave them access.

Apple gets to save face somewhat and the FBI gets access to their phones.

[Shibashi Dogemoto]

I'm still not 100% convinced there's no backdoor into apple's IOS...

For the FBI or CIA it might be sufficient to force a couple IOS developers to put some backdoors into their OS without the apple management knowing this fact. Afterwards they can put up a mock trial trying to force them to crack their own software, while they actually already have a backdoor...

[Swordsoffreedom]

Unfortunately, I think the feds will play the next round against someone smaller, easier to push around, in order to set precedent. They didn't expect Apple to play hardball and didn't want to risk setting precedent against its heavy resources. Maybe next time, they go after Android encryption developers. Easy peasy. Then Apple won't have any legs to stand on.

The question though is that the market is split between Android and Apple systems not including stuff like Palm or Windows 10 by default, they can't really push groups like Research in Motion because RIM is pretty much turning into a security company.
In a sense the best defense is an oligopoly in the phone market.

That said your right they can likely try to push some other groups to make precedent for an Apple case but it will depend on if the court will even want to after seeing the US government going to a third party to resolve it outside of the court and saying FU to the judiciary in a sense.

[bitbunnny]

I think the feds have found the way to "persuade" Apple to give them access and the story for the public is, of course, different.

[pedrog]

Unfortunately, I think the feds will play the next round against someone smaller, easier to push around, in order to set precedent. They didn't expect Apple to play hardball and didn't want to risk setting precedent against its heavy resources. Maybe next time, they go after Android encryption developers. Easy peasy. Then Apple won't have any legs to stand on.

There's nothing "easy peasy" going against Google, they also have shit loads of monies and an interest in showing their products are safe.

I think the feds have found the way to "persuade" Apple to give them access and the story for the public is, of course, different.

Rumor is, this guys are the ones unlocking the device:

http://www.cellebrite.com/Pages/ios-forensics-physical-extraction-decoding-and-analysis-from-ios-devices

[bitbunnny]

Unfortunately, I think the feds will play the next round against someone smaller, easier to push around, in order to set precedent. They didn't expect Apple to play hardball and didn't want to risk setting precedent against its heavy resources. Maybe next time, they go after Android encryption developers. Easy peasy. Then Apple won't have any legs to stand on.

There's nothing "easy peasy" going against Google, they also have shit loads of monies and an interest in showing their products are safe.

I think the feds have found the way to "persuade" Apple to give them access and the story for the public is, of course, different.

Rumor is, this guys are the ones unlocking the device:

http://www.cellebrite.com/Pages/ios-forensics-physical-extraction-decoding-and-analysis-from-ios-devices

Hmmm... UFED couldn't do it so far, so I don't know...

[cryptodevil]

I don't think it was ever difficult to do in the first place.

The content of an iPhone can be cloned in its encrypted state which means you make as many copies as you need to cycle through all the combinations for the numeric 4 or 6 digit pin code. Every time the tenth code fails and destroys the data you go to a fresh copy of the original and continue trying the next number in line. Likely could be done in less than a day.

Is this not the case?

[altcoinhosting]

I don't think it was ever difficult to do in the first place.

The content of an iPhone can be cloned in its encrypted state which means you make as many copies as you need to cycle through all the combinations for the numeric 4 or 6 digit pin code. Every time the tenth code fails and destroys the data you go to a fresh copy of the original and continue trying the next number in line. Likely could be done in less than a day.

Is this not the case?

IF you can clone the ROM, this can indeed be done.

I found this piece of software while looking for an answer: http://www.elcomsoft.co.uk/eppb.html  On the other hand, a quick search didn't give an answer to the fact wether or not iphone cloning can be done (i didn't do an extensive search on the subject tough)

[NeuroticFish]

As long as you have a device that uses Operating System and it gets ever connected to the internet, it doesn't matter who made that OS, it doesn't matter what else you have installed, there is a chance that somebody steals information from that device. As simple a that.

The rest of discussion is about who you trust. Whether iOS was hacked or a backdoor created by 3rd party, it's a privacy issue.
That Android steals info (especially GPS tracking) is well known.
Windows 10.... as worse as the others.

If Linux has backdoors or not, I don't know, but that may not be a realistic option - how many of you rooted the phone to a Linux of your choice?

[pedrog]

I don't think it was ever difficult to do in the first place.

The content of an iPhone can be cloned in its encrypted state which means you make as many copies as you need to cycle through all the combinations for the numeric 4 or 6 digit pin code. Every time the tenth code fails and destroys the data you go to a fresh copy of the original and continue trying the next number in line. Likely could be done in less than a day.

Is this not the case?

NAND mirroring is one of the hypothesis, not easy or cheap to be done, but some unknown vulnerability in iOS might have been the solution here.

[OROBTC]

...

Thank you all above posters for sharing insights into AAPL v. FBI.  I am not a technical guy from either the hardware side nor software.

The general impression I am getting, though, is still the news is rather good re privacy.  It DOES look like the FBI can crack the iPhone now in a real emergency, which is good.

But it also looks like it is not very easy nor very cheap.  Resources must be expended.  The most important insight I believe I get from this is that .gov will not be able to have wholesale access to our personal info.

[Slowturtleinc]

Its to late for Apple just the fact that this is suddenly dropped smells like they came to a agreement.
They would keep at this for future cases and new encryption systems. Establishing once and for all that they can backdoor everything,why just drop it? Does not serve their purpose unless they have a agreement now.

[onlinedragon]

The maximum OS that could be on the IPhone is IOS 9.2.1. Since hackers would be able to jailbreak the iPhone because of the found exploits. Possible with that exploits they could hack into the phone and recover the data they need.