Apple Opposes Judge Order to Break Encryption

[Thai]

Actually I am on an iPad as we "speak".

Let me give you a specific past event which having a cyber dark zone would have severely affected a terrorism issue: look up Ahmed Ressam, aka the Millineum Bomber. Ahmed the Algerian was caught entering the US from Canada on New Years Eve 1999, with what can technically be described as a big ass bomb in his car trunk. Nitroglycerin, ammonium nitrate, he had it all. Was on his way to bomb LAX. Ahmed had trained with Al Quaeda, and had been a terrorist a while. He is in Supermax Prison right now. What if, when he was arrested, he had all his info on an encrypted I(sis) phone. The instant world wide investigation that his arrest triggered would have been severely delayed and much more difficult, since all his contacts, maps and the like would have been "dark". Wouldn't have know his contacts, his target, nothing. But it probably wouldn't have affected you personally. Just the thousands of people at LAX that day. But not you. You should look up the Theory of Bounded Rationality, if you can understand it.

You mean up till now, ISIS did not know how to use encryption? They needed Apple to show them the way to go "dark"?

You do realize that there are phones sold that are super private. Google it. Blackphone. Hell, you might as well throw Blackberry in there too!

LOL...fancy words...color me impress. You sound super knowledgeable. Your kind of knowledge is about as useful as poop-flavored lollipop.

 

[Wingsuit]

Helpless people get nasty on these forums. It's an ideologue versus a realistic assessment of threats.

 

[Thai]

Helpless people get nasty on these forums. It's an ideologue versus a realistic assessment of threats.

LOL...ignorance makes people come up with some of the funniest sh!t on these forums...in a way to mask their understanding of the topic at hand.

 

[DK327]

I personally think a 3rd party can get into this iphone and the feds can too, they just want to set a precedent by publicly challenging apple on this. John McAfee said his "team" would only need a couple of weeks to extract data from the said phone, I'm sure others can do it as well. This grand standing is nothing but theater.

 

[Thai]

I personally think a 3rd party can get into this iphone and the feds can too, they just want to set a precedent by publicly challenging apple on this. John McAfee said his "team" would only need a couple of weeks to extract data from the said phone, I'm sure others can do it as well. This grand standing is nothing but theater.

About a year ago, i did as much research as i can into Activation Lock. Once activated, can someone extract data from iPhone is what i wanted to find out. I may be outdated. But, after looking and reading up on hackers forums/sites, the BEST that you can do to an iPhone is turn it into a fancy iPod Touch (once carrier blacklisted your serial). And the data on the iPhone canNOT be extracted with the hacking programs/tools available. Things may have changed since my superficial research.

Remember, McAfee is half crazy...and he does far more grand standing than Apple, Google, and Microsoft put together! At one point he was hiding like a dog in some foreign land.

 

[Thai]

For those who think that Apple should bend over and had picked the "wrong" battle, please read: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-value-in-privacy-vow.html?mwrsm=Twitter&_r=1

This is not a US thing. Apple stance (or lack of) will have a rippling effect world-wide.

Quote:

In China, for example, Apple — like any other foreign company selling smartphones — hands over devices for import checks by Chinese regulators. Apple also maintains server computers in China, but Apple has previously said that Beijing cannot view the data and that the keys to the servers are not stored in China. In practice and according to Chinese law, Beijing typically has access to any data stored in China.

If Apple accedes to American law enforcement demands for opening the iPhone in the San Bernardino case and Beijing asks for a similar tool, it is unlikely Apple would be able to control China’s use of it. Yet if Apple were to refuse Beijing, it would potentially face a battery of penalties.

Analysts said Chinese officials were pushing for greater control over the encryption and security of computers and phones sold in the country, though Beijing last year backed off on some proposals that would have required foreign companies to provide encryption keys for devices sold in the country after facing pressure from foreign trade groups.

“People tend to forget the global impact of this,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, policy director at Access Now, a nonprofit that works for Internet freedoms. “The reality is the damage done when a democratic government does something like this is massive. It’s even more negative in places where there are fewer freedoms.”

Link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2716997-Tim-Cook-Emails-Apple-Employees.html

For those who still have questions about this, PLEASE READ THE LINK.

Quotes:

Some advocates of the government’s order want us to roll back data protections to iOS 7, which we released in September 2013. Starting with iOS 8, we began encrypting data in a way that not even the iPhone itself can read without the user’s passcode, so if it is lost or stolen, our personal data, conversations, financial and health information are far more secure. We all know that turning back the clock on that progress would be a terrible idea.

Our fellow citizens know it, too. Over the past week I’ve received messages from thousands of people in all 50 states, and the overwhelming majority are writing to voice their strong support. One email was from a 13-year-old app developer who thanked us for standing up for "all future generations." And a 30-year Army veteran told me, "Like my freedom, I will always consider my privacy as a treasure."
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Q&A:

Could Apple build this operating system just once, for this iPhone, and never use it again?

The digital world is very different from the physical world. In the physical world you can destroy something and it’s gone. But in the digital world, the technique, once created, could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.

Law enforcement agents around the country have already said they have hundreds of iPhones they want Apple to unlock if the FBI wins this case. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks. Of course, Apple would do our best to protect that key, but in a world where all of our data is under constant threat, it would be relentlessly attacked by hackers and cybercriminals. As recent attacks on the IRS systems and countless other data breaches have shown, no one is immune to cyberattacks.

Again, we strongly believe the only way to guarantee that such a powerful tool isn’t abused and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is to never create it.

Link: DOJ seeks to force Apple to extract data from dozen other iPhones: WSJ | Reuters

Slippery slope? Hmmmm....

Quote:

The U.S. Justice Department is looking at court orders forcing Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.

This move comes on the heels of the San Bernardino, California, shooting case.

However, the details of these dozen cases are not yet public and they do not tend to involve any terrorism charges, the Journal said on Monday.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a reminder of my earlier post:

Link: FBI asked Apple to provide data from Illinois couple's phone - Chicago Tribune

This backdoor will open a huge can of..."what else should we use it for".

Here's the latest Cook interview....

Exclusive: Apple CEO Tim Cook Says iPhone-Cracking Software Equivalent of Cancer - ABC News

Good interview. Many good points and some clunkers....

Few quotes from the net:

Even Michael Hayden, a former chief of both the CIA and the NSA — who served as the NSA's director as it conducted the controversial surveillance program that collected telephone metadata on millions of Americans — called out Comey as not shooting straight about his real intent.

"In general I oppose the government's effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey," Hayden said in an interview. "Jim would like a back door available to American law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim's job a bit easier in some specific circumstances."

Hayden added, "when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors." If there's a back door, he said, "a lot of other people would take advantage of it."

Comey's FBI and the Obama administration are gaining some cover from the media as well, which keeps suggesting that the issue in question is whether or not "Apple should help the police to unlock a terrorist phone."

This is also absolutely untrue. Apple isn't being asked to unlock a device.

The FBI knows Apple can't unlock it, because there is no master key that exists anywhere.

What it is demanding is new software that would bypass iOS's existing security features to allow the FBI itself to guess the passcode for as long as it needed to access the device.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook called this new software a "cancer," suggesting that once unleashed, it would be impossible to control. And of course, if the U.S. federal government already has nine other requests in the queue for a security bypassing back door to get past encryption, setting a new precedent for the "Mother of All Back Doors" means that there will be a steady stream of new demands.

And if the U.S. can achieve its goals via a court order, clearly any other country Apple does business in can also demand access to the same capabilities, without even needing to establish any sort of democratically-originated legal basis in law.

Some readings that a few here needs to read up on. [MENTION=134251]Wingsuit[/MENTION]

 

[DK327]

Remember, McAfee is half crazy...and he does far more grand standing than Apple, Google, and Microsoft put together! At one point he was hiding like a dog in some foreign land.

That's true, what I don't get is, what do the feds think is on this iphone to want to get into it so badly? I mean the attack was already carried out successfully and whoever this guy was in contact with is long gone by now so what do they think they'll discover once they unlock it? I still think this is just a fake wrestling match with temporary heroes and villains playing their part... Think about how counterproductive it is to try to find that needle in the haystack by... wanting to make the haystack even bigger, referring to gov't wanting to or already collecting and storing all data possible.

 

[Wingsuit]

Some readings that a few here needs to read up on. [MENTION=134251]Wingsuit[/MENTION]

Yawn. Looks like someone doesn't have enough to do ....

 

[RedSled]

I personally think a 3rd party can get into this iphone and the feds can too, they just want to set a precedent by publicly challenging apple on this. John McAfee said his "team" would only need a couple of weeks to extract data from the said phone, I'm sure others can do it as well. This grand standing is nothing but theater.

The feds. like i said before do not want the resposibility, they want someone else to do the dirty work, and then take complete control on who, what, and why. If they set a precedent then that opens the door for them to dictate to any company to develope anything they need to fight anybody they deem to be a bad guy. It is not all about cracking a phone.

 

[Thai]

That's true, what I don't get is, what do the feds think is on this iphone to want to get into it so badly? I mean the attack was already carried out successfully and whoever this guy was in contact with is long gone by now so what do they think they'll discover once they unlock it? I still think this is just a fake wrestling match with temporary heroes and villains playing their part... Think about how counterproductive it is to try to find that needle in the haystack by... wanting to make the haystack even bigger, referring to gov't wanting to or already collecting and storing all data possible.

All about creating a precedent for future cases. Remember this case is being watched worldwide by all governments.

 

[flighht2k5]

I personally think a 3rd party can get into this iphone and the feds can too, they just want to set a precedent by publicly challenging apple on this. John McAfee said his "team" would only need a couple of weeks to extract data from the said phone, I'm sure others can do it as well. This grand standing is nothing but theater.

They said that what two weeks ago? Why haven't they?

 

[nevada]

They said that what two weeks ago? Why haven't they?

as of the last time I checked, the fbi had not responded to him. that's not what they want, clearly. they want access to ALL phones.

 

[Thai]

as of the last time I checked, the fbi had not responded to him. that's not what they want, clearly. they want access to ALL phones.

And who the hell takes McAfee seriously anymore?! That guy is a joke.

 

[Bigshankhank]

Actually I am on an iPad as we "speak".

Let me give you a specific past event which having a cyber dark zone would have severely affected a terrorism issue: look up Ahmed Ressam, aka the Millineum Bomber. Ahmed the Algerian was caught entering the US from Canada on New Years Eve 1999, with what can technically be described as a big ass bomb in his car trunk. Nitroglycerin, ammonium nitrate, he had it all. Was on his way to bomb LAX. Ahmed had trained with Al Quaeda, and had been a terrorist a while. He is in Supermax Prison right now. What if, when he was arrested, he had all his info on an encrypted I(sis) phone. The instant world wide investigation that his arrest triggered would have been severely delayed and much more difficult, since all his contacts, maps and the like would have been "dark". Wouldn't have know his contacts, his target, nothing. But it probably wouldn't have affected you personally. Just the thousands of people at LAX that day. But not you. You should look up the Theory of Bounded Rationality, if you can understand it.

Apart from the fact that this individual is alive as opposed to having been shot to death as the San Berdoo shooters were...

So you're saying that, upon the arrest of Achmed Ressam, we gained access to data on suspected terrorists and upcoming planned terror attacks and were subsequently able to prevent said attacks/arrest accused terrorists? Wait, didn't this guy get arrested prior to Sept 11, 2001? So what did the Feds do with the data they gathered? Honestly, use a success story as your allegory, this one doesn't hold water. Him having an iPhone in which he had had all of his data encrypted would have made no difference, he may as well just had a bunch of pictures & printed out emails sitting on the front seat of his car for all the good the gathered intel did.

And that's the crux of it, the Feds cannot justify by way of example, that what they might gain by cracking into iOS, and it will give them access to every iPhone/iPad made, is worth what we will all lose (privacy).

 

[DK327]

And who the hell takes McAfee seriously anymore?! That guy is a joke.

I hear he's going to be announcing he'll be running for president under libertarian party and will "mop the floor with Donald Trump."

 

[Thai]

I personally think a 3rd party can get into this iphone and the feds can too, they just want to set a precedent by publicly challenging apple on this. John McAfee said his "team" would only need a couple of weeks to extract data from the said phone, I'm sure others can do it as well. This grand standing is nothing but theater.

Good article dissecting McAfee full of crap claims: Thinksquad ? John McAfee better prepare to eat a shoe because...

And why iPhone security is no simpleton to hack.

 

[Thai]

Link: https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/defense-secretary-favors-strong-encryption-220341402.html

Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a tech industry audience that strong encryption is essential to the nation's security, while adding that he's "not a believer in back doors" or encryption programs that leave openings for outsiders to read coded file.

 

[BrianSD_42]

Amazon Quietly Removes Encryption Support from its Gadgets

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/amazon-removes-device-encryption-fire-os-kindle-phones-and-tablets

While Apple is fighting the FBI in court over encryption, Amazon quietly disabled the option to use encryption to protect data on its Android-powered devices.

The tech giant has recently deprecated support for device encryption on the latest version of Fire OS, Amazon’s custom Android operating system, which powers its tablets and phones. In the past, privacy-minded users could protect data stored inside their devices, such as their emails, by scrambling it with a password, which made it unreadable in case the device got lost or stolen. With this change, users who had encryption on in their Fire devices are left with two bad choices: either decline to install the update, leaving their devices with outdated software, or give up and keep their data unencrypted.

 

[Thai]

Quote from article i read earlier: [MENTION=66389]BlackWorksInc[/MENTION]

"The most likely method to extract the key, the experts said, would be by using a focused ion beam—essentially a very precise atomic saw that can cut through the chip’s outer structures to expose the 1s and 0s stored in the chip.

The technique is theoretically possible, but would be “very difficult and expensive,” said Julia Elvidge, president of Chipworks Inc., an Ottawa company that specializes in opening and probing chips for patent violations.

Chipworks has done similar work in the past, using a focused ion beam to extract data from a damaged flight-control computer recovered from the cockpit of Swissair 111, which crashed near Peggys Cove, Canada, after catching fire over the Atlantic Ocean in 1998.

That chip was also encrypted. But reading data off a modern iPhone, with its much smaller circuitry, would be harder.

Ms. Elvidge and other security experts say that first the FBI would need to develop a technique to unlock the circuitry of an Apple chip—a kind of high-tech recipe that would require months of painstaking tests with other chips. Ms. Elvidge estimates that this work would cost between $500,000 and $1 million.

“A memory cell today is just a few dozen atoms wide,” said Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at Security Research Labs in Berlin. “If anything goes wrong in your setup.…if there’s just the slightest vibration while you’re probing into your chip, it may be broken forever.”

Mr. Nohl has used a focused ion beam to extract data from smart-card chips. He says that cracking the iPhone would be much more difficult.

“It’s an option, but I think a very last resort because doing any kind of work on the chip itself risks breaking the chip for good,” he said.

Others think the technique is so unlikely to succeed that it isn’t worth trying. “We wouldn’t take such a project,” said Radu Trandafir, systems and software development lead at TechInsights Inc., which like Chipworks analyzes microprocessors. “It would have a very low probability of success.”

 

[BlackWorksInc]

Quote from article i read earlier: [MENTION=66389]BlackWorksInc[/MENTION]

"The most likely method to extract the key, the experts said, would be by using a focused ion beam—essentially a very precise atomic saw that can cut through the chip’s outer structures to expose the 1s and 0s stored in the chip.

The technique is theoretically possible, but would be “very difficult and expensive,” said Julia Elvidge, president of Chipworks Inc., an Ottawa company that specializes in opening and probing chips for patent violations.

Chipworks has done similar work in the past, using a focused ion beam to extract data from a damaged flight-control computer recovered from the cockpit of Swissair 111, which crashed near Peggys Cove, Canada, after catching fire over the Atlantic Ocean in 1998.

That chip was also encrypted. But reading data off a modern iPhone, with its much smaller circuitry, would be harder.

Ms. Elvidge and other security experts say that first the FBI would need to develop a technique to unlock the circuitry of an Apple chip—a kind of high-tech recipe that would require months of painstaking tests with other chips. Ms. Elvidge estimates that this work would cost between $500,000 and $1 million.

“A memory cell today is just a few dozen atoms wide,” said Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at Security Research Labs in Berlin. “If anything goes wrong in your setup.…if there’s just the slightest vibration while you’re probing into your chip, it may be broken forever.”

Mr. Nohl has used a focused ion beam to extract data from smart-card chips. He says that cracking the iPhone would be much more difficult.

“It’s an option, but I think a very last resort because doing any kind of work on the chip itself risks breaking the chip for good,” he said.

Others think the technique is so unlikely to succeed that it isn’t worth trying. “We wouldn’t take such a project,” said Radu Trandafir, systems and software development lead at TechInsights Inc., which like Chipworks analyzes microprocessors. “It would have a very low probability of success.”

That is a very weird and interesting idea on obtaining the data on the chip... Also that estimate of .5~1 million dollars seems very low. The hypothetical "blackbook" project I suggested I honestly expected to be in the 20+ Million dollar range.

Interesting read though.