FBI Can't Win: Apple Engineers Will Quit Before Unlocking iPhone

crimson5pheonix

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Gordon_4 said:
Joseph Shrike said:
Deathfish15 said:
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

F.B.I.

Central Intelligence Agency.

C.I.A.

Are you seriously telling me that these two GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, who have the same objectives in this terrorist investigation, aren't able to work together to hack a cell phone? Really?!

Is our government that inept that all we have now working for us is bureaucratic windbags (or douchebags?) that serve no purpose other than to argue in hearings and courtrooms? I'm more than certain that not only are there some highly trained programmers within the Air Force (the test alone to get into the program is insane). There is also the option of contracting out private contractors to do the hack as well.

This is just pure political poppycock in order to try to make precedence in order to make new laws. It is ridiculous!
The problem is that after 10 failed attempts, the iphone will erase all the data. They used to just plug it into a supercomputer and have it burn through combinations, but they can't do that anymore for the above reason. Additionally, even if the government could make a program, only Apple is capable of pushing through the update that would be required. So it's not just an issue of 'hacking' into it. Besides, America could have easily allowed the government to have a backdoor into such things, but nobody liked it, so it didn't happen. A lot of the same people complaining about Apple now were complaining about Clipper Chip. So you know. That's capitalism.
Here's what I don't understand though: I'm no expert on this myself but I've worked with plenty who are: isn't it possible that they can simply run a data recovery tool on the phone after the wipe has occurred and the device is restored to it's factory defaults? Am I to believe that Apple have developed an erasure technology that leaves NOTHING recoverable by data security experts?
Quite possibly. My understanding of how this works is that every file on a computer (which cellphones are too) has a header that describes what it is, where it begins, and where it ends in the storage. When you "delete" something, all it's doing is erasing the header as it saves time and cycles (which matters for solid state storage). A data recovery program just makes educated guesses as to the nature of the header for a data block. A proper formatting of the storage would leave a recovery program with far more work to do. I don't think there even is a way to recover formatted ss storage. But I'm not exactly an expert either.
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

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I do not like Apple normally but here, in this instance, I side with them. Its a complex situation but a government backdoor into security just leads to that key getting distributed to the people who nobody wants to arm it with.
 

Dandymanx

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Or (in full tin-foil hat mode) the intelligence services are fully capable of hacking the phones and this is just a trick to get terrorists to buy I-phones thinking this will render their antics untouchable (not sure if Apple is in on this or not)
 

IceStar100

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Albino Boo said:
Wiggum Esquilax said:
Albino Boo said:
Well Tim Cook better get used to to spending his time in jail and Apple will have to pay daily fines until they fulfil the warrant. Its contempt of court. That means judges can send Cook to jail and can impose unlimited daily fines until Apple fulfills the court order.
Apple already owes billions in back taxes. What's a few hundred million in fines?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/15/apple-european-commission-ruling-back-taxes-ireland

It's hardly as though Apple haven't thought this matter through in financial terms. They'll have to decide whether or not to jump off this bridge when they come to it. They've lost nothing in challenging the U.S. federal government so far; worst case scenario is Apple execs cave at the last second, and still pay little to nothing for the delay.

Between the loss of consumer confidence in Microsoft due to Windows 10 being self-installing spyware, and Apple giving their customers every cause to trust Apple brand security, this crisis may be an opportunity for greater market share is disguise. Screw the fines, there's profit being had in telling the FBI to go play with themselves!
The european commission decision had already resulted in changes in Apple's tax structures and agreements with various finance ministries over taxes. Apple is not alone in that Google has made the same changes. That does not compare to the ability to impose a 1 billion dollar a day fine, which is more than possible over contempt of court. Apple can be literally bankrupted if it does not comply with a court order and its senior executives can go to jail for an unlimited period.

In addition there is no loss in consumer confidence in Windows because it's averaging 1.35 million installs a day. A few people complaining on twitter isnt reflective of the real world. Remember the COD boycotts.
Or they just leave. Not have their headquarter in the usa. America not a popular country anymore. So pick up move to Sweden since if they do something as stupid as that it be cheaper. Sure they can throw some people in jail. However Apple can also make there life hell if they crack the phone. Make it where they never work in the tech industry again plus lost of severance package. So all in all Apple has the money to tell the US court to lick a lamp post in winter. sure they can fine apple as long as apple has office in the usa. Don't forget the internet a thing and buying a phone online not that hard.
 

Alleged_Alec

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Redlin5 said:
I do not like Apple normally but here, in this instance, I side with them. Its a complex situation but a government backdoor into security just leads to that key getting distributed to the people who nobody wants to arm it with.
But that's not even what they're asking for.

Gordon_4 said:
Here's what I don't understand though: I'm no expert on this myself but I've worked with plenty who are: isn't it possible that they can simply run a data recovery tool on the phone after the wipe has occurred and the device is restored to it's factory defaults? Am I to believe that Apple have developed an erasure technology that leaves NOTHING recoverable by data security experts?
Very easily. Normally, when a file is deleted, you just remove the directory entry for the file, which contains some metadata on the file, but more importantly: where you can find the file on the disc. This means that all the actual data is still there. This kind of deletion is fairly doable for software to backwards engineer: you start looking for blocks of data on the disk which are non-random and attempt to figure out which blocks form a coherent thing together.

However, a good factory reset doesn't just remove the entire list of "you can find these files here", but also overwrites all the data in those files with either random bits, or just 1s or 0s. This way, it's more or less impossible to get the data back, since it's actually overwritten.
 

Kuala BangoDango

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Dandymanx said:
Or (in full tin-foil hat mode) the intelligence services are fully capable of hacking the phones and this is just a trick to get terrorists to buy I-phones thinking this will render their antics untouchable (not sure if Apple is in on this or not)
Or worse yet it could be a trick that both Apple and the government are in on in order to see what part of the civilian population sides with Apple so that these people can then be added to the "anti-government" watchlist.
 

Albino Boo

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IceStar100 said:
Or they just leave. Not have their headquarter in the usa. America not a popular country anymore. So pick up move to Sweden since if they do something as stupid as that it be cheaper. Sure they can throw some people in jail. However Apple can also make there life hell if they crack the phone. Make it where they never work in the tech industry again plus lost of severance package. So all in all Apple has the money to tell the US court to lick a lamp post in winter. sure they can fine apple as long as apple has office in the usa. Don't forget the internet a thing and buying a phone online not that hard.
All the US institutional investors that ACTUALLY own Apple would have to vote to delist from the US stock exchange. In addition the US government can pursue a debt action against Apple anywhere in the world. Furthermore the US government can seize goods to the value of the fine, effectively ended Apple's ability to do business in the largest richest market in the world . The US government also has the power to exclude any Bank that operates in the US from doing business with Apple. The US government has excluded Iran and partially excluded Russia. Apple is small beer in comparison.

The reality is that the shareholders will fire Tim Cook and replace him with someone who will comply with a court order rather than see the value of their investment destroyed. If Apple loses its legal fight then it will have to comply or the face the full financial power of the US government. Whatever the rights and wrong of the issue, no US government will allow a large company to disobey a court order. Its sets a precedent for other companies to ignore US law, which goes way beyond this case.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Albino Boo said:
IceStar100 said:
Or they just leave. Not have their headquarter in the usa. America not a popular country anymore. So pick up move to Sweden since if they do something as stupid as that it be cheaper. Sure they can throw some people in jail. However Apple can also make there life hell if they crack the phone. Make it where they never work in the tech industry again plus lost of severance package. So all in all Apple has the money to tell the US court to lick a lamp post in winter. sure they can fine apple as long as apple has office in the usa. Don't forget the internet a thing and buying a phone online not that hard.
All the US institutional investors that ACTUALLY own Apple would have to vote to delist from the US stock exchange. In addition the US government can pursue a debt action against Apple anywhere in the world. Furthermore the US government can seize goods to the value of the fine, effectively ended Apple's ability to do business in the largest richest market in the world . The US government also has the power to exclude any Bank that operates in the US from doing business with Apple. The US government has excluded Iran and partially excluded Russia. Apple is small beer in comparison.

The reality is that the shareholders will fire Tim Cook and replace him with someone who will comply with a court order rather than see the value of their investment destroyed. If Apple loses its legal fight then it will have to comply or the face the full financial power of the US government. Whatever the rights and wrong of the issue, no US government will allow a large company to disobey a court order. Its sets a precedent for other companies to ignore US law, which goes way beyond this case.
The implications of any kind of remote uploadable master key software the likes of which they're asking for are also incredibly dangerous. There is no such thing as a security exploit that exists only for the good guys and all it will ever take is a single leak, then all iOS users are fucked. A security breach of this magnitude would also ruin the shareholders investments because it would make the devices defacto untrustworthy and dangerous.

The FBI's request in unreasonable and because of their own ineptitude from what I've gathered. They should just eat some shit, let the phone wipe itself and recover the data that way.
 

Albino Boo

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Gordon_4 said:
Albino Boo said:
IceStar100 said:
Or they just leave. Not have their headquarter in the usa. America not a popular country anymore. So pick up move to Sweden since if they do something as stupid as that it be cheaper. Sure they can throw some people in jail. However Apple can also make there life hell if they crack the phone. Make it where they never work in the tech industry again plus lost of severance package. So all in all Apple has the money to tell the US court to lick a lamp post in winter. sure they can fine apple as long as apple has office in the usa. Don't forget the internet a thing and buying a phone online not that hard.
All the US institutional investors that ACTUALLY own Apple would have to vote to delist from the US stock exchange. In addition the US government can pursue a debt action against Apple anywhere in the world. Furthermore the US government can seize goods to the value of the fine, effectively ended Apple's ability to do business in the largest richest market in the world . The US government also has the power to exclude any Bank that operates in the US from doing business with Apple. The US government has excluded Iran and partially excluded Russia. Apple is small beer in comparison.

The reality is that the shareholders will fire Tim Cook and replace him with someone who will comply with a court order rather than see the value of their investment destroyed. If Apple loses its legal fight then it will have to comply or the face the full financial power of the US government. Whatever the rights and wrong of the issue, no US government will allow a large company to disobey a court order. Its sets a precedent for other companies to ignore US law, which goes way beyond this case.
The implications of any kind of remote uploadable master key software the likes of which they're asking for are also incredibly dangerous. There is no such thing as a security exploit that exists only for the good guys and all it will ever take is a single leak, then all iOS users are fucked. A security breach of this magnitude would also ruin the shareholders investments because it would make the devices defacto untrustworthy and dangerous.

The FBI's request in unreasonable and because of their own ineptitude from what I've gathered. They should just eat some shit, let the phone wipe itself and recover the data that way.
That's Apple's opinion but Apple's opinion does not have the same weight as that of a judge looking at US Law. The law of the United States is made by individuals that are democratically elected and what Apple is trying to do is to impose Tim Cook's opinion on those democratically elected law makers. Tim Cook has the option of standing for office and changing the law, what he cannot do is ignore the law because he thinks it's wrong. What happens when another company decides that company taxes are too high and just simply stops paying them. What happens if a drugs company decides that safety test aren't needed? Apple not complying with a court order becomes a fundamental battle about whether or not large companies are subject to law of the land. That's not a fight any US government can afford to lose.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Albino Boo said:
Gordon_4 said:
Albino Boo said:
IceStar100 said:
Or they just leave. Not have their headquarter in the usa. America not a popular country anymore. So pick up move to Sweden since if they do something as stupid as that it be cheaper. Sure they can throw some people in jail. However Apple can also make there life hell if they crack the phone. Make it where they never work in the tech industry again plus lost of severance package. So all in all Apple has the money to tell the US court to lick a lamp post in winter. sure they can fine apple as long as apple has office in the usa. Don't forget the internet a thing and buying a phone online not that hard.
All the US institutional investors that ACTUALLY own Apple would have to vote to delist from the US stock exchange. In addition the US government can pursue a debt action against Apple anywhere in the world. Furthermore the US government can seize goods to the value of the fine, effectively ended Apple's ability to do business in the largest richest market in the world . The US government also has the power to exclude any Bank that operates in the US from doing business with Apple. The US government has excluded Iran and partially excluded Russia. Apple is small beer in comparison.

The reality is that the shareholders will fire Tim Cook and replace him with someone who will comply with a court order rather than see the value of their investment destroyed. If Apple loses its legal fight then it will have to comply or the face the full financial power of the US government. Whatever the rights and wrong of the issue, no US government will allow a large company to disobey a court order. Its sets a precedent for other companies to ignore US law, which goes way beyond this case.
The implications of any kind of remote uploadable master key software the likes of which they're asking for are also incredibly dangerous. There is no such thing as a security exploit that exists only for the good guys and all it will ever take is a single leak, then all iOS users are fucked. A security breach of this magnitude would also ruin the shareholders investments because it would make the devices defacto untrustworthy and dangerous.

The FBI's request in unreasonable and because of their own ineptitude from what I've gathered. They should just eat some shit, let the phone wipe itself and recover the data that way.
That's Apple's opinion but Apple's opinion does not have the same weight as that of a judge looking at US Law. The law of the United States is made by individuals that are democratically elected and what Apple is trying to do is to impose Tim Cook's opinion on those democratically elected law makers. Tim Cook has the option of standing for office and changing the law, what he cannot do is ignore the law because he thinks it's wrong. What happens when another company decides that company taxes are too high and just simply stops paying them. What happens if a drugs company decides that safety test aren't needed? Apple not complying with a court order becomes a fundamental battle about whether or not large companies are subject to law of the land. That's not a fight any US government can afford to lose.
My understanding is that there's no current law that means Apple are required to give over such a key and the FBI is seeking a legal injunction to make them do it and that's where the challenge is being made - on this single matter. Tax law is current and standing, safety tests are current and standing. The FBI swinging it's dick and asking them to compromise over a billion devices because they let the fucking intern try and guess the code or something isn't enshrined in law that I'm aware of. If all they want is this single phone cracked, I'm confident Apple would toil night and day to unlock it for them and hand it over after they're done.
 

pookie101

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you cant expect the fbi would actually keep this safe. not long ago they had all the personal records of every agent including undercover ones stolen and uploaded by a 15yo.

the moment the backdoor was agreed to you are basically waving a huge sign to hackers that says there is a backdoor go look for it
 

Albino Boo

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Gordon_4 said:
My understanding is that there's no current law that means Apple are required to give over such a key and the FBI is seeking a legal injunction to make them do it and that's where the challenge is being made - on this single matter. Tax law is current and standing, safety tests are current and standing. The FBI swinging it's dick and asking them to compromise over a billion devices because they let the fucking intern try and guess the code or something isn't enshrined in law that I'm aware of. If all they want is this single phone cracked, I'm confident Apple would toil night and day to unlock it for them and hand it over after they're done.
Every single civil and criminal law judgment rests on the ability of the court to enforce its judgment. You are allowed to appeal the decision but you are not allowed to ignore a court order otherwise there is no law. If a court orders you to do something its do it or else. The law is made the democratically elected representatives of the people and interpreted by the courts. If the court's decision goes against you have to comply or the courts will escalate the sanctions against Apple until Apple ceases to exist or it complies. To do anything else is saying that large companies can ignore the law if they disagree with it. The courts have no choice but to defend the principle of its judgements have to be complied with, if doesn't lawyers for all the other companies can use the same legal arguments to ignore other court orders. What happens if Walmart says paying company taxes is fundamentally offensive to walmart's core principles and would pose a severe threat to the autonomy of Walmart. Once you accept the principle in one case you create a precedent that can be used in other cases.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Righty ho. Sooo... Snowden claims this inability from the FBI is bullshit and their intentions are not what they claim;

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/09/edward-snowden-fbi-san-bernardino-iphone-bullshit-nsa-apple
 

Rastrelly

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Go team freedom! Fuck those potential terrorist victims who could be saved if contents of that phone would lead to other terrorists!

It's so hard to strictly regulate conditions and terms when contents of electronic devices are to be accessed (like, "8.3. Communication device manufacturers are to provide access to communication devices owned by people convicted for crimes described by articles XXXX of Criminal Code if such devices were in use by specified subject in period of preparation for and implementation of crimes in question" ) I can't imagine it being done, especially in a country where it was (or is?) legal to "listen" anyone without any permission =)
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Gordon_4 said:
Joseph Shrike said:
Deathfish15 said:
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

F.B.I.

Central Intelligence Agency.

C.I.A.

Are you seriously telling me that these two GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, who have the same objectives in this terrorist investigation, aren't able to work together to hack a cell phone? Really?!

Is our government that inept that all we have now working for us is bureaucratic windbags (or douchebags?) that serve no purpose other than to argue in hearings and courtrooms? I'm more than certain that not only are there some highly trained programmers within the Air Force (the test alone to get into the program is insane). There is also the option of contracting out private contractors to do the hack as well.

This is just pure political poppycock in order to try to make precedence in order to make new laws. It is ridiculous!
The problem is that after 10 failed attempts, the iphone will erase all the data. They used to just plug it into a supercomputer and have it burn through combinations, but they can't do that anymore for the above reason. Additionally, even if the government could make a program, only Apple is capable of pushing through the update that would be required. So it's not just an issue of 'hacking' into it. Besides, America could have easily allowed the government to have a backdoor into such things, but nobody liked it, so it didn't happen. A lot of the same people complaining about Apple now were complaining about Clipper Chip. So you know. That's capitalism.
Here's what I don't understand though: I'm no expert on this myself but I've worked with plenty who are: isn't it possible that they can simply run a data recovery tool on the phone after the wipe has occurred and the device is restored to it's factory defaults? Am I to believe that Apple have developed an erasure technology that leaves NOTHING recoverable by data security experts?
I think they designed the kill program to literally kill the phone. Its a good means of preventing phone theft since otherwise you can just restore it to factory and resell it. But if its got a remote kill or so then suddenly its value as a stolen product goes way down.
 

LordLundar

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Alleged_Alec said:
Redlin5 said:
I do not like Apple normally but here, in this instance, I side with them. Its a complex situation but a government backdoor into security just leads to that key getting distributed to the people who nobody wants to arm it with.
But that's not even what they're asking for.

Gordon_4 said:
Here's what I don't understand though: I'm no expert on this myself but I've worked with plenty who are: isn't it possible that they can simply run a data recovery tool on the phone after the wipe has occurred and the device is restored to it's factory defaults? Am I to believe that Apple have developed an erasure technology that leaves NOTHING recoverable by data security experts?
Very easily. Normally, when a file is deleted, you just remove the directory entry for the file, which contains some metadata on the file, but more importantly: where you can find the file on the disc. This means that all the actual data is still there. This kind of deletion is fairly doable for software to backwards engineer: you start looking for blocks of data on the disk which are non-random and attempt to figure out which blocks form a coherent thing together.

However, a good factory reset doesn't just remove the entire list of "you can find these files here", but also overwrites all the data in those files with either random bits, or just 1s or 0s. This way, it's more or less impossible to get the data back, since it's actually overwritten.
To add, it doesn't need to be a DoD level wipe (which can take hours) either. For the information to be able to be utilized in a legal matter it needs to be pristine or it can be challenged. A standard format and factory reset easily puts it into the corrupted range. This doesn't even cover the fact that the info is still encrypted and even decrypting it leaves an unintelligible mess.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

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The fact that this has been debunked so many times and that these agencies already have access to the tools required no longer makes me take this seriously. If anything, I'm starting to think this is a smokescreen for something.

Considering the fact that if they want access to someone's facebook or messages, that they can easily strong-arm the people in charge of those services(be it communications providers), this seems more like a publicity stunt or something else more worrying.
 

iseko

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Joseph Shrike said:
Deathfish15 said:
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

F.B.I.

Central Intelligence Agency.

C.I.A.

Are you seriously telling me that these two GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, who have the same objectives in this terrorist investigation, aren't able to work together to hack a cell phone? Really?!

Is our government that inept that all we have now working for us is bureaucratic windbags (or douchebags?) that serve no purpose other than to argue in hearings and courtrooms? I'm more than certain that not only are there some highly trained programmers within the Air Force (the test alone to get into the program is insane). There is also the option of contracting out private contractors to do the hack as well.

This is just pure political poppycock in order to try to make precedence in order to make new laws. It is ridiculous!
The problem is that after 10 failed attempts, the iphone will erase all the data. They used to just plug it into a supercomputer and have it burn through combinations, but they can't do that anymore for the above reason. Additionally, even if the government could make a program, only Apple is capable of pushing through the update that would be required. So it's not just an issue of 'hacking' into it. Besides, America could have easily allowed the government to have a backdoor into such things, but nobody liked it, so it didn't happen. A lot of the same people complaining about Apple now were complaining about Clipper Chip. So you know. That's capitalism.
question: Im not entirely sure about this but... A password encryption is basically just a pasword being jumbled around by your key. You select a password (for example: puppy). The key encrypts it into: "w751|''dwER4$%". Someone explained it to me once that you can only run it through from front to back (puppy into w751|''dwER4$% and not w751|''dwER4$% into puppy).

All you need to do is steal w751|''dwER4$% from the phone (what the encryption expects your answer to become). Run that through the key (provided by apple) on your super computer. Try about a few billion iterations and finally puppy will come out as a likely password.

Problem is that with 2048 bit encryptions or higher the combinations become too much for any supercomputer to try and break in this life time. Even assuming that the password is an actual word instead of a string of random symbols. If you assume words then it becomes very limited. (only a few hundred thousand possibilities, broken in seconds). Once the super computer has discovered that the password is puppy, THEN you enter it into the actual phone.

My experience with IT and encryption in general is very limited so... correct, half wrong, totally wrong, shut up?
 

Riddle78

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Honestly,I'm surprised this is even a question. The FBI is overstepping its bounds,and is failing to consider the future beyond the case. If someone develops the technology to crack the locked-down phone,it's not a question of if unlawfuls will get their hands on the tech,but when,and then that'll make cybersecurity even more of an impossibility. As well as certain intelligent unlawfuls producing their own ways to defend against this technology.

Besides,if they can't do this in-house,then the FBI's filled with fuckwits and incompetents. Makes me happy,in a way,to be North of the Lakes.
 

RaikuFA

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LJ Ellis said:
While this act of civil disobedience would appear to be extreme on the surface, it fits Apple's anti-establishment culture that dates back to beginning of the company with Steve Jobs at the helm.
You mean the same one that files false DMCA claims against parodies of their products?

OT: Maybe they can use the money to make their China factories a better place. You know, higher morale means faster work.