News Apple's Tim Cook strikes a blow for security, privacy

Tim Cook for President.

 

Really? This is purely a financially driven decision. If handing over access aligned with Apples best business interest then that's exactly what they would do.

 

Isn't all politics ultimately financially and PR motivated?

And besides, at least someone powerful gets and stands up for privacy and encryption.

What's the alternative? Hilary, Bernie, Trump or Cruz? GLHF with that.

 

Cook's move isn't politics for one. He's not standing up for encryption, ethics or rights. He's standing up for the financial well being of his company. Any benefit to society that occur as a result of his actions are merely coincidental.

As I've said if doing the opposite of what he's doing now ensured the financial security of Apple then doing the opposite is exactly what he would do.

 

It'd be nice if I could rely on my android phone being as tough a nut to crack.

 

i wonder if cook will suggest they relocate the entire company out of the USA if trump gets in.....

 

Greetings!

 

Google and Apple are pretty friendly, if Microsoft says it supports this stance United States government is screwed. Can't block all 3 selling products in the United States there would be a consumer outcry.

It would be the only way to force any of the 3 into compliance.

No Andriod No Apple No windows people would be pretty screwed as would other businesses

 

Going on this article from the Verge that's what Microsoft have done.

They don't appear to have a direct link to where that got that from though, found out that Microsoft are one of the members of Reform Government Surveillance so i guess RGS are speaking on behalf of Microsoft.

 

Since when have business interests been above the law?

Paying tax is against my business interest so I'll write a letter to the HMRC explaining why, lets see how far that gets me.

Seriously, some of you people need to wake up to the fact that countries only work if there are laws that are obeyed by everyone, regardless of power and wealth.

This court order has been legally obtained from a judge, it shouldn't be for Apple to usurp the law.

If they don't like the law then they should lobby their congressman/woman to change it, until then, obey the laws of the land like everyone else. Otherwise their would be anarchy.

 

Apple is completely right - the moment a back door is added other people would find it and it would make apple a no-go zone for corporates, as well as upsetting a lot of consumers.

That said clearly we want terrorists stopped, so hacking a phone shouldn't be impossible just very hard. I suspect the NSA will be able to take the phone apart, copy the memory and brute force to break the encryption. It would be hard but they could do it. That level of difficulty means they won't be hacking everyone's phone, just the few that *really* need it.

The FBI are too lazy for that - they are still stuck on the password screen of the phone with it's 10 goes or the phone is wiped. They want a quick and easy way to just look in peoples phones without any of this taking phones apart and cracking them. That would be far too easy as you know they'd just use it to instantly crack every phone they came across as would every other agency, business or random teenager once the master key got out!

 

One thing to remember that if encryption on iPhones works as it is advertised and there are no backdoors already on HW level - then it cant be done in software. Apple might be able to remove lockdown/wipe after x tries, but you still need to bruteforce the password, and with 80ms/password it will take some time.

 

It's only breaking the law if you get caught.

IANAL but there seems to be some confusion about what exactly the judge has ruled.

IDK how that 10 tries thing works and I don't pretended to know exactly what the judge ruled but i guess Apple could appeal or tie things up for months or even years.

 

There was no court order. It was a request from the FBI which they declined. The FBI are proposing to force them to comply using the courts and some old law. If the order is granted, Apple will have no choice but to comply although they may fight it in the courts. No one has broken any laws nor is anyone acting above it. It's very unlikely Apple will operate outside the law

 

The FBI are looking for them to create a version of the operating system to allow them to automate a brute force attack without restriction. I would think if Apple made such a version of iOS then passwords would be entered at a rate at least an order of magnitude quicker than that if not more.

As I write that it seems kind of weird to request such a modification. Surely Apple have the hash of this dudes password on a cloud server. Couldn't the FBI just grab the hash, employ the same hashing algorithm as Apple and brute force against the stored hash. Either way it's the same number attempts they would have to make whether it's on the phone or offline against a hash. But that seems too simple, I'm probably missing something.

 

No it wouldn't, apple's crypto engine combines device UID (not accessible to software) and user password using PBKDF2-AES algorithm, this takes ~80ms and is done in HW. So unless there is a way to extract that UID - FBI must bruteforce password on device. This is hindered now by lockdown/wipe. If it can be removed than it will come down to how strong the password is. Apple prob should put wipe functionality into HW for next revision.

 

Very interesting

 

TBH as much as I'm no fan of a surveillance state and unless I've missed something what Apple are being asked/ordered to do seems perfectly reasonable to me, it seems Apple could if they wished perform the necessary changes and then just allow remote access to the device.

 

I don't pretend to know a fraction of what's involved with encryption but surely once you allow backdoors into encryption or make it easier to break it then you might as well give up any thought of security on the web. No banking online, no buying or selling stuff online, it all works by encryption so any weakening surely means it gets easier to intercept.