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posted by martyb on Thursday November 09 2017, @01:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-bring-a-paperweight-to-an-encryption-fight dept.

At a press conference, an FBI spokesman blamed industry standard encryption for preventing the agency from accessing the recent Texas mass shooter's locked iPhone. Reuters later reported that the FBI did not try to contact Apple during a 48-hour window in which the shooter's fingerprint may have been able to unlock the phone. Apple said in a statement that after seeing the press conference, the company contacted the FBI itself to offer assistance. Finally, the Washington Post reports (archive) that an FBI official acknowledged Apple's offer but said it did not need the company's assistance:

After the FBI said it was dealing with a phone it couldn't open, Apple reached out to the bureau to learn whether the phone was an iPhone and whether the FBI was seeking assistance. An FBI official responded late Tuesday, saying that it was an iPhone but that the agency was not asking anything of the company at this point. That's because experts at the FBI's lab in Quantico, Va., are trying to determine if there are other methods, such as cloud storage or a linked laptop, that would provide access to the phone's data, these people said. They said that process could take weeks.

If the FBI and Apple had talked to each other in the first two days after the attack, it's possible the device might already be open. That time frame may have been critical because Apple's iPhone "Touch ID" — which uses a fingerprint to unlock the device — stops working after 48 hours. It wasn't immediately clear whether the gunman had activated Touch ID on his phone, but more than 80 percent of iPhone owners do use that feature. If the bureau had consulted the company, Apple engineers would likely have told the bureau to take steps such as putting the dead gunman's finger to the phone to see if doing so would unlock it. It was unclear whether the FBI tried to use the dead man's finger to open the device in the first two days.

In a statement, Apple said: "Our team immediately reached out to the FBI after learning from their press conference on Tuesday that investigators were trying to access a mobile phone. We offered assistance and said we would expedite our response to any legal process they send us."

Also at Engadget.

Related: Apple Lawyer and FBI Director Appear Before Congress
Apple Engineers Discussing Civil Disobedience If Ordered to Unlock IPhone
Senator Dianne Feinstein Claims That the FBI Paid $900,000 to Break Into a Locked iPhone
Federal Court Rules That the FBI Does Not Have to Disclose Name of iPhone Hacking Vendor


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 09 2017, @10:31PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday November 09 2017, @10:31PM (#594882) Journal

    Apple suggesting that you can put the dead man's finger on the phone is not them bowing to pressure. And your last sentence is just ridiculous.

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  • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday November 10 2017, @04:35AM (2 children)

    by etherscythe (937) on Friday November 10 2017, @04:35AM (#595034) Journal

    They offered to expedite any legal process, which sounds like kind of the opposite of their last stance on it which was "you'll get in there with my help approximately never". Maybe I am reading more into TFS than appears elsewhere but it sounded to me like they're suddenly eager to be super helpful. Again - and that last was intended to be wild and somewhat unrealistic hyperbole - something specific seems to have changed. I don't know why this is such a hard point for you to grasp.

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 10 2017, @05:04AM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 10 2017, @05:04AM (#595037) Journal

      Apple offered help (not including degrading the security of their products) last time:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute [wikipedia.org]

      On February 9, 2016, the FBI announced that it was unable to unlock the county-owned phone it recovered, due to its advanced security features, including encryption of user data.[15][16] The FBI first asked the National Security Agency to break into the phone, but they were unable to since they only had knowledge of breaking into other devices that are commonly used by criminals, and not iPhones.[17] As a result, the FBI asked Apple Inc. to create a new version of the phone's iOS operating system that could be installed and run in the phone's random access memory to disable certain security features that Apple refers to as "GovtOS". Apple declined due to its policy which required it to never undermine the security features of its products.

      [...] The same day, Apple revealed that it had discussed with the FBI four methods to access data in the iPhone in early January, but, as was revealed by a footnote in the February 19 application to the court, one of the more promising methods was ruled out by a mistake during the investigation of the attack. After the shooter's phone had been recovered, the FBI asked San Bernardino County, the owner of the phone, to reset the password to the shooter's iCloud account in order to acquire data from the iCloud backup. However, this rendered the phone unable to back up recent data to iCloud unless its pass-code is entered.[35][36][37] This was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, which then added that any backup would have been "insufficient" because they would not have been able to recover enough information from it.[38]

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      • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday November 10 2017, @06:39PM

        by etherscythe (937) on Friday November 10 2017, @06:39PM (#595266) Journal

        Ah, that's the detail I was missing, thanks

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