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Judge Orders Apple to Unlock iPhone Belonging to San Bernardino Shooter
Apple has been ordered to assist in the unlocking of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters. This may require updating the firmware to bypass restrictions on PIN unlock attempts:
Apple must assist the FBI in unlocking the passcode-protected encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters in California. US magistrate Sheri Pym says Cupertino must supply software that prevents the phone from automatically annihilating its user data when too many password attempts have been made.
The smartphone belonged to Syed Farook, who with his wife Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 coworkers on December 2. The couple died in a gun battle with police soon after. Cops have been unable to access Syed's iPhone 5C because they do not know the correct PIN, and will now gain the assistance of Apple, as ordered by Judge Pym [PDF] on Tuesday.
iOS 8 and above encrypts data on devices, requiring a four to six-digit PIN to unlock. After the first few wrong guesses, iOS waits a few minutes between accepting further PIN entry attempts, escalating to an hour's delay after the ninth failed login.
[...] Judge Pym wants Apple to come up with some magic software – perhaps a signed firmware update or something else loaded during boot-up – that will allow the FBI to safely brute-force the PIN entry without the device self-destructing. This code must only work on Farook's phone, identified by its serial numbers, and no other handset. The code must only be run on government or Apple property, and must not slow down the brute-forcing process.
Apple has five days to appeal or demonstrate that it cannot comply with the order. It is crucial to note that the central district court of California has not instructed Apple to crack its encryption – instead it wants Apple to provide a tool to effectively bypass the unlocking mechanism. "It's technically possible for Apple to hack a device's PIN, wipe, and other functions. Question is can they be legally forced to hack," said iOS security expert Jonathan Ździarski.
Apple Ordered to Aid FBI in Unlocking Shooter's iPhone
According to this Reuters article, "A U.S. judge on Tuesday ordered Apple Inc to help the FBI break into a phone recovered from one of the San Bernardino shooters, an order that heightens a long-running dispute between tech companies and law enforcement over the limits of encryption.
Apple must provide "reasonable technical assistance" to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook, Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said in a ruling."
"...Forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski said Tuesday Apple might have to write custom code to comply with the order, presenting a novel question to the court about whether the government could order a private company to hack its own device.
Zdziarski said that because the San Bernardino shooting was being investigated as a terrorism case, investigators would be able to work with the NSA and CIA on cracking the phone. Those U.S. intelligence agencies likely could break the iPhone's encryption without Apple's involvement, he said."
Update: EFF to file an amicus brief in support of Apple's position.
Update 2: mendax writes: The New York Times has some "breaking news" which says that Apple will not comply with the judge's order. It's a good way to get in trouble with the judge but it's the right decision on Apple's part.
Previously: FBI Unable to Decrypt California Terrorists' Cell Phone
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:12PM
If the encryption were truly secure, even Apple would not be able to do anything. This is one of the pitfalls with proprietary software: You can't ever trust it, not even a little bit.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:29PM
One thing fer sure... Apple's gonna go up several notches in the "trust" score if they can't honor this court order.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:07PM
Or they could just pretend they can't honor it and reap the benefit of the trust of gullible fools at the risk of a few million dollars' worth of lawyers. Probably an acceptable cost of doing business, and then they can both spy on you AND make you think they can't spy on you at the same time.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:28PM
Exactly. How do we know about this whole business in the first place? Because the gov and apple told us so.
Both are desperate for us to believe in them. Zero cred.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @04:42PM
From a technical standpoint there's no question they can do it. The FBI is requesting a special version of iOS that doesn't brick the phone after X number brute force PIN attempts. Apple's doing the right thing, but I guess when you hate Apple you'll find something to bitch about.
(Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:32PM
"Apple has five days to appeal or demonstrate that it cannot comply with the order."
So... let's wait a few days, shall we?
I would expect the FBI would blow their horn quite loudly if the Apple actually will be able to help them out here.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:57PM
I would expect the FBI would blow their horn quite loudly if the Apple actually will be able to help them out here.
I don't think so. In the name of national security, successfully breaking this would be kept very secret indeed. But the FBI would come out and tout their own horn about how they didn't need the decryption/apple support because "hey, we found these other things through other means, err... yes, other ways. Forget we ever asked about support with decrypting"...
(Score: 4, Informative) by wisnoskij on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:32PM
No, it is a 4-6 digit pin, well within the brute force range. All they need is for software to not slow down the brute forcing..
(Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:36PM
AFAIK there is no brute force... you have three attempts to find the correct PIN and once the third attempt fails the Iphone is reset/bricked/watever you want to call it.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:21PM
With all iOS versions since 8.0.
However what TFS is clearly saying is that they court require Apple to provide a bespoke version of iOS that doesn't have those restrictions on PIN attempts.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 4, Informative) by mtrycz on Wednesday February 17 2016, @12:49PM
After 10 attempts the memory is wiped clean.
The FBI wants Apple to load a customized OS to let them bruteforce the passcode without the memory wiping. Besides the slowdown.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:59PM
You make "wiped clean" sound so ... final. Sure, it's 'erased' but it's not gone!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 17 2016, @03:09PM
Maybe, maybe not. A simple "delete" or "erase" doesn't really kill any data. But, /dev/random overwriting whatever was there makes it pretty useless. How many "wipes" are performed, by default?
Almost any knucklehead running Linux can make data unrecoverable in short order. If he doesn't know how, Google is just a few keystrokes away.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WillR on Wednesday February 17 2016, @03:30PM
*barring implausible advances in mathematics or computing hardware
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gnuman on Wednesday February 17 2016, @05:10PM
Apple made their processor to hold the key. The key is inside the processor. That processor probably has some unique id too, so you can't just dump flash content (at least not easily). The wipe means that the key is destroyed in hardware and no longer readable to the processor, never mind the attacker.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202064 [apple.com]
http://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf [apple.com]
Oh, and here is a good read how criminals have used backdoors,
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/iphone_encrypti_1.html [schneier.com]
Backdoor access built for the good guys is routinely used by the bad guys. In 2005, some unknown group surreptitiously used the lawful-intercept capabilities built into the Greek cell phone system. The same thing happened in Italy in 2006.
In 2010, Chinese hackers subverted an intercept system Google had put into Gmail to comply with US government surveillance requests. Back doors in our cell phone system are currently being exploited by the FBI and unknown others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2016, @03:24PM
Are you sure it is 4-6 digits? I'm using 8 and using the first 6 won't unlock it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday February 17 2016, @01:40PM
If the encryption were truly secure, even Apple would not be able to do anything.
...including selling phones to regular consumers, who didn't want to enter a 32 character strong password every time they turned on their phone. A PIN is a deliberate compromise between usability and security. The fact that the FBI have unlimited physical access to the phone and still can't crack it without help from the manufacturer suggests that there are no flies on Apple's implementation of a PIN.
This is one of the pitfalls with proprietary software
Not in this case: the vulnerability is caused by deliberate features, namely the choice to use a PIN and (presumably) the ability to do a firmware update without needing the PIN (and I'm only assuming that's possible because it is the hack that is being suggested). Open source won't do anything to prevent that.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 17 2016, @04:49PM
In fact open source might make it easier to compromise, making it far easier to write your own "no limits" version of the OS. Then the only defense would be "tivoization" so that the device would only run a properly signed OS so that cooperation with the manufacturer is still required (or at least a copy of their signing key).
Of course, if the device doesn't require a signed OS then any halfway competent attacker should be able to edit the binary directly to remove the limitations. So presumably iPhones require signed binaries and the FBI hasn't yet acquired the keys. [Dons tinfoil hat] Or at least that's what the FBI wants the public to think.
Hmm, I suppose a signing requirement would also be needed for limiting the compromised software to a single device - hard-code the serial number check and even though it's easy to modify for another phone, the modified version will no longer be signed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2016, @03:47PM
In fact open source
Not merely open source, but free software. As for this, it's entirely possible to have free software that implemented similar security measures that is fully in control of the user. There is no reason the manufacturer would have to be involved.
It is silly to think that hiding how the software works will somehow protect you from competent attackers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday February 18 2016, @09:40PM
Is not Free software a strict subset of open source? I.e. all Free Software is open source, but not all open source software is Free.
And no, it's not entirely silly - if you have access to the source code their are a number of tools of various degrees of sophistication that you can use to analyze it for likely security problems. Probably a fair bet that competent attackers will do so using the most sophisticated tools available (especially if we're talking NSA-class attackers). Probably also a fair bet that most OS projects won't run such high-end analytics themselves, nor immediately fix all the problems if they do.
Open source can do a great job of eliminating a lot of the "low hanging fruit" for attackers. But as we've sen time and again it doesn't necessarily catch the more subtle problems. Meanwhile it helps to expose those subtle problems that would likely be difficult to find through black-box analysis to well-funded attackers.
Net result - your average security-conscious open source program is probably more secure against average attackers than a proprietary equivalent. But once you eliminate the low hanging fruit on both, then having the source gives you a leg up on finding more esoteric attacks. Not to mention it may make it more likely that an attacker will intentionally "poison the well" by contributing an obfuscated weakness. With proprietary software that can only be done with inside help - not that that's any sort of guarantee it doesn't happen, but it requires conspiracy rather than just the false appearance of good faith.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Wednesday February 17 2016, @06:42PM
This isn't really a free/proprietary thing. It sounds like it has a configuration where the OS can't be modified to bypass the security measures without the PIN and if the memory is transferred to another circuit board, it still can't be accessed without extracting information from the original hardware. It sounds like if they do this it will require physically monitoring or modifying the hardware.
The court could just as easily order a developer who posted circuit boards and software for a phone online as free software to cooperate with security bypass engineering on behalf of law enforcement. The free software movement is not an innoculant against this effect.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.