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from the so-simple-that-a-gov't-employee-could-do-it dept.
Russia Today reports
The US public doesn't need a Digital Security Commission; they need the FBI to stop deceiving everyone and tell the truth that it wants to spy on Americans, John McAfee, developer of the first commercial anti-virus program told RT's Ed Schultz.
[...] "The FBI wants Apple to change their software so that it removes the check for security, so that we don't check for security anymore. Once it has that software, they can use that software on any phone. But they say they only need it for one phone."
[...] "You need a hardware engineer and a [software] engineer. The hardware engineer takes the phone apart and copies the instruction set, which are the iOS and applications, and your memory. And then you run a program called a disassembler, which takes all the ones and zeros and gives you readable instructions. Then the coder sits down and he reads through. What he is looking for is the first access to the keypad, because that is the first thing you do when you input your pad. It'll take half an hour. When you see that, then he reads the instructions for where in memory this secret code is stored. It is that trivial--a half an hour.
...The FBI knows this, Apple knows this."[...] "In either case, if they (the FBI) don't know, that is tragic; if they do know it, then they are deceiving the American public and Apple and everyone else by asking for a universal key."
Video
Do you see any flaws in McAffee's explanation?
Previous: Apple Wants Court To Rule If It Can Be Forced To Unlock iPhones
Seems Like Everyone has an Opinion About Apple vs. the FBI
Update: TPP-Exposing Journalist Ed Schultz Lands on His Feet at RT
John McAfee Announces He Will Run For President of the United States
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @12:58PM
For unoptimized assembly, yes. For optimized assembly, even with full source code and symbols, it's often tricky to figure out what's what. Code is inlined, re-ordered, intertwined, it's a mess. Now imagine not having any symbols. All you see is a never ending series of jumps and nested calls. You have no clue what they're for and you can't search for anything, and there are millions upon millions of assembly instructions. The kind of reverse engineering McAfee is talking about worked back when you could install your entire operating system from one floppy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @01:46PM
If you, a layman, believe this, you are just a regular lamer. No surprise.
If you're an app programmer and believe this, it is rather sad but still understandable.
But if FBI "experts" do believe this, they are incompetents wasting the taxpayers' money.
Google "IDA Pro" and stop spreading stupidity around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @04:50PM
Yes, IDA is nice. You didn't think I disassembled opcodes in my head, I hope. But you certainly can't just "read through the instructions" to find "the first access to the keypad", as McAfee suggests. You need to execute and trace the code, and yes you will need several passes through it. It takes several weeks, certainly not 30 minutes. That kind of arrogance is common, but I find it's inversely proportional to experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @02:25AM
Plus there is a huge difference between disassembling a single thread in an app and multiple multi-threaded processes and the kernel at the same time.