Apple can comply with the FBI court order

http://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/17/apple-can-comply-with-the-fbi-court-order/

by admiralpumpkin • 10 years ago

328 199 10 years ago

blog.trailofbits.com

citizensixteen2• 10 years ago

This is so far the clearest and easiest to understand explanation of the Apple/FBI case I have come across. Great read.

jeffehobbs• 10 years ago

Great piece. Get thee to a "Secure Enclave" supported device, everyone.

venomsnake6• 10 years ago

Or any rooted android. Good luck in defeating LUKS. No custom firmwares will help them.

feld5• 10 years ago

a rooted android is probably easiest to own over the air with a push notification, so yeah, that's a great idea! NOT

scintill76• 10 years ago

Make sure you set high enough LUKS master key iteration counts, and/or very complex password, so that they can't image the LUKS header and brute-force your passphrase off-device.

st3v3r5• 10 years ago

A rooted android is even less secure.

HillRat• 10 years ago

John Kelley (@johnhedge), former Apple security engineer, says that Secure Enclave isn't protected against that kind of tampering, so that's not a solution, either. Until manufacturers start going to embedded HSMs, anyway.

markyc• 10 years ago

FBiOS :)

nindalf• 10 years ago

Indeed, this is precisely why Apple is writing an open letter. If this was an iPhone 6, they would have simply told the judge "no" and that would have been the end of the story. But since its a 5C, it is possible and Apple doesn't want to do it to avoid setting a precedent. If they cooperate with law enforcement to backdoor this phone, then they would face much more pressure to comply with any future laws that require backdoors be built-in.

ikeboy• 10 years ago

Apple has allegedly cooperated with law enforcement in the past by using a custom firmware image that bypassed the passcode lock screen.

If true, precedent has already been set.

jk563• 10 years ago

This simple UI hack was sufficient in earlier versions of iOS since most files were unencrypted

It probably wouldn't apply as precedent as it previously had nothing to do with encryption.

cubano5• 10 years ago

In the end, they will have no choice but to comply.

Do people think this a game? Apple doesn't run things, the federal government does, and will, in the end, use it's full power to get what it desires.

leereeves• 10 years ago

I like to imagine that in the end the people run things. (I know, I know.)

Apple may have to comply with this order (after appeals), but this also helps muster the troops for the battle against universal backdoors.

citizensixteen2• 10 years ago

The Feds will always try, but in this case there is some push-back. The fact that this case has been made public and Apple is fighting against this is a victory in and of itself.

EFF to Support Apple in Encryption Battle-

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/eff-support-apple-encr...

atirip• 10 years ago

Why are you saying this? There is always a choice. TC may choose to go to jail. His successor may also choose to go to jail. To the point that Apple shareholders may choose to let Apple go bust and burn the servers with the source code of iOS. You can argue that this is silly, idiotic and what not. But there is always a choice. Some brave people have choosen to go to jail previously.

p4wnc6• 10 years ago

It absolutely is a game. And governments don't always succeed in winning the game against powerful coalitions. Besides "the government" is a large, fractured entity with political divisions and its own internal power struggles. If one subset of "the government" can look impressive by milking some showy support of Apple, and use this to defeat internal rivals, they absolutely will.

mtgx• 10 years ago

Governments are ultimately bound by the people. So no, it's not supposed to do whatever it wants.

LordKano2• 10 years ago

No. The people of the United States of America run things. The government is our servant, not our master.

kylegordon• 10 years ago

Large companies don't have to stay in one place. If the USA were to force their hand, they have the option of leaving the country.

Chinas behaviour made HSBC, the worlds 5th largest bank, move to London. It's not an unheard of move.

NietTim• 10 years ago

What? This is literally a game. What are the feds going to do against Apple, one of the most valuable companies in the history of modern civilisation? Have them pay some fines? That's about the worst they can do. They can't shut down the company.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 10 years ago

I'd like to know what would happen if Apple said "Looks like we can't guarantee the safety of our users as an American company anymore. We're moving our headquarters and signing key to Iceland. For now, we'll keep our US company as a subsidiary which will provide R&D etc. to Apple Iceland as a service since we can't just move the office, but Apple is now an Icelandic company."

rdancer• 10 years ago

Does the federal government think this a game? Apple doesn't run things, the people do, and will, in the end, use their full power to get what they desire.

Also, "its", without an apostrophe.

pimentel• 10 years ago

If it was an iPhone 6, the FBI could just use the dead finger to unlock the phone, no?

davidiach• 10 years ago

Assuming the attacker used Touch ID.

pol0nium• 10 years ago

No, because the touch-id is deactivated after 24h (or 48h, I'm not sure) of inactivity.

kirykl• 10 years ago

or maybe a well constructed fake using a finger print on file

mindslight6• 10 years ago

Apple doesn't want to do it to avoid setting a precedent

Unfortunately that's exactly what they're going to end up doing with this faux resistance. It seems like in this case there is a master key that only Apple has. If the device's security is broken in this manner, then this is a terrible place to make a stand, as Apple will have no choice but to eventually comply.

Next time, with an actually secure implementation, the stance will be "you protested last time and gave in, do that again". And when USG realizes Apple isn't bluffing that time, their bolstered entitlement will result in the inevitable law for Apple to go back to the backdoored nearly-just-as-secure scheme.

To the first order, USG doesn't care about the argument that foreign governments could also compel Apple, since that simply reduces to traditional physical jurisdiction. And governments seem to be more worried about protecting themselves from their own subjects than from other governments.

We can only hope that the resulting legal fallout is implemented in terms of the standard USG commercial proscriptions based on the power of default choices, leaving Free software to continue to be Free.

venomsnake6• 10 years ago

There is the most master of all keys - the one they sign the bootloader/os with.

themagician• 10 years ago

Apple doesn't have the master key. Apple can't create a master key. Apple can, if they are forced to, create a variant of their software (which doesn't exist today) that will allow the FBI to try all keys and hope that they find one that works.

Apple could be forced to write software that removes the rate limiter and the FBI could still be stuck without access because it's possible the user used a password with too much entropy.

caf• 10 years ago

Makes you wonder why the FBI bothered with the bit about submitting PIN guesses electronically, and didn't just ask for a firmware that looped over all 10,000 PINs until it found the right one.

bryanlarsen• 10 years ago

Perhaps the phone in question has a 6 digit PIN, so it's useful to try it non-sequentially.

jkxyz• 10 years ago

Would setting this precedent to enable brute-forcing the PIN on a less secure model really be that dangerous, then? This isn't a request to circumvent encryption on all models. It would be worrying if the government were asking for a backdoor into the Secure Enclave feature to retrieve the encryption keys, but that's nowhere near what this request is actually detailing.

I still remain opposed to any kind of circumvention that reduces security, which this definitely does. Just questioning whether it's something to be so shocked about since it's not exactly far removed from the kind of requests that they have conformed to in the past.

retube• 10 years ago

The FBI's position seems entirely defensible. The phone data may yield important information - accomplices, contacts etc.

It also seems pretty disingenuous/hypocritical for Apple to plead "customer privacy" when the ENITRE BUSINESS MODEL of much of the smart phone and app industry (from which Apple directly benefit with a 30% commission) is predicated on abusing customer privacy.

jonknee4• 10 years ago

It also seems pretty disingenuous/hypocritical for Apple to plead "customer privacy" when the ENITRE BUSINESS MODEL of most of the smart phone and app industry is predicated on abusing customer privacy.

Apple uses privacy as a major selling point. Apple has also proven very bad at abusing customer privacy for profit, they have even shuttered their own advertising service.

feld5• 10 years ago

Apple does not use customer data as part of their business model. This is a unique Google/Android feature.

CaptSpify3• 10 years ago

We don't actually know that. The best we can say is that don't seem to use customer data. I'm not saying they do, but, we can't demonstrably say they don't either.

el_duderino• 10 years ago

Sources to back up your claim?

zerohm• 10 years ago

also unique to Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, all SEOs...

walls• 10 years ago

The FBI's position seems entirely defensible. The phone data may yield important information - accomplices, contacts etc.

They should already have this information from their 'metadata' collection programs. If the FBI was doing their job at any point this wouldn't even be a subject of debate.

jlebrech• 10 years ago

why can't they just use a pin code robot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_n5W69OdKM

feld5• 10 years ago

it would take forever. there's a timeout penalty for entering the wrong code.

LordKano2• 10 years ago

Because they don't want to spend the time.

After too many incorrect pins, there's a time delay before another attempt can be made.

The FBI is also thinking about the next time. They want to be able to take a phone, plug it in and brute force the PIN to gain access.

centizen• 10 years ago

I have a feeling it's more about setting the precedent, as others have said. There are strategies that can bypass the timeout periods and automatic wiping while bruteforcing, and I'd be surprised if the FBI didn't have at least one rig set up to do it.

RandomBK2• 10 years ago

There is a setting that makes the phone wipe all data after 10 failed attempts. While off by default, the FBI is worried that the setting is turned on.

StreamBright3• 10 years ago

I am wondering if there is no other way to get in. There are lots of security researchers out there who can hack in to iOS or any other mobile os. Would not be it simpler to hire somebody who could do it? There are probably many ways to get access to this device other than guessing the pin.

Update: In the meantime I was talking to my security engineer peers and it is not feasible to carry out an attack this way. The user partitions remains un-mounted until the PIN is provided after the boot.

jonknee4• 10 years ago

There are probably many ways to get access to this device other than guessing the pin.

It's encrypted data using the PIN (and a key embedded in the phone). There's not another way in.

StreamBright3• 10 years ago

The problem is that you are thinking of offline access when encryption is relevant, what I am thinking about is online access, for example let the device boot, connect it to a familiar wifi access point that is modified to redirect the normal iOS traffic to a site that infects the phone with a malware that opens it to unauthorized access. I am not sure if it is feasible though.

j_jochem3• 10 years ago

So I've been wondering, since the PIN is obviously not a strong cryptographic secret, the way the encryption works is basically security by obscurity.

All an attacker would have to to was clone the contents of the the device's SSD and somehow read the secret key that is embedded somewhere else. I'm not sure how feasible the latter part is, but surely this shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of US three-letter-agencies?

pilif3• 10 years ago

I know my opinion is probably not popular, but if there was a way for Apple to physically install a firmware on a single device to allow for brute-forcing and if Apple did that in response to a direct court order, then this is probably the best compromise we can get.

I really believe that there should be a way for law-enforcement to get access to specific devices in response to a court order as long as the solution doesn't involve weakening the encryption for everybody else.

I'm absolutely against backdoors, secret* keys or similar crap. But physically access a single device in order to make brute-forcing it possible, that seems acceptable to me as that won't affect any other device.

That would be similar to a court order allowing law enforcement to enter your premises and take out the safe in order to pry it open at some other location where specialised equipment is available.

If this is all law enforcement wants, then maybe it's time to hand this over before law enforcement wants even more which will doubtless pave the way for mass surveillance of devices.

* until they leak. Then everybody has access.

Spoom• 10 years ago

The FBI's backup in this case to Apple agreeing to work with them might just be to force Apple to disclose their signing key for iOS disk images, which could potentially be worse since it would enable the FBI and not Apple to control on which device(s) the image was installed. From a PR standpoint, that might be better for Apple since they could argue that they did not cooperate in creating a bypass, but from a technical perspective, it would be much worse.

Were I in Apple's position, I would probably do what Apple is doing here... but it's a harder question than just "should we cooperate?" They have to ask, "what if we don't?"

pilif3• 10 years ago

I was of the opinion that apple is actually signing individual OS installs (using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHSH_blob), so ultimately, apple would still be very much aware, if not totally in control of what firmware is installed where.

bjacobel• 10 years ago

maybe it's time to hand this over before law enforcement wants even more which will doubtless pave the way for mass surveillance of devices.

The FBI is already paving that way with this case. They don't overly care about access to this particular iPhone. They're taking this case through the courts so that they can establish a precedent that allows them to force manufacturer cooperation to unlock any phone.

Edit: If they really cared about access to this individual phone, they wouldn't be going through the courts to get it; they'd be talking to the NSA TAO or other LEO with advanced forensic capability. As several people have pointed out, this iPhone 5C does not have a Secure Enclave and probably does not present a significant challenge to forensically analyze, to people that know what they're doing. They're going through the courts on this so they can get carte blanche to access iPhones 5S and above, which no LEO currently has capabilities to inspect.

Further edit: This is Farook's work phone. His main, personal phone was found destroyed in a dumpster near the site of the attacks. I find it incredibly unlikely the FBI really cares much about the contents of this individual phone, they just want a high-profile test case to expand their surveillance capabilities.

delroth2• 10 years ago

Maybe that would force manufacturers to be in a position where they can truthfully say "we can't do that". I'd prefer that to the current situation where Apple basically has a backdoor they're just trying to keep for themselves.

Amezarak2• 10 years ago

They don't overly care about access to this particular iPhone. They're taking this case through the courts so that they can establish a precedent that allows them to force manufacturer cooperation to unlock any phone.

This is an analysis, not an objective and demonstrable fact.

I could just as well argue that yes, the FBI really does care a lot about this particular iPhone, and that's why the asked-for update is to be keyed to this iPhone and only this iPhone.

At the same time, even assuming that is true, we're talking about the FBI going through a legal process, reviewed by a judge, to get the data off one phone at a time. If that's how it works every time, I don't see a problem; that is how the system is supposed to work. I am kind of baffled as to why we're cheerleading the fact that Apple is refusing to perform what appears to be a perfectly reasonable request that is being made in accordance with the law. If you are operating under the presumption that the government is always a bad-faith actor, then we have much, much bigger problems.

Also, apparently this 'precedent' has already been set; according to a link in the article, Apple had previously offered custom firmware images to law enforcement after a court order that bypassed the lock screen on earlier iPhones.

http://www.cnet.com/news/how-apple-and-google-help-police-by...

venomsnake6• 10 years ago

As long as there is no law that mandates that a phone must be unlockable to be sold in US (which probably FCC has authority to insist for) - if there is technical capability for a device to be unlocked - it is manufacturers' fault and they must comply.

Apple chose themselves to have total control over the device, signing and ecosystem - now it backfires.

the8472• 10 years ago

But physically access a single device in order to make brute-forcing it possible, that seems acceptable to me as that won't affect any other device.

Sure, they can try brute-forceing it, or even break open the chips and try to extract keys with an electron microscope. That's all within their domain. But why should anyone be forced to assist them?

spdustin2• 10 years ago

I don't think the safe analogy holds up, maybe someone can help me understand why it would, given:

A safe is a container filled with physical objects: property. Property is subject to search and seizure with appropriate warrants, levies, writs, orders, wants, etc.

A phone is a container filled with information. The only physical property relevant to evidence consists of the electromagnetic state of the memory on the device. This would be no different from the bioelectric state of the neurons in the human brain, which coincidentally, also is a container filled with information. In both cases, there seems to be easy precedent to state that the information in those containers represents protected information, as it pertains to the possibly incriminating testimony of that information.

A safe can be physically removed and brought to a place where there are more specific tools available to access its physical contents. I stipulate to that.

A phone can also be physically removed and brought to a place where ... What? What tools exist to interrogate the electromagnetic state of the phone that aren't already accessible? Asking Apple to create some software allowing them to unlock and read the information is tantamount to asking a neuroscientist to create software allowing them to unlock and read your mind.

Not trolling, these are my sincere beliefs. Are they wrong?

MatthewWilkes• 10 years ago

Crucially, anyone with sufficient technical skill can open a safe, therefore the manufacturer offering that service isn't a violation of customer rights.

Nobody can bypass the security on an iPhone but Apple, requiring them to do so isn't requiring a company to assist in a search, it's requiring a company to use its unique position as the manufacturer to damage their product.

Natsu• 10 years ago

I really believe that there should be a way for law-enforcement to get access to specific devices in response to a court order as long as the solution doesn't involve weakening the encryption for everybody else.

This requirement is self-contradictory. The device has no way to determine whether the attacker trying to gain access is a good or bad guy, nor can it.

16bytes2• 10 years ago

That would be similar to a court order allowing law enforcement to enter your premises and take out the safe in order to pry it open at some other location where specialised equipment is available.

I would think it's more similar to the following: the government has gone to the safe manufacturer to help it open a safe it has a warrant for, has access to and can move, but can't open.

The government is asking to develop a method to modify the safe so that it can be opened. The safe manufacturer says that it they did so the same method would be able to be used on all of their safes, and thereby make all of their products less secure.

I would imagine that a reasonable safe manufacturer would bring up the same objection.

mikeash2• 10 years ago

The mere fact that the safe manufacturer is able to make such a modification already means the safe is not very secure. The development of the modification is almost incidental at that point.

If the safe manufacturer doesn't want to be put in this position, it should make it so there is no such modification possible. Which as far as I understand it is what Apple did with their safes^H^H^H^H^Hphones starting with the A7 CPU, but this phone is older.

Zigurd2• 10 years ago

there should be a way for law-enforcement to get access to specific devices in response to a court order as long as the solution doesn't involve weakening the encryption for everybody else

Which law enforcement? The FBI? Really? how about the DEA? TSA? How about the federal police in China? Venezuela? Saudi Arabia? Syria?

st3v3r5• 10 years ago

Except that it isn't possible. Once it's done for one device, it can be done for all. If Apple caves in this one time, then there's no reason they shouldn't cave in (or be compelled to cave in) the second time, and the third time, and so on.

exabrial• 10 years ago

We need to create devices that RESIST (warrantless,unconstitutional) mass surveillance and hide all of our data and metadata from everyone. Obama set a terrible precedent by warrantlessly scanning 'metadata' about who we contact. We're innocent by default, period.

I agree with the first post. We need to be creative and find a way to resist government surveillance, and the piece where the engineering seems impossible is allowing an occasional breach of security for extreme circumstances.

What's extreme? Well first, physical possession of the device should be required. Second, it should take resources only a nation-state would be able to afford. Want to decrypt an iPhone? It's going to cost > $5million in processing power. Any criminal would move on.

sandycheeks• 10 years ago

The part that I find most interesting as a former enterprise systems administrator from the 90's is that the employer owns the device but does not have a pass code for it. Is this the normal IT policy for these kinds of devices?

SSLy• 10 years ago

Maybe? I work in 50-100k people software corporation, employer owns the phone and PC i use, but does not know phone pin or LUKS password.

crystalmeph• 10 years ago

It's bad security to tell your manager your passcode/passwords, even for accounts they can get into through admin channels. The risk isn't the manager, the risk is that someone overhears you telling them the password, finds the piece of paper it's written on, etc.

tkinom• 10 years ago

What would happen when other governments, their court, their agencies make similar demand?

The Pandora's box is opened?

zaroth• 10 years ago

Crucially, this is software which doesn't currently exist in the world and which Apple has no intention of voluntarily writing. There is no specific law or regulation (like CALEA) which requires Apple to provide this functionality.

What the FBI is attempting is to use 'All Writs Act' from 1789 which authorizes Federal courts to issue "all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." Are there limits to what a judge can order a person, or a company, to provide?

A warrant describes "the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." I would not expect a judge can draft a warrant for something which doesn't actually exist, and then force someone to create it.

This is not about providing physical access, or about producing documents which are in your possession. This is whether the government can usurp your workforce to make you create something that only you are capable of creating, against your will, not because there's actually a law which says you have to provide that capability, but simply because some investigator has probable cause that given such a tool they could use it to find evidence of a crime!

If 'All Writs' somehow does give the government the ability to enslave software developers to creating this particular backdoor, what is there to legally differentiate this request from, for example, one that would function over WiFi or LTE remotely?

There's been a lot of discussion about the 'secure enclave' and how this particular attack isn't possible on the iPhone 6. I think that's missing the point.... If 'All Writs' can force Apple to open a black-hat lab responsible for developing backdoor firmware for the 5C, then it can do the same for the 6. For example, why not force Apple to provide remote access to a suspect's device over LTE while the device is unlocked / in use? While we're at it, the iPhone has perfectly good cameras and microphones, let's force Apple to provide real-time feeds.

Think about the sheer quantity of networked devices which exist (or will exist) in an average home which could be used in the course of an investigation. If they can force Apple to create a 5C backdoor, I can't see any reason they can't apply the same logic to WiFi cameras, Xbox Kinects, or even your cars OnStar. Heck, even TV remotes come with microphones and bluetooth now... And don't get me started on Amazon Echo!

Fundamentally, the question is can you force a device manufacturer to implement backdoors into their products to be used against their own customers? Notably, service providers have already lost that battle, they are required to architect their systems to be able to spy on their users and provide that data to law enforcement, often through specially design real-time dashboards. At least in that case it is based on duly enacted legislation with that specific intent.

But this is something really quite shocking -- can investigators, simply through obtaining a warrant, force companies to re-design the personal devices that we own and keep with us almost every moment of the day to spy on us? I truly hope not.

tptacek2• 10 years ago

Under extraordinary circumstances, compelled expert witness testimony has lots of precedents, including situations where experts are required to expend resources to develop that testimony.

People on the Internet tend to believe that technology poses confounding problems for the law, but the law has been dealing with technical challenges for centuries. See, for instance, any case involving a complicated medical issue.

mordocai• 10 years ago

I would argue that expending resources is different from creating something entirely new though.

alanwatts• 10 years ago

People on the Internet tend to believe that technology poses confounding problems for the law, but the law has been dealing with technical challenges for centuries.

The problem is different now than it was centuries ago when technology was oil, gas, and steam powered. Now it is electric, meaning information moves at the speed of light all around the world simultaneously.

Such technology is getting better, faster, and cheaper at exponential rates leading to ephemeralization. Meanwhile paper-based political processes have stalled and remain slow as ever.

Say a paper-based political system begins the process of banning a new technology. By the time they finally get around to completing their process, 5 better, faster, and cheaper technologies have already been invented making the old one irrelevant. This is an increasingly important problem to deal with considering the existential nature of paper-based political processes and the rate of technological change.

Paper-based information systems and processes are simply too slow to keep up with the speed of the electric medium. It's like trying to race a lightning bolt.

dsp1234• 10 years ago

Under extraordinary circumstances, compelled expert witness testimony has lots of precedents,

Can you name some of them?

IANAL, but the Federal rules of evidence section 706 explicitly states, "But the court may only appoint someone who consents to act."

legalbeagle4• 10 years ago

Yes, you can compel expert witness testimony, but this is different. Testimony is answering questions. Here, they are seeking to compel engineering/coding work. I've never seen that compelled by a subpoena.

hannibalhorn2• 10 years ago

Forcing Apple to develop said backdoor aside... I have to wonder if it wouldn't be much easier, legally speaking, for the government to force Apple to hand over it's firmware signing keys? Those undoubtedly do already exist.

Once in possession, they'd be free to contract an independent entity to modify the firmware and resign it with Apple's own key. It can't be all that hard to NOP out the code that increments the unlock attempt counter and associated delay mechanisms.

jarin5• 10 years ago

It doesn't quite work that way. The files on the device are ultimately encrypted with a dependency on both the hardware key in the Secure Enclave and the user's passcode. It's impossible to update the firmware without both pieces of information or erasing the device, and on A7 or later processors the unlock attempt delay is a direct result of the method of encryption used and tied to the hardware so it must be performed on the device itself.

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

egyptiankarim• 10 years ago

There's been a lot of discussion about the 'secure enclave' and how this particular attack isn't possible on the iPhone 6. I think that's missing the point.... If 'All Writs' can force Apple to open a black-hat lab responsible for developing backdoor firmware for the 5C, then it can do the same for the 6.

Well stated. That's the crux. The technical difficulty of any given hack is going to vary and is ultimately irrelevant. The idea that the government can commandeer a company's resources towards its ends, especially when those ends compromise the security of a larger community, is a dangerous one.

tedd4u• 10 years ago

Can the All Writs Act not then be used to acquire Apple's private keys? After which law enforcement could create the needed software?

jarin5• 10 years ago

Nope, because everything is ultimately dependent on the hardware key in the Secure Enclave and the user's passcode, neither of which Apple has knowledge of. The FBI would be able to create the OS, but they wouldn't be able to load it on the device without erasing it. It's really a brilliant system.

legalbeagle4• 10 years ago

Compelling production of Apple's private keys would (for better or worse) be a far easier legal question than what this subpoena seeks to compel. Remember the Lavasoft case? The private keys were ordered produced there. The difference here is that what is sought to be compelled here doesn't exist now; it will have to be created through expert engineering and software design work.

jsprogrammer4• 10 years ago

Apple is not being asked to engineer a new backdoor.

It is being asked to help exploit an existing backdoor in a device they produced; a device that was used by a person who slaughtered many people.

headShrinker2• 10 years ago

There is no backdoor

cmurf6• 10 years ago

If you have done nothing wrong, broken no law, can a court order you to write a letter or a book? If not, then on what basis does a court order someone (a company) to write code? This isn't just a matter of removing the anti-bruteforcing code, the FBI has also asked for a way to quickly iterate passwords without using the on-screen keypad. That's creating new functionality, not just removing existing functionality. This seems specious.

This almost certainly ends up at the Supreme Court, but due to the national security implications of the case it's plausible certiorari petition could be made by either Apple or the government. And yet we have a 4-4 court right now.

rayiner2• 10 years ago

I think most technical people, under ordinary circumstances, if asked to make a build of some software with a security feature disabled,[1] would not consider it akin to being asked to create something new akin to writing a letter or a book.

[1] Or really any small tweak. I can remember at least a couple of times being asked to provide someone with a special build of software I worked on that, e.g., logged something it didn't ordinarily log to help debug an issue a customer was having that we couldn't reproduce in-house. Can't say I ever thought of that as creating new software, even if I added some fprintf statements that weren't there before.

ptaipale• 10 years ago

This is whether the government can usurp your workforce to make you create something that only you are capable of creating

In a way, this would resemble war-time confiscation of production capability. You have a car factory, for instance, and the government tells you that from now on, you'll be producing tanks, thank you very much.

I think this was not strictly speaking what happened in the US during Second World War, because companies were willing enough to produce war material for the US government in exchange for considerable sums of money. But for instance, the Skoda factory in Czechoslovakia was just confiscated and directed to making military vehicles.

spdustin2• 10 years ago

I wonder about the relevance of the case styled "United States v. Hubbell" (530 U.S. 27)†

Specifically (emphasis mine):

...the Self-Incrimination Clause ... may be asserted only to resist compelled explicit or implicit disclosures of incriminating information. Historically, the privilege was intended to prevent the use of legal compulsion to extract from the accused a sworn communication of facts which would incriminate him.

-and-

...the act of producing documents in response to a subpoena may have a compelled testimonial aspect. We have held that “the act of production” itself may implicitly communicate “statements of fact.” By “producing documents in compliance with a subpoena, the witness would admit that the papers existed, were in his possession or control, and were authentic.”

-and-

Compelled testimony that communicates information that may “lead to incriminating evidence” is privileged even if the information itself is not inculpatory.

† https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-166.ZO.html

EDIT: Wikipedia summary of the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Hubbell

riskable• 10 years ago

This is all well and good but the 5th amendment doesn't apply to corporations. So United States v. Hubbell is irrelevant.

geographomics• 10 years ago

If Apple can update the firmware of the Secure Enclave, could they not also write one that leaks out all the data contained within it?

Presumably this could then be used for offline attacks against the image dumped from the phone's flash memory.

lowbloodsugar• 10 years ago

One would hope that the Secure Enclave only allows itself to be updated after the PIN has been entered successfully.

Fando• 10 years ago

Obviously government should not be allowed such power. Simply because it cannot be trusted. Everyone knows it will use this backdoor against everyone without limit. And everyone knows the lengths to which the US will go to spy on their people and everyone else. The fact that this request is being made is further evidence of the government's intentional malevolence. This behavior should not come as a surprise anymore. I mean any reasonable person by now knows what to expect from US government.

ericmuyser• 10 years ago

Technically feasible, sure. But with a higher risk of introducing security vulnerabilities than most features.

eridius• 10 years ago

Despite the assertion of this article, it doesn't actually give any evidence to support the claim that Apple is capable of writing this backdoor. The important question is whether it's possible for Apple to update the OS on the phone (or to load a program into memory that runs on the phone) via DFU mode or something similar without triggering a wipe of the phone. And this article doesn't even acknowledge that question, it makes the blind assumption that this is possible. But is it? As far as I know, nobody has ever updated an iPhone over DFU mode without erasing the phone. It's plausible that Apple has the know-how to do that, but it's also plausible that the device firmware may have been written to trigger a wipe the moment any modification is made via DFU mode.

As a side note, the author mentions that Apple has updated the Secure Enclave with increased delays in the past without wiping data, though they state that only Apple knows how it really works. I just want to put forth the theory that maybe the Secure Enclave allows its firmware to be updated if and only if the user's passcode is provided at the time the OS tells the Secure Enclave to prepare for a firmware update. That would be a reasonable way to ensure the Secure Enclave can't be subverted.

growlix• 10 years ago

The security architecture described here seems pretty clever. Is this degree of security unique across mobile devices? If the phone in question was from a different manufacturer or ran a different OS, would the FBI have to ask its creator for help?

pas• 10 years ago

Chrome OS was already doing chain of trust booting when it was first announced/revealed/open-sourced, but with maybe a hardware switch to enable flashing other loaders. (Since then that has been probably removed.)

There are Android full disk encryption schemes, and of course phones with signed bootloaders.

https://nerdland.net/unstumping-the-internet/pattern-unlock-...

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/216560-android-6-0-marshma...

What Apple did that was so valuable is providing a very clear, almost abstract implementation, from scratch, hitting every point along the way (randomized device private keys, read and execute only Secure Enclave, signed loaders, proper AES(-XTS?) full disk encryption, probably also requiring strong a password too, full lock after ~48 hours - sure, it'd be good if this could be customized to something lower).

PascLeRasc• 10 years ago

What I don't understand is why Apple can't just unlock the phone the same way that they would for any typical customer that forgot their passcode. I've never owned an iphone, what is the recovery process like for a typical customer that can't get into their phone?

Apple can comply with the FBI court order

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