Yep agree, there is no way they can hack current gen phones and current OS. Apple has been closing holes left, right and centre for the past couple years. You have to ask why are they not needing court orders for googles' android?...burn
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Hardened Security Features of iPhone 5s Successfully Hacked in LAPD Murder Investigation
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Yep agree, there is no way they can hack current gen phones and current OS. Apple has been closing holes left, right and centre for the past couple years. You have to ask why are they not needing court orders for googles' android?...burn
Well... I assume court orders are still needed. And that's OK.
But... I do wonder why you don't see google and samsung (and other) execs appearing before Congress explaining why they will not create special access software/methods to get into their phones, fighting for their customers' privacy. Actually, I don't wonder why...
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There's something fishy about both the FBI and LAPD media stories. Why would a law enforcement agency brag that they found a way to break into an iPhone, alerting that there is a way to hack in?
Wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep this information secret? To lull people into thinking their phones were secure but in reality not?
Perhaps the real initiative is to alert people/criminals into NOT using iPhones since the phones indeed are not crackable... They just want us to think that they are.
I'm sensing BS. All the way around. A big bunch of lies. We'll never know.
Wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep this information secret? To lull people into thinking their phones were secure but in reality not?
Perhaps the real initiative is to alert people/criminals into NOT using iPhones since the phones indeed are not crackable... They just want us to think that they are.
I'm sensing BS. All the way around. A big bunch of lies. We'll never know.
Hopefully the Apple security folks are working full time to stay ahead of the FBI game! Let's hope the upcoming iPhone 7 has enough encryption to make them work until the iPhone 8 is released! 
So essentially to take advantage of this you absolutely require a phone with force touch?
All iOS devices require pass codes once phone is powered off or battery dies. Don't see how a copy or real fingerprint would help.
I'm not 100% sure of the facts of the case, but is that the husband is saying "no we didn't argue", so if the texts show they did then they know he's lying?What I want to know is what difference it makes whether or not he had a verbal argument or one in text. I could have a knock down drag out verbal argument with my husband in person or in text but it doesn't mean he was the one who killed me if I turned up dead. It could have been the butler in the parlor with the candlestick.
Doesn't law enforcement have more ironclad evidence that this guy killed his wife? If all they have for evidence of motive is a nasty argument in texts on an IPhone, or even a text of apology making the defendent seem nicer, I think either way it's too flimsy for a jury to consider.
Now I could understand the importance of getting to texts saying where a body is buried or a hostage is being kept. But in this particular case I'm not getting why the iPhone is so important. Unless he bludgeoned her to death with it.
More broadly on this subject, I think it is inevitable that with enough time, money and skill any device can be hacked, even if that hack is removing the chips from the phone and dismantling them under an electron scanning microscope. Our safety is in the fact that it take lots of time, money and skill and therefore you need to be someone of considerable importance/significance to warrant that level of investment. There was an article not that long ago about a journalist who asked a couple of different people to hack him and was mortified at what they were able to do in just a couple of weeks, but one of the take aways was that you don't worry about a black-ops assassin coming into your house and killing you in your sleep. You know they exist and that it can happen, but why would anyone expend those resources on you.
Where it gets dangerous, and why we should all be eternally grateful to Apple for resisting, is that the FBI wanted a master key that would mean they could access any phone with very little effort.
Taking the big guy that standard against you and "won" is far more important because it set a precedent...
Exactly - and if someone has physical possession, sufficient resources and desire - all bets are off.
As Chiefsilverback somewhat stated above, nothing is 100% secure, and it's not unreasonable for law enforcement to want to access a suspect's personal device for evidence. Hacks such as this show that they don't need direct backdoor access to a device to get what they need.
This story doesn't reinforce the argument for government mandated access, it weakens it.
Exactly. Even non-digital things can be opened in the right circumstances.
A safe can be opened by a skilled safecracker with a drill and a boroscope. The point is to put more barriers in place to deter entry. A common house thief will avoid a 1000lb safe and instead grab easier items.
But if the safe is in police custody... it's a different story.
Anything can be opened if you put enough time and effort into it... and have physical access.
Won't work if the phone has been locked or off more than 48 hours, right?
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Carlsson, grammar correction (as you asked).
It should be "Her thumb still exists, doesn't it...?" English singular/plural usage:
- She exists.
- They exist.
English is weird sometimes; we j
Can we do without having a report for every iPhone hacking or accessing incident?
Everybody should know by now that it is possible to get in there if necessary, regardless of what Apple (or any manufacturer) says.
As long as you have your phone in your possession all the hype doesn't affect anybody.
Everybody should know by now that it is possible to get in there if necessary, regardless of what Apple (or any manufacturer) says.
As long as you have your phone in your possession all the hype doesn't affect anybody.
Well... Just a couple months ago the New York City District Attorney complained to Congress he had 175 (now more than 200) smartphones made by a single manufacturer, seized as evidence, that he couldn't get into. Guess who manufactured them? Hint: None of them were Android, MS, or RIM.
First of all, excellent point in the quote.
Secondly, I don't really care how secure the phone is as long as something more than plugging a cable into it has to be done to crack it.
Seriously, if someone has to dismantle it and hard solder into certain pins on a certain chip (or something of that nature) to get to it, it's safe enough. It will be remote wiped long before that happens. I just don't want it to be something easily done in 10 minutes by plugging a magic box into it.
Yeah. but now, the trend is rising...making it to the news that "they cracked the code"
More like a couple of certain phones were exploited in certain situations.
People should ask why it has been so easy ALL ALONG to get into Android phones.
Or why executives from google, Samsung, etc were NOT called before Congress to explain why they are resisting pressure from the government to help out with special OS software and techniques to breach their own phones.
Well. I'm sure it might be easy to hack into android...but I never hacked into it before. At same time, iPhone is not unbreakable. ...at least that's what i think.
48 hours after last unlock, OR if it was restarted, OR if fingerprint attempt fails 5 times in a row.
so, having someone's fingerprint is only useful within 2 days if the phone hasn't been turned-off.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204587
It's going to be the most practical and repeatable deal. They get the phone image, they emulate it, and they run it 9 times sequentially on every numeric password PIN combo until it falls.
No, the phone had been turned off.
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48 hours after the last time the password was used to unlock the phone (due to restart or 48-hour elapsed time requiring it, or voluntary use of the passcode instead of touchid).
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Bingo.
And we should also note that unless she had the wipe-on-ten-tries feature enabled (which very few people actually do), the NAND-replacement trick is also completely unnecessary. I mean, you would want to do it just in case, but the only thing stopping you from trying all 10,000 4-digit combos is time.
That said, I suspect the hacker here used exactly that NAND reseating technique, but used a more sophisticated "chip" than just NAND memory. I suspect that they connected not a simple NAND memory chip but one which could be easily reset on demand; when the iPhone started requiring more than a second between tries, restart the phone and reset the NAND memory to its original state. With a 30-second restart (I think it is much shorter than that in reality) after six attempts, the general throughput would be about six combinations per 35 seconds. This would take about 14 hours to get through all 10,000 4-digit combinations. Or, you would use a most-common-first approach to trying passcodes and have a significantly higher likelihood of finding the right one within an hour.
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Identity theft is a massive industry. I am sorry, but the identity information on your phone is much much more valuable than the $200 it will get on the black market, especially with the inability to wipe it clean without an icloud password.