The last thing Israel cares about is privacy .. or trademarks, or copywright, or patent laws.

If you think i'm being harsh google it.

Only the Chinese are worse and mote blatant. The Israelis are very very quiet about it at least.

charges too much for their work and they are accountable to the US Gov.

What they will try is to remove the top of the case of the processor and attach leads to copy the data to a computer. Then once they have the memory, they can keep copying the data back into a blank phone without worrying about the phone wiping the data. Every time the phone wipes the data out the clone, they just copy it back in and continue trying more passwords.

This is highly labor intensive naturally. The FBI wanted a short cut way to do it. Like being able to punch in a secret code known only to the FBI like "1234". One that a hacker or thief would never guess, and be able to steal all the credit card info and bank data. No thief would ever guess "1234" would they?

The FBI was asking for a customized version of iOS that would only run on Farook's phone (by checking the phone's unique ID), which would not delete data if the passcode was incorrectly entered 10 times, so they could find the passcode by "brute force." (They also wanted a way to enter guesses remotely, to speed up the process.) This is completely separate from the "backdoor" issue (and even that is not remotely like what you're suggesting). Apple doesn't want to do it, not because it would open other iPhones to attack (it would not), but because they're afraid they would be inundated with requests to do the same thing for other individual phones (which is probably true). I can see Apple's point on that, but they are being somewhat disingenuous to tie it to the "backdoor" issue, which nobody except the NSA likes.

At least according to an NSA person who was being interviewed a few weeks ago on NPR.

Different agencies can have different things they can do legally, and inside vs. outside the U.S.

... that with all the money we're pouring down the rabbit hole into "security" and "intelligence", they can't crack an IPhone and have to turn to an Israeli firm to do it for them.

WTF??

Apple saw right through them and said hell no!

The FBI and everyone else seems to forget for all their appearance Silicon Valley is filled to the brim with genuine geniuses.
They're ten steps ahead and can see that if they allowed the government to bully them into this that it would be a VERY SHORT step to no privacy at all!

after all private data should only be used for commerce and marketing, NOT for government surveillance!

The goal isn't to crack iPhones (We've been doing that forever).. the goal is to erode personal security and privacy even further.

They could get it but it would take a bunch of top brains working on it for a couple of weeks. They haven't made it because they fear once it's made there's a lot more than one phone to crack, and some for relatively minor offences.

To do what the FBI actually asked for, if it took one fairly junior programmer more than a couple of days, he would not get a very good review. And after that, the same thing could be done for other phones by just changing the unique phone ID that it would run on and rebuilding, which shouldn't take that junior programmer more than an hour to do. The reason the FBI needed Apple to do that is because the phone will not load a new version of iOS unless it's digitally "signed" by Apple's private key. But, yes, the reason Apple doesn't want to do it is because they just don't want to deal with an unending stream of requests. Those who think Apple is just championing privacy here should take note that they frequently turn over data that's been backed up to iCloud whenever they are served a warrant, as they are required by law. At best, Apple can make a "slippery slope" argument about the Farook case, tying it to the rather different "backdoor" issue, and they may have lucked out if the FBI doesn't pursue it; it's not at all clear that they would have won.

I'm not a computer expert, or an expert in lots of other disciplines either. Sooner or later you've got to decide who to trust on matters you don't understand. I've found John Oliver to be quite reliable about a whole range of issues. So I'll stick with what he said thanks.

Yes, most of the reporting about the Farook case has been by reporters who didn't understand the technical issues. I saw that show and was disappointed.

To do what the FBI was asking for, the modified version of iOS would need to check the phone's unique ID against the ID of Farook's phone, and not run if it didn't match. That's perhaps one or two lines of code.

The next thing was to not check for 10 failed passcode attempts, which would require simply removing the code that was counting. (ETA: They also wanted to remove any built-in delays between failed attempts, but that would also be a matter of just deleting some code.)

That would be the minimum requirement -- the FBI could manually find the passcode by "brute force" -- but they also wanted a way to enter guesses remotely through the data port or through bluetooth, to speed up the process. That's the only part that would require any significant amount of work, but nowhere near a team of geniuses working for weeks.

> To do what the FBI was asking for, the modified version of iOS would
> need to check the phone's unique ID against the ID of Farook's phone,
> and not run if it didn't match. That's perhaps one or two lines of code.

And one instruction to change in order to allow it to run on ANY phone.

If you seriously believe that the FBI (or any other alphabet agency) would
maintain individual builds for every single phone that they wish to examine
rather than simply taking that test out, you are incredibly naive.

A more likely answer is that you are fully in favour of such open "spying
on demand" and that - IMO - is far worse than being naive.

If the FBI (or any hackers) had any way to modify iOS and upload it without being signed by Apple's private key, they wouldn't need Apple to do anything.

ETA:

> A more likely answer is that you are fully in favour of such open "spying
on demand" and that - IMO - is far worse than being naive.

Bullshit. We're talking about complying with a warrant in a criminal case, the same as any other warrant, and we're talking about a case where the phone's legal owner (his employer) wants Apple to comply.

it seems that you believe apple is somehow obligated to grant a phone owners request

apple disagrees

But unlike John Oliver you're just some bloke on the internet. So am I, but at least I've acknowledged my source.

... who recently retired after 37 years as a software developer, and who has read technically accurate descriptions of what the FBI was asking for.

But I don't know you from Adam, taking someone's word for something on the internet takes a bit of time.

Can we crack encrypted smartphones?

Should Apple create/provide a backdoor for their encryption?

Should criminals (including terrorists) keep using encryption?

Do I have complete privacy and freedom from government surveillance? Of course you do!!!

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching."

and then couldn't remember the passcode. That person is probably having some very bad days at work.

Someone reset the iCloud account password to get into any data that had been backed up there. Apple had suggested taking the phone around to places Farook had been to see if it would reconnect to a wi-fi network that it had previously used. If so, and IF iCloud backups hadn't been disabled, then the phone would automatically update iCloud and the FBI could get the data there. After the password was changed, that wouldn't work because the phone doesn't know that new password. But since the phone hadn't done any updates for six weeks, backups were probably disabled, anyway.