FBI Opens San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone; U.S. Drops Demand on Apple
Source: The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department filed court papers Monday saying it had cracked the iPhone of a San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist, seeking to drop its legal case to force Apple Inc. to help them unlock it.
The move signals a temporary retreat from a high-stakes fight between Washington and Silicon Valley over privacy and security in the digital age.
The filing short-circuits a pending legal showdown over whether the government can force technology companies to write software to aid in criminal investigations, but it is unlikely to avert the long-term conflict between federal agents and technology executives over how secure electronic communications should be, and what firms should have to do to help the government access their customers’ data.
The decision by federal officials to drop the case comes a week after prosecutors bowed out of a planned courtroom showdown, telling the magistrate judge in the case that they may have found a new way to access the phone without Apple’s help.
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-unlocks-terrorists-iphone-without-apples-help-1459202353
= new reply since forum marked as read
Not to start an Apple vs. Whatever thread or argue with ya.. but iOS and OSX, linux were the "most insecure" last year.
http://thehackernews.com/2015/02/vulnerable-operating-system.html
You can argue the reasoning or the metrics used in order to lay claim to that title, however, there were MORE vulnerabilities in iOS and OSX.
In the IT and hacker community, we know they are just computers in the end. They run CPU instruction sets and have a model of computing that can be traced back to the 60's. Apple didn't "invent" iOS or OSX. They are engineered on top of Unix and modified.
Apple has been operating their OS in obfuscation and obscurity. They keep their secrets and recurring services close to the chest (Which is why they are "limited" in many ways; walled garden, hideous DRM schemes) and they have enjoyed being the obscure OS in terms of market share (Which is good for advertising: "We don't get viruses"
. They hold something like 8-9% of the computer market right now.. which is an all-time high... so the Virus program makers, prior to this, have been solely targeting the other 95-99% of computers as that is where the numbers are. Now that Apple has a considerable market share, malware authors are taking notice.
Guess which computer users DO NOT USE AN ANTIVIRUS because they were sold that idea. Apple users. Guess who knows this? Virus writers.
Just a few days ago:
Mac OS X Zero-Day Exploit Can Bypass Apple's Latest Protection Feature
With the release of OS X El Capitan, Apple introduced a security protection feature to the OS X kernel called System Integrity Protection (SIP). The feature is designed to prevent potentially malicious or bad software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.
The zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2016-1757) is a Non-Memory Corruption bug that allows hackers to execute arbitrary code on any targeted machine, perform remote code execution (RCE) or sandbox escapes, according to the researcher.
The most worrisome part is that the infection is difficult to detect, and even if users ever discover it, it would be impossible for them to remove the infection, since SIP would work against them, preventing users from reaching or altering the malware-laced system file.
Apple has patched the vulnerability, but only in updates for El Capitan 10.11.4, and iOS 9.3 that were released on 21st March.
Other versions do not appear to have a patch update for this specific vulnerability from Apple, meaning they are left vulnerable to this specific zero-day bug.
If you have Android, at least you have the option of "locking down" your device either with the built-in OS tools or 3rd party tools.
ld DU
:Old DU FU smilie:
f
