Apple engineers may have the last word

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife killed 14 people. He may have friends that plan to kill more.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

That's because John doesn't believe anything that isn't from a conservative propaganda machine.

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Rick

And there may be a terrorist working in your company. I think we should strip search all of them.

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Rick

Right. ...and that requires a digitally signed (i.e. encryption) software load.

Once that software exists, it will *NOT* remain corked. Every LEO on the planet will want it.

...because you don't want to understand.

ALwaysWrong is wrong again. Surprise, surprise.

...and you're wrong, AlwaysWrong.

Idiot.

Hardly.

They don't need "evidence", moron. They need *leads*.

What if the "volunteers" have an ulterior motive? E.g., to "accidentally" corrupt the contents of the phone! Are they then criminally liable (co-conspirators, after-the-fact) for these acts? Does the FBI have to vet each applicant?

The discussions/speculations regarding what lies within the device seem to be incredibly naive. It's not being thought of from the standpoint of a device DELIBERATELY designed to be secure but, rather, as some sort of general purpose computer running a "security program".

What if the device was INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED to make these sorts of changes impractical? Not just by confounding with software but by actually designing failure modes into the HARDWARE? (comparable to a glass relocker in a wall safe!)

E.g., imagine the encryption processor has a "key/passphrase REGISTER" (not some general memory address but a specific REGISTER). The HARDWARE that implements and interfaces to this register:

- inherently requires a long time for the WRITE to update its contents

- "wears out" after some number of write cycles

There's no need for the interface to be FAST -- it takes considerable real time for the user to enter the passphrase. If it takes 100ms to store it in that register, the user will never be the wiser!

There's no need for the register to be *durable* -- how many times is a user likely to enter the CORRECT passphrase (plus some number of typographical errors) in the LIFETIME OF THE PHONE? 20 times per day?

365 days per year? 3-5 years before you EXPECT the user to grow tired of the phone, drop it, lose it, etc.?? What if a nonresettable hardware counter locks out writes when the number of writes exceeds this value? What if the inherent fabrication technology ensures this as a side effect of normal use??

If the key space is sufficiently large wrt to these factors, you could remove any and all "artificial" (software imposed) constraints on the process and still end up with a physically uncrackable device -- it takes too long for an exhaustive search of the keyspace AND the hardware "wears out" before that sort of attack can succeed, independent of time!

[Keep in mind Apple has made deliberate design choices to make these sorts of cracking requests harder with which to comply; why wouldn't they take advantage of their design and market leverage to create a HARDWARE device that imposes such constraints?? Then, throw up their arms when asked to expedite the passphrase write time or alter the maximum number of writes before the device locks? "We'll have to lay out a new *mask* -- which, of course, won't help you with THIS particular phone..."]

y d

ead's odd, the same points get made over & over.

John Larkin is marginally superior to krw in that John believes stuff from several different conservative propaganda machines, while krw knows exactly what is "true" - anything he happens to believe - and can't imagine that w hat he believes isn't both true, and universally known to be true, so that anybody who disagrees with him is liar (and - of course - an idiot).

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

an

in

ave

it.

Better gun control in the US would save a lot more lives than getting excit ed about imaginary terrorists. But the FBI worries about the terrorists it can imagine, rather than the idiots who own guns and go mad from time to ti me - most people who own guns and go mad use the guns to kill themselves, b ut some of them suffer from more florid psychoses and go in for suicide by cop.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

cited about imaginary terrorists."

Yeah like taking them away from the cops until they learn how to shoot. Fuc king 41 rounds for a guy with a knife.

This country was better back when FBI agents were not allowed to carry guns and regular Citizens were. We all had them in the glovebox of our cars. We ll maybe half the people.

Y'know, your crime rate did not drop like a rock when they took away your b est form of personal defense.

Back when half the people had a gun in their glovebox or under the driver's seat, there were no school shootings. There was also a hell of alot less c rime. Know what I think ? I think some of the criminals were afraid of gett ing shot.

Not long ago a CCW holder blew away an ARMED robber at a Waffle House resta urant. The perp's cousin called for better gun control. I agree, because th e other guy got away and was caught later. I he had better gun control he c ould have blown away both the punks.

See, the problem is that most of you all in the UK and their bailiwick have never been severely threatened. With a gun or otherwise. You do not have t he broken social system generating people who will kill you for your shoes. You are civilised.

That is the difference you do not seem to grasp. ut it doesn't matter becau se the supreme court has spoken. In fact I think they just ruled against a law in Soviet Massachusetts against stun guns.

Question, are you allowed to have stun guns down under ? Or is it that they are dead set, like some here, on making sure you are completely dependent upon Big Brother for protection ? (which he cannot provide of course)

More than 30,000 per year at last count, more than auto deaths.

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Rick

Updates: dozens blown up in Brussels, and the feds may have found another way to unlock the phone. With physical access to the flash chip, I can see how there could be ways. I wonder if the code can be patched in-place without some checksum failure or something.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

the feds may have found

Now this is some heavy-duty irony:

A senior Apple executive, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity late Monday, said should the government fail to unlock the phone and continue its fight with the company, Apple would want to know more about the outside party that has claimed it can break into the iPhone, in order to learn what methods could circumvent the

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

This article says some odd things. "Apple has loudly opposed opening the iPhone, citing privacy concerns" which may be true to an extent, but seems to misrepresent the details of the issue. Apple does *not* oppose opening the phone as far as I know. They oppose being forced to turn over a hacked copy of their OS which can be used to open *any* of their related phones.

"The change is a reprieve in the clash that has erupted over how and when the authorities should use the troves of digital data collected and stored by tech companies." This is just completely wrong. Apple has cooperated by sharing the data backed up to the cloud from this phone. The case in question has *nothing* to do with data Apple collected.

I wonder how much of this story is actually right?

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Rick

there are lots of options

maybe the FBI realized they might lose and didn't want to set a precedent maybe NSA already had all the info and decide to give it to them maybe Apple got "an offer they couldn't refuse"

or if the tin foil hat is bit tight: FBI got a tip that if they waited a day the public might be a bit more on their side

-Lasse

Europe is the other side of the planet from here. how could you be more wrong?

you don't say. well you didn't

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  \_(?)_

Loser.

I did. You can't read.