To think if the FBI can hack into iphones they aren't up to par

[holdonfor1moreday]

I assumed my phone would have decent encryption, but if the FBI can hack into them surely anyone with the resources could do?

I don't understand why you are wasting time thinking about this. What is the likelihood of anyone wanting to hack your phone? Just accept that nothing is 100% secure and act accordingly.

I'm not sure that's true Bertie, although I can't view the youtube clip. Anything can be hacked if you know what you are doing.

Well I'm a bit tin foil at times.

Some of the things that were thought to be crazy a decade ago have turned out to be true, thanks to people like Snowdon.

Thanks I'll watch the video.

I thought even WhatsApp was incripted end to end these days?

Surely they can only be hacked if there is a exploit / van utility? If the key is strong enough then would take thousands of years to break at current computer processing power.

No because hackers can create the back doors.

It's about staying one step ahead. People will always find away.

Look at house security. It's update because people find away around it.

Besides which it's not in anyone's interest for the general public to have something un hackable

By anyone I mean companies and governments.

I'm not sure where you are getting your info from op. What kind of exploit? What is van utility? How do you think they will make a key? strong enough to take thousands of years to get past? It all sounds like sci fi to me.

The ones who can hack this tech are as clever as those who create the security in the first place. In fact they are probably the same people.

The big problem the FBI had with the iPhone was that it can be set to wipe all data after a few incorrect password attempts. Without this it's just a brute force problem that can be over come with time, though possibly a lot of time.

But it looks like they're hacking Farook's phone through mirroring, where they basically make thousands of electronic copies of the encrypted phone so they can run a brute force attempt to guess the password.

This was suggested to them weeks ago, so not sure why it's just happening. I would have thought that mirroring would be standard practice for law enforcement at least once simply for evidence integrity reasons. Maybe it's really tricky within iPhone.

Anyway, mirroring thousands of times lets them get around the limited attempts before it's wiped and let's them cut down the amount of time it takes to run a brute force attack because they can do thousands of attempts at once. It just requires an awful lot of computing power.

So if that's the case - I.e. Phones can stand up to most casual decryption attempts but not a concerted, need huge amounts of data processing power attempt, then YABU to think phones aren't up to much. That's a reasonable degree of privacy.

This was suggested to them weeks ago, so not sure why it's just happening. I would have thought that mirroring would be standard practice for law enforcement at least once simply for evidence integrity reasons. Maybe it's really tricky within iPhone.

It's because they wanted to use this situation to force Apple's hand. They haven't succeeded so they have caved in. What a waste of time.

That makes sense BoomBoom.

I read somewhere that the relevant Apple staff were prepared to leave their jobs if they were to be forced to write this unlimited-attempts-at-the-keycode hack.

It was never about just hacking one, individual iPhone - the FBI have always been able to do that as long as they physically had the device - it was about forcing Apple into the position where they had to provide them with software that would allow them to access many devices without necessarily needing to have the physical device and that is what was so concerning. I don't disagree with the FBI accessing this particular phone, but the ability to access whatever they want? No thanks.

Backdoors != decryption. Apple phones are really quite secure by design (pretty important if they want Apple Pay to be adopted). It's precicely because decryption is nigh-on impossible that the FBI want a back door. And they shouldn't get one.

My cousin works for the police - uncovering pictures etc of child abuse. She says the iPhone is the most secure phone there is, and that even if you get into one, you can't uncover deleted data the same way as other phones.

Exactly fireside!

firesidechat I heard that radio article too. I think it's a far more likely scenario than that the FBI can't do it.

The security services should be trying to hack phones? It is there job to spy and decrypt codes.

I don't care if they have the ability to do that. I expect them to have that ability.

The issue is that they should only be using it on a particular target not the public.