Correct me if I’m wrong in my thinking, but it seems to me that I have read that Apple iPhones will ‘self destruct’ or wipe it’s memory if the incorrect password is given more than a certain number of times.
Being in electronics, but not familiar with Apple circuitry, it seems to me that if you would take the memory chips off the circuit board or disabled by lifting the power pin, to where they could not be accessed by the phone’s microprocessor and you could use a computer programmed to hack away at the password innumerable times to gain access to the data.Or you installed them into another iPhone that you could access them directly.
If the data is encrypted on the memory chips, then reading them is not a problem, only the encryption method used to ‘unscramble’ them is. If the algorithm used to encrypt the data is known, then it seems that you could unscramble the data with a computer programmed to try every possible iteration of the data until something readable comes up.
This whole mess isn’t really about ‘the data’ on a particular iPhone, but about The Government wanting Apple to provide to them a quick and easy method of decrypting the data on ANY iPhone via some method.
Or am I wrong?.............................
It boils down to it’s all software. Software sends the signals to wipe the system. Replace a few bytes in memory and that won’t happen anymore. It might write ‘Hello Bob’ on the screen instead.
First of all, the algorithm to encrypt them isn't known. Secondly, the key that was used to encrypt them is constructed using the passcode that isn't known, entangled with an unknown Unique ID that isn't known or recorded anywhere, also entangled with a group ID that is known, also entangled with a purely random number that came from a purely entropic input from four sensors (camera, microphone, accelerometer, and one other Apple doesn't list) in the iPhone that were read when the original passcode was input and entangled themselves to provide a truly random number . . . but the last three of those things, the UID, GID, and the random number are stored inside a special area called the Encryption Engine inside the A6 processor which even the data processor of the A6 cannot reach.
The first item, the passcode, has to be input anew each time by the user. . . and another algorithm converts it into a one-way hash that will be compared with a stored one-way hash that is kept with the other items in the Encryption Engine that was generated the first time the passcode was entered. If the two match, the iPhone is unlocked, the encryption algorithm builds the encryption/decryption key by using the passcode, the UID, GID, and random number, and the data can be deciphered.
BUT, it has to have all four of those things, and they are not anywhere on the flash drive . . . and three of them are locked away in the Encryption Engine, completely unreadable by the A6 processor and the fourth can only be input by the user from the touch screen. . . and all of them only manipulable by the Encryption Engine itself inside itself.