U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone

NYT ^ | 3-21-16 | Katie Benner

[afraidfortherepublic]

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The Justice Department moved to cancel a Tuesday hearing over whether Apple should be forced to help investigators break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, saying it might no longer need Apple’s assistance to extract data from the device.

In a new court filing on Monday, Justice Department lawyers wrote that as of Sunday, an outside party had demonstrated a way for the F.B.I. to possibly unlock the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino gunmen.

“Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing. “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple.”

The Justice Department requested that the court cancel Tuesday’s hearing and said it would file a status report by April 5 on its progress on unlocking the iPhone.

The Justice Department’s move may help sidestep a clash that has erupted between the United States government and Apple over the iPhone and how and when authorities should use the troves of digital data collected and stored by tech companies. The two sides have traded barbs over the issue for weeks, ever since Apple received a court order last month requesting that the company comply with an order to weaken the security of the iPhone so law enforcement could gain access to the data in it.

[Hugin]

What they have been asked to do appears pretty easy from a software point of view.

No it's not. Putting a backdoor in new software would be. But that's not what the government is asking for here. Apple built software encryption that was to the best of their ability uncrackable. It destroys the data after too many unsuccessful attempts. The government now want's them to create software that will crack software that they designed not to be crackable. That's a whole other ballgame. If it can be done, then Apple didn't do it right in the first place. If it was easy the government wouldn't need Apple's help.

[Lurker]

“Not difficult software modifications at all.”

Then you do it.

L

[etcb]

From a national security standpoint, what would be most beneficial, getting information from this one phone or creating the idea phone encryption was not secure.

[csivils]

Do you have zero experience with software development?

Can you force them to design it, test it, pay for the development of it? And even if they did, do you really think it would work for every version of IOS?

I don’t believe it can be a valid court order any more than you could get one to write a novel or compose a song.

[Bshaw]

It causes issues with admissibility in trials to not be given consent or access to the data.... That pesky-ass probable cause.

For the lesser crimes that they want to prosecute anyway.

[vette6387]

“Not when you have a search warrant it isn’t. Refusing to do so when a search warrant is issued is “against the law and the Constitution!”

The rule of law requires search warrants (or writs) to be obeyed. Nobody is above the law. Not even Apple.”

That is absolutelhy untrue in this case. If the relevant software existed at Apple, then maybe, but the government can’t force Apple to invent something. It’s called involuntary servitude and it’s outlawed by both law and the Constitution.

[CutePuppy]

Apple built software encryption that was to the best of their ability uncrackable.

The government now want's them to create software that will crack software that they designed not to be crackable.

Not even close, but that's what Apple's hysterical propaganda claims want you to think...

1. Apple didn't "build" software encryption — they are using standard military-grade AES-256 encryption engine, like most everyone else.

2. Government / FBI has not asked Apple to crack the software or decrypt the phone.

3. Apple is deliberately defying a court order having to do with national security, to appear to care about their users' "privacy."

Here's what they are actually asked to do — it has nothing to do with encryption / decryption or wide-ranging "backdoors" or some such nonsense and it should not take more than 10 minutes for any software engineer at Apple who has the firmware's source code to create it — in fact, they woud not be able to test their phones' firmware without this "pseudo-hack":

[ClownSandwiches]

He’s an imbecile and doesn’t understand RSA encryption.. Frankly

[ClownSandwiches]

scopolamine would be much more effective

[ClownSandwiches]

Not only that, the point of this whole debacle is that Apple’s encryption is one way only. Thus there can be no back door - and that is the whole point of encryption. The FBI and other alphabet angencies can cry all they want but it won’t help them. They need to listen to their top coders and realise there’s no way of breaking through private one way encryption without the help of “GOD” or divine intervention. Apple for whatever you may think of their thing is a shining light here we all should respect and stand beside so our freedoms are kept intact,

[DiogenesLamp]

If the relevant software existed at Apple, then maybe, but the government can’t force Apple to invent something.

Stop. Just Stop it. I don't need to hear such drivel this early in the morning.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not even close, but that's what Apple's hysterical propaganda claims want you to think...

1. Apple didn't "build" software encryption — they are using standard military-grade AES-256 encryption engine, like most everyone else.

2. Government / FBI has not asked Apple to crack the software or decrypt the phone.

3. Apple is deliberately defying a court order having to do with national security, to appear to care about their users' "privacy."

Exactly right. Apple has been successful at spreading a lot of false propaganda, and the "guppies" have bought it.

[Ghost of SVR4]

He also came back and said he could not do it and was just seeking headlines; again.

[csivils]

The way to defeat the encryption would be at the hardware level. Make a copy of the contents on the physical disk, then clone it and have thousands or millions of virtual iPhones crack it. Problem is that is a solution that requires the physical phone rather than a broad net monitoring of everyone, so they don’t want it.

[William Tell]

DiogenesLamp said: "What they have been asked to do appears pretty easy from a software point of view. All they have to do is disable a counter to ten, and remove delays."

If one combines the memory access function, the password entry function, and the mechanism which counts password attempts and generates delays in a single chip, along with the routines needed to erase the mass storage device, then it could be made virtually impossible to change the operating system in a way which would defeat the chip.

I know that many of Apple's security features are built into the chips. Some day it will certainly be the case that you can't update the operating system at all and that Apple will have no ability whatever to overcome the encryption features of its products.

The question that will remain is whether the government will dictate that no such hardware will be permitted. Such banning, of course, will not diminish any government's ability to protect its own secrets, whether that government is the U.S., Russia, or China. Nor will it stop larger criminal or international enterprises from implementing unbreakable encryption. Only the law-abiding will be affected by such a ban.