FBI breaks Apple code.

[kiddchaos]

Zero day.

 

[poptab]

Zero day exploits are worth a lot of money

 

[churchmouse]

Apple can't just "give up the codes." They built the device without a backdoor. That's the issue. They specifically designed the phone software to be difficult to break into. Read about their group of core engineers and why they did what they did. The FBI either found an exploit in the software or found a way to brute force their way in (read: supercomputer).

Or bribed/blackmailed one or more of the core engineers....

 

[Cldedhnds]

After the disclosure of massive phone records being intercepted and compiled what makes you think this wasn't just for show? They likely were in already but had to make the PR spin of being unable to get on. No way they would just say yeah we can get into this and create more big brother scandal.

 

[Kutnupe14]

There was something that just sit right with me about this, and after thinking it over, I figured out what bothered me.
From the article:

The U.S. Justice Department announced Monday it has successfully accessed data stored on the iPhone that belonged to the San Bernardino gunman without Apple's help, ending the court case against the tech company.

Why the HELL would the FBI make this known? You've got a "1-up" on the bad guys. They think you can't crack Apple's program, and Apple isn't willing to play ball. Seems like, if you're a bad guy, you'd be more likely to use the phone then right? But by the FBI announcing they've hacked the phone, theyre essentially ensuring that bad guys will no longer use that particular brand. Why not keep you big FBI mouth shut, continue with the lawsuit, deep six your chances so you lose, and keep Apple and the rest of the bad guys none the wiser? Has nobody at Quantico read Sun Tzu?

Kut (once again, thinks our intelligence services aren't showing intelligence)

 

[dirtybird]

I actually agree with kut!!! It's gonna be a good day!

 

[cobber]

There was something that just sit right with me about this, and after thinking it over, I figured out what bothered me.
From the article:



Why the HELL would the FBI make this known? You've got a "1-up" on the bad guys. They think you can't crack Apple's program, and Apple isn't willing to play ball. Seems like, if you're a bad guy, you'd be more likely to use the phone then right? But by the FBI announcing they've hacked the phone, theyre essentially ensuring that bad guys will no longer use that particular brand. Why not keep you big FBI mouth shut, continue with the lawsuit, deep six your chances so you lose, and keep Apple and the rest of the bad guys none the wiser? Has nobody at Quantico read Sun Tzu?

Kut (once again, thinks our intelligence services aren't showing intelligence)

Trying to make the Dem administration look good (competent), heading into the 2016 election?

 

[jamil]

There was something that just sit right with me about this, and after thinking it over, I figured out what bothered me.
From the article:



Why the HELL would the FBI make this known? You've got a "1-up" on the bad guys. They think you can't crack Apple's program, and Apple isn't willing to play ball. Seems like, if you're a bad guy, you'd be more likely to use the phone then right? But by the FBI announcing they've hacked the phone, theyre essentially ensuring that bad guys will no longer use that particular brand. Why not keep you big FBI mouth shut, continue with the lawsuit, deep six your chances so you lose, and keep Apple and the rest of the bad guys none the wiser? Has nobody at Quantico read Sun Tzu?

Kut (once again, thinks our intelligence services aren't showing intelligence)

So if they stay pat, their case with Apple is still ongoing. Do they just tell the judge never mind because reasons?

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

There was something that just sit right with me about this, and after thinking it over, I figured out what bothered me.
From the article:



Why the HELL would the FBI make this known? You've got a "1-up" on the bad guys. They think you can't crack Apple's program, and Apple isn't willing to play ball. Seems like, if you're a bad guy, you'd be more likely to use the phone then right? But by the FBI announcing they've hacked the phone, theyre essentially ensuring that bad guys will no longer use that particular brand. Why not keep you big FBI mouth shut, continue with the lawsuit, deep six your chances so you lose, and keep Apple and the rest of the bad guys none the wiser? Has nobody at Quantico read Sun Tzu?

Kut (once again, thinks our intelligence services aren't showing intelligence)

Trying to make the Dem administration look good (competent), heading into the 2016 election?

Maybe they had to race Obama to the cameras before he took credit for it?

So if they stay pat, their case with Apple is still ongoing. Do they just tell the judge never mind because reasons?

Do you have to give a reason? Did they even have to drop the case? Could they just let it lay out there until the judge just dismissed it without prejudice (or something like that)? Perhaps Apple was pressing them to drop it and so they did, but in a fashion that would embarrass Apple and damage their products among some---and they may not have really hacked the data and are just saying that to further make Apple look bad.

 

[bigus_D]

Nothing indicates the code was hacked. This was almost certainly a hardware hack. i.e. The memory was physically removed and then duplicated. Brute force then applied against the passcode lock. With many duplicates in hand, there is no need to worry about the auto-erase feature.

Symantics? Maybe. But not in my opinion.

 

[cobber]

Maybe they had to race Obama to the cameras before he took credit for it?

Now his line will have to be 'I just saw it on the news.'

 

[T.Lex]

So if they stay pat, their case with Apple is still ongoing. Do they just tell the judge never mind because reasons?

Actually, that would be possible. They could move to dismiss without any explanation at all. Have a PR person say that the sanctity of the 1A/4A/14A/99A is a higher priority. Say they will wait for decryption technology to catch up. Say that other intel has rendered the iPhone data redundant. Say they don't want to risk bad precedent by a bad decision. Lots of options, on a spectrum of truthiness.

 

[Twangbanger]

There was something that just sit right with me about this, and after thinking it over, I figured out what bothered me.
From the article:



Why the HELL would the FBI make this known? You've got a "1-up" on the bad guys. They think you can't crack Apple's program, and Apple isn't willing to play ball. Seems like, if you're a bad guy, you'd be more likely to use the phone then right? But by the FBI announcing they've hacked the phone, theyre essentially ensuring that bad guys will no longer use that particular brand. Why not keep you big FBI mouth shut, continue with the lawsuit, deep six your chances so you lose, and keep Apple and the rest of the bad guys none the wiser? Has nobody at Quantico read Sun Tzu?

Kut (once again, thinks our intelligence services aren't showing intelligence)

You seem to be of the opinion that what the .Gov really cared about was the ability to read the contents of physical phones. A belief which would certainly be logical and understandable, from the viewpoint of someone in Law Enforcement whose primary concern is solving crimes. I considered the San Bern crime to be essentially "solved" soon after it happened. But all the government really appears to have here, is the ability to sledgehammer a phone they have physical possession of. Unless I'm misunderstanding this, which is certainly possible, the real problem here is what about the millions of phones out there they don't have physical possession of?

I guess I will have to surrender my tinfoil card, because I really don't find this story difficult to take at plain, old, simple face value. Knowledgeable people always believed the FBI, buttressed by Gubmint resources, had the ability to sledgehammer that physical phone. The real prize was _always_ going to be the court ruling which mandated the company had to compromise their technology and create a doggy door, so the coons could get in and eat the cat food. The Government obviously does not want its citizens having a mass-produced, encrypted "private channel" which can be purchased by anyone with less than a week's paycheck. And such a ruling would have effectively ended that.

The problem is that the PR war wasn't going well for the Gubmint. Apple was supposed to cave to the Obama Administration (just like everyone else in his political career had done - except the NRA). Instead, they took their case to The People. This was going to play out ugly. My guess is, the Historic First Black President didn't want the negative authoritarian fallout of this blemishing his Historic First Trip to Cuba, especially among the Kool Kid voters who are dreaming of drinking Mojitos on the beach, and within whose minds his Historic Presidential Legacy will live.

So the Government, who have most certainly read Sun Tzu, simply got up from the table with what they already had, anyway, and left the real battle to be fought another day. With San Bern and the first successful high-profile act of domestic terrorism since 9-11, they thought they had favorable timing and could attack from a position of fullness. It just turned out that Apple's fullness was "fuller" than theirs, this time. This isn't over. The Government are simply withdrawing from what turned out to be unfavorable ground, and preserving what they have to fight another day, under another General.

And Thunder Thighs and her Law Degree are more than capable of carrying that battle forward. Obama was simply not going to have the loss of the People's Secret Channel going down on his watch. "I got cigars to smoke - end this Now."

(...and exactly what super, highly-valuable information did they get from this phone, anyway, from that 15 minutes during the shooting? I bet it's really riveting. "Shoot the guy in the stairway, honey!" "Ok, got him...love you Sugarbuns...and Praise Allah, Mwah!" "Good Job, Honey...").

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Anybody got experience/knowledge of this sort of thing?

Can We Really Trust The FBI After THIS Amazing Revelation? | The Federalist Papers

 

[printcraft]

Trying to make the Dem administration look good (competent), heading into the 2016 election?

[video=youtube;GQjztrnJzCM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQjztrnJzCM[/video]

 

[jamil]

Anybody got experience/knowledge of this sort of thing?

Can We Really Trust The FBI After THIS Amazing Revelation? | The Federalist Papers

I wouldn't doubt that the FBI already had this kind of device. The problem they faced is that users can set security on their phones so that after 10 incorrect password attempts the the data on the phone is erased. Also with later versions of ios users can set longer complex pass codes consisting of numbers and characters. That's not as easy to crack as a 4 digit number. Even if you don't set the phone to erase itself, as you enter too many incorrect pass codes the phone locks for increasingly longer periods. So it's gonna take much longer than a few seconds per attempt. I can see that gismo working on older phones, but not on newer phones with complex pass codes.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

After the disclosure of massive phone records being intercepted and compiled what makes you think this wasn't just for show? They likely were in already but had to make the PR spin of being unable to get on. No way they would just say yeah we can get into this and create more big brother scandal.

If the FBI (or NSA) had been able to "get in," why would they have advertised it? That's as stupid as the Pres announcing UBL had been taken down and "valuable intel" had been gathered. All they had to do was keep their mouths shut and let everyone else wonder what had happened. . . .

 

[Jludo]

If the FBI (or NSA) had been able to "get in," why would they have advertised it? That's as stupid as the Pres announcing UBL had been taken down and "valuable intel" had been gathered. All they had to do was keep their mouths shut and let everyone else wonder what had happened. . . .

That wouldn't have embarrassed Apple for not complying though. They've already established this wasn't about one particular phone. This terrorist attack was just their best shot to get the skeleton key.

 

[jamil]

That wouldn't have embarrassed Apple for not complying though. They've already established this wasn't about one particular phone. This terrorist attack was just their best shot to get the skeleton key.

Yep.