Mike Wuerthele
FBI officials continue their attack on Apple's iPhone encryption, with the latest remarks against the company's moves coming from a senior forensics examiner — and only one day after similar remarks were made by the FBI director.
At the International Conference on Cyber Security, the FBI's Stephen Flatley called Apple "jerks" and akin to an "evil genius" with moves that the company has made to secure iPhones for users. In the same interview, Flatley lauded penetration company Cellebrite — known for selling iPhone intrusion tools to law enforcement.
Flatley cited Apple's dramatic increase to hash changes from 10,000 to 10,000,000 which meant that the FBI's password attempt timetable went from 45 tries every second to one every 18 seconds with a brute force attack. Flatley said that crack time "went from two days to two months" as a result of Apple's changes.
Flatley is the New York FBI office's senior forensic examiner. Ostensibly, his talk about about the challenges of proper execution and management of one of the largest forensic labs in the world, and not specifically about Apple's iPhone encryption.
The timing of the remarks collected by Motherboard on Wednesday may not be coincidental. They were made the day after FBI Director Christopher Wray amped up law enforcement's diatribe against smart phone encryption, saying that he believed that secure encryption could still have a back door for law enforcement.
Wray said at the same event that in fiscal year 2017, the FBI was unabel to access the data on 7,775 devices using available tools, like the ones from Cellebrite.
"For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers' personal data because we believe it's the only way to keep their information safe," Apple has said for almost two years, in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting investigation. "We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business."
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77 Comments
Yup, nothing to see or dangerous in this continuing narrative, nope...
considering even the god damn nsa can’t keep secrets, i’m Glad no one in government has the safe (sic) keys to my house.
Not that i’d Feel good if they could secure it and spy at will on me; it just makes arguments railing against encryption so very weak.
Citizen's rights be damned. We only want to snoop into your private life whenever we see fit.
Yep! Good for Apple for standing up to this BS.
The way this news is reported by some media totally avoid the elephant in the room.
How Apple could find a way to protect their users datas that can be circumvent only by US Government agencies and no other government or private organization?
Not being a US citizen, I found this admission from the FBI very reassuring for every iOS consumers.
We need to be aware of the revived attack against encryption. As is appropriate, remind people we know the reality, that backdoors will not just be limited to government access.
As is obvious, Stephen Flatley surely knows that creating intentionally breakable devices compromises their security altogether. And since he believes secure encryption shouldn’t be on iPhones then he’s also saying that he doesn’t believe we need secure encryption. He’s saying the government is entitled to create an environment for us where it is impossible for us as citizens to even pursue total privacy.
Smoke and mirrors.
The FBI may not have keys - but the NSA has a back door to not only snoop but turn your mic and camera on at any time without you knowing.
The same backdoor Apple uses to sell your info to advertisers.
Don't believe me? try it yourself: Without having any phone or iPad on - start talking about a product: "honey, do we have any Tylenol?" "I think we are out of Tylenol", "Who in town sells Tylenol"... then watch as mysteriously your Facebook ads and cookies throw Tylenol ads at you.
The reason battery life is worse in iOS 11 is because our devices are always listening.
Try it yourself. We've seen it with 4 random products now - too much to be a coincidence.
Also, everything and anything you text to someone is read and sold to advertisers. Text someone you are thinking of taking a vacation to Hawaii and watch as your ads start sending you Airbnb for Hawaii.
The crazy thing is, we are furthest thing from conspiracy theorists - and we set out to prove this wrong... yet the results done lie.