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Unfortunately there is a lot Apple can do to help unlock the phone -- Apple can sign a new ROM and not respect the 10-tries-and-zeroize, I believe, even on a 6S
by rdl 11y ago
Unfortunately there is a lot Apple can do to help unlock the phone -- Apple can sign a new ROM and not respect the 10-tries-and-zeroize, I believe, even on a 6S and iOS 9.
There's also some unencrypted content which could be dumped with a signed ROM on a locked/powered off phone, although I believe there are ways to dump this as non-apple. This has evolved over time -- it was much more open pre iOS 8, and I haven't read the entire iOS 9 documentation or tried to verify it for iOS 9 yet.
The rate limit portion is in hardware, but the 10 tries is not. IMO Apple should make an effort to avoid being in a privileged position for deployed phones; it's unavoidable with iCloud for the current architecture, but they could do a lot to avoid the "special rom can dump more" issue. At the very least the 10 tries and dead could be moved into hardware.
- ubernostrum 11y agoI believe the thing here is a chicken-and-egg problem: in order to install whatever security-disabling thing they'd come up with to let the phone be unlocked, first they'd have to manage to unlock the phone.
- mindslight 11y agoI've no idea about the implementation specifics, so I was just assuming the 10 tries are part of the trusted security chip. Obviously if some features are implemented solely with software, then those can be defeated even without an unlocking (since the system is based on a low entropy passcode). Honestly if Apple can indeed break their own security, I would call that fortunate for not advancing the inevitable showdown. Widespread proprietary software puts us in a very poor position for creating precedents, since Apple is eminently controllable by USG.
- awqrre 11y agoplus, Apple more then likely has full access to your device while it's unlocked...