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Terrorist’s Apple ID Password Changed In Government Custody, Blocking Access
- abc_lisper 11y agoMind blown, if this is true!
- castratikron 11y agoYes, I'd like to see a more conservative source to confirm this fact.
- newman314 11y agoIt's on TechCrunch too
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- slouch 11y agoI can't find it.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agohttp://techcrunch.com/2016/02/19/apple-executives-say-new-iphones-also-vulnerable-to-back-door-requested-by-fbi/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/19/apple-executives-say-new-ip... 7th paragraph or search the text for "One such method."
- lvs 11y agoYou consider that to be a serious news source? Come on.
- danso 11y agoBuzzfeed's news reporters are as good as any among the top organizations, including in tech. Recently their work made the top of HN, as their reporting led to the major shakeup at Zenefits http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-high-flying-zenefits-fell-to-earth http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/how-high-flying-zenefit...
- mattnewton 11y agoFootnote 7, Page 18 of the governments brief to the court http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000152-fae6-d7cd-af53-fafe53bb0002 http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000152-fae6-d7cd-af53-fafe53...
- danieltillett 11y agoWow so the government broke the autobackup approach by reseting the password afterwards. That was clever!
- Steko 11y agoNot by the police but by the county which as the shooter's employer, was the owner of the phone.
- jessaustin 11y agoMore confirmation, as if anyone needed it, that this case is not about the months-old data on one particular phone, but rather about breaking the security of all phones.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jfoster 11y agoSorry, but how does this confirm that? It sounds to me as though someone screwed up by changing the password rather than it being intentionally changed so they could request that Apple build an iOS with a backdoor.
- jessaustin 11y agoHanlon's Razor, eh? Very rational. Would you be interested in purchasing shares in the Golden Gate Bridge?
- FireBeyond 11y agoHow does one change the password they supposedly do not know and need Apple's assistance to retrieve?
- interpol_p 11y agoThey probably did a reset, and since the phone was owned by the employer, they probably had access to the email and user details required to initiate an iCloud password reset. Unfortunately resetting the iCloud password disabled automatic iCloud backups when the phone was on a known wifi network.
- imron 11y agoMaybe the FBI should concentrate their efforts on finding that someone and asking them what the password is.
- 11y ago
- ctdonath 11y agoSo who changed the password? And why hasn't the FBI asked for the new password?
- deathanatos 11y agoThe employer[1]: > The FBI obtained a warrant to search the iPhone, and the owner of the iPhone, Farook's employer > the owner, in the hours after the attack, was able to reset the password remotely, but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup (the first quote is on page 1 of [1]; the second quote is footnote 7 on page 18 of [1] as pointed out by another commenter[2].) I think — and frankly, the document isn't too clear on it; it'd be great if an iPhone owner could clarify — is that this is the Apple App Store account password, and the phone has a separate and different passcode. The FBI knows the password, and can access the account, but not the phone; the phone I'm guessing won't back up until the passcode is given to it. Supposedly the previous backup on the account is allegedly too old: "nearly one-and-a-half months prior to the IRC shooting incident", and even weirder, "back-ups do not appear to have the same amount of information as is on the phone itself" How can the FBI know this if they can't access the information on the phone? The FBI's point is that this is a one-time use of the software Apple would write, and Apple would maintain possession of the software throughout using it: > Indeed, it is less so because the software requested would not reside permanently on the SUBJECT DEVICE, and Apple can retain control over it entirely. > Moreover, to the extent that Apple has concerns about turning over software to the government so that the government can run the passcode check program, the Order permits Apple to take possession of the SUBJECT DEVICE to load the programs in its own secure location, similar to what Apple has done for years for earlier operating systems, and permit the government to make its passcode attempts via remote access. […] no one outside Apple would have access to the software required by the Order unless Apple itself chose to share it. This eliminates any danger that the software required by the Order would go into the "wrong hands" and lead to criminals' and bad actors' "potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession." (from page 20 of [1]) Frankly, that sounds rather convincing against the section of Apple's "A Message to Our Customers" headed "The Threat to Data Security" (but I'd love to be proved wrong! why is this a threat to data security given the above?). That said, I'm unsure about the section headed "A Dangerous Precedent" — this does seem like a bad precedent. Are we to now assume that our manufacturer should be included in our threat models for whether our device is secure? Also, has Apple submitted anything to the court detailing their argument as to why they should not be forced to follow the Order? [1]: http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000152-fae6-d7cd-af53-fafe53bb0002 http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000152-fae6-d7cd-af53-fafe53... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137995
- pj_mukh 11y agoIs there a reason Apple can't take apart the phone and access the hard drive directly? Maybe put the hard drive on a dev board of sorts. AFAIK, most cell-phones have dev board versions that the mfg's engineers use to test various component hardware revisions no?. There they can access it through root? I might be missing something here. It would be hilarious if after all this, they find nothing on the phone. GENIUS!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nnx 11y agoUser data stored on an iPhone is encrypted using a key derived from the passcode, so somehow taking apart the NAND chips would not help a bit.
- kozukumi 11y agoThe same reason they can't take the SSD out of my computer and put it in a dock to get at the data. The drive is encrypted with a key they don't know.
- pj_mukh 11y agoRight! Hard drive encryption. Of course.
- zaroth 11y agoiCloud backups are not protected by your iCloud password. I know this because I've personally reset my password and then successfully recovered an iCloud backup to a new phone with the new password. However, the auto-backup feature, which would have pushed the most recent data from the phone onto iCloud just by leaving the phone powered on... apparently that is disabled when the iCloud password is reset. Which makes sense if you think about it, the phone still has the old iCloud password, and it would need the new password in order to authenticate to iCloud. So they inadvertently disabled the backup feature by locking the phone out of iCloud! The first question this raises is can the auto-backup be made to start working again by Apple changing their backend iCloud authentication code to specifically allow this device to login to iCloud with the "wrong" (old) passsword? That would not involve touching the phone and seems like a much cleaner solution. Unless there is code on the phone which disables or destroys the iCloud authentication token / stored password after encountering a login error, which really would surprise me, because API errors could be spurious, but I guess it's possible if they are looking specifically for an "invalid login" return code and then dumping the old token in order to trigger a UI prompt to enter a new password. The second question is why are the existing backups a month and a half old? Doesn't this imply the device was not even turned on or connected to the network for that last month and a half? The other interesting tidbit in the article is the statement the FBI was able to verify that the phone was never paired with any devices to obtain data. How in the world could they know that? (Cross-posting this comment from another article, because it's more relevant here)
- circuiter 11y agoWhat's strange is that they're investigating two international terrorists who committed mass murder and all they're talking about is their fucking iPhone? What if after all this drama and forcing everyone to install backdoors and disable encryption they find out that they used it only to play Clash of Clans and take pictures of food?
- SturgeonsLaw 11y agoThen it's mission accomplished, because the door's been wedged open.
- junto 11y agoYou could write a good film script here; how some secret 3 letter agency has gone rogue and has a long and complex plan to incite a couple of people to terrorism, making sure they conveniently die, leaving no witnessed. This shadow group then invoke the hearts and minds of the people, through the fear of a series of terror acts to relinquish their privacy rights, happily accepting a legal precedent to remove encryption from the masses. Their end goal being total population control and surveillance on order to control the masses on behalf of a secret and powerful governing elite. A bunch of FBI agents suspect this secret group have programmed these people to commit these terror acts, and since they are now dead they need to recover the data from the phone to prove this dastardly conspiracy. Starring Matt Damon as the one rogue ex-agent who brings the whole almost perfect plan crashing down, and Liam Neeson as the FBI agent who is determined to bring this shadowy elite to justice.
- allending 11y agoWhat's preventing Apple from reverting things on the backend to 'undo' the password change and allow the next authentication and backup attempt by the phone to work? Apart from unless the phone has been restarted in which case the FS is still encrypted so the backup wouldn't yet be possible until at least after the first unlock.
- themartorana 11y agoMaybe they don't store previous passwords? Edit: or are you suggesting iCloud be programmed to accept any password for this account?
- themartorana 11y agoMost important point in the article (to me, anyway): "The government says the access being sought could only be used on this one phone, but Apple's executives noted that there is widespread interest in an iPhone backdoor, noting that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Thursday that his office has 175 Apple devices he'd like cracked."
- yardie 11y agoWhy not "enhance interrogate" the shit out of the criminal until he willingly gives up the password? It works in TV, cinema, and, according to Cheney, in real life. Amirite? /s
- Vivtek 11y agoThis is of course a difficult procedure to apply post-mortem.
- DonHopkins 11y agoBringing dead people back to life works on TV, cinema, and, according to Cheney, in real life (at least at Easter).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sschueller 11y agoIf it were an iPhone 6, how long does a finger print last on a corps? In future crimes is the FBI going to cut fingers off corpses and store them for later use?
- bcook 11y agoCut off fingers? How about simply photographing the fingers, or, at worst, just fingerprint the dead without removing the digits (which I assume is SOP)?
- illumin8 11y agoTouch ID requires your passcode after 48 hours. So, only if the phone had been previously unlocked with a passcode, kept powered on and charged, and 48 hours had not elapsed, could the government use a corpse fingerprint to unlock. The device in question is an iPhone 5 and doesn't have a Touch ID sensor, so the question is moot anyway.