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My Take on FBI's “Alternative” Method

149 points by aorth 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago
The speculation that, on Sunday night, some security researcher was able to convince the FBI they had a good shot at cracking the phone defies belief. A simpler and more likely explanation is that the FBIs lawyers, having overreached, have gone back on an earlier lie and concocted a new lie: Oh yeah, we need just a couple weeks to try this out. (And for the furore to die down.) Don't let these little John Yoos off the hook. They are over-aggressive, unethical, and unprofessional.
- hockeybias 11y ago
  'overly aggressive'.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I think it's more likely to be a mix. The FBI knew for a while, if not from the beginning, that getting into the phone without Apple's help was feasible. The NAND mirroring technique described here has been floating around for a while. But the FBI didn't want to, either because they have ulterior motives in forcing Apple's cooperation or because they just didn't want to take the risk of breaking anything. Now that they're having so much trouble securing Apple's cooperation, they either think the alternative is worth trying, or at least find it to be a good excuse for stopping.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    What you say is plausible. Can it be shown by outside parties what FBI knew and when? If so, it seems a fair bet that several agents and lawyers perjured themselves/suborned perjury in their zeal to "win" at all costs.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      We know they were aware of the attack no later than three weeks ago, when Congressman Issa brought it up during the FBI's congressional hearing on the matter. Of course, that doesn't mean they took it seriously, but I'd say they should have, given that Issa described it in great detail. In fact the FBI director said they'd check into it. Of course, that could just be meaningless pleasantries meant to placate someone in power. The timing certainly is suggestive, though.
snassar 11y ago
Of potential interest: "Can This Israeli Company Hack the San Bernardino iPhone Without Apple’s Help?" by Ariel David Mar 21, 2016 7:58 PM in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.710066 http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.71006... Or: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zcNErpmZ7sJ:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.710066&num=1&hl=en&gl=de&strip=0&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zcNEr...
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >Aside from a robust research department, Ben-Peretz attributes the company’s success to its original business in the mobile services sector, which gives Cellebrite good contacts with mobile phone operators and vendors and ensures it gets early access to new phone models and operating systems, allowing it to release updates for its software often months ahead of the competition. So manufacturers are helping them break in earlier by providing early access? Why would they do that?
  - paulmd 11y ago
    I think they mean "mobile carriers and retailers" there. I.e. they're getting it from AT&T, or a Sprint Store (or the appropriate Israeli equivalents), not from Apple. I would speculate that the relationship is either commercial in nature, or that it also serves as a pentest to prevent things like unlocking/jailbreaking contract phones.
- snassar 11y ago
  Non-paywall second report that Cellebrite might be the company providing the iPhone hacks to the FBI: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrite-idUSKCN0WP17J http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrit...
azurelogic 11y ago
I think they know the risk is too high, and they jeopardize being able to use the All Writs Act in a similar situation against a company that lacks all of the resources that Apple has at their disposal. If patent trolls back down when challenged too hard, why not the US government?
- notthegov 11y ago
  They first use the momentum of the monolithic "justice" system to flatten you. Do you accept our authority? You defy it? Okay, the misdemeanor we charged you with, if you don't plea we will file an unrelated felony against you. Oh you resisted, oh you showed the evidence we have against you actually exonerates you? Okay, the prosecution moves to withdraw the case citing lack of evidence. We won't give you the opportunity to win against us. (This happened to me when I was a kid. I won my case. The FBI is acting just like that. Threaten and lie, then when everyone doubts them, they run. But as they run, I run after them faster, and in the end they lose.)
  - jamesdwilson 11y ago
    story time! <mj popcorn gif>
    - gsibble 11y ago
      http://imgur.com/gallery/kp8te http://imgur.com/gallery/kp8te
- fab13n 11y ago
  > I think they know the risk is too high Yes indeed, let's not forget that nobody cares about this particular phone! FBI has got archives until 6 weeks ago, they should have had full access, hadn't they fucked up (or sabotaged?), and it's a professional phone that's most unlikely to contain anything interesting anyway. The FBI thought it has a perfect opportunity to establish a precedent: Apple wouldn't fight against this case, because TERRORISM! It looks like it's failing, so of course they won't help establish a precedent against them. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and if you're a techie, everything looks like a technical issue. But this is not a technical issue, it merely masquerades as one.
tiredwired 11y ago
Maybe the guy that changed the password remembered what he changed it to.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  The iCloud password was changed (and yes they know what to). Now the iPhone & iCloud won't - that is, can't - access any data until the 4-digit passcode is entered on the phone, which will self-destruct if 10 wrong codes are entered. After they enter the 4-digit passcode, then they can enter the new iCloud password.
pkaye 11y ago
I've done this kind of "NAND mirroring" technique before but in the context of SSD failure analysis and debugging. We built a special board that would dump the contents of the NAND to a file and restore it. That way we could be free to do failure analysis without losing our only evidence. And the effort to build this infrastructure was not difficult at all and paid back in the first use.
- rsync 11y ago
  I would love to see pictures of the testing / analysis rig, etc. That would be very interesting.
  - pkaye 11y ago
    Its from a company I no longer work at. Not much really to it. The hardest part is connecting to the NAND. We had special debug connections provisioned to make it easy. Other options include desolder the part and putting into a socket, using a interposer, using boundary scan. Then we had a FPGA board that connected to the NAND and via USB to a PC. The FPGA board issued the proper signal patterns to control the NAND and the PC had a GUI interface to issue all kinds of commands to the NAND including doing a raw read and write to files. Obviously we cannot decrypt anything stored on NAND. When we get a failed SSD, I would read the internal logs and try to root cause it. Sometimes, we have to power up the firmware or change contents of the NAND to help determine the root cause and the concern is the problem is no longer reproducible. By keeping a backup, I have a good chance of recovering things back to the original state. Having a backup gives me lots of freedom to experiment. I've seen weird multi-factor failures where a batch of NAND parts would fail due to high temperature, with particular data pattern written using specific commands. One of those things that even manufacturing screening could catch in reasonable time. Debugging these failures was always one of those moments where I would go in wondering "what the heck is going on" to ... "ah now it makes sense."
- Philipp__ 11y ago
  Care to elaborate on this topic a little bit more?
ezoe 11y ago
NAND mirroring technique this article describe is just absurd. It would be more believable to me that FBI will try to steal the Apple's secret signing key or to bribe the Apple engineers in two weeks.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  For a government agency tasked with enforcing the law, it's absurd to contend they would steal and bribe to acquire evidence (victimizing one of the world's biggest & richest corporations, involving the "crown jewels" and/or significant engineering efforts, in the process). NAND mirroring is hard, but not impossible. (Whether the FBI can do it may be approaching absurd.)
  - xresonance 11y ago
    Not absurd to contend they would steal or bribe. FBI's use of sneak-and-peek black bag operations is well-documented and has been going on for a very long time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bag_operation#Use_by_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bag_operation#Use_by_the...) In the book "The Puzzle Palace", there is a section documenting how the NSA pushed to get the FBI to reinstate blag bag ops after Hoover stopped them, so that they could recover cryptographic information to aid or obviate cryptanalysis. I leave judgement of the ethics of the practice and integrity of the organization as an exercise to the reader.
  - tzs 11y ago
    Is it actually hard? See this discussion just a day or two ago of services in China that are doing iPhone memory upgrades for cheap [1]. This involves desoldering the NAND, copying its contents to a bigger NAND, and soldering the bigger NAND into the phone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044
    - ctdonath 11y ago
      Actually doing it may be easy for those familiar with the details. Doing it with legally-provable assurance that you won't permanently screw it up, and proving chain-of-custody issues along the way, is hard.
jeffdavis 11y ago
The author assumes the FBI wants to continue pursuing Apple. They might be calculating that it's too risky now, and this is the cleanest way out without losing face. They may not even care if the alternative method works or have a viable one.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Johnny555 11y ago
"The weak link in all of this has been Farook and his poor choice of security." It's only a poor choice if there's anything worth securing on the phone, and most people think that there's not, he destroyed his personal phone while leaving this phone intact. In any case, most people unlock their phone dozens of times a day, perhaps hundreds of times a day (for some). So expecting users to use a secure passphrase as an unlock code is unreasonable. It seems that it would be better to have a 2 stage system -- if the phone hasn't been unlocked with the passcode in X hours (user configurable), then it has to be unlocked with the secure passphrase -- even if someone knows the passcode the phone can't be unlocked with it after that timer expires. And on reboot, only the passphrase should be accepted. So someone that unlocks their phone frequently can use a simple passcode, but once the phone has been out of their possession for a few hours, only the passphrase can unlock it.
- mikeash 11y ago
  This could actually be a way to cause some havoc. Leave nothing useful on the phone, but dangle it in front of authorities, making them go crazy trying to get into it. I'm sure this guy was not that clever, though. What you describe is essentially how Touch ID works on newer iPhones, just with your fingerprint as the simple passcode. On a fresh boot, you have to put in your full passphrase, and every 48 hours after that. After you put in your passphrase, fingerprint unlock is available until either you turn the phone off, 48 hours passes, or fingerprint authentication fails five times in a row. Unfortunately, the 48 hours thing isn't configurable, so it's not quite perfect, but it's pretty decent. Certainly for me, it has immensely improved the security of my phone. In situations where I don't trust the fingerprint authentication (e.g. crossing an international border), I can just shut the phone off. Otherwise, it provides "good enough" security. Yes, there are potential attacks on the system, by copying my fingerprints and replicating it, but the five-attempt limit and the 48-hour timeout are good enough. For me, it's a vast improvement over what came before, when I had a passcode of 0000 just to satisfy some apps that wouldn't offer certain features unless a passcode was set. There are some improvements I'd like to see. The timeout should be customizable. I'd like to be able to set up a "duress fingerprint" which immediately disables fingerprint authentication, as an easier alternative to turning off the phone. But overall it seems like a good blend of security and usability.
devy 11y ago
I was just posting the video[1] on iPhone SE thread about the flourishing iPhone NAND Flash memory upgrade market in China yesterday. Incidentally, "NAND mirroring technique" is a crucial step in the process of upgrade iPhone NAND Flash memory. It's increasingly clear that what Congressman Darrell Issa questioned FBI Director James Comey about what exact steps FBI took to attempt to crack the iPhone 5C and in the U.S. House hearing was right on the money! [2] The iPhone's NAND Flash is in BGA packaging and de-soldering / soldering aren't too much of an issue for a skilled technician (even Foxconn workers can do it!) And did the timing suggest this "3rd party" in the far east? Sunday night in the U.S. is day time in the far east. This is getting interesting! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249033
- rsync 11y ago
  "I was just posting the video[1] on iPhone SE thread about the flourishing iPhone NAND Flash memory upgrade market in China yesterday. " I read those posts and was interested ... and I am sorry to digress now in this thread, but: If you upgrade your iphone with an amount of memory that no iphone has ... what does iOS do ? Does it care ? Does it object ? If I upgraded a 16GB to a 32GB, I would expect iOS not to notice or care. However, I would be worried about upgrading a 32GB to, say, a 128GB, which is a flash memory size that no iphone SE ships with. What does iOS do ?
  - devy 11y ago
    That's a very good question! I am guessing that the memory addressing might be tricky to figure out - again, I wouldn't be surprised if repair shots had tried it. It's always safer to use the hardware parts with most compatible specs - similar like how people do hackintosh [1] :) You have to also consider the memory chip availability at that specific size and BGA packaging - since Apple is a top consumer of those flash memory chips with only 32GB, 64GB and 128GB in sizes (omitting 8GB/16GB), the production of of those memory chips might very well be coming in ONLY those sizes due to the economies of scale in manufacturing cost. [1] http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible
vox_mollis 11y ago
The one that is the most tight lipped is, of course, the one people are paying the most attention to. I’m not at liberty to specify who Is this some bastardized take-off of responsible disclosure? Why the hesitation in naming the suspected firm?
lunchTime42 11y ago
There is a passcode that is really tough to replicate- behaviour - aka habbits. Every day, you travell down the same road, meet the same people (okay as your cellphone the same cellphones, wifi-stations). This habbit is like a fingerprint, as in, there are very few people who have the exact same browsing behaviour. If you could extract a fingerprint from that information, you have a sort of biometric identifier that is at least hard to come bye. Problem- every holiday your phone thinks youre a phonethief
- corin_ 11y ago
  One of many problems.
- andromeduck 11y ago
  Seems like that would be the incredibly difficult to train, incredibly invasive and by the time it detected the user probably wasn't you or you weren't nearby to considerable confidence you could have been compromised already. I think that kind of approach would be better handled by implants or wearables like watches with super long battery life but Bluetooth tokens already so most of that with half the invasiveness.
- EdHominem 11y ago
  I think that Toopher is developing something like that. Two-factor where your phone supplies the second-factor over a sidechannel if you're in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time.
thelucky41 11y ago
My Take is that they circumvented the existing protection against brute forcing. The iPhone does this by implementing a countdown timer that prevents trying more than a few passcodes before the time between tries becomes unreasonable. If you can speed up the clock, then you can cut down on the timer. There may be other methods to shorten the time as well.
- habosa 11y ago
  I think I read that it takes 80ms just to run the decryption algorithm on the iPhone, so while having unlimited retries would get them in eventually it will not speed up the brute force attack.
  - jontas 11y ago
    Assuming it is a 4 digit numeric passcode, that's only 10,000 possible combinations. At 80ms each (let's round up to 100ms to be conservative) that's only ~17 minutes. Even if it is a 6 digit pin we're only talking about ~28 hours (if they use a single, serial process).
    - habosa 11y ago
      That is true. Most people use a 4-digit or 6-digit numeric password and that's what the FBI is betting on when they ask to remove the brute force restrictions. However Apple allows something like a 35-char max with numbers and letters so in the worst case they will never crack it.
      - jontas 11y ago
        I don't know if it is correct but I've seen it mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the passcode they need is 4 digits.
_pmf_ 11y ago
> We know the FBI hasn’t been reaching out to independent researchers, and so this likely isn’t some fly-by-night jailbreak exploit out of left field. If respected security researchers can’t talk to FBI, there’s no way a jailbreak crew is going to be allowed to either. There are thousands to ten of thousands commercial forensic companies (domestic and international; not including Shenzhen one-man shops) that can de-package a chip and hook into the ARM AHB.
sixothree 11y ago
Wouldn't these hacking techniques be completely illegal for a corporation to sell?
thesz 11y ago
His reasoning made me think about JTAG. JTAG can be used to inject test data into device. Basically you put data into device flip-flops (registers) by shifting a long series of bits into special port. Then you perform a single step (computation of a function) and read resulting state from registers back. I think it is possible to inject PIN attempts into device and prevent device (by resetting it instead of performing step) to write over the key. Or even simpler - I think it is possible to read the key from device by JTAG operations.
- magila 11y ago
  Apple surely disables JTAG ports on shipping devices, this has been standard practice on security critical hardware for years.
nkurz 11y ago
3. An NSA 0-day is likely also out, as the court briefs suggested the technique came from outside USG. This seems like very flimsy logic. Not to say that an NSA 0-day is clearly the answer, but ruling it is non-sensical. Both the NSA and FBI are well are well practiced with "parallel construction": http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-dea-fbi-snowden-doj-oig/ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-dea-fbi-snowden-doj-oig...
- fapjacks 11y ago
  I came here to say this, and also to offer a rimshot of: "But the NSA is outside the USG. Above the law is still outside of it".
  - duaneb 11y ago
    Sure. And shell corps aren't unheard of for laundering government actions--the CIA is particularly known for that tactic.
- officemonkey 11y ago
  And we all know that the U.S. Government wouldn't lie to protect National Security assets.
owenversteeg 11y ago
One thing is clear to me from all of this: Rep. Issa is a really smart guy. I don't agree with his politics (for PATRIOT act, against gay marriage, and supports anti-flag desecration amendment) but I have quite a bit of respect for the guy. A few weeks before pretty much anyone else brought up the point of NAND mirroring, he stood before Congress and confronted Comey about it. In general, he's written very well thought out letters before about issues before Congress. In a Congress where the majority (!!!) does not believe that humans contribute to climate change, it's rare to find someone who actually thinks. Congratulations to Rep. Issa for his role in protecting our Constitutional rights.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  Hold your horses. It seems the natsec apparatus is divided on this case and many have been vocal about it, including the Secretary of Defense. I don't think Issa himself cares very much about this issue, it's more likely that someone close to him, someone not too keen on having the courts ruling on this, fed him the NAND mirroring line. A good contribution to the debate congress was having but not enough to justify this inadvertent canonization of Rep. Issa.
  - owenversteeg 11y ago
    Oh, I'd definitely like to avoid a canonization of him if possible. He's anti-gay, anti-climate change, and supports the PATRIOT act. But even if this is just a fed line (and this is definitely possible), just think how many other members of Congress would even be able to deliver such a line or understand it? Of the 99 others, do you think any would understand NAND mirroring? Even on a superficial level? My broader point remains that in general, Rep. Issa takes the time to analyze things and write about them, often bringing up issues that are otherwise neglected. Even in his support of the PATRIOT act, he lodged unique complaints about the constitutionality of the law under the fourth amendment.
- DMac87 11y ago
  https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/darrell-issa-california/ https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/darrell-i...
mosburger 11y ago
Doesn't this kind of circumvention around encryption violate the DMCA? (Yes, I know, gov't agencies are probably exempt from DMCA enforcement and/or the FBI doesn't really care if they're violating it anyway).
- ikeboy 11y ago
  DMCA is about copyright. Breaking encryption has nothing to do with it except insofar as the encryption is protecting copyrighted data.
  - rconti 11y ago
    I think parent is referring to access control circumvention under the DMCA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_Stat...
    - ikeboy 11y ago
      >No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title Which, as I said, refers to encryption protecting copyrighted works as a means of control.
      - mosburger 11y ago
        Is it possible that Farook had some copyrighted material on his phone?
        ikeboy 11y ago
        I think that's irrelevant. The encryption needs to be a means of control like DRM, not just copyrighted material that happens to be encrypted. Edit: >a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. So encryption that doesn't depend on the authority of a copyright owner isn't affected.
datashovel 11y ago
A little off topic, but I was wondering what kind of "wear and tear" occurs on a phone at the molecular level? I imagine a phone with a "pin" verification will be tapped fairly regularly in certain places on the screen (especially if the user never changed their pin). Also wonder if any of that "wear and tear" would show up in the circuits that detect taps. Again, if only specific places on the screen are tapped for the pin (never changed) it may leave enough evidence somewhere somehow at the molecular level. Anyone here with knowledge in this area that could debunk or validate this concept?
cjensen 11y ago
For embedded devices which run code off of ROMs, there are "romulators" [1] which emulate ROMs. They can be fitted into the ROM socket to work just like a ROM except that you can reload it at-will without burning a new ROM. Makes it very easy to recompile and try a new set of code. Is there nothing like this for Flash memory? [1] https://secure.transtronics.com/I-PKTROM.htm https://secure.transtronics.com/I-PKTROM.htm
zmmmmm 11y ago
I don't see why anybody believes the FBI aren't just lying at this point. They pretty clearly lied or at least obfuscated the truth on several other points so far. It seems obvious to me they never cared that much about what was on the phone and were only after a legal precedent - this claim about being able to unlock it another way is just a way to save face. It will be interesting to see whether they ever make public any evidence they claim was gathered from the phone or whether they just quietly let it slide into history and hope everyone forgets about it - I'm betting the latter.
- eric_h 11y ago
  <conspiracy theory> Apple releases latest version of iOS (which requires everyone who installs it to type in their passphrase, for both the phone and iCloud, again), and the FBI backs off on demanding that Apple write FBiOS for them. Maybe Apple got hit with an NSL and were actually required to backdoor their products? Now Apple is delivering the full encryption keys to interested parties? </conspiracy theory> I know it's silly, but the coincidence of the release of iOS 9.3 and the FBI backing off from its position was striking. The more reasonable theory is, of course, that the FBI realized that they overstepped their boundaries and put a tool they've used for decades ex parte at risk of being taken away from them by butting heads with a determined adversary.
  - adamcw 11y ago
    I'd find the timing scarier if the beta for 9.3 hadn't been going for a while before this all came up, and we were already right around the number of releases they always do before an GM build is ready.
- joering2 11y ago
  IANAL, but since FBI was a plaintiff, they have a right to withdraw the case without giving any reasons, no?
  - zmmmmm 11y ago
    Of course they have the "right", but after pushing to an extreme here - to the extent of getting everyone up to Obama to pressure Apple to give in - they can hardly just walk away and not say anything. Even the "oh we found another way" sounds pretty lame, but it's probably the best they could come up with.
DonGateley 11y ago
One thing I think we can count on is that now that there has been a retreat we will never hear another word about this from FBI or NSA. And probably from Apple.

149 points by aorth 11y ago

The speculation that, on Sunday night, some security researcher was able to convince the FBI they had a good shot at cracking the phone defies belief. A simpler and more likely explanation is that the FBIs lawyers, having overreached, have gone back on an earlier lie and concocted a new lie: Oh yeah, we need just a couple weeks to try this out. (And for the furore to die down.) Don't let these little John Yoos off the hook. They are over-aggressive, unethical, and unprofessional.

hockeybias 11y ago
'overly aggressive'.
mikeash 11y ago
I think it's more likely to be a mix. The FBI knew for a while, if not from the beginning, that getting into the phone without Apple's help was feasible. The NAND mirroring technique described here has been floating around for a while. But the FBI didn't want to, either because they have ulterior motives in forcing Apple's cooperation or because they just didn't want to take the risk of breaking anything. Now that they're having so much trouble securing Apple's cooperation, they either think the alternative is worth trying, or at least find it to be a good excuse for stopping.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  What you say is plausible. Can it be shown by outside parties what FBI knew and when? If so, it seems a fair bet that several agents and lawyers perjured themselves/suborned perjury in their zeal to "win" at all costs.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    We know they were aware of the attack no later than three weeks ago, when Congressman Issa brought it up during the FBI's congressional hearing on the matter. Of course, that doesn't mean they took it seriously, but I'd say they should have, given that Issa described it in great detail. In fact the FBI director said they'd check into it. Of course, that could just be meaningless pleasantries meant to placate someone in power. The timing certainly is suggestive, though.

snassar 11y ago

Of potential interest: "Can This Israeli Company Hack the San Bernardino iPhone Without Apple’s Help?" by Ariel David Mar 21, 2016 7:58 PM in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.710066 http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.71006... Or: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zcNErpmZ7sJ:www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-1.710066&num=1&hl=en&gl=de&strip=0&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8zcNEr...

ikeboy 11y ago
>Aside from a robust research department, Ben-Peretz attributes the company’s success to its original business in the mobile services sector, which gives Cellebrite good contacts with mobile phone operators and vendors and ensures it gets early access to new phone models and operating systems, allowing it to release updates for its software often months ahead of the competition. So manufacturers are helping them break in earlier by providing early access? Why would they do that?
- paulmd 11y ago
  I think they mean "mobile carriers and retailers" there. I.e. they're getting it from AT&T, or a Sprint Store (or the appropriate Israeli equivalents), not from Apple. I would speculate that the relationship is either commercial in nature, or that it also serves as a pentest to prevent things like unlocking/jailbreaking contract phones.
snassar 11y ago
Non-paywall second report that Cellebrite might be the company providing the iPhone hacks to the FBI: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrite-idUSKCN0WP17J http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-encryption-cellebrit...

azurelogic 11y ago

I think they know the risk is too high, and they jeopardize being able to use the All Writs Act in a similar situation against a company that lacks all of the resources that Apple has at their disposal. If patent trolls back down when challenged too hard, why not the US government?

notthegov 11y ago
They first use the momentum of the monolithic "justice" system to flatten you. Do you accept our authority? You defy it? Okay, the misdemeanor we charged you with, if you don't plea we will file an unrelated felony against you. Oh you resisted, oh you showed the evidence we have against you actually exonerates you? Okay, the prosecution moves to withdraw the case citing lack of evidence. We won't give you the opportunity to win against us. (This happened to me when I was a kid. I won my case. The FBI is acting just like that. Threaten and lie, then when everyone doubts them, they run. But as they run, I run after them faster, and in the end they lose.)
- jamesdwilson 11y ago
  story time! <mj popcorn gif>
  - gsibble 11y ago
    http://imgur.com/gallery/kp8te http://imgur.com/gallery/kp8te
fab13n 11y ago
> I think they know the risk is too high Yes indeed, let's not forget that nobody cares about this particular phone! FBI has got archives until 6 weeks ago, they should have had full access, hadn't they fucked up (or sabotaged?), and it's a professional phone that's most unlikely to contain anything interesting anyway. The FBI thought it has a perfect opportunity to establish a precedent: Apple wouldn't fight against this case, because TERRORISM! It looks like it's failing, so of course they won't help establish a precedent against them. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and if you're a techie, everything looks like a technical issue. But this is not a technical issue, it merely masquerades as one.

tiredwired 11y ago

Maybe the guy that changed the password remembered what he changed it to.

ctdonath 11y ago
The iCloud password was changed (and yes they know what to). Now the iPhone & iCloud won't - that is, can't - access any data until the 4-digit passcode is entered on the phone, which will self-destruct if 10 wrong codes are entered. After they enter the 4-digit passcode, then they can enter the new iCloud password.

pkaye 11y ago

I've done this kind of "NAND mirroring" technique before but in the context of SSD failure analysis and debugging. We built a special board that would dump the contents of the NAND to a file and restore it. That way we could be free to do failure analysis without losing our only evidence. And the effort to build this infrastructure was not difficult at all and paid back in the first use.

rsync 11y ago
I would love to see pictures of the testing / analysis rig, etc. That would be very interesting.
- pkaye 11y ago
  Its from a company I no longer work at. Not much really to it. The hardest part is connecting to the NAND. We had special debug connections provisioned to make it easy. Other options include desolder the part and putting into a socket, using a interposer, using boundary scan. Then we had a FPGA board that connected to the NAND and via USB to a PC. The FPGA board issued the proper signal patterns to control the NAND and the PC had a GUI interface to issue all kinds of commands to the NAND including doing a raw read and write to files. Obviously we cannot decrypt anything stored on NAND. When we get a failed SSD, I would read the internal logs and try to root cause it. Sometimes, we have to power up the firmware or change contents of the NAND to help determine the root cause and the concern is the problem is no longer reproducible. By keeping a backup, I have a good chance of recovering things back to the original state. Having a backup gives me lots of freedom to experiment. I've seen weird multi-factor failures where a batch of NAND parts would fail due to high temperature, with particular data pattern written using specific commands. One of those things that even manufacturing screening could catch in reasonable time. Debugging these failures was always one of those moments where I would go in wondering "what the heck is going on" to ... "ah now it makes sense."
Philipp__ 11y ago
Care to elaborate on this topic a little bit more?

ezoe 11y ago

NAND mirroring technique this article describe is just absurd. It would be more believable to me that FBI will try to steal the Apple's secret signing key or to bribe the Apple engineers in two weeks.

ctdonath 11y ago
For a government agency tasked with enforcing the law, it's absurd to contend they would steal and bribe to acquire evidence (victimizing one of the world's biggest & richest corporations, involving the "crown jewels" and/or significant engineering efforts, in the process). NAND mirroring is hard, but not impossible. (Whether the FBI can do it may be approaching absurd.)
- xresonance 11y ago
  Not absurd to contend they would steal or bribe. FBI's use of sneak-and-peek black bag operations is well-documented and has been going on for a very long time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bag_operation#Use_by_the_FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bag_operation#Use_by_the...) In the book "The Puzzle Palace", there is a section documenting how the NSA pushed to get the FBI to reinstate blag bag ops after Hoover stopped them, so that they could recover cryptographic information to aid or obviate cryptanalysis. I leave judgement of the ethics of the practice and integrity of the organization as an exercise to the reader.
- tzs 11y ago
  Is it actually hard? See this discussion just a day or two ago of services in China that are doing iPhone memory upgrades for cheap [1]. This involves desoldering the NAND, copying its contents to a bigger NAND, and soldering the bigger NAND into the phone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    Actually doing it may be easy for those familiar with the details. Doing it with legally-provable assurance that you won't permanently screw it up, and proving chain-of-custody issues along the way, is hard.

jeffdavis 11y ago

The author assumes the FBI wants to continue pursuing Apple. They might be calculating that it's too risky now, and this is the cleanest way out without losing face. They may not even care if the alternative method works or have a viable one.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Johnny555 11y ago

"The weak link in all of this has been Farook and his poor choice of security." It's only a poor choice if there's anything worth securing on the phone, and most people think that there's not, he destroyed his personal phone while leaving this phone intact. In any case, most people unlock their phone dozens of times a day, perhaps hundreds of times a day (for some). So expecting users to use a secure passphrase as an unlock code is unreasonable. It seems that it would be better to have a 2 stage system -- if the phone hasn't been unlocked with the passcode in X hours (user configurable), then it has to be unlocked with the secure passphrase -- even if someone knows the passcode the phone can't be unlocked with it after that timer expires. And on reboot, only the passphrase should be accepted. So someone that unlocks their phone frequently can use a simple passcode, but once the phone has been out of their possession for a few hours, only the passphrase can unlock it.

mikeash 11y ago
This could actually be a way to cause some havoc. Leave nothing useful on the phone, but dangle it in front of authorities, making them go crazy trying to get into it. I'm sure this guy was not that clever, though. What you describe is essentially how Touch ID works on newer iPhones, just with your fingerprint as the simple passcode. On a fresh boot, you have to put in your full passphrase, and every 48 hours after that. After you put in your passphrase, fingerprint unlock is available until either you turn the phone off, 48 hours passes, or fingerprint authentication fails five times in a row. Unfortunately, the 48 hours thing isn't configurable, so it's not quite perfect, but it's pretty decent. Certainly for me, it has immensely improved the security of my phone. In situations where I don't trust the fingerprint authentication (e.g. crossing an international border), I can just shut the phone off. Otherwise, it provides "good enough" security. Yes, there are potential attacks on the system, by copying my fingerprints and replicating it, but the five-attempt limit and the 48-hour timeout are good enough. For me, it's a vast improvement over what came before, when I had a passcode of 0000 just to satisfy some apps that wouldn't offer certain features unless a passcode was set. There are some improvements I'd like to see. The timeout should be customizable. I'd like to be able to set up a "duress fingerprint" which immediately disables fingerprint authentication, as an easier alternative to turning off the phone. But overall it seems like a good blend of security and usability.

devy 11y ago

I was just posting the video[1] on iPhone SE thread about the flourishing iPhone NAND Flash memory upgrade market in China yesterday. Incidentally, "NAND mirroring technique" is a crucial step in the process of upgrade iPhone NAND Flash memory. It's increasingly clear that what Congressman Darrell Issa questioned FBI Director James Comey about what exact steps FBI took to attempt to crack the iPhone 5C and in the U.S. House hearing was right on the money! [2] The iPhone's NAND Flash is in BGA packaging and de-soldering / soldering aren't too much of an issue for a skilled technician (even Foxconn workers can do it!) And did the timing suggest this "3rd party" in the far east? Sunday night in the U.S. is day time in the far east. This is getting interesting! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11331044 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11249033

rsync 11y ago
"I was just posting the video[1] on iPhone SE thread about the flourishing iPhone NAND Flash memory upgrade market in China yesterday. " I read those posts and was interested ... and I am sorry to digress now in this thread, but: If you upgrade your iphone with an amount of memory that no iphone has ... what does iOS do ? Does it care ? Does it object ? If I upgraded a 16GB to a 32GB, I would expect iOS not to notice or care. However, I would be worried about upgrading a 32GB to, say, a 128GB, which is a flash memory size that no iphone SE ships with. What does iOS do ?
- devy 11y ago
  That's a very good question! I am guessing that the memory addressing might be tricky to figure out - again, I wouldn't be surprised if repair shots had tried it. It's always safer to use the hardware parts with most compatible specs - similar like how people do hackintosh [1] :) You have to also consider the memory chip availability at that specific size and BGA packaging - since Apple is a top consumer of those flash memory chips with only 32GB, 64GB and 128GB in sizes (omitting 8GB/16GB), the production of of those memory chips might very well be coming in ONLY those sizes due to the economies of scale in manufacturing cost. [1] http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible

vox_mollis 11y ago

The one that is the most tight lipped is, of course, the one people are paying the most attention to. I’m not at liberty to specify who Is this some bastardized take-off of responsible disclosure? Why the hesitation in naming the suspected firm?

lunchTime42 11y ago

There is a passcode that is really tough to replicate- behaviour - aka habbits. Every day, you travell down the same road, meet the same people (okay as your cellphone the same cellphones, wifi-stations). This habbit is like a fingerprint, as in, there are very few people who have the exact same browsing behaviour. If you could extract a fingerprint from that information, you have a sort of biometric identifier that is at least hard to come bye. Problem- every holiday your phone thinks youre a phonethief

corin_ 11y ago
One of many problems.
andromeduck 11y ago
Seems like that would be the incredibly difficult to train, incredibly invasive and by the time it detected the user probably wasn't you or you weren't nearby to considerable confidence you could have been compromised already. I think that kind of approach would be better handled by implants or wearables like watches with super long battery life but Bluetooth tokens already so most of that with half the invasiveness.
EdHominem 11y ago
I think that Toopher is developing something like that. Two-factor where your phone supplies the second-factor over a sidechannel if you're in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time.

thelucky41 11y ago

My Take is that they circumvented the existing protection against brute forcing. The iPhone does this by implementing a countdown timer that prevents trying more than a few passcodes before the time between tries becomes unreasonable. If you can speed up the clock, then you can cut down on the timer. There may be other methods to shorten the time as well.

habosa 11y ago
I think I read that it takes 80ms just to run the decryption algorithm on the iPhone, so while having unlimited retries would get them in eventually it will not speed up the brute force attack.
- jontas 11y ago
  Assuming it is a 4 digit numeric passcode, that's only 10,000 possible combinations. At 80ms each (let's round up to 100ms to be conservative) that's only ~17 minutes. Even if it is a 6 digit pin we're only talking about ~28 hours (if they use a single, serial process).
  - habosa 11y ago
    That is true. Most people use a 4-digit or 6-digit numeric password and that's what the FBI is betting on when they ask to remove the brute force restrictions. However Apple allows something like a 35-char max with numbers and letters so in the worst case they will never crack it.
    - jontas 11y ago
      I don't know if it is correct but I've seen it mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the passcode they need is 4 digits.

_pmf_ 11y ago

> We know the FBI hasn’t been reaching out to independent researchers, and so this likely isn’t some fly-by-night jailbreak exploit out of left field. If respected security researchers can’t talk to FBI, there’s no way a jailbreak crew is going to be allowed to either. There are thousands to ten of thousands commercial forensic companies (domestic and international; not including Shenzhen one-man shops) that can de-package a chip and hook into the ARM AHB.

sixothree 11y ago

Wouldn't these hacking techniques be completely illegal for a corporation to sell?

thesz 11y ago

His reasoning made me think about JTAG. JTAG can be used to inject test data into device. Basically you put data into device flip-flops (registers) by shifting a long series of bits into special port. Then you perform a single step (computation of a function) and read resulting state from registers back. I think it is possible to inject PIN attempts into device and prevent device (by resetting it instead of performing step) to write over the key. Or even simpler - I think it is possible to read the key from device by JTAG operations.

magila 11y ago
Apple surely disables JTAG ports on shipping devices, this has been standard practice on security critical hardware for years.

nkurz 11y ago

3. An NSA 0-day is likely also out, as the court briefs suggested the technique came from outside USG. This seems like very flimsy logic. Not to say that an NSA 0-day is clearly the answer, but ruling it is non-sensical. Both the NSA and FBI are well are well practiced with "parallel construction": http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-dea-fbi-snowden-doj-oig/ http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-dea-fbi-snowden-doj-oig...

fapjacks 11y ago
I came here to say this, and also to offer a rimshot of: "But the NSA is outside the USG. Above the law is still outside of it".
- duaneb 11y ago
  Sure. And shell corps aren't unheard of for laundering government actions--the CIA is particularly known for that tactic.
officemonkey 11y ago
And we all know that the U.S. Government wouldn't lie to protect National Security assets.

owenversteeg 11y ago

One thing is clear to me from all of this: Rep. Issa is a really smart guy. I don't agree with his politics (for PATRIOT act, against gay marriage, and supports anti-flag desecration amendment) but I have quite a bit of respect for the guy. A few weeks before pretty much anyone else brought up the point of NAND mirroring, he stood before Congress and confronted Comey about it. In general, he's written very well thought out letters before about issues before Congress. In a Congress where the majority (!!!) does not believe that humans contribute to climate change, it's rare to find someone who actually thinks. Congratulations to Rep. Issa for his role in protecting our Constitutional rights.

rpgmaker 11y ago
Hold your horses. It seems the natsec apparatus is divided on this case and many have been vocal about it, including the Secretary of Defense. I don't think Issa himself cares very much about this issue, it's more likely that someone close to him, someone not too keen on having the courts ruling on this, fed him the NAND mirroring line. A good contribution to the debate congress was having but not enough to justify this inadvertent canonization of Rep. Issa.
- owenversteeg 11y ago
  Oh, I'd definitely like to avoid a canonization of him if possible. He's anti-gay, anti-climate change, and supports the PATRIOT act. But even if this is just a fed line (and this is definitely possible), just think how many other members of Congress would even be able to deliver such a line or understand it? Of the 99 others, do you think any would understand NAND mirroring? Even on a superficial level? My broader point remains that in general, Rep. Issa takes the time to analyze things and write about them, often bringing up issues that are otherwise neglected. Even in his support of the PATRIOT act, he lodged unique complaints about the constitutionality of the law under the fourth amendment.
DMac87 11y ago
https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/darrell-issa-california/ https://www.barackobama.com/climate-change-deniers/darrell-i...

mosburger 11y ago

Doesn't this kind of circumvention around encryption violate the DMCA? (Yes, I know, gov't agencies are probably exempt from DMCA enforcement and/or the FBI doesn't really care if they're violating it anyway).

ikeboy 11y ago
DMCA is about copyright. Breaking encryption has nothing to do with it except insofar as the encryption is protecting copyrighted data.
- rconti 11y ago
  I think parent is referring to access control circumvention under the DMCA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#United_Stat...
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    >No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title Which, as I said, refers to encryption protecting copyrighted works as a means of control.
    - mosburger 11y ago
      Is it possible that Farook had some copyrighted material on his phone?
      - ikeboy 11y ago
        I think that's irrelevant. The encryption needs to be a means of control like DRM, not just copyrighted material that happens to be encrypted. Edit: >a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. So encryption that doesn't depend on the authority of a copyright owner isn't affected.

datashovel 11y ago

A little off topic, but I was wondering what kind of "wear and tear" occurs on a phone at the molecular level? I imagine a phone with a "pin" verification will be tapped fairly regularly in certain places on the screen (especially if the user never changed their pin). Also wonder if any of that "wear and tear" would show up in the circuits that detect taps. Again, if only specific places on the screen are tapped for the pin (never changed) it may leave enough evidence somewhere somehow at the molecular level. Anyone here with knowledge in this area that could debunk or validate this concept?

cjensen 11y ago

For embedded devices which run code off of ROMs, there are "romulators" [1] which emulate ROMs. They can be fitted into the ROM socket to work just like a ROM except that you can reload it at-will without burning a new ROM. Makes it very easy to recompile and try a new set of code. Is there nothing like this for Flash memory? [1] https://secure.transtronics.com/I-PKTROM.htm https://secure.transtronics.com/I-PKTROM.htm

zmmmmm 11y ago

I don't see why anybody believes the FBI aren't just lying at this point. They pretty clearly lied or at least obfuscated the truth on several other points so far. It seems obvious to me they never cared that much about what was on the phone and were only after a legal precedent - this claim about being able to unlock it another way is just a way to save face. It will be interesting to see whether they ever make public any evidence they claim was gathered from the phone or whether they just quietly let it slide into history and hope everyone forgets about it - I'm betting the latter.

eric_h 11y ago
<conspiracy theory> Apple releases latest version of iOS (which requires everyone who installs it to type in their passphrase, for both the phone and iCloud, again), and the FBI backs off on demanding that Apple write FBiOS for them. Maybe Apple got hit with an NSL and were actually required to backdoor their products? Now Apple is delivering the full encryption keys to interested parties? </conspiracy theory> I know it's silly, but the coincidence of the release of iOS 9.3 and the FBI backing off from its position was striking. The more reasonable theory is, of course, that the FBI realized that they overstepped their boundaries and put a tool they've used for decades ex parte at risk of being taken away from them by butting heads with a determined adversary.
- adamcw 11y ago
  I'd find the timing scarier if the beta for 9.3 hadn't been going for a while before this all came up, and we were already right around the number of releases they always do before an GM build is ready.
joering2 11y ago
IANAL, but since FBI was a plaintiff, they have a right to withdraw the case without giving any reasons, no?
- zmmmmm 11y ago
  Of course they have the "right", but after pushing to an extreme here - to the extent of getting everyone up to Obama to pressure Apple to give in - they can hardly just walk away and not say anything. Even the "oh we found another way" sounds pretty lame, but it's probably the best they could come up with.

DonGateley 11y ago

One thing I think we can count on is that now that there has been a retreat we will never hear another word about this from FBI or NSA. And probably from Apple.