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>Now, it's the FBI sending a giant "screw you" to Apple by not only letting them know they were able to hack into the phone without Apple's help but at the same
by zeofig 11y ago
>Now, it's the FBI sending a giant "screw you" to Apple by not only letting them know they were able to hack into the phone without Apple's help but at the same time, making a mockery of Apple's entire security claims.
>it's pretty obvious that Apple has been outsmarted by a government agency.
I disagree with this assessment. It's not very surprising that the FBI was able to hack into a particular iPhone by focusing all available resources on the task. Given their previous duplicity, I would not even believe the claim without real evidence. Furthermore, I would not be surprised if they'd already hacked into it weeks ago. After all, their objective here was never to hack into the phone, but to establish a legal precedent that would force companies like Apple to comply with their future wishes. Apple has well and truly won, and the FBI is at this point trying (and succeeding, sadly) to save face.
I would speculate that Apple are asking them about it publicly because they know that the FBI will not comply with such a demand, thus making the FBI look bad, since it is now (purportedly) putting the security of millions of consumer devices at stake. They may also suspect that the FBI has not legitimately hacked into the phone, which remains a possibility. Or, as is more likely, that the FBI's method required large resources and could not be applied to many iphones at once, for instance.
- coldcode 11y agoAn interesting twist would be for Apple to encourage someone to sue Apple for having a hackable phone and then having Apple supply a legal request to require the FBI to disclose the hack in order to "defend" the lawsuit. Not sure this would work but you need a legal reason to force disclosure.
- Mtinie 11y agoLet's find out. As an iPhone user, I presume I have standing and could argue some form of damages. Now, is there a lawyer out there interested in discussing whether there is really any merit to bringing a suit forward? Would / could this be a class action, or in this case, is it better to seek an individual out come? Hypothetically speaking, of course, until there are proven grounds to stand on.
- giaour 11y agoIANAL, but you would probably need to show that you were materially harmed by your iPhone's now-weakened security. Maybe someone could step forward and show that their new iPhone got hacked and that they lost money because of said hack.
- ethbro 11y agoLegally, why couldn't you sue the government directly? Ianal, but isn't the US government (via the FBI's court proceedings) publicly stating they have access to / have used a vulnerability actionable in some way? If this were done in private that would be one thing, but they've now gone on the record as saying a usable vulnerability exists.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- marcoperaza 11y agoIt's perfectly legal to use vulnerabilities on machines that you own, publicly advertise it, and refuse to disclose the details. It's a free country. Funny that the infosec community traditionally supports this and opposes mandatory disclosure laws. If you had to disclose any vulnerabilities that you find, you'd never get paid for it. There wouldn't even be bug bounties, since those exist because of the vulnerability market. The fact that it's the government also adds in the great deference that the courts give the government on national security issues. And it would be with good reason in this case. Vulnerabilities are used to craft attacks against our country's enemies (see Stuxnet).