4 ms·
That's absolutely correct, come to find out. For some reason I thought the SE was responsible for holding some of the keys and the wipe counter, but instead it'
by Karunamon 11y ago
That's absolutely correct, come to find out. For some reason I thought the SE was responsible for holding some of the keys and the wipe counter, but instead it's a section of the NAND flash called "Effaceable Storage".
Their own whitepaper defines it:
A dedicated area of NAND storage, used to store cryptographic keys, that can be addressed directly and wiped securely. While >>it doesn’t provide protection if an attacker has physical possession of a device<<, keys held in Effaceable Storage can be used as part of a key hierarchy to facilitate fast wipe and forward security
(emphasis mine)
However, it appears that the FBI attack only worked because the people in question used the 4 digit pin. A strong passcode is the way to go and protects you from these kinds of brute force attacks.
- mikeash 11y agoI initially assumed the same as you, because it would just make so much sense. And yes, it looks like all of this came down to the short PIN. It's likely a six-digit PIN would still fall, but a proper passcode would have made this whole affair moot. It looks like even the older phones are still totally secure in that case, although the lack of Touch ID can make it somewhat impractical. This is a major problem I have with the "iPhones got less secure" idea. Apple has gone through heroics to make short passcodes somewhat secure, but there's only so much you can reasonably expect there.