Yes, it is more speculative, but I have lower standards for HN comments than HN submissions. The article doesn't mention Apple's understanding of encryption, b

Yes, it is more speculative, but I have lower standards for HN comments than HN submissions. The article doesn't mention Apple's understanding of encryption, but it seemed to speculate that this encryption wouldn't be "real" encryption: "is it really securing the device while running". As for the length of the pin, it isn't as important as you think. Assuming the attacker doesn't read the compact flash directly (there is very little you can do at that point), you can store a strong encryption key on disk and protect the device via an exponentially increasing lockout. If the key were also stored in iTunes, you can always wipe the key from disk and require the phone be re-sync'd. Anyway, my point is that the original article is lame.