Apple's response to the US Government

not to say that there aren't any 0days for current phones & OSes....

wasn't there some competition some months ago where some unknown actor offered a million $$$ bounty for an iOS 0day exploit, and it was "allegedly" solved like a week later? Could have been a hoax or some other bullshit but dunno.

it's not like these things are completely safe now, there's always some security hole or another waiting to be exploited.

  On 2/18/2016 at 12:56 AM, phling said:

^ as I understand, DropOutJeep worked on older phones with older iOS versions, which did not have the sophisticated hardware-based encryption features that newer phones have... iOS & the phone hardware has evolved quite a bit in the last 5 or 6 years, and this Jeep thingie is a bit old.

much like an old jailbreak for iOS 5 won't be able to unlock your new iPhone, this particular Jeep (which must have cost a ton of money to develop) is very likely very useless nowadays...

True, it worked on older iPhones but it wouldn't surprise me if the NSA has attempted to maintain pace with iOS development.

this makes me somewhat more respectful of Apple. they spoke right at least.

well, mcafee is willing to decrpyt the phones for free

they definitely shouldn't get the phone repaired by a third party

  On 2/17/2016 at 8:33 PM, chenGOD said:

An interesting theory is that the backdoor already exists, and this is simply an attempt by the US gov't to propagate the story that the iPhone is secure, so that terrorists will continue to use the iPhone. Similar to how the UK gov't spent much effort convincing the Germans that they hadn't cracked the Enigma code.

Be carefull, best wishes and good luck.

ummm ok?

according to the daily beast a NY prosecutor said that apple can unlock phones and has worked with the gov to unlock phones up to 70 times in the past which daily beast says apple does not dispute. which if true imo probably does reduce apple's current stance down from being a moral stance against authorities invading privacy down to a concern about PR with their users. maybe the reason they refuse to cooperate in this case is because of how high profile the case is, which means that if they did cooperate it would be a lot harder to sweep that aspect of the story under the rug so that the happy iphone users out there could continue thinking their locked phones are truly private and unhackable?

It's probably a combination of a recognizing of the change in attitudes by the public toward privacy, an actual change in moral compass, and the fact that iOS9 makes it harder to crack the passwords.

Regardless, a public stance against this demand from the feds is not really a bad thing.

no, it's not bad that they do so. it's just bad that they can extract information if they want to while saying that they can't

basically they already have a back door, they just want to give it to the feds

so all this nonsense about 'protecting information' and 'putting it beyond reach of even apple' is just a load of bullshit

and we are swallowing it like hot croissants.

god, fuck you apple. fuck you so fucking hard with your fucking two-timing asshat attitude

  On 2/18/2016 at 9:27 PM, chenGOD said:

It's probably a combination of a recognizing of the change in attitudes by the public toward privacy, an actual change in moral compass, and the fact that iOS9 makes it harder to crack the passwords.

Regardless, a public stance against this demand from the feds is not really a bad thing.

possibly. but it seems to me you have just as much of a reason to believe that as i do that it's merely a case of apple having enjoyed having it both ways in the past- being paragons of virtue to their userbase, providing them with this sweet 'locked phone' tech that makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy and unhackable and private, while colluding with the gov to unlock, apparently, dozens of phones. in dozens of cases which apparently were much more under the radar than a terrorist attack, and therefore not widely reported on or at least for whatever reason, the apple angle not getting covered in those cases. and now you have a pretty big headline and the feds want their buddies to comply again as they have many times in the past, and apple chooses this, a terrorist attack, as their ground to make a stand and protect the privacy of those attackers.

maybe its because the headine of 'terrorist attack' brings with it a tad more media scrutiny which means more possibility of apple's cooperation being made into a headline itself? so they did the only thing they could do, which was point fingers and jump to take the high horse stand and hope it flies with their loyal userbase? is there any real evidence based reason to suggest i don't have just as much of a reason to interpret the events this way as you do to interpret them your way?

Steve was an inside jobs

lol

lol

lol

lol

MisterE of course there's no reason you couldn't be exactly correct in your assumption.

In this case I'm not too bothered about the motives as long as the end result is Apple doing what they say they will.

i agree. but the same apple who is telling people now that the new tech can't be unlocked even by them, is the same apple who told people in recent years that the phones they were selling couldn't be unlocked, while they were unlocking them. apparently.

  On 2/18/2016 at 10:29 PM, double uv said:

lol

lol

I don't know what apple was telling people about previous phones, I don't pay that much attention to the corporate PR.

I have no doubt that Apple could unlock even the newest phones and iOS, but since I have no means to change Apple's behavior (as I don't have Apple stock, nor do I sit on the board), I instead choose to focus on the government, which we can actually change (not without considerable effort and not always successfully).

So I'm glad that they didn't just bend over, and I'm glad that the issue is more in the public, even if this is what it took to get there.

  On 2/18/2016 at 9:00 PM, MisterE said:

according to the daily beast a NY prosecutor said that apple can unlock phones and has worked with the gov to unlock phones up to 70 times in the past which daily beast says apple does not dispute. which if true imo probably does reduce apple's current stance down from being a moral stance against authorities invading privacy down to a concern about PR with their users. maybe the reason they refuse to cooperate in this case is because of how high profile the case is, which means that if they did cooperate it would be a lot harder to sweep that aspect of the story under the rug so that the happy iphone users out there could continue thinking their locked phones are truly private and unhackable?

apple increased security with the secure enclave in the A7 chip starting with the 5S and encryption in iOS 8 to avoid helping the government again.

  On 2/18/2016 at 9:54 PM, roasty said:

Steve was an inside jobs

so woz Woz

Warning:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/19/donald-trump-apple-boycott-fbi-san-bernardino

That was good