Judge: Apple must help US hack San Bernardino killer's phone

sfgate.com

10 points·cgtyoder··6 comments

It would be really nice if these AP blurbs linked to the primary source. Another article[1] is a little more in-depth and mentions a 40-page filing by the prosecution, but doesn't link to it. Ten minutes of searching yielded me nothing.

I really want to see the arguments made by the prosecution and the judge's reasons for approving this. Without that information, there's not much to engage with.

1. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/san-bernardino-shooting/jud...

Looks like the article linked from the main thread on this has it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114756.

Found it: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2714005/SB-Shoote...

Thanks!

If device makers can do this, then presumably anybody can, which suggests a huge security vulnerability in so-called "encrypted" devices which are only protected by an easily brute-forced 4-digit PIN.

Not necessarily. Only Apple has the code signing key to update the OS. They'd probably update the phone with a special version of iOS that lacked the erasure feature. Even then, decryption isn't guaranteed. The owner may have used a longer passphrase.

Does it brick the hardware protecting the secret key, or could it be attacked by saving and restoring the flash storage (or replacing it with simulated storage)?

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