Jonathan Zdziarski, writing on his security blog:
FBI acknowledged today that there “appears” to be an alternative way into Farook’s iPhone 5c – something that experts have been shouting for weeks now; in fact, we’ve been saying there are several viable methods.
And:
We do know that the FBI frequently works with a number of contracted external forensics and data recovery labs, especially a handful at the top. The likelihood here is that a third party contractor, such as one of these forensics or data recovery firms, has devised a method and notified FBI of their findings.
And:
The leading theory at present, based on all of this, is that an external forensics company, with hardware capabilities, is likely copying the NAND storage off the chip and frequently re-copying all or part of the chip’s contents back to the device in order to brute force the pin – and may or may not also be using older gear from iOS 8 techniques to do it. The two weeks the FBI has asked for are not to develop this technique (it’s most likely already been developed, if FBI is willing to vacate a hearing over it), but rather to demonstrate, and possibly sell, the technique to FBI by means of a field test on some demo units.
All this is speculation, but very well reasoned speculation.
If true, this should put in rest speculations that FBI only wanted to use this case to set a legal precedent. There have been so many irresponsible, fear-mongering speculations in the unfolding of this story. Tech press in general should issue an apology for being ignorant about this topic and yet not allowing their ignorance to stop your wild pontifications.
Finally, someone who has no idea what they’re talking about gives us a definitive statement on this case. Just what we’ve all been waiting for.
It could be this alternative method was “found” just before the FBI was about to lose the court case, creating a precedent they didn’t want.
A lot of what goes on in many court cases isn’t seen in the courtroom, where one or both sides of a case are playing a game of “chicken” with the courtroom being something to be avoided by one, the other or both parties.
In this case, the FBI flinched, as it was looking like Apple wouldn’t as it had the superior argument for the courts.
Losing the court case would hurt the FBI’s broader goals, which are now dependent on passing legislation, which also got harder for them after this.
yeah, sure, buddy — the tech press will apologize to the FBI as soon as the MSM apologize to the american people for framing this as merely apple “unlocking the device” for the FBI, rather than being forced against their will to create an entirely new, insecure version of govOS with weakened encryption.
bootlicker nonsense.
“is likely copying the NAND storage off the chip”
You can’t pull the data off the device and then try to brute force the PIN. The PIN is only one part of the key used to encrypt the data, the other is a random 256-bit UID that is “stamped” onto the SoC during fabrication. The only way to “see” it is to physically look at it under an extremely strong microscope.
Only after you have the UID can you start the brute force attack. And even then, you better hope the user chose the 4 or 6 PIN passcode and not the alphanumeric passphrase.
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