Apple wants the FBI to reveal how it hacked the San Bernardino killer's iPhone

I really find this whole thing hilarious.<p>First, it&#x27;s Apple sticking it to the FBI by making a stand for privacy and receiving public accolades doing so as a champion of privacy. The FBI is the bad guy trying to invade our privacy.<p>Now, it&#x27;s the FBI sending a giant &quot;screw you&quot; to Apple by not only letting them know they were able to hack into the phone without Apple&#x27;s help but at the same time, making a mockery of Apple&#x27;s entire security claims. And now, Apple is in panic mode, slowly realizing that they went from being the hero of privacy in the modern age to the company that wasn&#x27;t able to secure its phone from the FBI. From the FBI. Of all things.<p>No wonder they are freaking out and they want to know how the FBI did it.<p>Except that if I were them, I certainly wouldn&#x27;t ask that publicly, I would at least pretend I know how the FBI did it and claim that it&#x27;s already fixed in the next version of the OS.<p>Which still means that tens of millions of iPhones are at risk today and will be for months, but at least, you get to pretend that you&#x27;re ahead of the FBI while right now, it&#x27;s pretty obvious that Apple has been outsmarted by a government agency.<p>The bottom line is that in this line of work, it pays to be discreet and humble.

Can anyone find any actual citation for Apple wanting &quot;the FBI to reveal&quot; anything? There&#x27;s quotes from an AVG spokesperson in the article, and the paragraph &quot;Attorneys for Apple are researching legal tactics to compel the government...&quot; but no specific sources.<p>The author, on Twitter, said that &quot;last week&quot; Apple said they wanted to know what the exploit was, but the announcement about a successful exploit was only two days ago.

Doesn&#x27;t this create a kind of precident for future requests to unlock iPhones on a newer OS? If the FBI&#x2F;US Gov go to court saying they require Apples assistance - can&#x27;t Apple turn around and basically say &quot;this is what you said last time - and you worked it out - so we are sure you&#x27;ll work it out again without our help&quot;?

Um, Apple doesn&#x27;t really care, but they are continuing to stick it to the FBI.<p>If the FBI cracked the phone, then Apple can smack them with it when this comes around again. If the FBI didn&#x27;t crack the phone, then Apple can smack them with it for dropping the lawsuit.<p>This is just Apple saying &quot;Fuck you, FBI, for bringing this lawsuit and then dropping it when things went badly. You&#x27;re gonna sweat some more before you get off the hook.&quot;

The only people who don&#x27;t notify software developers of exploits they find in their systems are criminals. That the FBI are happy to act like black hat hackers in this is pretty amazing.

This whole article is hilarious. At no stage whatsoever has Apple actually made a statement that confirms they haven even requested the method used. All this laughable article could provide is &quot;quotes&quot; from an antivirus company. Apple don&#x27;t really care how they did it, or even if they really did crack it, just as long as they didn&#x27;t have to be seen doing it for the government.

Is it legally acceptable that FBI knows about a criminal activity and do not act to stop it? A security vulnerability like this will sooner or later be used by criminals, and the FBI are in the authoritative position to prevent it. Could future victims sue the government for allowing the crime to occur? There have been many lawsuits where an ISP has been found guilty for knowingly host a copyright infringer on their network and not acting to prevent it, so it should not be too implausible that a government agency responsible to prevent crime is held to equal or higher standard.

Why are we believing anything the FBI says on the matter?

I&#x27;m skeptical that the FBI hacked into the iPhone. Seems more like a 4th grader trying to save face.

Is there any way for Apple to compel them to provide the details? I would imagine that the Government has made the laws so they don&#x27;t have to comply with them the same way we do.

We don&#x27;t know for sure if the FBI is only bluffing about hacking the phone just to not have to drag the case further

Deduction should make it pretty simple. There are a large number of phones out that law agencies want hacked. If the FBI completely stops asking for assistance, Apple can consider the exploit still active.

Which company, or group did the hacking? I was told it was an Israeli company? If the company is listed, I would be tempted to gamble my last $500?<p>My luck--it will go down.<p>(I am curious if someone they really did hack it.)

I guess they should file a motion or how does this work to force FBI to disclose what they did :) It&#x27;s only fair to give the FBI a chance to write a public letter too.

well it seems to me that now they know the bug exists, and they have the source code, that makes it easier to find. They have plenty of clever people at Apple I&#x27;m sure they will work it out.<p>I guess the biggest problem really is that they don&#x27;t know if this vulnerability exists in current versions or if it was already fixed. I don&#x27;t know that they would normally bother to fix old vulnerabilities but they do need to work on identifying this one at least.

The FBI usually went with the no-stones-left-unturned analogy. But did they actually find anything meaningful under this stone that they accidentally locked up?

To best of my knowledge, there&#x27;s no law saying the Government has to disclose squat to Apple. Given the public bickering&#x2F;brinksmenship going on these past couple weeks, I doubt they&#x27;ll be inclined to do so, and they&#x27;re probably also bound by NDA&#x27;s from Cellebrite or whoever created the hack (if the Feds even know how they did it)<p>There&#x27;s some irony in here somewhere...

Does anybody really believe that Apple doesn&#x27;t either know how it was done or at least know it was one of X ways (with X being the number of exploits they know about internally that could have been used)?<p>This whole circle jerk was about the govt compelling Apple to bypass its own security so that they can do it in every other case to come after.

Would the TPP be a possible basis for legal action in a case like this?

If it was a million dollar hardware-level exploit, does it really matter? Much of the excited reporting on this seems to assume the FBI exploited an iOS software bug... do the press know something we don&#x27;t?

If they want to find out, they should buy Cellebrite.

I am sure TAO has a rich portfolio of zero day exploits for iPhones. Still appaled how easily people took this stunt as proof the iPhone is not a surveillance end point.

Compared with android phone, it&#x27;s still better for us. Encryption means it&#x27;s hard to decryption not impossible to decryption.

what if they just guessed the passcode based on numbers found associated with the couple or some other means of figuring it out like discovering a commonly used pin?

Ask these guys, not the feds: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cellebrite.com&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;cellebrite-solution-for-locked-apple-devices-running-ios-8x" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cellebrite.com&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;cellebrite-solution-for-lock...</a><p>You are welcome Apple.

Isn&#x27;t this how it was done:<p>&gt; Apple already knows, and you can be sure the engineers already knew the mechanism that can be exploited. They hired an Israel firm to remove the nand flash, clone it, and brute force the pin code by trying each combination until valid data was readable from the nand flash (combined with the hardware encryption key located on a second chip). It&#x27;s not particularly difficult with the right tools and engineers.<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;worldnews&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4cj2pd&#x2F;apple_wants_the_fbi_to_reveal_how_it_hacked_the&#x2F;d1iqog9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;worldnews&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4cj2pd&#x2F;apple_wan...</a>