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Thread: iPhone encryption - John McAfee can break it, or he'll eat his shoe on TV

  1. #1
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    iPhone encryption - John McAfee can break it, or he'll eat his shoe on TV

    http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/02/...v-if-cant.html

    John McAfee vows he can break iPhone encryption, promises to eat his shoe on live TV if he can't

  2. #2
    Junior Potato
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    Someone's gotta do it of Apple won't.

    http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

    Bless them.

  3. #3
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    That guy is insane. Of course it's breakable, but the time involved makes doing so almost useless.

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    Some of these things are very hard to break when the encryption and keys are done in hardware. They even tend to put it inside a single chip so you can't even spy on it by taping onto the circuit board.
    As for time, again I think the delay is done at the chip level, not the OS level, so it might not be possible to just jailbreak and load new code to bypass the delay between attempts.
    This could make the time for a brute force attack in the order of many years.

  5. #5
    Relaxing and enjoying life MR2 Fan's Avatar
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    I think John McAfee is crazy enough to eat his own shoe either way

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dicknose View Post
    Some of these things are very hard to break when the encryption and keys are done in hardware. They even tend to put it inside a single chip so you can't even spy on it by taping onto the circuit board.
    As for time, again I think the delay is done at the chip level, not the OS level, so it might not be possible to just jailbreak and load new code to bypass the delay between attempts.
    This could make the time for a brute force attack in the order of many years.
    Your only current option is brute force 256 bit AES. The encryption key is unique to each device, and the key for the key is not readable directly by hardware or firmware. Once the drive is encrypted - on boot - it is protected by the passcode delay and wipe after attempts. If you don't get the passcode in five (?) attempts, the key erases itself and you're back to brute force. Unless McAfee knows either a secret about AES or has devised a way to read or write the UID that defies reason, that is. The jailbreaking gets you nowhere because in order to jail break the phone you already knew the passcode. You obviously can't jailbreak a phone if it's locked. There are rumors someone has devised a way to beat the wipe after attempts thing, but you are still brute forcing a six digit passcode with a five second delay (through hardware) between tries - even if that tech exists it's not an hour.

    But, McAfee doesn't know what every government in the world doesn't. That's nuts.

  7. #7
    Corvette Enthusiast Kchrpm's Avatar
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    The article states that he plans to do it through social engineering.

    We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks.
    Get that weak shit off my track

  8. #8
    mAdminstrator Random's Avatar
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    That sounds like he's figuring out the passcode, not breaking the encryption.
    Whoomah!

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    Corvette Enthusiast Kchrpm's Avatar
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    Which will be fun to try, since the passcode was recently reset by the employer at the FBI's request. You'd think if that's all it was, they'd have done that by now.
    Get that weak shit off my track

  10. #10
    mAdminstrator Random's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kchrpm View Post
    Which will be fun to try, since the passcode was recently reset by the employer at the FBI's request. You'd think if that's all it was, they'd have done that by now.
    If I'm understanding the articles correctly, the iCloud pwd was reset, but not the phone's pwd.
    Whoomah!

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