Gandydancer’s Comments

• Feb 20th, 2016 @ 11:06am

  Re: Apple Must Open The San Bernardino Terrorist's IPhone.

  on No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  The claimed authority to require Apple's assistance is the All Writs Act, and All Writs does not apply if there is specific law. Which in the case of communications devices there arguably is. So you may be wrong on that account.
• Feb 20th, 2016 @ 10:59am

  Re: Re: Re:

  on No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  If the only input that is missing is the 8-character PIN then the number of tries in a pure brute-force method is the number of possible 8-character PINs. The key-lengthening etc merely imposes computational delay, and if an iPhone can do it in a reasonable amount of time then more capable hardware will breeze through that. So it comes down to my first if.
• Feb 20th, 2016 @ 10:29am

  Re: Re: Send the phone to NSA

  on No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  Of course you're without the PIN, that's what you're looking to determine. But the number of rounds introduces nothing other than a computational delay between trying a pin and testing for a successful decrypt. Saying, "Without the PIN, there is nothing to find" makes no sense.
• Feb 20th, 2016 @ 10:12am

  Re: Re: Re: or maybe it's more calculated than it appears...

  on No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  I don't believe for a moment that decrypting the data on the phone is impossible for Apple, though the exact method specified as the default may not work (but read the last paragraph of the first quote).
  
  My understanding is that the phone in question is an old model that doesn't implement the "secure enclave".
  
  But if the data can be extracted then it's just stupid to do the decryption in the phone.
• Feb 20th, 2016 @ 9:58am

  Re: Re: or maybe it's more calculated than it appears...

  on No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
  "...if the user chose a decent password a brute-force search would still take prohibitively long."
  
  The FBI appears to believe that a brute force method will work, and I know no reason to disbelieve them. Most people don't, after all, use "decent" passwords. And my understanding is that the allowed password isn't very long. The encryption key is, I understand, from a hash with the device id, but if the latter is known that doesn't increase the number of necessary tries.