Apple Just Killed The 'GrayKey' iPhone Passcode Hack (forbes.com) 85
Apple's newest version of iOS has rendered the GrayKey hacking tech useless, a report said Wednesday. How Apple pulled it off wasn't immediately clear, but it would have a huge implication for the law enforcement agencies around the world that have relied on GrayKey to break into locked iPhones. Forbes reports: Apple has put up what may be an insurmountable wall. Multiple sources familiar with the GrayKey tech tell Forbes the device can no longer break the passcodes of any iPhone running iOS 12 or above. On those devices, GrayKey can only do what's called a "partial extraction," sources from the forensic community said. That means police using the tool can only draw out unencrypted files and some metadata, such as file sizes and folder structures.
Previously, GrayKey used "brute forcing" techniques to guess passcodes and had found a way to get around Apple's protections preventing such repeat guesses. But no more. And if it's impossible for GrayKey, which counts an ex-Apple security engineer among its founders, it's a safe assumption few can break iPhone passcodes. Police officer Captain John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department in Minnesota said of the claim iOS 12 was preventing GrayKey from unlocking iPhones: "That's a fairly accurate assessment as to what we have experienced."
Previously, GrayKey used "brute forcing" techniques to guess passcodes and had found a way to get around Apple's protections preventing such repeat guesses. But no more. And if it's impossible for GrayKey, which counts an ex-Apple security engineer among its founders, it's a safe assumption few can break iPhone passcodes. Police officer Captain John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department in Minnesota said of the claim iOS 12 was preventing GrayKey from unlocking iPhones: "That's a fairly accurate assessment as to what we have experienced."
Go, Apple! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently STILL the only phone OEM STILL looking out for the USER'S Privacy...
Re: Go, Apple! (Score:2)
Hilarious to see people bashing apple for positioning data security over fashion.
GTFO.
Re: Go, Apple! (Score:1)
The anonymous ass-hat is exhibiting confirmation bias. He can't believe in such an important decision like which $1000 phone to purchase, he made the wrong choice. He isn't mentally equipped to say "hmm, maybe I should have made a different choice. The other ones are far more concerned with my privacy than the one I chose."
He has no argument to stand on, so he throws feces around hoping no one will judge his bad decisions
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Apparently STILL the only phone OEM STILL looking out for the USER'S Privacy...
Is that true?
Does anyone know how Pixel stands up against like tools?
Re:Go, Apple! (Score:4, Insightful)
Its a phone made by google. I wouldn't bet too much on privacy. Who knows about encryption though..
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Either... Unfortunately that sounds like most companies these days. Its hard out here in the streets of the interweb.
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last I read, only IOS had the entire file system encrypted
Re: Go, Apple! (Score:2)
It's an option. Some users prefer not to so as to parse backups for files. Or at least it used to be, not sure now
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https://www.google.com/search?q=does+android+encrypt+file+system&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
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Starting with iOS 4, Apple included a âoedata protectionâ feature to encrypt all data stored a device. But unlike Android, Apple doesn't use the full-disk encryption paradigm. Instead, they employ a file-based encryption approach that individually encrypts each file on the device.Nov 24, 2016
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Yep, that's an option in APFS, which iOS uses.
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Its Closed Source. From Apple. And the iGadgets are known to send packets of encrypted data to Apple servers when linked to a wifi connection.
What's in the big packets? Who knows? It's encrypted.
You can trust Apple. You know you want to trust Apple. Just do it.
What "big packets?
Define "Big"
Define the frequency.
I'll wait.
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Of course you can't trust them. But you can distrust them less.
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Apparently STILL the only phone OEM STILL looking out for the USER'S Privacy...
Is that true?
Does anyone know how Pixel stands up against like tools?
Well, considering there isn't such a tool for Android phones, I'd say that is your answer.
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Are there any high end phones that aren't encrypted by default now? Has anyone cracked the latest Galaxy S or Pixel phones?
Apple is obviously the biggest target and thus gets the most attention from crackers.
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Are there any high end phones that aren't encrypted by default now? Has anyone cracked the latest Galaxy S or Pixel phones?
Apple is obviously the biggest target and thus gets the most attention from crackers.
Doesn't that statement fly directly in the face of all you Slashtards CONSTANTLY crowing about how ANDROID has the most marketshare, and thus would also be the BIGGEST TARGET?
You idiots are just like Trump: You'll say ANYTHING to advance whatever LIE du jour...
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iPhones are the most common type of phone that law enforcement are likely to encounter, simply because there are so few models and they all share common software. After that it's probably Samsung Galaxy phones.
Overall Android is the large majority of the market, but there are so many different handsets all with different techniques needed to unlock them, if it can be done at all...
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iPhones are the most common type of phone that law enforcement are likely to encounter, simply because there are so few models and they all share common software. After that it's probably Samsung Galaxy phones.
Overall Android is the large majority of the market, but there are so many different handsets all with different techniques needed to unlock them, if it can be done at all...
Nice try.
Bullshit.
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https://deviceatlas.com/blog/m... [deviceatlas.com]
Top 9 best selling phones in the US are iPhones.
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https://deviceatlas.com/blog/m... [deviceatlas.com]
Top 9 best selling phones in the US are iPhones.
Fascinating to see you try to refute the attitude of all Fandroids on Slashdot... When it suits your purposes.
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till the find the china backdoor that apple put in.
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As opposed to the wide-open China front door that Google put in Android.
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Whenever you save or do something on your phone, take a moment to think: can this be used against me? If it can, don't save or do it!
And just to throw the police off create a bunch of files like "masterUSPlan.doc" with nothing but wombat images. Then when asked about the "wombats" you know they have dug into your phone and you can tell them all about how wombats have ruined your life.
Re: For now (Score:2)
Fuck, man, how did you know about the wombats??? Are you working for them? They're INSIDE THE HOUSE now. I can hear them in the walls. Nobody believes me!!
Still pretty useful to police (Score:1)
It still could be useful to pull out some un-encrypted content - I think maybe recent photos would not be encrypted for example, and any app that did not specify to encrypt app storage with app not active would not have encrypted databases either (though many do).
Not sure if the contact database would be encrypted, but probably...
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No, all "content" is encrypted. It's the meta data (file sizes, folder structure) that is unencrypted.
No photos, videos, etc, are left unencrypted.
Is GreyKey stopped at that level, that is question (Score:3)
Actually, the article is likely a bit off about that. The iPhone uses encrypted APFS, you shouldn't be able to get much other than "yep, there's a file system there".
What I was getting at is that I thought GreyKey was still getting past the basic whole file system encryption, but that it was stymied getting to individual app files that had been encrypted until the app opened...
That's how I read it anyway, otherwise why even bother to mention GreyKey could "still access unencrypted files" if it couldn't even
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Thanks, I wasn't sure just what GreyKey was doing. Then I guess the idea they could "access unencrypted files" is just totally wrong, as there are none without a filesystem...
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What I was getting at is that I thought GreyKey was still getting past the basic whole file system encryption, but that it was stymied getting to individual app files that had been encrypted until the app opened...
Nobody ever got past the encryption. People managed to find the passcode - and if you have the passcode then you can unlock the phone and access all the files on it.
Finding the passcode could be done in theory by trying out all passcodes. Apple prevents this or tries to prevent this by making you wait longer until you can try another passcode; more than an hour after ten attempts. Or you can set up your phone to erase everything after ten wrong attempts. _That_ protection is what they got around.
But y
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No, all "content" is encrypted. It's the meta data (file sizes, folder structure) that is unencrypted.
Everything is encrypted at least with a key built into the CPU, and a key stored on the flash drive. The key on the flash drive means that the whole iPhone can be erased in a millisecond by erasing that key. _Most_ things use the passcode as an additional key.
Things that don't use the passcode are those that Apple wants to be available even if you don't unlock your phone. For example, you can _take_ photos without unlocking the phone, and those photos could be extracted until you unlock your phone and th
Re: Still pretty useful to police (Score:4, Informative)
When you activate a PIN / Touch ID / FaceID it uses the computed has as an encryption key for the entire user filesystem. Everything gets encrypted, and has for years.
Re: Still pretty useful to police (Score:2)
No, not exactly. But close.
Those hashes are used to reverse a hash of a master key for your system which unlocks the file system. That way, both that hash and your pin code work. You need a master key, and then your authentication vectors re-encrypt the master key. You therefore have multiple avenues of logging in and authenticating, because each way provides you with a key you can unlock
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For 6+ year, everything on iOS is encrypted all the time and you can't turn it off.
All that changes is policy around how the key material is managed - some of that policy is mandatory access controls and some of it is discretionary.
Welcome! (Score:1)
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Only the people in charge use desktop computers, junior.
Including the people who write the 'apps' they allow you to run on your little gadgets.
If I were a tech savvy terrorist (Score:3)
I'd be wondering right now whether they actually can't crack my iPhone, or if they're just saying that so that I will keep using it, thinking it's "safe."
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MS-DOS isn't really good enough, because the communications has to sit somewhere on the machine queued up for the PGP program to encrypt.
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I'd be wondering right now whether they actually can't crack my iPhone, or if they're just saying that so that I will keep using it, thinking it's "safe."
If I were a terrorist I wouldn't be keeping anything on my phone, i or otherwise.
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If you were a tech savvy terrorist, you would've started using a much longer passcode a long time ago. The system only worked quickly on 4-digit passcodes (6.5 minutes), and 6-digit codes were reportedly up to 11 hours, which is 660 minutes or 10 times longer. Even if we assume that simple pattern held (every 2 digits increases the time by a factor of 10), a 10 digit code would be 1100 hours or 45 days, and a 14 digit code would be 12.5 years. In all likelihood, the rate of increase was considerably worse t
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LOL
Already blocked since iOS 11.4.1? (Score:2)
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So, when iOS wants to decrypt the hard drive it first has to retrieve the master key using the PIN.