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Encryption Twitter Apple Technology

Apple Used the DMCA to Take Down a Tweet Containing an iPhone Encryption Key (vice.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Security researchers are accusing Apple of abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to take down a viral tweet and several Reddit posts that discuss techniques and tools to hack iPhones. Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Vice: On Sunday, a security researcher who focuses on iOS and goes by the name Siguza posted a tweet containing what appears to be an encryption key that could be used to reverse engineer the Secure Enclave Processor, the part of the iPhone that handles data encryption and stores other sensitive data. Two days later, a law firm that has worked for Apple in the past sent a DMCA Takedown Notice to Twitter, asking for the tweet to be removed. The company complied, and the tweet became unavailable until today, when it reappeared. In a tweet, Siguza said that the DMCA claim was "retracted." Apple confirmed that it sent the original DMCA takedown request, and later asked Twitter to put the Tweet back online.

At the same time, Reddit received several DMCA takedown requests for posts on r/jailbreak, a popular subreddit where iPhone security researchers and hackers discuss techniques to jailbreak Apple devices, according to the subreddit's moderators. "Admins have not reached out to us in regards to these removals. We have no idea who is submitting these copyright claims," one moderator wrote.
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Apple Used the DMCA to Take Down a Tweet Containing an iPhone Encryption Key More

Apple Used the DMCA to Take Down a Tweet Containing an iPhone Encryption Key

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  • Seems like that's a pretty good use of a takedown request actually, to take something down that is truly proprietary and by rights belongs to Apple exclusively.

  • Paging Streisand... (Score:3)

    by thomn8r ( 635504 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:44PM (#59509322)
    please pick up the white courtesy phone
  • You can't copyright or trademark a number or math. A crypto key is both those things.

    • Re:Bad Apple. Bad. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:56PM (#59509402)
      But Apple is more than free to file copyrights on their crypto keys. We expect the full keys to become a matter of accessible public information if they're submitted for such registration, which of course circumvents the whole point of a private key. But I assume all this flies far above the heads of most legal professionals.

      • Re:Bad Apple. Bad. (Score:4, Informative)

        by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:07PM (#59509472)

        You can't copyright crypto keys, as there's no creative component and they are purely functional.

        • Complete audio silence shouldn't be copyrighted, yet AFAIK there's a few silent audio tracks out there. The authors have successfully copyrighted particular lengths of zeroes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )

            Neither of those are random and would require some thought to produce and therefore I can see a possible argument for them being creative works.

            • A sealed room would also produce the same audio tracks, I fail to see how any thought is required to produce them.

              • People have tried to copyright all possible touch tone phone numbers, as music, just to make a mockery of this.

                All 0s audio file is even stupider.

            • Neither of those are random and would require some thought to produce and therefore I can see a possible argument for them being creative works.

              Encryption keys aren't random, either.

              So, you write a music composition program. Once launched, with no human intervention, it can "compose" human-sounding music.

              You wrote the code that created the output. Do you own the output, too? Wasn't it ultimately an expression of your creative process?

              That's different than, say, Photoshop; where the fruits of the developers' "creative process" still ultimately doesn't produce any "art", no matter how long it sits there, running.

              But since the program that produces th

          • Makes the question of sampling a little more interesting.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Chaset ( 552418 )

            Not defending the silliness of copyrighting silence, but I read that the original "composition" was intended to be the "silence" as recorded in front of a live audience. That means it included the occasional muffled coughs, whispers, shuffling in seats, musicians turning pages, etc, so it's not quite all zeros.

            It's sort of like a photograph of a typical street scene. The "creativity" is not in the creation of the scene, but in the "artist" choosing to capture that particular segment of reality. (quotes b

        • Crypto keys aren't just functional. They are just a number. You can't copyright or even trademark a pure numbers, they are specifically forbidden.

      • But Apple is more than free to file copyrights on their crypto keys. We expect the full keys to become a matter of accessible public information if they're submitted for such registration,

        Copyright is not a trademark. You have to file for trademark protection. You don't have to file for copyright, though it does make it easier to win copyright cases as you don't have to provide evidence that you created the work.

      • And you have to register to actually bring a copyright suit in federal court.

    • You can copyright a number. Super Mario Bros. 1 is a 81920-digit hex number.

      What you can't do is copyright a number that has no creative value behind it - you can't copyright randomly generated data.

    • Wait a minute... according to the usual American logic which is used in politics, it can't be both a number and math. Pick only one!

  • Changing Keys (Score:3)

    by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:54PM (#59509382)

    Apple likely deactivated the code that was leaked while it was down, so now it's a dead issue and the post could go back up.

  • For posterity (Score:5, Informative)

    by LenKagetsu ( 6196102 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @04:54PM (#59509386)

    iPhone11,8 17C5053a sepi 9f974f1788e615700fec73006cc2e6b 533b0c6c2b8cf653bdbd347bc18 97bdd66b11815f036e94c 951250c4dda916c00

    Spaces added to avoid /.'s filters.

    • Even if they did come after this and every other post like it, someone would just upload an image to imgur or other sites of this really cool flag for an imaginary country that they came up with. What an awfully strange set of colored stripes.

      Hell, there's even a particular cipher that you could feed this very post into that would magically spit out that same key. The horse is already out of the barn Apple. Trying to lock the doors now isn't going to do any good.

    • Re:For posterity (Score:4, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:03PM (#59509792)

      Also

      EmergencyServices2,0 01189998819991197253

  • Print the key out on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and on stickers for computer loving taggers. Lets see Apple try to redact that!
  • Are doomed to repeat it. Back when Digg was relevent.
  • It just happens to be titled 17C5053a sepi 9f974f1788e615700fec73006cc2e6b533 b0c6c2b8cf653bdbd347bc1897bdd66b 11815f036e94c951250c4dda916c00. One two, Apple don't sue!
    • The question is, is that still illegal? Clearly you're not working on a book. You claim you are just as a means to get the number out there. On the other hand, your claim is a creative work in itself (albeit a brief one).

      I wonder if something implicit is illegal though. For example, if I mention that :
      17C5053a sepi 9f974f1788e615700fec73006cc2e6b533 b0c6c2b8cf653bdbd347bc1897bdd66b 11815f036e94c951250c4dda916bfe is not an encryption key, and;
      17C5053a sepi 9f974f1788e615700fec73006cc2e6b533 b0c6c2b8cf6

  • that security is fundamentally not taken seriously by anyone.

    Real security would not even have this feature available to it.

    If there is a recovery key, then you have weak security! Once the actual key is lost, it needs to be effectively erased.

  • They used this same tactic and lost in federal court. What's the difference here?
  • Companies have a legal obligation to protect their corporate IP. Which this key definitely falls under. They are also legally obligated to protect the privacy of their customers. Which this key being published is specifically counter to keeping their customer's information private. This is true in Europe and the state of California as well. So, they are acting on a legal obligation that would cause them to be heavily fined and even have charges brought against them. What I have learned is that anti-fanbois

  • Summary says "an encryption key that could be used to reverse engineer the Secure Enclave Processor."

    That does not tell me a whole lot. Some context is missing. What does it mean to reverse engineer the processor? I suspect it doesn't mean that this key somehow will help me to eventually end up with a set of photomasks that I could have a foundry use to produce more of these. What does this key do for those who possess it (and whatever other tools/knowledge necessary to make use of it)?

    • So google it.

      The relevant bit here is there is a number (crypto key) that apple doesn't want released. It's got released, and apple created a Streisand effect trying to protect it, where in trying to take it down they actually caused it to become widely spread and talked about.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The bad old days of encryption a "munition" but now the private says what will fall under a DMCA takedown request.

  • hey wait (Score:4, Funny)

    by v1 ( 525388 ) on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:01PM (#59509788) Homepage Journal

    that's the combination on my luggage!

  • Sounds to me like it was a flawed attempt at damage control. By issuing the DMCA takedown, Apple basically confirmed that the key is valid. After someone else noticed the DMCA takedown being filed, there was most likely a "You fool! you've just told them it's a good key! Retract the takedown before anyone _else_ notices", but alas, it was too late.

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