Lot of cope and denial in these threads. Yes the same-day is probably a rosy estimate based off people using 6 digit codes or something easy to crack, doesn’t mean it’s false or that they can’t hypothetically target longer alpha-numeric passwords. For all we know they might not even be brute-forcing and could be conducting some sort of exploit that over time reveals the encryption keys themselves in some way.
I’m still very curious about the nature of the mechanisms of action. I assume they manage to bypass the basic lock-out against entering too many passcodes too quickly somehow which is what enables this. If throttling could be properly enforced (to say nothing of something like 10 attempts and it refuses all future attempts and erases the key type of thing) this type of attack wouldn’t be practical for anyone using anything above a 6 digit numerical passcode in any reasonable timeframe. I wonder if they exploit wireless radios including cellular, wifi, bluetooth and force some code on the phones via these usually-on chips that enables this via exploiting problems in their architecture. Perhaps something that locks up, prevents functioning or resets certain checks via flooding parts of the hardware/software from these points of access. Or if it really is purely phy/log access to the lightning/usb-c port.
This looks like old news to me. Years ago I’ve read that three letter agencies can access phones without getting the access code or bio-metrics from the phone owner.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayshift
- And it was in the news recently because of the Trump shooter : https://www.theverge.com/24199357/fbi-trump-rally-shooter-phone-thomas-matthew-crooks-quantico-mdtf
- https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities (2021, crazy story)
“lawful access” lol
I doubt it. That info is first party and not to be trusted since it is obviously marketing. Any third party article that backs up their claims?
Isn’t it an open secret that powerful entities (like spying institutions) can get into pretty much every system if they have physical access? Why is this not plausible
No. You watch too many Movies. Yes there were attempts from state sponsored actors to weaken encryption algorithms. But is encryption easy to crack? No.
Dude what encryption are you talking about? Hardware storage encryption is just by now getting more widely adapted, the phone I used till a year ago didn’t even support any encryption.
Sure, aes-256 with secure password only stored in your mind is quasi 100℅ safe, but that is not how most devices handle their “encryption”.
If the key for the encryption is on the device, and either stored in an unencrypted TPM or unencrypted storage, its not a matter if breaking the encryption (quite impossible) but breaking the software/hardware (quite possible for someone with good enough forensics and skilled programmers)
Also also: encryption only helps if the device is off, which is seldom the case with phones.
Because they would have to possess technology that doesn’t exist in order to circumvent actual encryption without a key.
If I adequately encrypt my own data, and keep the keys a secret, I could hand my hard drive off to Microsoft and they could spend billions running all their AI clusters trying to crack it, and it would be a futile endeavor.
If the government had the technology to bypass encryption or quickly and inexpensively crack it, they’d use it for a whole lot more than unlocking smartphones. They could basically control the flow of Bitcoin on a whim with such tech.
I am aware that there are secure encryptions, but android isn’t hardware encrypted isn’t it? Haven’t used google android for a while, but no encryption was one of the reasons I moved away from it.
No idea about apple, but longer startup times for storage encryption doesn’t seem like a very apple thing to do
Also phones are so seldom turned off, and if the system is running storage encryption becomes less of a concern as the key is somewhere in the ram
Phones are really not that hard to compromise from an encryption standpoint. All they need to do is break a pin most of the time. Also the pin is very predicable and probably can be pulled from a cloud service like google.
It is actually pretty horrifying to think about
