On 3/2/16, Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> wrote:

I keep wondering what the odds are that the NSA has no method available to decap the chips within an iPhone and extract secret keying material. I suspect they must be able to do that, even from one of the more modern iPhones with hardware based security modules.

If IBM can image and arrange single atoms, you can bet the NSA can do something as simple as ablate them. Got the shakes and cook a few extra along the way... no problem, chips still have much larger features. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms)

The techniques for doing this sort of thing are both well known and in the open literature. Even skilled amateurs manage such feats on older hardware quite routinely -- I've personally witnessed chips being decapped and put into university grade equipment for analysis. Given the NSA's budget and mission, it seems highly, highly unlikely that such methods are unavailable to them.

This brings up another question. FBI officials have testified under oath that there is no government agency that can extract such information on their behalf. Is that very careful spin, willful ignorance, or simple perjury?

Doesn't matter, they just contract out to their good ole boys at IBM or their favorite university.