#FBIvApple: Cellbrite was just a ruse. "The Greys" cracked it.

[Steve Kinney]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 04/13/2016 12:12 AM, Jack Liddy wrote:
> The person in charge of PR at Cellebrite deserves a raise after
> this.

Ditto the person or persons who found a way to attribute the crack
to someone outside the USG.

The SanBerdino* iPhone Massacre:  A Post Mortem

In a case involving "terrorism" and any "Middle Eastern person,"
the FBI has unlawful legal authority to hand a locked iPhone
containing material evidence to the NSA for cracking.  NSA hands
the phone back, locked up with timestamps undisturbed, along with
a pen drive holding the decrypted content of the device.  All of
this is done under "Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized
Information" cover, as befits the work of a Double Nought Spy
service with a license to do whatever the fuck they want "to
protect and preserve America's Freedom."

Apple got a great publicity boost, Uncle got a shot at legalizing
all of the above and more, and that's the whole story of the big
public controversy.  As for the super-duper security sideshow
about how Apple uses unique hard coded keys to encrypt iPhone
contents, OK fine:  It's actually a decent system, and having the
details out there will result in a bump in sales to "security
conscious" consumers including Apple's /large/ consumer base in
the Federal sector.

Anybody who doubts that the NSA can routinely crack iPhone
encryption - when they have the physical device in hand - haven't
thought it through:  The problem is to read one number stored on
an IC chip.  We have the technology to do that, and the NSA has
the budget, facilities, mandate, and as many practice iPhones as
Apple will sell them.  They also have the resources to "borrow"
any technical documents they need from Apple, with or without
asking permission or telling Apple it happened.  iPhones are
common and reading out the contents of "locked" devices is one of
the reasons why the U.S. has a big budget technical intelligence
service.  It is more than safe to assume that reading out a locked
iPhone is a solved problem at NSA, a documented routine procedure.
 Processing the paperwork for an FBI request based on the word
"terrorism" probably took longer than cracking the iPhone.

The pretended "inability" of the FBI to obtain the contents of a
"Terrorist iPhone" was Security Theater, pure and simple.
Checking out the details of the narrative was necessary to
accurately assess the SanBerdino iPhone Massacre as Security
Theater, but that does not mean it was ever anything but that:  A
set piece show, attempting to set a precedent legalizing forced
Federal back doors in all digital devices made by vendors under
U.S. jurisdiction.

[ * See Frank Zappa and the Mothers, Let's Make The Water Turn
Black. ]



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)
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=FKrz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----