Question about the FBI vs Apple case

[Anthony Papillion]

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I've got a question about the FBI vs Apple case that I don't think has
been discussed before here (or at least I haven't seen it). It
pertains to reverse engineering and the FBI's seeming helplessness.

Software is software and we reverse engineer software all the time.
I'd assume that the government has some fairly competent programmers
on staff so why don't they just figure out what they need to change in
iOS that would allow them to disable the passcode entry count and just
/do it/. Similar to what malware writers do all the time.

I'd imagine that, somewhere in iOS code, there is a block of code
similar to

if(passwordEntryCount == 10){
    destroyPhoneAndKey();
}

Wouldn't this be trivial to spot in assembly code and get around it?
Isn't this really just a game the FBI is playing to make us think they
just can't get around Apple's 'oh so clever' schemes?

Or am I missing something here?

Thanks,
Anthony

- -- 
Anthony Papillion
Phone: (918) 533-9699
PGP:   0x53B04B15


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