Comment on Leaked Cellebrite Tool Docs Reveal List of Phones That Can Be Unlocked
underisk@lemmy.ml 3 months agoThe Secure Enclave is a component on Apple system on chip (SoC) that is included on all recent iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and HomePod devices, and on a Mac with Apple silicon as well as those with the Apple T2 Security Chip. The Secure Enclave itself follows the same principle of design as the SoC does, containing its own discrete boot ROM and AES engine. The Secure Enclave also provides the foundation for the secure generation and storage of the keys necessary for encrypting data at rest, and it protects and evaluates the biometric data for Face ID and Touch ID.
support.apple.com/guide/security/…/web
The FBI wanted access to Apple’s encryption keys which they use to sign their software which would let them bypass these features. They don’t have ‘your’ encryption keys, they have their own that the FBI wanted to use to bypass these features. They eventually dropped it because they found a zero day exploit which apple fixed in later versions. That is why the newer phones aren’t vulnerable.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 months ago
Familiar, but based on your first comment about the benefits of hardware encryption over software encryption, and thus iOS being better than Android, perhaps you’re misinterpretting the specifics?
For the first point, the SE only stores keys at rest. The keys and hashes are still in memory when booted, otherwise the device wouldn’t be able to function. This works the same as software encryption, the key itself is just encrypted and stored on “disk” instead of in flash when off.
For the second, Apple’s software signing keys would not give the FBI access to a device. There is nothing to “turn over”. The signing of new software to bypass the lock was to remove the 10 retry reset. As above, there is no benefit to hardware encryption over software here.
The benefit hardware encryption brings is potential speed (which is certainly valuable, but not necessarily more secure or harder to crack).
underisk@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I’m not claiming iPhones are superior. I don’t care about dumb OS wars, just don’t put things on your phone expecting that they can’t be retrieved. That’s the only point I’m trying to make here.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 months ago
This was the hardware vs software comment I was debating, not the rest.
Also, software signing keys (like those requested by the FBI) would work for enabling brute force since that’s a change to the software, but not for direct access into SE. That would be like saying a firmware update could grant access to a LUKS partition without the passphrase. Not possible. If it was, no open source encryption would ever work.
underisk@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
The only thing that has successfully managed to thwart the FBI in their attempts to break into a phone was Apple’s hardware based encryption. To such an extent that they took legal and legislative actions to try and circumvent it. The specifics of how the encryption works is irrelevant to this argument, and you are more than welcome to consider that point conceded.