[Cryptography] iPhone hardware attacks

[Perry E. Metzger]

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.

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?

Perry
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Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com