[Cryptography] More Apple news

[Arnold Reinhold]

On Thurday, 3 Mar 2016 23:48 Viktor Dukhovni called our attention to:

> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/san-bernardino-da-says-seized-iphone-may-hold-dormant-cyber-pathogen/ <http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/san-bernardino-da-says-seized-iphone-may-hold-dormant-cyber-pathogen/>
> 
>   "The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to
>    the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may
>    contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that
>    it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen
>    that endangers San Bernardino's infrastructure," according to a court
>    filing (PDF) by Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County District
>    Attorney.
> 
> This seems so far beyond remotely plausible that one wonders whether
> the responsible lawyers can be disbarred for blatant fabrication…

Take the San Bernardino County District Attorney at his word. This opens whole new line of defense for Apple and could give the court an easy out. Remember the FBI has been demanding that Apple connect the suspect iPhone to Apple's computers to upload a modified iOS operating system with the FBI then accessing that iPhone remotely (presumably via a connection to the Apple network) to try all the 4-digit key combinations. If there is even a small chance the iPhone contains a “dormant cyber pathogen” then the procedure the FBI has asked for carries the risk that the phone could infect Apple’s infrastructure and from there hundreds of millions of computers that connect to Apple services. The potential liability for Apple is unbounded and the danger to the public enormous. 

Apple is not in the cyber-warfare business and cannot be expected to have the kind of high-grade software containment facility and expertise needed to safely deal with weaponized software at this level. Furthermore the government neglected to even warn Apple of the danger until yesterday. The court could throw out the FBI order on that basis alone, without having to reach the trickier and precedential issues of undue burden and compelled speech this case presents.

Arnold Reinhold
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20160304/cb5f66a6/attachment.html>