[Cryptography] Apple ordered to decrypt cellphone

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Mark Seiden <mis at seiden.com> wrote:
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> On 2/16/16 9:28 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
>> FYI -- Below is the OCR'd version of today's court
>> order to Apple to decrypt a cellphone.
>>
>> https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/02/17/apple_order.pdf
>
> decryption isn't what the court ordered.
>
> rather, it's firmware allowing the FBI to brute force the unlock
> code for the phone (without the usual timeouts imposed by software
> to avoid that, and without activating the protective "erase memory"
> features.
>
> the original article and the comments abundantly point this out:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/17/apple_help_fbi_san_bernardino/
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> i'll save you some time:
>
> this is the county-provided work phone of one of the san
> bernadino shooters, who supposedly destroyed their personal
> phones and hard drive has not been found.
>
> it appears iphones can boot a signed image in recovery
> mode. that's what the requested system image would be.
>
> the 5c does not have a fingerprint reader.
>
> ocr-introduced typos: model 5c, RAM.


So it was a government owned phone? Even less reason to go to the mat over this.