[Cryptography] Apple ordered to decrypt cellphone

[Mark Seiden]

On 2/17/16 10:51 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Mark Seiden <mis at seiden.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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/
>>
>> 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.
>


according to associated press:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/tim_cook_apple_will_fight_orde.html

it was a county-owned work phone.

"The couple took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cell
phones, crushing them beyond the FBI's ability to recover information
from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer; it has
not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential
electronic evidence in a nearby lake.

Farook was not carrying his work iPhone during the attack. It was
discovered after a subsequent search. It was not known whether Farook
forgot about the iPhone or did not care whether investigators found it."

there's therefore speculation that it has nothing useful on it, since
they bothered to destroy or hide their personal devices and not this
one which he wasn't carrying on the day of the attack.