[Cryptography] The FBI can (almost certainly) crack the San Bernardino iPhone without Apple's help

[Jerry Leichter]

> Just posted this, targeted more towards the general public than the people on this list, but I would appreciate feedback (and maybe an upvote on Hacker News):
> 
> http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/02/the-fbi-can-almost-certainly-crack-san.html
Sigh.  This has become a meme so quickly, and it's just wrong.

You can clone the memory chip of an iPhone.  But even in the iPhone 5C in question, that doesn't give you the chip UUID, which is embedded in the processor - which provides no way to read it.  Without the UUID, knowing the lock code doesn't tell you the encryption key.

We've spent so many years working with universal Turing machines and software and virtual machines that we sometimes forget that underneath it all there's actual hardware, and that universal replicators of hardware don't exist....

                                                        -- Jerry