[Cryptography] Of crypto and the iPhone

Dave Horsfall dave at horsfall.org
Fri Dec 3 12:41:03 EST 2021


First, the back-story: the battery in my iPhone finally died; the culprit 
was the QR scanner which I have to use practically each day :-(  I'll 
ignore the socio-political implications and just deal with the crypto 
stuff.

So, me being me I decided to replace it myself rather than send it to a 
dealer; seemed easy enough, right?  Quite a number of videos on the 'net 
explaining the process, step by step.

Well, in the process I managed to damage one of those flimsy cables that 
abounded within because the digitiser no longer worked; they are really 
fragile.

So, a new screen was called for; no problemo, and they are readily 
available; this is where the brown stuff hit the fan...  The fingerprint 
ID was as dead as a dodo (not even being seen by iOS), but the home button 
still worked; odd, because they share the same cable.

To cut a long story short, it seems that the screen and body are bonded 
together like Siamese twins with a cryptographic exchange, making screen 
replacement all but impossible without arcane incantations and for all I 
know the sacrifice of a goat.

So, does anyone have any details of this crypto mechanism?  Not one video 
mentioned it, and neither did the local Apple dealer; I understand that 
it's probably not possible to crack, but I'd like to know how it works all 
the same.

I insist upon the "right to repair"...

Thanks.

-- Dave


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