Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

September 23, 2016

Avoid FBI Demands – Make Your Product Easily Crackable

Filed under: Cybersecurity,FBI,Government — Patrick Durusau @ 9:23 pm

Joshua Kopstein reports that Apple has discovered a way to dodge future requests for assistance from the FBI.

Make backups of the iOS 10 easily crackable.

From iOS 10 Has a ‘Severe’ Security Flaw, Says iPhone-Cracking Company:

Apple has introduced a “severe” flaw in its newly-released iOS 10 operating system that leaves backup data vulnerable to password-cracking tools, according to researchers at a smartphone forensics company that specializes in unlocking iPhones.

In a blog post published Friday by Elcomsoft, a Russian company that makes software to help law enforcement agencies access data from mobile devices, researcher Oleg Afonin showed that changes in the way local backup files are protected in iOS 10 has left backups dramatically more susceptible to password-cracking attempts than those produced by previous versions of Apple’s operating system.

Specifically, the company found that iOS 10 backups saved locally to a computer via iTunes allow password-cracking tools to try different password combinations at a rate of 6,000,000 attempts per second, more than 40 times faster than with backups created by iOS 9. Elcomsoft says this is due to Apple implementing a weaker password verification method than the one protecting backup data in previous versions. That means that cops and tech-savvy criminals could much more quickly and easily gain access to data from locally-stored iOS 10 backups than those produced by older versions.

After the NSA sat on a Cisco vulnerability for a decade or so, you have to wonder about the motives of Elcomsoft for quick disclosure.

Perhaps they wanted to take away an easy win from their potential competitors?

In any event, be aware that your iOS 10 has a vulnerability the size of a Mack truck.

Got any Russian readers, that’s roughly the equivalent to:

russian-truck-460

While looking for this image, I saw a number of impressive Russian trucks!

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