<story><title>The Feds Can Now Probably Unlock Every iPhone Model</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/02/26/government-can-access-any-apple-iphone-cellebrite/#50ba3a5d667a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eugeniub</author><text>This is not true. You cannot just clone the data and run passcodes against it, because the data is not encrypted by your passcode. Instead, each file on iOS 11 is encrypted with a different AES 256-bit key, and cracking even one 256-bit key through exhaustive search is thought to be out of reach of humankind (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;security.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;6141&amp;#x2F;amount-of-simple-operations-that-is-safely-out-of-reach-for-all-humanity&amp;#x2F;6149#6149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;security.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;6141&amp;#x2F;amount-of-...&lt;/a&gt;). The file keys are wrapped by, among other things, the device&amp;#x27;s Unique ID, a 256-bit key generated by the Secure Enclave, and accessible only to the Secure Enclave, not any other hardware or software running on an iOS device.&lt;p&gt;In the end, the only options are: bruteforcing passcodes on the original device while attempting to trick the device into allowing more than 10 failures, or prying open the Secure Enclave to obtain the Unique ID — both options a lot more complicated than just cloning the data and trying passcodes on it.</text></item><item><author>caymanjim</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m too lazy to find a link for it, but last time I read about Cellebrite, they were cloning the data and simply trying unlock codes in sequence until one worked. They could restore the cloned data before each try, or possibly do it on custom hardware or an emulator, and start with a fresh copy each time, so they never triggered &amp;quot;erase after 10 failures&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s a pretty straightforward approach, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t scale well. Works for targeted cracking of high-value targets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>userbinator</author><text>&lt;i&gt;or prying open the Secure Enclave to obtain the Unique ID&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;People have been cracking secure coprocessors of the type used in payment cards, TPMs, and the like for a long time, dare I say even those which were designed to a higher level of security than Apple&amp;#x27;s. The fact that there is an entire phone attached to it doesn&amp;#x27;t make much of a difference, but the technology behind this (FIB, microprobing, etc.) has been steadily dropping in price and increasing in availability for a long time.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Feds Can Now Probably Unlock Every iPhone Model</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/02/26/government-can-access-any-apple-iphone-cellebrite/#50ba3a5d667a</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eugeniub</author><text>This is not true. You cannot just clone the data and run passcodes against it, because the data is not encrypted by your passcode. Instead, each file on iOS 11 is encrypted with a different AES 256-bit key, and cracking even one 256-bit key through exhaustive search is thought to be out of reach of humankind (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;security.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;6141&amp;#x2F;amount-of-simple-operations-that-is-safely-out-of-reach-for-all-humanity&amp;#x2F;6149#6149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;security.stackexchange.com&amp;#x2F;questions&amp;#x2F;6141&amp;#x2F;amount-of-...&lt;/a&gt;). The file keys are wrapped by, among other things, the device&amp;#x27;s Unique ID, a 256-bit key generated by the Secure Enclave, and accessible only to the Secure Enclave, not any other hardware or software running on an iOS device.&lt;p&gt;In the end, the only options are: bruteforcing passcodes on the original device while attempting to trick the device into allowing more than 10 failures, or prying open the Secure Enclave to obtain the Unique ID — both options a lot more complicated than just cloning the data and trying passcodes on it.</text></item><item><author>caymanjim</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m too lazy to find a link for it, but last time I read about Cellebrite, they were cloning the data and simply trying unlock codes in sequence until one worked. They could restore the cloned data before each try, or possibly do it on custom hardware or an emulator, and start with a fresh copy each time, so they never triggered &amp;quot;erase after 10 failures&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s a pretty straightforward approach, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t scale well. Works for targeted cracking of high-value targets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gruez</author><text>I think he got the the idea right. Yes, you need the secret key burned into the CPU to decrypt anything, and yes, you can&amp;#x27;t easily extract the keys. but his claim is that by fully restoring the flash storage (presumably where the retry counter is stored), it&amp;#x27;s possible to bypass the &amp;quot;erase data after 10 failed attempts&amp;quot; policy by constantly resetting the counter back to its original state. It might take a while (you might have to go through the boot process each time, but for a 6 digit pin and 30 seconds each attempt, it&amp;#x27;s still less than a year.</text></comment>