News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs. Parent comment

Re:iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs by Sanddancer on Saturday February 06, 2016 @04:15PM (#11049902)
Looking at teardowns, like the one at ifixit [1], the touch id sensor seems to be a pretty standard imaging sensor that heads to an NXP chip. I'd be willing to bet that the encryption of the print happens on the nxp chip instead of the imager, so if the NSA/whoever were doing a "repair", they'd probably just put an MiTM chip on that insecure path for later playback. Against a state actor, Touch ID is a triviality.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+5s+Teardown/17383

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:iPhones 'disabled' if Apple detects third-party repairs by qb45 on Saturday February 06, 2016 @07:00PM (#11050710)
Maybe they want to move encryption onto the sensor chip in future generations, because the scheme you described is indeed a joke.

But to be honest, it's not like fingerprints are such a hard to obtain secret in the first place.

[ Parent | on HN ]