No, they can't. A quick update to recent hardware practices: modern SoCs like Apple's have something called "Secure Enclave Processor" that's on-die. This is the first thing to start when the chip is powered up, the thing that loads a cryptographically-signed bootloader, and the thing that gates a lot of IO with the outside world (like the NAND).

Hardware encryption on consumer hardware has existed for over a decade (look up Intel's TPM), and while it hasn't obviously taken hold on the more open Intel world, locked-down hardware platforms like Apple's top-to-bottom design has had much more liberty in implementing secure computing.

Furthermore, all debug/probing features can be disabled by fuses at the factory. The manufacturer can test the chip with those features on, and once verified, blow those fuses. No-one's JTAG-debugging that chip, not even Apple.

That said, Apple's focus on security and privacy ramped up in recent years. You want more secure, get more recent hardware. The downside, of course, is that if even Apple can't hack the software... neither can you.

However, without more information, this does not tell us whether it is possible in this case. The obvious implementation for a secure enclave resisting this sort of attack is to only allow key-preserving updates when already in unlocked state (which would be the case for any normal user update). All other cases should destroy the user keymat, even if the update is validly signed by Apple. This would be done by the hardware and/or previous firmware before it loaded the new firmware so you can't create an update that bypasses this step.

If this isn't how the secure enclave works now, I'll bet it will be in the next version (or update if possible).

I'm also confused by a lot of this since don't you need the password anyway to upgrade?

I bet if Apple is forced to comply with this order they will make sure that they will find a way to design the iPhone such that they physically can't comply with similar requests in the future.

Yes, they can. The particular phone in question is from before the Secure Enclave Processor

Some people trot the argument that it's OK for the government to compel apple to deliver the backdoored firmware because the measures it would circumvent are not of cryptographic/information-theoretical nature.

Then one could expand that argument by saying that compelling physical reverse-engineering is also OK because the devices are not built to be physically impossible (read: laws of nature) to pry open.

When a passcode is entered, the SoC queries the Secure Enclave with the passcode. If the passcode is correct, the Secure Enclave responds with the decryption key for the flash storage.

The best Apple could do is sign a malicious update to the Secure Enclave firmware that either removes the time delays or dumps the keys. However, some people suspect the SE erases its secrets on firmware update, although this behavior isn't documented in Apple's security reports.

Dumping the Secure Enclave would not result in the keys necessary to read the files on the filesystem. Each file has a unique key, which is wrapped by a class key, and for some classes, the class key is wrapped by a key derived from the passcode. If you don't have the passcode, you can't unwrap any of the keys (Page 12 of https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf).

To my knowledge, all keys are still wrapped with the UID, and the UID is still a factory-burned SoC key (not accessible to any firmware). Possible to extract, but not easy to do at scale.

Tim's position today might not be apple's position tomorrow. Apple is a large publicly traded company. They owe a duty only to shareholders. Fighting this fight will probably impact the bottom line. Tim's continuation may turn on the outcome.

Cooperation may see Apple hurt. The perception of cooperation was part of RIM's fall from grace. Non-cooperation may also cause issues. Through it's various agencies, the US government is Apple's largest customer, as it is Microsoft's. Large contracts might be on the line should Apple not play ball. Either way, this order has probably wounded Apple.

I'm having trouble finding numbers, but I seriously doubt this. The reason that's true (or more likely true) for Microsoft, is Windows. The US gov't has massive site licenses for Windows and most of MS's software portfolio. Apple is used where in the US government? Some cell phones? A few public affairs offices that convinced their purchasing officer to buy a Mac Pro for video editing? Maybe some labs that wanted a unixy OS and, again, convinced their purchasing officer to buy a Mac Pro?

Per: http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1193125-14-...

The bulk of Apple's revenue comes from outside the US. Perhaps the US government is their largest single customer (I still hold this is a dubious claim), but it is not essential to their continued existence. They would do just fine without those sales.

But remember, iPhones and MacBooks are quite popular everywhere, including US government procurements (e.g., https://37prime.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/nasa-mars-science-l...).

Your characterization ("Maybe some labs that wanted a unixy OS and, again, convinced their purchasing officer to buy a Mac Pro?") is a little off -- where I work, MBP's for laptop replenishments are treated exactly the same way as Windows systems, you just tick a different button on the order form.

As in, improve it.

Tim Cook is probably more popular than Obama (and surely is WRT this issue.) Apple is about a thousand times more popular than the NSA and blessed with almost infinitely deep pockets and a very, very good marketing team.

Not to mention the fact that most of the people who use computers and phones don't even live in the USA.

Tim Cook is responsible to his BoD and shareholders.

In comparison, Apple had a net income of ~50B in 2015.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Because Freedom Markets(tm), booyah!

Society can bumble along just fine without corporations. Corporations serve society.

Take away society, with its culture, laws, rules, regulations, courts, people, economy, markets, capital, etc, there can be no corporations.

The Shareholder Fallacy http://www.salon.com/2012/04/04/the_shareholder_fallacy/

Historically, corporations were understood to be responsible to a complex web of constituencies, including employees, communities, society at large, suppliers and shareholders. But in the era of deregulation, the interests of shareholders began to trump all the others. How can we get corporations to recognize their responsibilities beyond this narrow focus? It begins in remembering that the philosophy of putting shareholder profits over all else is a matter of ideology which is not grounded in American law or tradition. In fact, it is no more than a dangerous fad.

The Myth of Profit Maximizing

“It is literally – literally – malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to maximize its profits. That’s a corporation’s duty to its shareholders.”

Since this sentiment is so familiar, it may come as a surprise that it is factually incorrect: In reality, there is nothing in any U.S. statute, federal or state, that requires corporations to maximize their profits. More surprising still is that, in this instance, the untruth was not uttered as propaganda by a corporate lobbyist but presented as a fact of life by one of the leading lights of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, Sen. Al Franken. Considering its source, Franken’s statement says less about the nature of a U.S. business corporation’s legal obligations – about which it simply misses the boat – than it does about the point to which laissez-faire ideology has wormed its way into the American mind.

Laws and statutes don't enforce contracts. But courts do. You are trumpeting a theory I've heard many times before. It's creators lack a basic understanding of contract law or corporate organization. :ookup "shareholder derivative actions".

That almost certainly isn't the case. It is doubtful whether any other government organization cares about how they handle this case. Heck the FBI likely doesn't care as long as Apple doesn't do anything illegal.

I would not be surprised at all that Apple's internal 'backdoor' (if you can call it that) is just resetting the security enclave, essentially erasing everything on the NAND. That'd be fine for refurb/manufacturing, desirable even as that guarantees that full system wipes happen before a refurb goes to a new customer.

Most ICs can be completely erased to remove the limitations on access, but this usually requires a 'mass erase', where the entire non-volatile memory is erased (taking any codes, passwords, and encryption keys with it).

source: I am an embedded software engineer who works with these settings in bootloaders and application software.

Is this true? That would have to mean that either the passphrase is stored on the device or that the data is not encrypted at rest. Neither of these sound likely, frankly

The only way to secure the device against that would be to have the users manually memorize and key in a complete 128 bit encryption key, which they could then refuse to provide.

I think we tech folks were fooling ourselves with the idea that Apple had somehow delivered a "snoop-proof" device. They really didn't (no one can!) as long as they're subject to government or judicial control.

> possibly with the addition of a judicially compelled fingerprint scan or PIN brute force to get the encryption key out of whatever on-device escrow it's stored in

This is the whole problem. The keys are in the SE. You can't brute force the PIN because the SE rate-limits attempts (and that rate limiting cannot be overridden by an OS update because the SE is not run by the OS).

If you can get a fingerprint scan then all bets are obviously off, but then you don't need Apple at all.

> A large iteration count is used to make each attempt slower. The iteration count is calibrated so that one attempt takes approximately 80 milliseconds. This means it would take more than 51⁄2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers

(Page 12 of https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf).

Additionally you don't have to use your thumb, so if you don't know what body part was used your out of luck.

Edit just to be clear: the requirement really is that the firmware be stored in a ROM somewhere, probably on the SoC. That's a lot of die space (code storing a fully crypto engine isn't small) to dedicate to this feature. Almost certainly what they did is put a bootstrap security engine in place that can validate external code loaded from storage. And if they did, that code can be swapped by the owner of the validation keys at will, breaking the security metaphor in question.

https://twitter.com/JohnHedge/status/699882614212075520

The key thing would be for it to lose all stored keys on update when the current passphase has not been provided, and it sounds like that may not currently be the case.

Maybe in this case, Apple could comply, but a simple tweak would make it impossible in the future?

I would not actually be shocked if they originally did wipe out stored info on firmware update, but had some issues with people updating their phone and losing everything, so they ifdef'd that particular bit out in the name of usability.

Well, yeah. But then you'd have a system that couldn't be updated in the field without destroying the customer data (i.e. you'd have a secure boot implementation that couldn't receive bug fixes at all).

It's a chicken and egg problem. You're handling the problem of the "iPhone" not being a 100% snoop-and-tamper-proof device by positing the existence of an "interior" snoop-and-tamper-proof device. But that doesn't work, because it's turtles all the way down.

Ultimately you have to get to a situation where there is a piece of hardware (hardware on a single chip, even) making this determination in a way that has to be 100% right from the instant the devices go out the door. And that's not impossible, but it's asking too much, sorry. We're never going to get that.

The enclave would store (in secured storage) a hash of the last used firmware. Hardware would have a hash update capability, but this destroys all other stored information (i.e., keys) if used when the enclave is not currently in an unlocked state.

On boot, hardware verifies firmware signature as usual but also compares the firmware hash (already calculated for the signature check) to the stored value. If there is a mismatch, update the stored hash. Since the enclave is currently locked, the hardware clears the keys.

Since it's in hardware, you're correct that it would have to be 100% right, but that's quite feasible for a simple update mechanism (indeed, the most complicated bits are reused pieces from the signature check which already has this requirement).

Die space is cheap nowadays, especially stuff that doesn't need to be on all the time because of the death of Dennard scaling.

(FWIW: OTA firmware updates are routine in the industry. I've worked on such systems professionally, though not for Apple.)

To be fair - the only reason he's doing it is because it would cause a significant drop in sales for Apple devices. People overseas would immediately stop buying because "The American government is listening", and that's assuming countries like China and Russia wouldn't ban them outright.

This is the big thing American politicians are missing or glossing over in their campaigns to get re-elected: Forcing American companies to compromise their products will result in a significant loss of revenue overseas. Microsoft, Google, et al, have already reported it and foreign governments have already started banning goods/services (due to the Snowden revelations).

That's not being fair at all. To say the only reason he is doing it is to protect iPhone sales doesn't speak to Tim's character. Of course he cares about sales, but he also cares about privacy.

Compare to GE, which rolled over [2].

So I believe Mr Cook when he says his opposition to the FBI's request is rooted in a desire to do the right thing, and not the bottom line.

[1] http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-reje...

[2] http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-GE_Climate_Change_022114.ht...

[Cook] didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

That's a very blunt statement that the immediate stock valuation is not Cook's only consideration.

Some people seem to have a hard time taking Cook at his word, but he's been quite consistent. This massive skepticism feels more like nostalgie de la boue than anything based in facts.

We should be careful about plainly stating what someone else's motivations are when it contradicts their own story.

Edit: s/it's/his reasons include/ for clarification.

We still live in a world where all people are not treated equally. Too many people do not feel free to practice their religion or express their opinion or love who they choose. A world in which that information can make a difference between life and death. If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money. We risk our way of life.

See pages such as http://qz.com/344661/apple-ceo-tim-cook-says-privacy-is-a-ma...

Cook's responsibility is first and foremost to the stockholders, and secondarily to the customers. Decrypting the iPhone would seriously compromise the security of Apple's products, gravely damage the company's credibility, hurt sales, and drive the stock price down.

No CEO is going to take such a drastic step unless they are a craven, cowardly type who meekly obeys ask-for-the-sky demands from overbearing federal law enforcement types, and Cook surely did not rise to his current position by being a pushover.

That's not to say there won't be some kind of secret deal made behind closed doors, but secrets tend to get out. Apple would not be so foolish, I think. Yahoo? Microsoft? They just handed over the keys to their email to anyone who demanded it -- the Chinese government, the NSA -- but Apple has no history of this type of behavior. Surely Snowden would have revealed it if they had.

People that really care about security don't use smartphones.

I'm not sure this is true once you factor in price range. The general knowledge is a lot of those Android devices are sub-$250.

Maybe by share of units shipped. By revenue share they dominate, and their margins are estimated to be very good.

So?

I understand wanting to know people's motivations, from both the perspective of predicting future action and just because we're nosy monkeys. But frankly, what's in Cook's heart doesn't matter. Actions do. And to date, in my view, he's done pretty much exactly the right thing on this issue all along.

Maybe he's defending customer privacy because he believes the Lizard People have religious objections to invading until all humans have Freedom of Math. It doesn't simply matter.

That hasn't happened with other devices or earlier iPhones that aren't as secure.