FBI can’t bypass iPhone’s auto erase is “Bullshit”

 

Apple vs FBI fight has been on going regarding unlocking an iPhone, where FBI claims that they can’t even try to guess the passcode, because the iPhone will choose to auto erase all its data after 10 failed attempts. Well, this is not the case.

“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’” to unlock the phone. “Respectfully, that’s bullshit,” Edward Snowden said, over a video link from Moscow.

Edward Snowden also linked a blog post in his tweet and mentioned that how FBI could bypass iPhone’s auto erase, and try to guess the password as many times as they wanted.

The blogpost is about how to bypass iPhone’s auto erase. So FBI can try an unlimited number of times. The write Daniel Kahn Gillmor explained that FBI could take back up of iPhone’s NAND Flash before making 10 failure attempts, and then can try unlimited number of times. If iPhone auto erases all the data, they can restore from the backup.

To take a backup, FBI can remove (desolder) that chip from iPhone, and connect the it to a device that can read/write NAND Flash, and copy all of its data. Thereafter, they can replace the chip and try testing Passcodes as many time as they want. If the data gets erased after 10 failed attempts, they can remove the chip again, restore data, and replace it. As guessing the passcode is not really easy, and they may need to do it so many times, so they can attach a “test socket” to the circuit board that will make the chip swapping fast and easy.

The Intercept : NSA seems to be absent from Apple vs FBI flight. They tried, but failed to unlock iPhone that seems Unlikely. Another possibility is that the NSA was excluded on purpose, so the FBI could create a test case .