John Mcafee Reveals To Fbi, On National Tv, How To Crack The Iphone

This can't really be true, because if it was, then as long as you had physical access to a computer, you could circumvent any encryption it employed. But since a private decryption key can't be in an encrypted message itself, since the person who encrypted the message would as a rule only have access to the public encryption key, then where DOES the private decryption key reside?

 

I like what he said to a certain amount. I believe following the code would lead to a procedure to change the 'passphrase' to a hash value. Probably the key was in ram at that point but deleted or overwritten later. That's why I believe they would have to run the procedure on a trial and error brute force to obtain a matching hash value. But I bet the hardware/software people probably had to run through each step as they built the product and they know where each step of the program goes next as for instructions and memory locations.
Also what he hinted on was this could all be mis-information as to anyone's ability. Maybe they found something but don't want anyone to be suspicious. We may never know. And he -the gunman- could have been a isolated cell and never knew of anyone else. At least he is over!

 

Maybe in 20 years, when they can build a supercomputer with millions of parallel processors, each one little larger than a complex molecule, which channels light instead of electrical current, and which has superspeed memory based on quantum particle entanglement rather than on magnetic fields. But for the number of possible decryption keys, not anytime in the foreseeable future.

Here's what worries me about this: One could argue that security is more important than privacy, but here's where that argument is false: Creating a way to break encryption would do infinitely more to COMPROMISE security than to aid it. We'd be under cyber-attack in countless ways, and we couldn't even store, let alone transmit, counter-terrorist intelligence.

 

Don't know if linking to another forum is permitted. But here's some interesting reactions to the hearings today.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...-is-watching-iphone-unlocking-battle.1959162/

On your supercomputer idea. If the gov can track some 200 million phone calls a day and connect the dots between 1st 2nd and 3rd jump connections between phones to see who talks to who - along with everything else they do- they must have some fairly good computing assets.

 

An even easier way may be to do as he said de-compile and reverse engineer. If there are 2 memory locations 'a' and 'b'. 'a' is the input key's hash and 'b' is the real hash. Stepping thru the code but put a copy of what's in 'b' to the 'a' location then let it run. When compared there would be a match. They 'apple' and 'gov' both should have people capable of doing such things.

 

We already are under cyber attack after cyber attack, it's no freaking secret. Which is all the more reason why the FBI needs to do the same in this case and do what McAfee believes is child's play on that phone already. I hate to think about how all terrorists are laughing at Uncle Sam now while devising more crap on their iPhones.

 

What percentage of terrorists own iPhones?

 

So you think the USA is so special........ the terrorists are laughing at everyone
The NSA are compromising everyone's security to try and protect against something that is almost indefensible. When the terrorists don't value human life, either ours or their own or even their own children then what do you really think hacking a phone is going to stop. It may delay but it won't stop anything as they are still recruiting suicide bombers. What's to say the terrorists will even continue using mobile phones when they could also use HF radios with a scrambler which would be to all intents unhackable. The terrorists are winning because of the SOBs that have traded our rights in the name of "the fight against terrorism" have now got it such that everyone is either molested or radiated at every airport before boarding a plane and now you can't even carry nail clippers on a plane ...... Hmmmm maybe the NSA is scared you might attack someone's hangnail
So is the next call going to be to ban all back packs or all baby prams because they have been known to be used for terrorist bombings........oh I nearly forgot the perennial favourite is the delivery van or car ...........taking away people's liberties in the name of security will end up effectively turning citizens into prisoners in their own countries

My take on this is that the only way to win this battle is to educate the next generation so that they aren't indoctrinated with hatred against all other religions from the time they are toddlers. This will be a major undertaking requiring cooperation between village elders, parents and religious leaders. Hmmm seems too hard already.........
Another thing that should help is if the USA, Great Britain and Australia attended to the problems in their own countries instead of sticking their noses into a middle eastern war that can't be won and that has been fought on and off for centuries

Mimsy and Laura's quote was most apt

 

This thread appears to be closed, but on the off-chance it's still open, I just want to say that it wasn't my intention to introduce a political topic into this forum, and I'm still wondering: Could it be true that the method outlined above could circumvent any encryption, and where do decryption keys reside?

 

OK, found this thread at the Lounge.

 

You started this thread... in The Lounge... and it's open.

 

The question really should be how many more terrorists plan to buy iPhones after the FBI failed to hack the San Bernardino terrorist's phone?

 

Right. I knew that.

 

Or they could stick with Android phones, which can be encrypted too.

 

Yeah like this terrorist creep:

 

I didn't see any mention of which phone she preferred.

 

That "terrorist creep" might be nothing of the sort:

Maybe she just watched too many news reports.

 

Then why did you ask?

 

If all cell phones were open, would that stop people who behead folks that don't agree with them?