Apple products

aussietraveller · Guru

Apple products

dorian · Guru

It's the thin edge of the wedge. Give the guvmint a little power and they grab the lot. I still remember little Johnny Howard's jackbooted thugs smashing a hard drive belonging to reporter Carmel Travers because it contained Alan Wilkie's expose of Howard's lies regarding the Iraq War. Don't fall for Big Brother's BS.

For a product to be truly secure, its design must be such that its own manufacturer or software author must not have any way to break it. My take on the situation is that Apple left a backdoor in their customers' data. That's a much bigger concern for me.

-- Edited by dorian on Wednesday 23rd of March 2016 04:14:51 PM

Krusty · Senior Member

Create a back door in Apple's products and Hackers and virus will happily walk through it. I like the idea that my banking details are safe and I haven't had a virus (despite never buying any virus protection) in over 20 years of working with apple products online. Open up their software, create back doors, reduce their security and I'll buy Microsoft products. They're a Lot Cheaper!!

Baz421 · Guru

Huewae (spelling) the Chinese company that is trying to get into Aussie market even more and get Govt contracts is rumored to have secret software in some products.

dorian · Guru

Krusty wrote:
Create a back door in Apple's products and Hackers and virus will happily walk through it. I like the idea that my banking details are safe and I haven't had a virus (despite never buying any virus protection) in over 20 years of working with apple products online. Open up their software, create back doors, reduce their security and I'll buy Microsoft products. They're a Lot Cheaper!!

Duh! The point is that Apple products must already have a backdoor, otherwise the FBI wouldn't be demanding that Apple open it.

Krusty · Senior Member

Nup, they want apple to re write the software to create one.

Bryan · Guru

aussietraveller wrote:
obviously we cant do that because even terrorists have rights to privacy .

Thats why we're losing the war against terrorists. They set the rules of engagement but we fight a politically correct fight.

03_Troopy · Guru

Bryan wrote:
aussietraveller wrote:
obviously we cant do that because even terrorists have rights to privacy .

Thats why we're losing the war against terrorists. They set the rules of engagement but we fight a politically correct fight.

Bryan · Guru

03_Troopy wrote:
Bryan wrote:
aussietraveller wrote:
obviously we cant do that because even terrorists have rights to privacy .

Thats why we're losing the war against terrorists. They set the rules of engagement but we fight a politically correct fight.

Quite correct Troopy, we are all entitled to our opinion.

dorian · Guru

Krusty wrote:
Nup, they want apple to re write the software to create one.

If a user's data is to be truly secure, then it should be impossible to write any software to gain access to it. The fact that Apple have been ordered to access the data means that it is possible to do so, ergo your data are not secure. Whether or not you call that a backdoor is a matter of semantics.

There is (was) an open source encryption tool called TrueCrypt. The FBI cannot crack it, nor can they compel the author to crack it, and that's because it was designed to be that way. What's more, the software's open source nature means any programmer can scrutinise it for backdoors or security holes. There is no need to trust Apple or Microsoft or any guvmint. Strangely, though, TrueCrypt's author is now recommending that people switch to Microsoft's Bitlocker (WTF?). ISTM that someone got to him.

BTW, an Israeli company (Cellebrite) have been hacking mobile phones for years. In fact US police forces (and data recovery companies) use their tools. No doubt these Apple phones are a work in progress.

Here's some food for thought. The US government has already hacked the firmware of your hard drive as long ago as 2002. Kaspersky Labs suggests that access to the firmware's source code would have been required to do this.

https://blog.kaspersky.com/equation-hdd-malware/7623/
https://securelist.com/blog/research/68750/equation-the-death-star-of-malware-galaxy/

Indestructible malware by Equation cyberspies is out there -- but don't panic (yet):

This is one of the long-anticipated scary stories in computer security -- an incurable virus that persists in computer hardware forever was considered an urban legend for decades, but it seems people spend millions of dollars to make it happen. Some press reports on Equation's story go as far as saying this enables hackers "to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers". However, we want to lower the level of drama. This ability will remain as rare as pandas walking across the street.

Other Russian researchers have recently hacked SEDs (self encrypting drives). Several years ago Western Digital's encrypted portable drives were also hacked. In fact an Arab guy paid Russian hackers to do it for him. There are free, openly available tools to crack the password of your HDD, so don't rely on that for security.