“Apple’s legal showdown with the federal government over the security of iPhones likely won’t be settled for many months, or even years if the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court,” Aaron Pressman reports for Yahoo Finance. “But the world’s biggest technology company could easily make upcoming versions of the iPhone even more secure, all but eliminating its ability to help law enforcers crack the encryption.”
“In the current case, the FBI wants Apple to create a special, less secure version of its iOS iPhone software and install it on the phone of deceased San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook,” Pressman reports. “With the weaker software installed, the FBI would have a much easier time guessing Farook’s password. That’s only possible because the iPhone’s hardware allows certain kinds of software updates from Apple without requiring a password. Future phones could be designed to lock out any such changes or erase data if changes were made.”
Pressman reports, “‘I bet Apple will move towards making the most sensitive parts of that stack updatable only in very specific conditions: wipe user data, or keep user data only if the phone is successfully unlocked first,’ Ben Adida, security expert and lead engineer at Clever who formerly worked at Square and Mozilla, wrote on his blog on Thursday. ‘The interesting question will be whether Apple will be legally allowed to engineer their phones this way.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If this fiasco makes our iOS devices even more secure, it’ll have been worth it.
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