John Mcafee Offers to Decrypt San Bernardino iPhone, Prevent the 'End of America'
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Posted February 18, 2016 at 9:53pm by iClarified
John Mcafee is offering to decrypt the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone free of charge so that Apple isn't forced to build a back door into its devices. He made the offer to the FBI in an open letter published by TechInsider.
Mcafee notes that the FBI is unable to decrypt the phone because it won't hire the most capable hackers.
"The FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year."
Mcafee says that his team of hackers will be able to access the device given some time and he offers to do it for free so that Apple isn't forced to. Something he believes would be the "beginning of the end of the US as a world power."
So here is my offer to the FBI. I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team. We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks. If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.
Apple is only worried about losing their biggest growing market which is China. If they make a back door, Apple will not be trusted brand anymore. Government officials are not allowed to use the brand if I remember correctly. This is the single and only reason for Apple strongly and OPENLY going against the USA government.
Easy, - they want front door entry. Take the damn phone, do your thing and set the code to 0000 and CHARGE 500.000$ for this 'upon search warrant' service. Give that away for a good cause close to your hearts ! The FBI gets access, and will think twice to ask for hacks against petty criminals etc due to the fee they'd need to fork out. No one gets a backdoor, issue solved and Apple looks good all around !
The primary assumption here is that the passcode used to lock the phone is trivial (four digits, for instance), which would take thirty or so minutes to brute force. If the password is non-trivial, even with the requested deactivation of the phone's self-erasing firmware, the FBI could be looking at a years-long project and lots of bucks to open the phone, while still having f**ked Apple up the wazoo.
Apple's obvious workaround is to provide the FBI with the modified firmware to allow them to bruteforce the phone. It's a 50/50 proposition whether they would get anywhere with this. Then Apple needs to include a requirement in a release of iOS 9 that users employ a 9-digit alphanumeric unlock code.
This way, even if the FBI has the firmware hack to deactivate the self-erase feature of the phone, since they are limited to 12 attempts per second to brute force-- because they've got to use the onboard processor in the phone-- ain't no way they're breaking into phones with a 9-digit alphanumeric password. Simply implausible.
Takeaway: Use a 9-digit alphanumeric lock code on your phone to immunize you against FBiOS, as it's been called elsewhere (MotherBoard).
One further thought is that it is quite likely that the data on the phone will prove relatively innocuous as these two really seemed to be a couple of low-level wannabe-type players acting largely on their own extreme views and not at the behest of some mysterious mastermind. Just a guess on my part, but let's wait and see...
People stop with the damn right to privacy crap....sorry to burst ur bubble but having 100% privacy is a fairy tale. You guys should be more concerned with hackers who are trying to hack YOU instead of FBI asking assistance from Apple to decrypt a known terrorist cell phone.
With due respect, you are failing to see the long-range ramifications of Apple cooperating with the FBI on this. Not only does it open the door to Sheriff Arpaio or someone with similar suspect motives demanding access to someone's phone to dox them on immigration and potentially harass friends, relatives and neighbors, but it also means that oligarchical governments anywhere Apple products are sold could make similar demands of Apple to oppress dissidents, for instance, and Apple would not be in a strong position to refuse.
This is not even to touch on the effect on the general public's right to free speech of a government that they are pretty sure could potentially access any comments that they make-- like the one I'm making here, for instance. This has an inhibitory and harmful result, not unlike the effect the Stasi had on East Germans, who were afraid to talk to anyone lest they be reported.
Once this power is granted to individuals whose only requirement is that they be employed by a government entity, it will be abused-- you know, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
It's not just about protecting people's racy selfies, although those also do deserve protection. The government has no place injecting itself into the private affairs of its citizens beyond reasonable governance.
Am i the only one who thinks Apple is wrong for this? They were terrorists......Tim Cook should be subpoenaed to help. He is not above everyone and everything. He sending a message that if ur a terrorist....use an iPhone cuz America wont try to hack into it after u kill a bunch of people.
Ur right to privacy is nothing compared to the information that may be on that damn phone. If it will help law enforcement to learn about details of the attack in order to prevent more attacks from ISIS then.....the hell with ur privacy.
You guys understand that if they are able to hack this iPhone, then they can get into everyone's iPhone and if you commit a small crime, they can use the data in your phone to convict you, no more 5th amendment.
How do you know that the iPhone contains sensitive information? This was Syed Farouk's work phone issued by the county.... his personal phone was destroyed and tossed in the lake, remember?
If you work for Apple, than you have the perfect way to voice your displeasure with your boss. No need to post it here...
Speaking as some one who doesn't live in America, I'm damn sure I don't want the US Gov being able to access my phone, remotely or not, I have a passcode on my phone with a finger print reader for a reason. So only I can't access my data why should some body sat 1000s of miles away who has no power over me, have access, who can be easily corrupted, not to mention them selling it or passing it to other Govs who then can nosey about
Or this could be his way of showing that the FBI have their own agenda behind trying to force Apple to create a back door key. Like you have someone who's willing to offer to decrypt the phone free of charge, but if the FBI still wants Apple to create that key it shows their real motives behind asking APPLE to create one.
I like this guy. Maybe he looks like a crackhead, but I think what he says may not be completely impossible. He says he'll do it for free so what does the FBI have to lose? At the very least they will have shown Mcafee to be a liar !!
If it has a fingerprint sensor the use it. If it doesn't there is only 10,000 possible 4-digit number combinations. With a program it shouldn't take that long to run all combos.
iPhone's have a safe guard where if you enter the wrong password 5 times in a row the phone will wipe the flash drive. Also, how do you know they have a four pin password? You do know you can use 6 digit password on an iPhone, including the entire alphabet, numbers, and special characters like àáâäæãåā and that's just the letter A...
The model phone a question does not have a fingerprint sensor and there is a feature that after 10 failed passwords being able to after pen password attempts in row the phone is wiped clean of data. There is also an 80millsecind delay between each password attempt this was slow down the process of getting into the phone the FBI want Apple to remove that delay
Lol, social engineering... So they are going to call apple and pretend they are the guy who isn't actually dead and ask Apple for the password. Yeah that's going to work
When have you ever been able to call apple and ask for a password? Being your own if you forgot it, or someone else's. They have no knowledge of what someones password is.
So true Apple don't have your password and they build it this way just to avoid situations like this but I believe that he can hack the iPhone in question but if he does he shouldn't do it at the FBI Labs but his own because the FBI will monitor him closely and will copy his work and one last thing, if jail breaking is possible then there is no reasons why he shouldn't hack that iPhone and get the data out, also if you think about it he could pull out the memory chips copy them and work that way. ( yes the data is probably encrypted and that a reason for it to take time. )
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