Re: Simple solution...
"The passcode is needed to unlock the key with which the data is encrypted.
That key is a 256 Bit AES key. You can't brute force that"
Yes, but the whole point of this is that the FBI wants to brute force the passcode. Not the key, the passcode.
They seem to think it can be done if Apple would remove the limitation that 10 wrong guesses will wipe the whole thing. It's not immediately obvious to me why, if the flash memory were to be cloned, this couldn't be done in a VM as the whole memory image could be restored every 10 guesses.
I'd have thought that extracting and cloning such an image is something the NSA would have looked at already and had a method worked out. That makes me suspicious.
Consider the situation. The owner is dead and is unable to object. There's general acceptance that the owner committed several murders - and in due course we can expect a coroner's court to make that official. There's a strong argument that good intelligence relating to terrorism could be obtained. It's about as good a situation as TPTB could have to set a precedent which could be used later in weaker circumstances - a phone seized from a live suspect who's not been charged with a particularly serious offence let alone convicted - in other words a fishing expedition.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
