http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/no-cia-isnt-stealing-apples-secrets.html
By Robert Graham
blog.erratasec.com
March 10, 2015
The Intercept news site by Glenn Greenwald is activism rather than
journalism. Their stories don't reference experts knowledgeable about
subjects, but only activists who are concerned about the subjects. This
was demonstrated yet against in their piece claiming "The CIA Campaign to
Steal Apple's Secrets". Yes, the Snowden documents are real, but pretty
much everything else is made up.
Here's the deal. Terrorist leaders use iPhones. They are a status symbol,
and status symbols are important to leaders. Moreover, since Apple's
security is actually pretty good, terrorists use the phones for good
reason (most Android devices suck at security, even the Blackphone).
Getting software onto terrorist's phones, or basebands, is an important
goal of intelligence.
When CIA drones bomb a terrorist compound, iPhones will be found among the
bodies. Or, when there is a terrorist suspect coming out of a dance club
in Karachi, a CIA agent may punch them in the face and run away with their
phone. However, it happens, the CIA gets phones and wants to decrypt them.
Back in 2011 when this conference happened, the process of decrypting
retrieved iPhones was time consuming (months), destructive, and didn't
always work. The context of the presentation wasn't that they wanted to
secretly spy on everyone's phones. The context was that they wanted to
decrypt the phones they were getting.
[...]
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