Why Apple won't unlock terrorist's iPhone

Syed Rizwan Farooq and wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people last December at San Bernardino, California before they were shot dead. An iPhone was recovered from scene. But investigators don’t know the passcode and have failed to access phone data.

1.

It's tough to break into an iPhone

Each iPhone has an encryption key (a unique number) which is needed to scramble or unscramble phone data. This key is 256 bits long — a string of 256 1s and 0s. Guessing the right encryption key will take many lifetimes even if every computer on the planet were working on the problem.

2.

In the court

A US court has directed Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to FBI — a software to disable security feature that erases data after 10 failed attempts to unlock phone.

3.

What FBI wants

*Modification in the terrorist’s iPhone software to make it easier to guess his passcode.
*Allowing passcodes to be entered electronically over a Wi-Fi network or using the iPhone’s lightning port.
*Disabling the delays between passcode guesses.
*These modifications will allow FBI to guess the phone’s passcode more quickly — and without worrying about triggering the phone’s auto-wipe function.

4.

Take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending...We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption...Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye if we don’t follow this lead

FBI director James Comey

5.

Why Apple is opposed to the court ruling

*Because the technique could easily be reused on any phone.
*Request is tantamount to asking for a “back door” that would allow people without a passcode to access protected data.
*The move could lead to more repressive governments asking Apple for the same favour.

6.

For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data... We must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the US govt.

Apple CEO Tim Cook