
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Encryption [video] - XioNoX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjZ2r9Ygzw
======
dcw303
Like everyone on this site, I've been following this story too closely to get
any new info from this segment, so I couldn't tell if this will convince
people. It was up to the always high standards of Last Week Tonight though.

I really hope the message got through to his audience. We need every single
non-technical person in the world to understand this clearly if we have any
hope of getting the US Government to back down.

~~~
dfc
Do you honestly think non-technical people from outside the US are going to
make a difference in this debate? I can't imagine a demographic with less
influence over the situation.

~~~
Selfcommit
That "non-technical" person from "outside the US" has done a better job of
explaining Edward Snowden to the masses than most news networks. His target
demographic is Millennials, and he's very popular.

Yeah - This carries some weight.

~~~
dfc
OP said "We need every single non-technical person in the world to understand
this clearly." You are talking about one non-technical person, from outside
the US, who reads, writes and speaks English fluently, lives in NYC with his
American wife and has an above average income because of the wildly popular
television show on HBO that he hosts. John Oliver is hardly representative of
the other billions of non-technical people from outside of the US.

    
    
      > Yeah - This carries some weight. 
    

A February poll by Reuters has 46% of Americans supporting Apple, the number
jumped to 64% for people 18-39 years of age and a more recent WSJ/NBC poll of
registered voters puts the number at 47%. What percentage of John Oliver's
audience do you think changed their opinion after seeing the show and now
support Apple? Or do you consider comedic reinforcement of a previously held
belief is "carrying some weight"?

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mangeletti
I hoped he would have touched on one more important and oft overlooked point:

Encryption is not a secret. It's accessible to criminals, and criminals don't
give a shit about "backdoor" laws.

In fact, I'd venture to guess that there is great encryption software already
available on jail broken iPhones.

~~~
baldfat
Well what we have seen in actual practice is in France and other terror
attacks that they used no encryption so far.
[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-18/a-back-
door...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-18/a-back-door-to-
encryption-won-t-stop-terrorists)

What we have also seen in regards to just use of technology is the reign of
default. I I doubt that criminals would go for an unlocked iPhone for security
reasons for a few reason but one being that is beyond them.

~~~
jschwartzi
ISIS is known to use encryption in their communications.

~~~
will_hughes
Do they? Do you have evidence to back that up?

The bits I've read suggest that they don't - or at least not widely.

Eg:
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_terrori...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_terrorist.html)

~~~
stoshe
[http://www.businessinsider.com/telegram-isis-app-
encrypted-p...](http://www.businessinsider.com/telegram-isis-app-encrypted-
propagandar-2015-11)

~~~
will_hughes
There's only one mention of ISIS affiliated chat channels on Telegram, not
that it's actually been used by actual terrorists.

The rest of the speculation in that article was called out and refuted by the
link I supplied.

------
anc84
What a shame that Signal is not mentioned as encryption app.

~~~
maxerickson
Open Whisper is based in the US so Signal isn't different from Apple in a way
that was interesting for the story.

~~~
lorenzhs
If someone shows up with a phone, Open Whisper Systems can't read the messages
stored on it if they don't have the passphrase. The messages are encrypted at
rest, so they can't create an update that would circumvent it. The only option
would be brute-forcing the passphrase. In that way, it's fundamentally
different from Apple.

~~~
maxerickson
Sure, but the segment that mentioned other encryption apps was talking about
what would happen under a US government mandate. Open Whisper Systems would
have to comply, move or cease operating (Just like Apple).

Apple also improved the latest iPhones, the OS replace bypass at question here
will no longer work. So Signal has an advantage over older iPhones, but not
all of them.

------
thwarted
He used phrasing like "widely thought by experts to be impossible" (13m2s) a
few times through this piece. Which cryptographers and cryptography experts
think, in 2016, that a crypto system could be created that is, baring bugs,
completely secure right up until the point where you don't want it to be? He
showed clips of legislators asking for magic crypto unicorns (10m). Is this
some kind of 4 out of 5 cryptographers think it's an "impossibility", and do
we really think that that remaining one is actually an expert?

Or is this just an attempt at "fair and balanced" reporting, implying that,
while they couldn't find any "experts" to take the opposite side, there must
be some out there. John Oliver doesn't usually do that though.

~~~
manuelflara
I think what he meant with those words was that experts think it's impossible
to create such a backdoor and keep it 100% safe from being leaked or exploited
by bad actors. Which I think we all here can agree with.

~~~
rtpg
Well Apple has signing keys right? The signing keys are a backdoor, and we've
mostly mastered "don't leak your secret keys."

Now for a backdoor that you're sharing with a bunch of people...

~~~
monocasa
But they would be asked to share this back door with the thousands of law
enforcement organizations, as well as other countries. If they had to do the
same with their signing keys, those wouldn't be secure either.

------
Tempest1981
Awesome summary of the issue. All it takes is 1 disgruntled/bribed/blackmailed
employee, and everyone could be compromised. Not worth the risk.

~~~
dogma1138
Depending on how it's done if the signing key is delivered to the USG yes, if
Apple only delivers on-demand software updates then the security remains
pretty much the same - anyone within apple who has access to the current
signing key / authority to push software updates to apple devices.

Handing out the signing key to the USG will probably be quite disastrous as
they more likely than not offload it to any 3rd party in the private sector
which will offer to make them the next best phone scrapping kit or spyware.

If Apple is compelled and goes trough the software route then it's will be
bombarded by 1000's of requests to unlock phones, and worse in the future to
potentially install "wiretaps" on phones of suspects not in custody who
haven't been charged with anything yet which will be quite a costly operation
for Apple.

~~~
nickik
In the house meeting the security expert said this pretty well. As soon as the
process becomes routine its going to be in a huge amount of danger.

~~~
dogma1138
That one I don't really buy sorry, wiretaps have been around for ages and
while they have been misused by law enforcement I haven't heard about too many
cases in which criminals actually exploit them.

While cyber criminals are sophisticated it's just not going to be worth the
effort for them, most large cyber crimes were pretty low tech.

Foreign intelligence agencies is another deal, but then again they could just
as easily penetrate Apple now.

So while there will be some technical risk its really not substantial, the
privacy implications however are going to be very severe.

~~~
nickik
You attack the weakest aspect of a system and with traditional phones that was
not the interface to the state.

Apple having a well such a key now is problematic but it is necessary. As long
as apple only signs individuel versions that is hardcoded to one perticular
phone, the danger is not that large. These keys are protected with lots of
effort and access to it is limited.

If apple is forced to unlock hundreds of phones they will not sign a version
for each phone individually, the will have a version that runs on all phones.
This software is way more problematic then the key itself.

This is by the way exactly what the securty expert said in front of the house:

[https://judiciary.house.gov/hearing/the-encryption-
tightrope...](https://judiciary.house.gov/hearing/the-encryption-tightrope-
balancing-americans-security-and-privacy/)

~~~
dogma1138
Apple doesn't and as far as I can tell cannot sign a version for an individual
phone a signed binary by apple that removes the security settings for a phone
lock/wipe will be valid for any other apple phone as long as you can trigger
an update which you can using iTunes you should be able to deploy it on any
device you want.

There are no individual singing keys for phones that would be unmanageable
there are probably a handful (or even a single one) singing keys that apple
has which are valid on their devices and that's it.

~~~
nickik
That is wrong. The phones have hardware ids and those can be checked in code.
They can sign a binary blob that runs on one phone only.

~~~
dogma1138
No its not, phones have hardware ID's that are used to generate the encryption
key (on phones with a secure enclave, this isn't even one) I have seen no
evidence that there is any specific per phone signing of apple software.

------
Shivetya
Okay, while I am in full agreement that no back door is warranted why does
Apple get a pass of their actions with regards to China? The rumor mill claims
it means possibly handing over source code used to drive devices. If true, how
would they not do the same for US officials?

I certainly don't believe they should write the code request by the government
but at the same time are they going to keep that stance in all markets?

~~~
bhhaskin
There is a big difference between handing over source code and pushing signed
patches to a device. A key principle in modern Cryptography is that if your
algorithm has to stay secret in order to remain secure then it is inherently
insecure. The same could be said of source code. Handing over the source code
to China should not effect the security of the platform, otherwise it is
inherently insecure. Handing over signing keys however is completely
different.

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aauchter
Would it be possible to build devices that could be unlocked a fixed number of
times across all units (say 1,000 times). Devices could be heavily hardware
encrypted, but unlockable with an encryption key, a portion of which comes
from a publicly monitored blockchain/distributed ledger, that when used
reduces the number of future uses.

This way, the government could be granted access for extreme cases, but
without the potential for abuse or mass surveillance. Once there were 1,000
check-ins, not more keys could be generated.

Thoughts?

~~~
acqq
It's irrelevant, since the goal of FBI now is to make a precedent in being
able to demand the changes in hardware or software based on the "All Writs
Act" which should otherwise be the wrong act to allow them to effectively
introduce infinite "Clipper chip" equivalents the way they haven't succeeded
through the regular legislation procedures up to now.

Up to now such changes had to pass through the Congress, the laws had to be
voted to solve such issues. This time they just quoted the Act which really
just says they "may issue all writs necessary or appropriate." (check:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act)
) Almost like citing the Catch 22.

It sounds too trivial but it's fundamentally dangerous in the powers they
obtain if their current interpretation is accepted: the state doesn't have to
make laws, the government can just write anything whenever it likes and say
it's covered by "All Writs."

In the older cases when Apple cooperated Apple didn't have to change anything,
neither their future hardware for retail nor the software of the hardware they
produce for retail and the cases when nothing has to be changed but just the
accessible data copied can be understood to be actually covered with the
specific law, CALEA.

And don't forget how weak the argument of the FBI really is, the phone in
question was a business phone of the terrorist, who actually intentionally
destroyed his private phone before being chased. For this one he didn't care.
Apple gave FBI the backup of the business phone, and was able to give them
even the current state of it, but the government changed the backup password
themselves. And the FBI can actually without Apple copy the data from the SSD
disk of the phone and restore it any time to allow them more password tries.
But they really want to make the precedent. Because they don't want that Apple
produces the next phone on which FBI can't have more access.

~~~
josinalvo
Is it really technically feasible for the FBI to do a bit by bit copy of the
SSD? Is there not some hardware restriction?

This seems highly relevant...

~~~
serge2k
Not on the 5, apparently. My understanding is that it isn't the SSD but rather
the flash on which the encryption key derived from user input is stored (the
part you unlock with code and is wiped after 10 tries).

~~~
acqq
I don't agree. There were more texts claiming it can be done, they just have
to try the combinations on the same circuit board, because one of the parts of
the key is the part of the hardware, but the copying of encrypted data and
then restoring from such backup can be done outside of the board, nothing is
against that. Here's how Chinese trivially remove and replace the "solid state
disk" chip.

[http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/03/iphone-flash-storage-
upgrade-s...](http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/03/iphone-flash-storage-upgrade-
shenzhen/)

And the article that describes the process:

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-
claims-...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/one-fbis-major-claims-
iphone-case-fraudulent)

Yes it's just a chip that has to be copied, it's not a disk as we understand
it in notebooks in a sense "a bunch of chips connected via SATA or M2" it's
lower level but the principle is the same.

------
pointernil
So there is an effort estimate to ADD what the authorities need?

Does this indicate the crypto is already broken?

What's hindering the "intelligence community" from doing it on their own on
case by case basis?

Did they already do this?

Does Apple win disproportionately marketing wise by staging it self as the
sound and secure provider?

~~~
pfg
The FBI is asking for firmware that disables its anti-brute-force delays and
auto-wipe feature. The estimate Apple gave is for creating that firmware and
signing it with their key. They're not breaking the crypto, but merely making
an brute-force attack more viable (by reducing the delay to ~80ms, which is
how long the hash algorithm takes per passcode).

The intelligence community would need access to Apple's firmware signing key
in order to do this themselves. (IIRC, in their latest court filing, the FBI
actually mentioned this would work for them if Apple is unwilling to implement
the firmware changes.)

~~~
pointernil
Thanks for clarifying this.

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senectus1
any chance of a non-geoblocked link?

~~~
samwillis
[https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=858905877571756&...](https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=858905877571756&id=479042895558058&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Flastweektonight%2Fcomments%2F4ac0it%2Flast_week_tonight_with_john_oliver_hbo_encryption%2F&_rdr)

Supprisingly their Facebook video isn't...

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fufefderddfr
Video spam. Late night show bullshit.

