On: Hacking My Mother’s Phone to Save Her Memories

[kennyadam]

Weird title. They never managed to get in to the phone. They just took the SIM out and put it in another phone to use 2FA SMS codes, along with logins they found written down.

[Maximus9000 → kennyadam]

IMO hacking is getting into a system by any means. Ultimately they were going after the "memories" which were all stored on the cloud. They needed to get into that. They determined they didnt need to get into the phone in order to get into the cloud.

[_lffv → Maximus9000]

>"Hacking my Mother's Phone"

I agree with your definition of hacking but the explicit goal was to get into their mother's phone, which they didn't. Ultimately they achieved their goal, yes, but via a different method than the one they originally attempted.

[fossuser → Maximus9000]

Except they didn't get access to iMessage or other things encrypted locally on the device.

[LannisterDebt → Maximus9000]

I thought iCloud contents were all encrypted?

  No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information [1]

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

[xvector → LannisterDebt]

End-to-end encryption only works for “certain sensitive information” according to your link. A close inspection at the link you provided reveals that just about nothing of value aside from the Keychain is E2EE.

[mceachen → LannisterDebt]

They got access to her iCloud account.