John McAfee offers to decrypt iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorists, criticizes FBI

Ok, ATS, before you start calling McAfee a nut job, ( which I too have in the past). Let's think about this for a single minute. If McAfee can do what he S A Y S he can, this could very well be the story of the decade!!!

I would asK you to please, read the entire article prior to posting. I want to hear your response and thoughts. This is a very powerful proposition. The question is, will the FBI be willing to accept this offer from the private sector ? Thanks in advance for your discussion! !

Calling it a "black day and the beginning of the end of the U.S. as a world power," software developer John McAfee criticized the FBI on Thursday for attempting to force Apple to build a backdoor to access data from a terrorist's iPhone, saying that he will decrypt the handset himself for free.

McAfee, an eccentric millionaire who is currently vying for presidential nomination from the Libertarian Party , believes that he and his team could hack into the iPhone in question without the need for a new, insecure version of iOS to be built by Apple. He shared his thoughts in an editorial published by Tech Insider.
The former antivirus creator believes his team would be able to decrypt the information from the iPhone 5c at the center of the case within three weeks. He believes they will be able to unlock the iPhone "primarily" with social engineering.

L I N K

a reply to: ReadLeader

What does this mean and why is it important?

Thanks.

a reply to: ReadLeader

It's a very interesting offer! One that I think would be hard to refuse....if this is the legitimate problem. I think the FBI will refuse the offer sighting "national security". They do not want any other eyes on the information they uncover.

I heard this morning that now the FBI claims they need to break into 100+ phones and haven't ruled out a 3rd terrorist. It seems they keep throwing out a bigger net in hopes of getting the public to say "yep....let's make a back door. We need to stay safe".

a reply to: onequestion

On several levels One?, first off, if the offer is accepted & Mcaffe failed, there goes Appple stocks over the top.. secondly the big bad gubmunt wants to continuously monitor iOS devices; and that is """""unconstitutional"""" and impedes privacy rights.

Meanwhile, bqck at the ranch of ISil..... the real terrorsts simply use 3rd party encryption tools.

Our Gubment would still be in the dark about who they are contacting and what they are saying.

Thanks for posting

He believes they will be able to unlock the iPhone "primarily" with social engineering.

I would think the NSA would have access to as much or more details then his people.

I personally believe this is a McAfee publicity stunt. If you look at what he says he will do, he says he will decrypt using social engineering. Now that would be a feat. But the reason it is important is because if he CAN do it, then Apple's claim of strong encryption goes out the window and Apple loses face and probably market share.

However, the issue is important without McAfee because it allows the government to force companies to actually write software to allow a back door into the system. In terms of the precedent it sets for governmental intrusion, the issue are a lot more complex than they look like at first. This is a criminal investigation of a crime that has been committed. Generally law enforcement is allowed to gather evidence once a crime has been committed. They have, in effect, subpoenaed this evidence. I know everyone here has opinions on that, but if you'd like to read some informed opinion by people who generally understand the issues better than those here, take a look at the Slashdot thread on the subject where all the fine points are debated in detail.

Now: a complication. The phone itself does not belong to the dead suspect. It is a government phone, so right there you have no expectation of privacy because it belongs to the suspects employer. You CANNOT make the case that the government is prying into someone's private data here. You are way off base if you think that;s what is going on here. Further, someone took the phone and messed with it AFTER the crime was committed, and Apple says had they not messed with it, information could perhaps have been captured from a cloud backup of its data, but their messing with it caused the possibility to not be available, so, in effect, Apple is saying the government messed up and it's their own fault.

Further, Apple claims they CANNOT de-encrypt the phone, that it is technically impossible, and court issued directives to do so have no meaning. It's like the court directing Apple to construct a spaceship and fly a manned mission to Jupiter. So we'll just have to see how all this plays out. But McAfee is kind of a side-show in all this.

The FBI won't even comment on this offer. If they do, they will just downplay him as irrelevant to the problem.

It's like someone calling our Moron president and offering to fix a few things for him for free, when fixing things has never even been a goal.

a reply to: ReadLeader

Apple cooperated with the feds SEVENTY times before

Tim Cook is just being a first class asshole. He is just putting up this "show" to come across, for his ego, as a fake "defender of the people"

Except if you are Chinese. The same Tim Cook has no problem bending over / getting Apple to bend over for the China Communist party.

...and Timmy is a real s #ty manager of Apple, with the stock down over 30 percent.

a reply to: ReadLeader

The report I heard was that he promised to 'eat his shoe' if he couldn't unlock it within a month.

Some guy that was being interviewed on Coast to Coast one night this week quoted him as saying that.

a reply to: M5xaz

The 70 times of which you speak, how many were encrypted?? do you even know? you only tell half the story!!

originally posted by: thedigirati
a reply to: M5xaz

The 70 times of which you speak, how many were encrypted?? do you even know? you only tell half the story!!

I AM THE ONE TELLING HALF THE STORY ????
NO !
APPLE is the one doing this!

Apple has not denied they did this. At least until iOS 7, Apple had a built in back door, e.g. throughout Steve Jobs' LEADERSHIP
Google it !!!- absolutely true!!

Under Timmy on the other hand......only to allow China to beat up dissidents, up to and including iOS 10
qz.com...

So, there you have it, Tim Cook is a grandstanding asshole, a traitor, and completely incompetent

FIRE THE JERK

a reply to: M5xaz

Something just doesn't smell quite right with this whole story. 1) Somone changed the password after it was recovered. To do this you usually need the original password. 2) The goverment probably have the means to make an digital image/copy of the phone to save it's current state. If so they can brute force the hell out of the phone to infinitum. 3) I wish Apple was truely trying to protect our privacy ... however, they could just try to help the FBI crack this one phone and keep quite about it.

I think there may be a coraboration between the government and Apple. What if all phone already have a backdoor. Apple is only playing its part to keep it's consumer base up and create a false sense of security. The government then hopes the sense of security will lure people of interest into using ipohnes.

a reply to: joemoe

"Something just doesn't smell quite right with this whole story"

I agree.

Apple has given the Chinese the ability to do "security checks" REMOTELY, worldwide!!

Apple itself could very well have reset the password on the SB iPhone.

A fish rots from the head down, and the head is Timmy, hence the smell....

I get the feeling this is all a dog and pony show and for a long time the back-doors have existed and been in use.

How will he decrypt anything without the key?

Social engineering... what is he going to do? "Hello, Allah Ackbar, give me key pls"

If you want to get into a terrorist group and become trust, it will take more than three weeks. FBI agents investigating groups like these they can take years to get anywhere. How will he know who has the key anyway?

Or maybe I do not understand?


Oh, and backdoors already exist in ALL consumer technology. They only do not like to tell everybody about it, for obvious reasons.

My understanding of iPhone status was that they were mostly hacked, like jailbreaking, iCloud lock removal, psw removal...

It's been confirmed the county changed the password after the shooting so they have the password. So then whats it all really about???? If they use the same system our company does for our I phones then everything is backed up daily. If I lose my phone I contact security and it's backed up and wiped within minutes. The next day I can stop in and sign out another with all my stuff back on it.