While updating its Phone Breaker software for iOS 10, Elcomsoft, a Russian cybersecurity firm, discovered a security flaw where encrypted backups can be hacked fairly easily. Apple’s chosen password verification method contains a flaw that makes it possible to bypass some security checks. In the past, iOS 9 limited the amount of password attempts that could be made even when with GPU acceleration at 150k times a second. With iOS10, the flaw allows 6 million times a second. By allowing more attempts in a second, the risk of hackers successfully entering the phone has increased tremendously. Elcomsoft says at that speed “hackers would only need to leave their software running for 2 days until the odds of success approached 90 percent”. But, the real risk is the local encrypted backup done through iTunes. With a full backup, a user’s keychain, Apple’s storage system for passwords,cc numbers and other personal info, is encrypted and stored on the local PC/machine. With the possibility of being able to retrieve the password fairly easy, hackers can gain access to the PC/machine containing the backup and decrypt it as well the keychain to gain access to personal information.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/beware-ios-10-security-flaw-makes-cracking-encrypted-backups-2500-times-easier/
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Scott Radaszkiewicz says
Jimmy, great article. I’m an iPhone user and have been for many years. I do like the iPhone, but the first thing I do when and update comes out is…..wait 3 weeks before I deploy it! Seems like Apple never gets it right the first time. It’s so very scary when we think about how much of our lives are tied to our phones. Banking, emails, passwords. It’s all up for grabs! It’s a wonder we can ever put our heads down and night and rest comfortably.
Scott
Brent Easley says
Scott,
I need to follow that line of thinking. Give them some time to work out the kinks of the latest IOS and send the latest security patches.
Jason A Lindsley says
I’m glad this vulnerability was discovered. While I don’t typically backup my iPhone to iTunes, there have been times I’ve done this either as a precaution or because my iCloud account was full. We typically don’t think to delete these backup files, so there was a risk that data backed up during this period could be stored indefinitely without a user knowing it was vulnerable.
I wonder if Apple can identify users that have backed up their data to iTunes when they were on this version and notify them to securely delete their backups.
Shain R. Amzovski says
Jimmy, this is an interesting article. I never usually update to the latest iOS because of all the bugs that the new iOS initially has. This time, I was forced to have iOS 10 because I purchased a new iPhone 7, which came pre-loaded with the software. Typically, I do not use iTunes to back-up my device. I generally use iCloud, and pay $.99 a month for 50GB of storage. It is interesting that Apple would leave this security flaw in its encrypted backups to allow for a brute force attack. I am sure they patched the problem quickly, as they generally do when a major security flaw is discovered.