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Increasingly, law enforcement agencies and lawmakers are asking smartphone developers like Apple and Google to create backdoors into the encryptions that protect user data. But even without them, investigators can access your data.
Wired recently reported that cryptographers at John Hopkins University used publicly available documentation from Apple and Google to study the hardness of the Android and iOS encryptions. Lead researcher and cryptographer Matthew Green found that smartphone operating systems aren’t extending encryptions as far as he originally assumed. Vulnerabilities that allow access to decryption keys, which open access to additional data, are more than often found when a phone is unlocked for the first time after rebooting.
Apple states that these types of attacks are very costly to develop and aren’t typical type of security work they focus on to protect personal information from hackers, thieves, and criminals. Security layers could be deeper, but Apple’s goal is to balance security with user experience and convenience.
Google states that these types of attacks on Android would require physical access and the just the right type of exploitable flaws. Both companies work to patch flaws on a regular basis, but it’s exactly this type of vulnerability that governments and law enforcement can easily use by purchasing smartphone access tools.
A recent report from the nonprofit Upturn found nearly 50,000 cases where 44 police departments had extracted data from phones, but researchers assume the true ..
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