Although the US authorities are stubbornly waging a "cryptographic war" with technology companies, demanding weakening of encryption, they already have the technical ability to hack any phone.
First, law enforcement agencies have successfully used tools to conduct forensic analysis of mobile devices (for example, the FBI was able to hack the iPhone 11 Pro Max using the GrayKey tool). Second, as shown in a series of tests conducted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) over the past year, the toolmakers are very good at reverse engineering smartphones.
During the study, NIST tested tools from Cellebrite, Grayshift and MSAB. As a reminder, Cellebrite updated its premium encryption cracking tool for iOS and Android UFED devices in 2019.
As NIST research shows, the current version of UFED 4PC allows you to receive GPS coordinates, messages, call logs and contacts from the iPhone X and almost all earlier models. The researchers also managed to get some data from Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Against the newer iPhones, the tool was mostly powerless.
It is noteworthy that the UFED 4PC handles Android devices much worse than the iPhone. For example, the tool was unable to extract social media data, GPS and browser history from Google Pixel 2 and Samsung Galaxy S9. Additionally, UFED was unable to access messages on the Ellipsis 8 and Galaxy Tab S2 tablets. With Huawei P20 Pro, the tool does not work at all.
“Now we can jailbreak the iPhone. A year ago, we could not jailbreak an iPhone, but we could handle all Android devices. Now we can't hack many Android devices, ”Detective Rex Kiser told Motherboard.
Cellebrite is currently the leader in mobile jailbreak tools (excluding iPhones), according to Kiser. The main supplier of iPhone jailbreak tools is Grayshift. Her GrayKey tool sells for $ 15,000-30,000 and can crack encryption on any iPhone.
First, law enforcement agencies have successfully used tools to conduct forensic analysis of mobile devices (for example, the FBI was able to hack the iPhone 11 Pro Max using the GrayKey tool). Second, as shown in a series of tests conducted by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) over the past year, the toolmakers are very good at reverse engineering smartphones.
During the study, NIST tested tools from Cellebrite, Grayshift and MSAB. As a reminder, Cellebrite updated its premium encryption cracking tool for iOS and Android UFED devices in 2019.
As NIST research shows, the current version of UFED 4PC allows you to receive GPS coordinates, messages, call logs and contacts from the iPhone X and almost all earlier models. The researchers also managed to get some data from Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Against the newer iPhones, the tool was mostly powerless.
It is noteworthy that the UFED 4PC handles Android devices much worse than the iPhone. For example, the tool was unable to extract social media data, GPS and browser history from Google Pixel 2 and Samsung Galaxy S9. Additionally, UFED was unable to access messages on the Ellipsis 8 and Galaxy Tab S2 tablets. With Huawei P20 Pro, the tool does not work at all.
“Now we can jailbreak the iPhone. A year ago, we could not jailbreak an iPhone, but we could handle all Android devices. Now we can't hack many Android devices, ”Detective Rex Kiser told Motherboard.
Cellebrite is currently the leader in mobile jailbreak tools (excluding iPhones), according to Kiser. The main supplier of iPhone jailbreak tools is Grayshift. Her GrayKey tool sells for $ 15,000-30,000 and can crack encryption on any iPhone.
