How the hell could the FBI hack into that iPhone? - CNET

Harry Potter spoke parseltongue to get into the Chamber of Secrets. The FBI would have to resort to a less magical (and a lot more tedious) solution to getting into the iPhone.

It's called NAND mirroring, and it requires copying part of the iPhone's memory. Right now, the iPhone will wipe itself clean after 10 wrong passcodes. But with a copy of the phone's flash memory, the FBI can just keep restoring the data.

"It can then re-try indefinitely," wrote ACLU technology fellow Daniel Kahn Gillmor.

Gillmor wrote about NAND mirroring earlier this month, but that's when the FBI was publicly focused on forcing Apple to write a new version of the phone's operating system that would let it try unlimited passwords. Now Gillmor's theory is looking like the FBI's best bet. It wouldn't be as fast as a simple "brute force" effort password guessing, but it wouldn't require Apple's help.

On Monday, forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski wrote his own explanation of NAND mirroring and argued it was the FBI's most likely tool.

Still, there are other possibilities.

Exploiting a software flaw

The feds could conceivably hack Apple's software ruing the iPhone through a software flaw, according to Johnson. That flaw might affect the way the phone works over wireless Inteet, Bluetooth or cellular communications -- or investigators might find a flawed app on the phone they could use to their advantage.

Whatever it is, the flaw would have to be severe to let investigators all the way into the phone's core and tell it to open. The biggest problem with this theory is that security researchers are constantly on the hunt for these sorts of flaws. If flaws exist, we'd probably know about them.

"It's not really possible with so much attention being paid," Johnson said.

Acid and lasers

Finally, the FBI could look at the chip that's storing the passcode.

As Zdziarski describes it, investigators could remove the microprocessor from the iPhone and run it through a chemical treatment before hitting it with a laser. But like Dr. Evil's plan to put lasers on sharks, this one is pretty risky. One wrong move, Zdziarski said, and the chip would be ruined. Not only would the data would be lost, there would no longer be any point in forcing Apple to write new software.

The Justice Department said in its court filing Monday that it's been working on a technical solution during the entire legal kerfuffle.

Johnson compared the behind-the-scenes machinations to a football game, saying investigators have probably moved the ball as far forward as they can.