Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
MIT Applauds Enhanced Security for iPhone
August 20, 2012
Thanks to reader and colleague Mark Unger for passing along this blog post with the question – is this true?
MIT has recently praised the steps Apple has taken to enhance iPhone security. Here is what it has said: “In fact, in its efforts to make its devices more secure, Apple has crossed a significant threshold. Technologies the company has adopted protect Apple customers’ content so well that in many situations it’s impossible for law enforcement to perform forensic examinations of devices seized from criminals. Most significant is the increasing use of encryption, which is beginning to cause problems for law enforcement agencies when they encounter systems with encrypted drives.”
There has been a lot of improvement in iPhone security, but don't think it is secure out of the box. Two things you need to do: Have a PIN to enable encryption and go into the settings to permit a PIN longer than the default four digits. There are several available tools that can brute force the four digit PIN in less than 15 minutes even if the iPhone is set to wipe data after ten invalid attempts. Another reason to have a long complex passphrase.
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