Day: March 29, 2016

Viability of Software Exploit and SEP Devices

A number of people have been asking me my thoughts on the viability of a software exploit against Secure Enclave enabled devices, so here’s my opinion:

First, is interesting to note that the way the FBI categorizes this tool’s capabilities is “5c” and “9.0”; namely, hardware model and firmware version. They won’t confirm that it’s the only combination that the tool runs on, but have noted that these are the two factors they’re categorizing it by. This is consistent with how exploit-based forensics tools have functioned in the past. My own forensics tools (for older iPhones) came in different modules that were tailored for a specific hardware platform and firmware version. This is because most exploits require taking Apple’s own firmware and patching it; those patches require slightly different offsets in the kernel (and possibly boot loader). The software to patch is also going to be slightly different for each hardware and firmware combination. So without saying really anything, FBI has kind of hinted that this might be a software exploit. Had this been a hardware attack, such as a NAND mirroring technique, firmware version likely wouldn’t be a point of discussion, as the technique’s feasibility is dependent on hardware revision. This is all conjecture, of course, but is worth noting that the hints are already there.

If the FBI did in fact use a software exploit, the question then becomes one of how viable it is on other platforms. Typically, a software exploit of this magnitude could very well take advantage of vulnerabilities that have long existed in the firmware, making it more than likely that the exploit may also be effective (possibly with a little tailoring) to older versions of iOS. Even if the exploit today was tailored specifically for this device, adjusting offsets and patching slightly different copies of Apple’s firmware is a relatively painless process. A number of open source tools even exist to find and patch the correct bytes in decrypted Apple kernels.

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