Up until the Cupertino company launched iOS 4 last year, there wasn’t any real data protection for iDevices. This left much of the government and enterprise market who require top notch security, holding onto their BlackBerry devices.
iOS 4 brought about industry-standard AES-256 encryption. The new protection consisted of encrypted key sets that were either tied to the device or to the iDevice user’s passcode. Up until now, that encryption has been fairly unbreakable…
Although the iPhone’s backup files have been hacked in the past, this is the first time that anyone has decrypted files directly on the device. This means that forensic researchers now have access to much more information, instead of just the data that iTunes backs up.
ElcomSoft is a proactive software company focused on digital forensics and network security. The firm seems to be on their A-game, as they just posted another one up in the win column.
The security company is the first to bring a complete toolkit to market that enables the forensic analysis of encrypted user data stored in certain iDevices running iOS 4 and higher. To see all the nerdy details of how they dismantled the iOS encryption, click here.
Though they claim they’re restricting availability of the kit to government entries like law enforcement, it’s terrible to think what could happen if the information ended up in the wrong hands. I don’t think we’ll see any government agencies dropping their BlackBerries for iDevices anytime soon.
Are you worried about iOS data security? Or is that an oxymoron?