The anti-virus program pioneer John McAfee has claimed that unlocking the Apple iPhone of the San Bernardino shooters is a ‘trivial’ exercise.
McAfee claimed that hacking into the phone of Syed Farook, one of the shooters who carried out a deadly attack in California, late last year, should take the FBI just 30 minutes and that hacking it was a ‘trivial matter’, International Business Times reports.
However, McAfee indicated he believes that the FBI knows this and is simply using the debate to deceive the public by ‘asking for a universal key’ to access Apple’s smartphones.
According to McAfee, it should be simple for the FBI to unlock Farook’s iPhone.
He said:
You need a hardware engineer and a software engineer. The hardware engineer takes the phone apart, and copies the instruction set [the phone’s mobile operating system and installed applications] and the memory. You then run a program called a disassembler, which takes the 1s and 0s and gives you readable instructions
Then the [software engineer] sits down and reads through it. What he is looking for is the first access to the keypad, because that is the first thing you do when you input your [personal identification number]. When he sees that, he reads the instructions for where in memory the secret code is stored.
McAfee made the comments during an interview with Russia Today about the debate over the FBI’s attempts to force Apple to unlock the iPhone 5C used by the terrorist .
The federal agency wants the tech giant to make a piece of software to bypass the phones security but the company’s tried to resist the move.
McAfee had previously said he would decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone free of charge so that Apple wouldn’t have to put a back door into one of its products.
At the time, he claimed it would take three weeks, but now he says he offered that time frame as a precaution so he basically wouldn’t have to eat his words later.
He also says his comments aren’t meant as an indictment of apple it’s just ‘any computer can be [cracked], and it is a half hour job.’
Considering how bad McAfee security is though I’m not entirely sure I believe he could do it…
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.