iPhone hacking is easy, claims Indian telecom minister

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Apple supplier is increasing its ability to build masses of iPhones in India
Has India come up with a fool-proof way to hack iPhones? Apparently so.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

So far this year, vulnerabilities have been exploited to help unlock the older-generation iPhone 5s and 5c, both as part of murder investigations. However, the newer iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, and 6s Plus remain secure devices no government has been able to break into.

Although that record may have been broken in India, according to the country’s telecom minister.

“Smartphones including phones by Apple employ strong encryption to secure the data stored and to protect the communication,” telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today. “Such encryption technologies pose challenges to law enforcement agencies throughout the world including India.”

But Prasad went on to say that R&D in India has developed a tool for mobile forensics, “which handles smartphones including Apple phones.”

Prasad doesn’t specify exactly which “Apple phones” or operating system his mobile forensics tool apparently works on, although his words certainly imply that the country has this pesky encryption problem sorted. He did, however, deny that the government wants to introduce a backdoor or key for smartphone encryption.

Has any such mobile forensics tool been developed? If it has, we can surely expect to hear more about this in the near future.

Source: Times of India

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