Apple vs FBI: Here's how the FBI might hack into the iPhone in two weeks without Apple's help

The week wasn’t as busy as expected for Apple. After its high-profile iPhone SE event on Monday, the company was to get into a showdown with the FBI right the next day. At the event, Cook mentioned how important security is for Apple, possibly in preparation for the hearing the next day. There was a twist in the tale however. The Justice Department asked the judge to postpone the hearing as the FBI wanted to try some alternate methods to break into San Bernadino shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. A third-party has apparently demonstrated a method that may help in this regard. The FBI claims that it needs to test the process on other devices as they don’t want to damage critical data on Farook’s iPhone. To that end, the FBI was granted a two week extension. This last minute surprise has taken the Internet by storm and reams are being filled with theories (we’ll be adding to those reams very shortly). Typically, iOS will throw away the encryption keys after 10 failed attempts at the passcode, locking the data away for good. The FBI however, expects to get unlimited attempts at figuring out the pass-code. Forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski has said that a process called NAND Mirroring is quite possible to be at the forefront. “Most of the tech experts I’ve heard from believe the same as I do – that NAND mirroring is likely being used to some degree to brute force the pin on the device. This is where the NAND chip is typically desoldered, the data extracted (likely by a chip reader/programmer, which is like a cd burner for chips), and then copied so that if the device begins to wipe or delay after five or ten tries, they can just write the original image back to the chip, [and start over]” he points out. There is also the possibility of inducing a software flaw that will be severe enough to give access to the device’s core. However,  experts believe that to be impossible. “The flaw would have to be severe to let investigators all the way into the phone’s core and tell it to open. The biggest problem with this theory is that security researchers are constantly on the hunt for these sorts of flaws. If flaws exist, we’d probably know about them,” writes Cnet . Zdziarski also rules out some other experimental methods such as frankensteining the crypto engine, de-capping, acid, lasers, and others.