In some ways an offline attack is easier – by copying the data off the device and onto a more powerful computer, specialized software and other techniques can be used to try all different passcode combinations.īut offline attacks can also be much harder, because they require either trying every single possible encryption key, or figuring out the user’s passcode and the device-specific key (the unique ID on Apple, and the hardware-bound key on newer versions of Android). There are two types of brute-force attacks: offline and online. William Enck and Adwait Nadkarni, CC BY-ND Starting the attackĪ very abstract representation of the derivation of the encryption keys on Android. In what is called a “brute force” attack, a phone can be unlocked by trying every possible encryption key (i.e., all character combinations possible) until the right one is reached and the device (or data) unlocks. Some people have modified their phones’ operating systems to give them “root” privileges – access to the device’s data beyond what is allowed during normal operations – and potentially weakening security.īut if these options are not available, code-breaking is the remaining way in.Some phones have fingerprint readers, which can be unlocked with an image of the phone owner’s fingerprint.

Only the most recent versions of Android allow the user to encrypt an entire removable SD card not all apps encrypt data stored on an SD card.

If the target data are stored on a removable SD card, it may be unencrypted.

The information that is backed up, and thereby accessible from the backup site directly, depends on which applications are installed on the phone.

Many applications use Android’s Backup API.

It is unclear if Android still allows this. In March 2011, Google remotely installed a program that cleaned up phones infected by malicious software.

A custom app could be installed on a target phone to extract information.But sometimes getting access to encrypted data from a phone doesn’t involve any code-breaking at all. Attackers can try to crack either the key directly – which is very hard – or combinations of the passcode and device-specific number, which is hidden and roughly equally difficult to guess.ĭecoding this strong encryption can be very difficult. Beyond the fact the Android ecosystem involves more companies, we discovered some technical differences, including a way to remotely update and therefore unlock encryption keys, something the FBI was not able to do for the iPhone 5c on its own.ĭata encryption on smartphones involves a key that the phone creates by combining 1) a user’s unlock code, if any (often a four- to six-digit passcode), and 2) a long, complicated number specific to the individual device being used. We attempted to replicate what the FBI had wanted to do on an Android phone and found some useful results. We are Android users and researchers, and the first thing we did when the FBI-Apple dispute hit popular media was read Android’s Full Disk Encryption documentation. The FBI said it relied on a third party to crack the phone’s encrypted data, raising questions about iPhone security and whether federal agencies should disclose their method.īut what if the device had been running Android? Would the same technical and legal drama have played out? The high-profile case has pitted federal law enforcement agencies against Apple, which fought a legal order to work around its passcode security feature to give law enforcement access to the phone’s data. The Justice Department has managed to unlock an iPhone 5c used by the gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December.

Juniper Encrypted Password Crack 1