- Jul 22, 2014
- 2,525
A computer forensics firm says Apple weakened backup security protection with the Sept. 13 release of iOS 10, making it simple work for hackers to crack password protection used for backups of iOS devices stored on Macs and PCs. Elcomsoft, which explained the security hole in a blog post Friday, said the “major security flaw” opens the door for a new type of iOS brute-force password attack.
“We looked into it, and found out that the new mechanism (in iOS 10) skips certain security checks, allowing us to try passwords approximately 2,500 times faster compared to the old mechanism used in iOS 9 and older,” wrote Elcomsoft’s Oleg Afonin in the post. Researchers said Apple weakened password protection with iOS 10, and that iOS 9 stored passwords with a stronger encryption algorithm. iOS backup images are an attractive target to hackers and typically hold saved passwords and authentication tokens for mail and social media accounts, said Per Thorsheim, CEO of security firm God Praksis. Thorsheim called the change in the way Apple handles password protection in iOS 10 a “massive weakening of security and privacy.” In one attack scenario, if an iOS device owner performs a backup of their iOS 10 iPhone locally to a PC or Mac using iTunes, that backup image is vulnerable to a password attack. An attacker who has local or remote access to that PC or Mac can run brute-force password cracking software on the backup image and more easily crack the password than with previous backups performed with iOS 9 devices. Unclear is what, if any, specific version of iTunes creates conditions optimal for the password vulnerability with iOS 10 backups. “This new vector of attack is specific to password-protected local backups produced by iOS 10 devices. The attack itself is only available for iOS 10 backups,” Afonin wrote. According to Elcomsoft, with a password attack against iOS backup images using an Intel i5-class system, an attacker can perform a brute-force password attack at a rate of 2,400 passwords per second versus 6 million passwords per second for an iOS 10 backup.
See more at the link above
“We looked into it, and found out that the new mechanism (in iOS 10) skips certain security checks, allowing us to try passwords approximately 2,500 times faster compared to the old mechanism used in iOS 9 and older,” wrote Elcomsoft’s Oleg Afonin in the post. Researchers said Apple weakened password protection with iOS 10, and that iOS 9 stored passwords with a stronger encryption algorithm. iOS backup images are an attractive target to hackers and typically hold saved passwords and authentication tokens for mail and social media accounts, said Per Thorsheim, CEO of security firm God Praksis. Thorsheim called the change in the way Apple handles password protection in iOS 10 a “massive weakening of security and privacy.” In one attack scenario, if an iOS device owner performs a backup of their iOS 10 iPhone locally to a PC or Mac using iTunes, that backup image is vulnerable to a password attack. An attacker who has local or remote access to that PC or Mac can run brute-force password cracking software on the backup image and more easily crack the password than with previous backups performed with iOS 9 devices. Unclear is what, if any, specific version of iTunes creates conditions optimal for the password vulnerability with iOS 10 backups. “This new vector of attack is specific to password-protected local backups produced by iOS 10 devices. The attack itself is only available for iOS 10 backups,” Afonin wrote. According to Elcomsoft, with a password attack against iOS backup images using an Intel i5-class system, an attacker can perform a brute-force password attack at a rate of 2,400 passwords per second versus 6 million passwords per second for an iOS 10 backup.
See more at the link above
