Technology researchers at Johns Hopkins University have recently found a way to crack open the security encryption on certain iPhone apps, although it was fixed with the recent update iOS 9.3. The way that it worked was that they designed a program that guesses a bunch of encryption codes, and the apps (such as iMessage) are designed in such a way that they tell the program if any numbers in the guess were correct.
This is a good reflection to show just how far ahead of hackers Apple truly is; their position is balanced on a knife-edge. They’re able to stay just far enough ahead of anyone who wishes to bypass their security. It reflects back to the issue of government encryption bypassing for the iPhone.
On the team from Hopkins University, Ian Miers remarked, “Apple has some of the best cryptographic engineers in the business, and yet they made a mistake. Imagine what would happen if they tried to do something more complex like adding a backdoor… The same people in the government who are saying backdoors can be done safely said iMessage was completely secure."
However, don’t think that you’re safe just because you have an Android.
Stagefright, a hacker’s dream tool for making another Android phone his or her own, has recently been been updated. Tech company Zimperium has recently released an exploit tell-all to Google of the ways Android can be disrupted. Nicknamed ‘Metaphor,’ it can still access over 235 million unpatched Android devices. Google, much like Apple, struggles to stay just ahead of hackers.
Images: TechWorld
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