Should iPhones Have a Back Door?

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At first blush, we want to have the “good guys” have access and capture the “bad guys.” Yet, the cyber security world is rarely so black and white. Two shooters, a man and wife, murdered 14 people in San Bernadino, California in 2015. The couple had apparently destroyed their own mobile phones, however, the husband’s work phone was absconded by the FBI where the FBI versus Apple lawsuit was raised. Without access to the iPhone, the FBI were helpless to see if the phone had any further intelligence.
An officer can certainly guess at the password, yet after 10 unsuccessful tries, an iPhone has a secondary security setting that automatically wipes the phone’s data. Thus, the lawsuit, intending to force Apple to deliberately “backdoor” around existing security measures, prompted a firestorm from the security world.
At first blush, it seems like a no-brainer: let the FBI have access to the bad guys (and girls…) phones. In a perfect world, this seems obvious, however, the world of security is never so black-and-white.

Dangerous Precedent
To backdoor one iPhone would effectively betray all of Apple’s many millions of law-abiding customers and pave the way for weaker security measures. Google, WhatsApp and Microsoft all back Apple up and have even employed the #nobackdoors hashtag. Weakening security with the aim of advancing security doesn’t make sense.
Some argue that the FBI is not requesting a permanent backdoor, but looking to change features which disallow multiple password entries.
FBI Cracks the Code
The FBI’s announcement of the ability to unlock the iPhone without Apple’s help sent ripples through the security world: no one is truly “private.” This could also impact Apple’s ambitions in the enterprise market and in China. Apple phones have been previously approved for various high-security organizations which previously only used Blackberry devices. Recently, Apple reportedly let the government run security checks on all Apple devices and moved Chinese users’ data to Chinese servers. Unfortunately, the FBI’s revelations could hurt Apples sales in China.

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