Yes, the security researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov manages to bypass the safeguards or the securities that were put by Apple and pointed by the FBI to explain its difficulty in accessing the smartphone of a terrorist, San Bernardino: due to the limit on the number of trials to unlock the code of the device. After 10 unsuccessful attempts, the device was hit by the Apple effect, yes, as Apple programmed this system to delete all its data, hence, ruining any hope of police to recover all the useful information for their investigation. The security researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov from the University of Cambridge has managed to hack that iPhone 5C and also the researcher shows that just with a few tweaks FBI could have Hacked iPhone in just $100. Yes, sounds crazy, but, it’s actually true. According to the security researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov used the hack without the use of any expensive equipment. He used cheap parts instead of expensive parts, that he purchased at a local electronics store. Hacking a four-digit PIN would be the technique that can take up to 20 hours. To do this, the researcher Sergei Skorobogatov uses a technique known as ‘Nand mirroring’ technique. Using equipment commercially available that and the equipment will also cost you less than a hundred dollars, cruelly precise Skorobogatov that he manages to create copies of the Flash memory of the phone – much as he wants – to increase the number of PIN trials. Here is what the security researcher said, “It does not require any expensive and sophisticated equipment. All needed parts are low cost and were obtained from local electronics distributors”. So, this is the first public illustration of the real hardware Nand mirroring process for iPhone 5C. As the security researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov also added that “Any attacker with sufficient technical skills could repeat the experiments easily”. However, till now both the FBI and Apple have not commented on Skorobogatov’s research. Sergei Skorobogatov detailed the whole process in a new paper and was able to gain entry into a locked iPhone 5c using the NAND mirroring technique. Here’s the video demonstration, where Skorobogatov explained the NAND Mirroring technique:-
