ThebumpyroadofiPhone5Cmirroring.pdfVIP

The bumpy road towards iPhone 5c NAND mirroring Sergei Skorobogatov University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Cambridge, UK e-mail: sps32@cam.ac.uk Abstract—This paper is a short summary of a real world security prospective the process of mirroring could pose a mirroring attack on the Apple iPhone 5c passcode retry threat as it creates a backup copy of the data that might counter under iOS 9. This was achieved by desoldering the allow restoring the previous state of the system, for NAND Flash chip of a sample phone in order to physically example, with a higher value of password retry counter. access its connection to the SoC and partially reverse The Apple iPhone 5c went under the spotlight soon engineering its proprietary bus protocol. The process does after FBI recovered one from a terrorist suspect in not require any expensive and sophisticated equipment. All December 2015 [2]. In February 2016 the FBI announced needed parts are low cost and were obtained from local that it was unable to unlock the recovered phone due to its electronics distributors. By using the described and advanced security features, including encryption of user successful hardware mirroring process it was possible to data [3]. The FBI first a