John McAfee : Cyber Security Legend

Introduction :

Photo Credits : NullSession

John McAfee is basically a cyber security legend.John McAfee is an american hacker(computer programmer who's expertise are breaking through software security protocols to access sensitive information without having any access rights) who is also the founder of the company "McAfee Antivirus" John McAfee, is probably ,for some people, the most interesting man in the world.McAfee Antivirus has been around even before the internet and it is also among the oldest antivirus soft wares around.John McAfee made over $100 million from his company.

The World's first antivirus software company McAfee was later bought by Intel which we all might have already heard of. In short,Intel is world largest manufacturer of semiconductors.

Photo Credits :Martin Abegglen

He life after retirement from his company in 2007 has seen many ups and downs.He was arrested for corruption and disobeying federal laws.He spent some years in Belize where he faced some jail time but he got out from there ,people say he faked a heart attack there which led to his early release.Even after his return to the United States he faced many hardships most of them were legal issues.


The US government has accused him of hacking the government databases.He found out Prime Ministers involvement in extra judicial murders.Minister of National Defense involved in international human and drug trafficking.
  He was also arrested for these reasons.According to him the NSA is always watching him.He was offered many acres of land and many other benefits in return to paying the political party $2 million dollars for their election campaign which he refused to accept.He was later arrested at his house and his dog was shot dead in front of him.

John McAfee like fishing and he is also a scuba diver.

McAfee has been showing  "other" aspects of his personality lately mostly by the way he dresses and even in the the TV commercial where he shows "how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus".




FTC:
John McAfee is also the owner of the FTC(Future Tense Central), a  company that he made.This company offers services like Internet Privacy and secure files and data sharing on the web.This company has also released Android and IOS platform applications like Chadder android app.Demonsaw is another desktop software from FTC that performs security for you in data sharing.
The company has also invested in health related apps like fetal beats.
D-Vasive Pro is also a great application that is basically anti-spy app for your WiFi computer accessories like mike , camera.

Cracking the iPhone :
John McAfee has been concerned about the ever so popular Apple vs FBI case.Hes been diving into the hot debates on televisions ever since this case became a thing.If you dont know about FBI vs Apples legal stand of you can check this link we have covered it too.

He gave his own method out to public and to FBI  about how they can crack the iphone. According to him cracking the phone needs two people involved ;

 1) a hardware engineer and

 2) a software engineer.

The Hardware Engineer : 
The hardware engineer disassembles the phone and then he copies the instruction set ;
Instruction set is defined as the computer architecture related to programming which basically tells the models that the computer follows to perform core tasks like I/O interrupt handling, registers , memory addressing etc.And then a software converts all the instructions into readable code.

The Software Engineer :
The software engineer's job is to analyze that code to find the first keypad input of password.Once he finds out the first input.He then works to locate that input in the memory of the iphone(instruction set).

Quotes from John McAfee :

Photo Credits :By NullSession from Bettendorf, Iowa, United States (John McAfee @ Def Con) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

“I do not want to live in a society where everything is known. That creates chaos and conflict and arguments.”

Apple's Legal Standoff With FBI

                                                   

 

As the events unfolded:

On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured when  Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple opened fire in a public health training program in San Bernardino, California.


 Tashfeen Malik and Rizwan Farook

After shooting there the couple fled the scene .Pursued by cops after four hours the couple was shot dead. On December 6 after an investigation carried out by FBI, president Obama stated the unfortunate event as an act of terrorism.

The rented SUV the couple used to fled the scene

The interesting thing about the shooters was that,they were not connected to any organization nor someone else motivated them to do so. FBI investigators have said that Farook and Tashfeen had become radicalized over several years prior to the attack, consuming poison on the internet and expressing a commitment to jihadism and martyrdom in private messages to each other.

FBI's row with Apple :

Both Farook and Tashfeen died in that SUV during shootout with police. When situation was controlled and investigation started police found an iPhone 5C in the SUV in which Farook and Tashfeen were killed. The information on that phone was off course very critical but the iPhone was Pin code protected. In order to access the data in its storage, calls ,emails etc FBI asked Apple to develop a new software to gain access to data in the phone but Apple denied due to its policy to never undermine the security features of its products.

Back Story :

The Clipper Chip :

In 1993, the National Security Agency (NSA) introduced the Clipper chip, an encryption device with an acknowledged backdoor for government access, that NSA proposed be used for phone encryption. The proposal touched off a public debate, known as the Crypto Wars, and the Clipper chip was never adopted.

 

Revealing of Classified Information by Edward Snowden :

It was revealed as a part of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden that the NSA and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had access to the user data in iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Android phones and could read almost all smartphone information, including SMS, location, emails, and notes.
 

Apple's Reaction to Edward Snowden's disclosures :

According to The New York Times , Apple developed a new encryption method for its iOS operating system, versions 8 and later, "so deep that Apple could no longer comply with government warrants asking for customer information to be extracted from devices". Throughout 2015, prosecutors argued for the U.S. government to be able to compel decryption of iPhone contents.
 

New Security Details in iOS 9 :

In September 2015, Apple released a white paper detailing the security measures in its then-new iOS 9 operating system. The iPhone 5C model can be protected by a four-digit PIN code. After more than ten incorrect attempts to unlock the phone with the wrong PIN, the contents of the phone will be rendered unaccessible by erasing the AES encryption key that protects its stored data. According to the Apple white paper, iOS includes a Device Firmware Upgrade (DFU) mode, and that "[r]estoring a device after it enters DFU mode returns it to a known good state with the certainty that only unmodified Apple-signed code is present.
 

 Legal Standoff and Court Orders :

 

Apple's Denial to FBI :

When FBI first asked Apple to create a program to pass through the security of the phone, Apple declined it.Then FBI requested a federal judge to  issue a court order, mandating Apple to create and provide the requested software .

 

Response to Court Order :

Apparently that order was not subpoena, but rather was issued under the All Writs Act of 1789 which in legal meaning was not so effective. So Apple declined the court order, citing the security risks that the creation of a backdoor would pose towards their customers. It also stated that no government had ever asked for similar access. 

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook's Statement:

On February 16, 2016, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook released the following statement to his customers:

"The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand. This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake"

Tim Cook made clear they were opposing court orders just for the data security of their customers.

Another Option Given to Apple :

In response to the opposition, on February 19, 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a new application urging a federal judge to compel Apple to comply with the order. The new application stated that the company could install the malware on the phone in its own premises, and after the FBI had hacked the phone via remote connection, Apple could remove and destroy the malware .

What's Next:

Currently the case is going on. Apple has hired attorneys Ted Olson and Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. to fight the order on appeal.

According to the Wall Street Journal Google parent company Alphabet and Facebook are preparing to file a motion backing Apple.

Many technology giants are working on a joint submission against the government demands.

Google will also file its brief soon.

 Microsoft being not so responsive at first, now planning to file an amicus brief too.

So let's see what happens next.