‘Back Doors’ Cyber Insights for 22nd February from The National Cyber Skills Centre
Would you feel more or less safe if there was a 'back door' into your personal data?
Imagine the situation, you are at home one day minding your own business and a knock at the door comes. It’s the Police. Immediately your heart races as you rapidly imagine all the scenarios as why they need to talk to you. You have nothing to worry about, they are just calling in to collect a spare set of keys to your house. Just in case at some point in the future, they need to let themselves in to investigate a crime that you may, or may not have committed.
How would you feel about that? Would you say give it to them? Of course not. Who would? This scenario will never, of course, happen in the physical world, but in the cyber world, the concept of being compelled by law to leave ‘back doors’ in encryption technologies is being openly discussed.
The best-known case of this was during 2015-2016 when Apple point blank refused to assist the FBI investigating the iPhone of an individual who committed a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people and injured 22. The iPhone had been locked with a 4-digit password, which after ten failed attempts to access it would erase all its data. The FBI wanted to compel Apple to write new software that would let the Government bypass iPhone security and unlock the phones. Meaning that they would have a permanent ‘back door’ into the devices...
Read the rest over at Cyber Insights, brought to you by the National Cyber Skills Centre.
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