What does the US Government want with iOS exploits?

Factual Questions
1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/23/shopping-for-zero-days-an-price-list-for-hackers-secret-software-exploits/

could someone elaborate on what the article is hinting at? that say it’s not Apple, but rather governments that are looking at spying on people through their iphones? like how iphones can be used as wiretaps / surveillance because it’s never really switched off?*

  • can it be switched off? there’s no easy way to take out the battery…
2

I would suspect, practically, that a government might be interested at any way they can use a criminal or enemy agent’s smartphone against him or her. Having it used as a bug when it’s apparently asleep might be a stretch practically, but definitely valuable. Also of interest:

  • Recording calls and forwarding copies to the government (aka smartphone ‘wiretapping’)
  • Forwarding copies of any voice recordings intentionally made by the user
  • Forwarding information about when and how the owner browsed the web and accessed data through apps.
  • Searching through any other data loaded onto the phone that might be valuable.
3

Lots of Chinese are now using the iphone, it would be nice to listen in on some party big wig or general without having to go to far in extremes.

Declan

4

Any method of exploitation is useful to the government. That is, for example, the purpose of CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act), which requires providers communications tools and services to modify their products in order to accommodate government surveillance activities in real time. Back when Nextel push-to-talk was new on the scene, it created a significant challenge.

5

it seems they are interested in everything as a matter of course - game consoles, really? what useful information could they learn?

http://www.livescience.com/19306-military-hacks-game-consoles.html

6

I expect this isn’t really about getting data off a used game console, but about learning how to exploit the security of game consoles for other purposes.

Game consoles are often hooked up corporate/government networks without the knowledge of IT. Someone who’s playing Halo in his downtime at work is less likely to have the console go through whatever formal process is needed to vet it. That means that there’s an unsecured entry point into some networks, if you can figure out how to break it open.

Similarly with iPhones (to some extent). It’s not just being able to run code on the iPhone, it’s that iPhones get synced to people’s computers daily. If you can find an exploit on the iPhone, it can lead to exploiting an even more interesting system.

To attempt an answer for one of the OP’s questions: an exploited iPhone’s power status may be in the hands of whoever wrote the exploit. There’s no physical power disconnect available to the user. It’s possible that there’s some unwriteable low-level ROM that handles the power down sequence, though, so you might be safe either way.

7

that makes sense. in related news, it seems your credit card info is stored in your Xbox even if you reset it to factory settings.

http://kotaku.com/5897461/hackers-can-steal-credit-card-information-from-your-old-xbox-experts-tell-us