14 DAY TRIAL // India’s telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has revealed that the country developed solutions to break into smartphones with strong encryption systems, including Apple’s iPhones, following reports that technology companies might refuse to help authorities by unlocking their devices.
This is becoming a serious problem for Apple, as India is the third country after the United States and China that is looking into ways to break into its devices. The United States has already unlocked iPhones 5c and 5s that were involved in criminal activities, while China is believed to have requested access to the iOS source code, a demand that Apple has already denied.
But in India’s case, the telecom minister suggests that the country does not want to deal with problems such as those in the United States where Apple is refusing to help the FBI in criminal investigations by unlocking its phones, so it has developed its own solution to hack these devices.
“Smartphones including phones by Apple employ strong encryption to secure the data stored and to protect the communication. Such Encryption technologies pose challenges to Law Enforcement Agencies throughout the world including India. As part of this programme, a tool for Mobile forensics has been developed, which handles smartphones including Apple phones,” Prasad was quoted as saying by TOI.
No backdoor for the time being
The telecom minister hasn’t nominated the phones that can be unlocked with this tool, so it’s unknown whether India can hack iPhone 6 and 6s too. Following FBI’s successful unlocking of iPhone 5s and 5c models, it was said that the latest iPhone models are the most secure and cannot be hacked at the moment.
India does not plan to force tech companies to install backdoors on their smartphones in order to help bypass encryption should this be needed, but it goes without saying that tech companies would have quickly opposed such a proposal.
India, however, is becoming a rather hostile market for Apple, although the company is trying to benefit from the local demand for iPhones in different ways. Earlier this week, the firm has been blocked from bringing refurbished iPhones in the country to sell them locally on grounds that such a move would have a significant environmental impact and affect sales of companies that have set production facilities in India.
Apple is believed to be seeking approval to open several retail stores in India, but a decision in this case from the local government has not yet been made.