After FBI, Delhi cops sowing seeds to crack Apple code

New Delhi: Three months after America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted Apple to help it decrypt an iPhone used by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, who killed 14 people last December, Delhi Police too is seeking technology that can unlock Apple and other mobile devices.
Highly-placed sources say that the police are in touch with global firms for the supply of software and training that could help the cops extract data from iPhones.The cops also want help in extracting and decoding iCloud backup data.
The information that the police want their hands on include contact lists, messages and calls, Geo data, deleted social network posts, Messenger text and passwords of the applications on the device. They would like to access details of platforms like Foursquare, VK, Kik, Line, Viber and Textie, the source added, as well as information from applications like Remember the Milk and Dropbox Hide It Pro and the logs of fitness and travel apps with booking history.
Delhi Police is readying also for technology to unlock and extract data from 8,400 other mobile devices, including Blackberries and to unlock Chinese phones, which have found their way deep into Delhi’s crime world.
The police document on the revamp of its cyber cell elaborates how the force will get a boost in dealing with cyber-crime if these software and gadgets are made available to them. The paper claims that the technology to be procured will be able to decrypt even WhatsApp’s new encrypted chat history database i.e. Crypt8. The technology will also enable them to crack screen locks and pattern locks which, as of now, take a lot of time for forensic labs to unravel.
Among the software that the capital’s police force has sought are “brute force attacks” that launch a series of possible passwords into an account to open it and Rainbow Table,which produces passwords. Technology to fight and detect malware is also being taught.
Police officers say they were left helpless when asked to probe cases that required high-level cyber investigation. From economic offences to terror cases, the cops have had to rely on forensic laboratories or private investigators for assistance. Evidence in such cases often have to be immediately retrieved comprising as they do e-mails, websites, chat rooms and databases traced to desktops, laptops as well as mobile phones, said a senior policeman.
In December last year, Turkey-based hackers, suspected to be working for the Islamic State, siphoned off Rs 6 crore in Indian currency by manipulating the transaction account numbers between a Delhi firm and its UK-based client. The case required examination of emails, email accounts, sources and origins of transactions, etc, that they did not have the expertise for.
The cops have a lengthy shopping list ready, from Encase Forensics — computer forensic techniques of global standard — to forensic workstations, email examiners and digital intelligence servers. “Email examiners,” said an officer, “will not only recover deleted emails, but also analyse mails from the content of their headers, subject, body, etc. They can scan through hundreds of email formats. Cyber forensics will assist them in tracing the origin and destinations of the mails.”