To give it to you straight: it would take roughly 1.2 unvigintillion years (that’s a 1 followed by 51 zeros) for the fastest supercomputer on Earth to brute-force AES-256 encryption. In other words, AES-256 is practically unbreakable by modern computing standards. Even if you hijacked every computer on the planet, the sun would literally burn out and the entire universe would experience heat death long before you even made a dent. The above commenter apparently has “foundational level knowledge” of computer systems, yet thinks they can put backdoors into their own products.
Just to give you an idea of how this actually functions in their products; Apple comprehensively bakes encryption into both the hardware and software levels of iPhones and iPads by default, making it one of the most secure consumer operating systems available. Every modern Apple device features a dedicated coprocessor called the Secure Enclave which leverages a Built-in Crypto Engine, to ensure that that all data stored on the device’s flash storage is encrypted at the hardware level using an AES-256 crypto engine. On top of that, they utilise UIDs (Unique Device Keys) which are physically fused into the device’s silicon , Unique Device Keys: A Unique ID (UID) is physically fused into the device’s silicon during manufacturing. Neither Apple nor the iOS software itself can read this key directly. It is used to generate the base keys that encrypt the entire file system (including the OS itself). Because the encryption is tied to the specific hardware, they are not even capable of engineering their own backdoors into their systems, without completely breaking the entire underlying security architecture, which underpins all their devices.
To give it to you straight: it would take roughly 1.2 unvigintillion years (that’s a 1 followed by 51 zeros) for the fastest supercomputer on Earth to brute-force AES-256 encryption. In other words, AES-256 is practically unbreakable by modern computing standards. Even if you hijacked every computer on the planet, the sun would literally burn out and the entire universe would experience heat death long before you even made a dent. The above commenter apparently has “foundational level knowledge” of computer systems, yet thinks they can put backdoors into their own products.
Just to give you an idea of how this actually functions in their products; Apple comprehensively bakes encryption into both the hardware and software levels of iPhones and iPads by default, making it one of the most secure consumer operating systems available. Every modern Apple device features a dedicated coprocessor called the Secure Enclave which leverages a Built-in Crypto Engine, to ensure that that all data stored on the device’s flash storage is encrypted at the hardware level using an AES-256 crypto engine. On top of that, they utilise UIDs (Unique Device Keys) which are physically fused into the device’s silicon , Unique Device Keys: A Unique ID (UID) is physically fused into the device’s silicon during manufacturing. Neither Apple nor the iOS software itself can read this key directly. It is used to generate the base keys that encrypt the entire file system (including the OS itself). Because the encryption is tied to the specific hardware, they are not even capable of engineering their own backdoors into their systems, without completely breaking the entire underlying security architecture, which underpins all their devices.