OMGZ. Time to put on tin foil. /s
Forensic scientist identifies suspicious 'back doors' running on every iOS device | ZDNet
Forensic scientist identifies suspicious 'back doors' running on every iOS device | ZDNet
In his talk, Zdziarski demonstrates "a number of undocumented high-value forensic services running on every iOS device" and "suspicious design omissions in iOS that make collection easier." He also provides examples of forensic artifacts acquired that "should never come off the device" without user consent.
According to one slide the iPhone is "reasonably secure" to a typical attacker and the iPhone 5 and iOS 7 are more secure from everybody except Apple and the government. But he notes that Apple has "worked hard to ensure that it can access data on end-user devices on behalf of law enforcement" and links to Apple's Law Enforcement Process Guidelines, which clearly spell this out.
Undocumented iOS services exposed by Zdziarski (like "lockdownd," "pcapd" and "mobile.file_relay") can bypass encrypted backups and be accessed via USB, wifi and "maybe cellular." What's most suspicious about the undocumented services (and the data they collect) is that they're not referenced in any Apple software, the data is personal in nature (thus unlikely to be for debugging) and is stored in raw format, making it impossible to restore to the device (making it useless to carriers or during a trip to the Genius Bar). Zdziarski does a good job of refuting most plausible explanations for the code.