Google's Android operating system also supports encrypted storage, but only for some of the data on the phone. More important, there is no key burned into the hardware, so even complex passwords can be broken by extracting them and using a network of a few hundred computers. BlackBerry phones, on the other hand, also have a strong encryption system that can be based on multiple factors in addition to the user's PIN.
But the BlackBerry system is designed for business customers and is harder to use than Apple's, which is made for the consumer market. Now that hardened, military-grade encryption is tough and easy for consumers to use—assuming the user has set a PIN lock that's both long and hard to guess—the nightmare scenario of the crypto wars may finally have come to pass.
Simson L. Garfinkel, who works in computer forensics, is a contributing editor at Technology Review.
This article was updated on August 13 to correct the amount of time it would take to try all possible encryption keys of given lengths.
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