&gt; Apple is being asked to create a firmware version without brute force rate-limiting.<p>This is a one line of code change for Apple and would take them a few minutes. FWIW, there are people in the iOS jailbreaking community who could do this without the source code rather quickly. I&#x27;ll even go so far as to say that we actually already have all the tools for this lying around for the iPhone 4, and with only minimal changes made by even less qualified engineers they would probably work on the iPhone 5C.<p>&gt; With a sufficiently complex passphrase, the FBI is still SOL.<p>Most people use the 4- or 6- digit PIN number. One presumes that in this case the user did so (and you can tell, as the UI is different depending on the kind of passphrase used), or the FBI wouldn&#x27;t be quite so excited to bother here. It takes mere minutes to crack a 4- digit PIN code on the iPhone 4.<p>&gt; The fact that only Apple is in a position to sign firmware that could do this is a positive thing in this context. The only alternatives are no firmware signing at all (so everyone could run this attack), no updates at all, or enforcing the rate-limiting in a HSM (which is what they&#x27;re doing on the latest generation iPhones).<p>You have conveniently removed &quot;allow the user to lock everyone out from firmware updates except themselves&quot; from the list of possible options :&#x2F;. While I am perfectly happy with the idea that some people might want to allow Apple to update the firmware on their device, I would much rather no one be able to do that unless they go through me, and as I own the hardware and it is my data that is on the line, I should have the right to make that decision. Apple is selling locks, claiming them to be secure, while not only sitting on a master key but now <i>claiming that it isn&#x27;t really a master key</i>, which is not just disingenuous but outright dishonest at this point.