It's a pretty good bet that China, Russia, the NSA, and other state security agencies have access to Apple's source code (not by Apple providing it to them, but by having pwned an employee's laptop). If Apple creates the source code to do this, these state agencies will be a digital signature away from being able to crack any iPhone that ends up in their physical possession. This applies even if Apple deletes the source code soon after providing the binary to the FBI, since it will have been siphoned off the corp network while under development.
> "It's a pretty good bet that China, Russia, the NSA, and other state security agencies have access to Apple's source code (not by Apple providing it to them, but by having pwned an employee's laptop). If Apple creates the source code to do this, these state agencies will be a digital signature away from being able to crack any iPhone"
In the scenario you lay out, these security agencies are incapable of writing their own modifications to iOS, even though they possess the source to iOS.
Absolutely ridiculous. If they can steal the source and signing key, they certainly have access to the technical expertise to do it themselves.
I mean christ, exactly how complicated do you think this pin timeout logic is? If they can hire sufficiently skilled hackers, they can certainly hire sufficiently skilled developers.
The security of the system lies in the secrecy of the signing key. If they can meet that bar, they can surmount any other obstacle.
Still a good idea?