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Security software entrepreneur turned gonzo cyber-prophet John McAfee is sticking to his contention that he could crack San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Farook's iPhone 5C—though there are a few caveats. In an interview with Ars today, McAfee laughed off a report from the Daily Dot in which he admitted he had lied about the ability to crack the phone, instead explaining that he was dumbing things down in his interview with Russia Today for "people uneducated in technology."

In a candid conversation with Ars, McAfee expressed frustration and exhaustion over trying to educate the masses about the dangers of allowing governments to undermine encryption—and the beating he's been taking for his crusade.

"Ars Technica has probably trashed me more than any other publication," he said. "I don't fault you for it, because I'm not speaking to you guys—you guys don't need to be educated. I'm talking to the masses of America and trying to get them to understand the massive cliff we're all teetering on." With a laugh, he added, "If I look like an idiot, that's because I'm talking to idiots, so cut me some slack."

But in response to Ars' skeptical coverage of his claims of being able to crack Farook's phone, McAfee insists that if given access to specialized hardware he believes the FBI possesses—a "probe machine" that can "decap" the iPhone 5C's A6 processor—he would be able to quickly gain access to the encryption key for the device. He added, "If the FBI does give me the phone, and if the US government gives me access to a probe machine, then I want somebody at Ars Technica to eat their fucking shoe."

Speaking truth to haters

Part of the problem, it seems, is that people in the media can't tell when John McAfee is joking. After his appearance on Russia Today, McAfee gave an interview to Inverse's Joe Carmichael, "stating why I oversimplified," McAfee explained. "I sarcastically called the oversimplification 'a terrible lie.' That was sarcasm, for heaven's sake. How else on earth are you going to explain chip decapping, machine probing and all of these things to get a UID [the iPhone's unique ID code] and why the UID is important to a bunch of people who don't even know there is anything inside a computer? I oversimplified. I didn't lie at all."

As for his comment that he could somehow social-engineer the PIN on the phone, McAfee said, "That was the greatest joke in the fucking universe. I was going to socially engineer a dead man's phone? Am I going to use a spiritual medium to raise him from the dead? Come on. That was probably the greatest joke I pulled this year: I'm going to socially engineer a dead man's phone."

But when it comes down to the issue at hand—whether or not the FBI needs Apple to assist with the iPhone's decryption—McAfee said he's dead serious. When asked if he could crack the iPhone, McAfee insisted, "Yes, absolutely—and anybody could," as long as they had access to the million dollar hardware rig with lasers and acid required to decap the phone's processor and probe it for the phone's UID. "You've got to give them the cash to rent a probe machine," he acknowledged. "I don't have that kind of money, but the FBI has one, [so] let me use theirs—it won't cost anything."

"If I look like an idiot, that's because I'm talking to idiots, so cut me some slack."

The process McAfee described was a sketch of the same decapping process Ars has previously reported: "You decap the chip, and you use the probe machine to get the UID," which is used in combination with the user's PIN to create the encryption code for the phone's storage. "Now, combined with the UID, that's a near infinite number of possibilities," McAfee continued. "The greatest supercomputer in the world would take a thousand years to do it. If you have the UID, it's trivial—you have a couple of trillion possibilities. Start running it, go have lunch, come back and it's done."

And if the FBI doesn't already have the hardware required, it would be a surprise to McAfee. "I'm positive the FBI has a probe machine," he said. "If they don't, they're going to be behind every other foreign country." If the FBI somehow doesn't have one, he added, "The Chinese have them, so we can rent one. So of course it can be done. And there is no other way to do it, I promise you, not without Apple's help."

Apple, he added, should certainly not be offering the help the FBI has requested. "That's all we need is somebody else getting [Apple's software signing] key. If that happens, they're going to go to Google [as well], and that's 95% of the market, which means we are fucked. And then it's not just 'give me a key to get into the phone, give me a key where I can get into it from the comfort of the FBI office.' You know where it's headed. We're fucked if that happens."

Talking smack to power

The Apple-FBI debate, he believes, is the crack in the proverbial dike—a cascade that starts with pressuring technology companies to provide "golden keys" to all encrypted communications and ends with those keys inevitably escaping into the wild. "Once any key, once any back door once any opening to software is created," McAfee exhorted, "I promise you can't keep it secret. Good fucking god, the Chinese have walked off with 21 million records of our Office of Personnel Management—[practically] everybody who's ever worked for the US government. Last month a 15-year-old boy walked off with records including undercover agents of the FBI with their names, addresses and everything else. Do you think our government can keep anything safe? Please."

And that is why he rages against the machine, taking his message to the media and fighting government's overstep by trying to educate the vast tech-ignorant masses of the danger that the government is putting them in. "Nobody else is doing it, for gods' sake," McAfee railed, pointing to his debate with former FBI agent Steve Rogers on CNN. "No one else is out there doing this. Goddamn, get yourself out here, you do it! You think it's easy? I'm out there fighting this fight, the best way I can, trying to educate the American public, and unfortunately they're so illiterate in cybersecurity—so I'm doing the best I can, because if we don't have the public behind us, trust me, we're lost. And I'm doing the best that I can fucking do to convince them, and doing the best I can do to explain it in sandbox detail. That's all I can do for them to understand." Then, with an almost audible shake of the head, he said "And then while I'm doing that I've got Ars Technica and Reddit going 'what an asshole'—that's ok, I can't fault you for that."

It's a lonely battle, from McAfee's perspective. "Do you see anybody else out here on national television banging, other than the chairman of Apple with balls of steel? Tim's a good guy, but he has to do it. So, somebody else get out there! I'm tired of doing this alone."