According to the FBI Director James Comey, the tool that made them able to crack into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C only works on that specific model. The announcement from Comey was part of a speech that took place Wednesday night at Kenyon University, and it comes after months of the heated debate between the FBI and Apple.
Now, thanks to the help of a third party, possibly the Israeli data retrieving company Cellebrite, the FBI cracked the phone involved in a federal case without the help of the tech company giant, and developer of the iPhone. Comey went on to claim the iPhone-cracking tool only works on a narrow series of phones, and stated the tool won’t work on iPhone 6 and beyond.
Comey’s declaration on Wednesday doesn’t clarify how exactly they managed to hack into the iPhone in order to retrieve significant information for the ongoing investigation. Yet the case against Apple has already been dropped, as the FBI doesn’t have any more reasons to keep up battling the tech company on court. The FBI abandoned its legal pursue against Apple as they could finally unlock the iPhone which belonged to Syed Farook, one of the shooters from the San Bernardino attacks, for further investigations.
The FBI then announced the cease of any legal demand for the tech company giant to help them unlock the security of the shooter’s iPhone. The investigation saw many bold statements from both court magistrates and Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, as the main concern was the security of user’s privacy.
The case between Apple and the FBI brought many privacy concerns with it
The case between Apple and the FBI – although already dismissed officially – stirred commotion amongst Apple users as it posed a threat to its security protocols. The court case got more attention than expected when the tech company giant raised issues regarding people’s information to be monitored.
The order from the U.S. Justice Department would have required Apple to create a backdoor access for the federal agency to access the iPhone involved in the case. In spite of that, the FBI was able to crack the iPhone anyways, possibly thanks to the help of the data retrieving company Cellebrite.
Then again, in previous court debates against Apple, the government stated Apple was the only one who could tamper with the iPhone’s security protocols. So it seems as if the government’s statement is being twisted for its own benefit in the federal investigation regarding the San Bernardino shootings.
Still, the government is considering to report Apple how they cracked Farook’s iPhone 5C, yet Comey claimed that if Apple figures out how the FBI cracked the phone, they will fix it. A childish move from the FBI and the U.S. government, yet Apple is set to figure out how Cellebrite cracked the iPhone’s code and make sure to fix the problem and increase its security.
Source: CNN Money