FBI keeps Apple in the dark on hacking San-Bernardino shooter’s iPhone

The government vs. technology trend continues with the latest update to the FBI’s battle with Cupertino-based tech giant Apple Inc. Since the U.S. government’s insistence that Apple agree to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the tables have turned.

Last week, the FBI announced it had unlocked Syed Rizwan Farook’s phone without Apple’s help, claiming it purchased the tool used to do so from the Israeli-based mobile developer Cellebrite.

However, it’s recently been revealed that Cellebrite “only works on a narrow slice of phones,” according to FBI Director James Comey at the Biennial Conference at Kenyon University. This means the tool purchased from Cellebrite isn’t effective on any model newer than the iPhone 5s. Farook used a 5c running iOS 9.

In February, the U.S. government filed a motion to force Apple to comply with its request that the tech company help them bypass the phone’s security features. When Apple refused, stating it would set a dangerous precedent, the U.S. government decided to fight them on it.

However, the court date, originally set for March 22, was postponed by the FBI a week in advance. It was later revealed that the government had enlisted outside assistance to help them unlock the phone. Now that they’ve unlocked the phone without Apple’s help, the FBI has dropped its case.

Problem solved? Not quite. Since it came out that the tool sold to the U.S. government by Cellebrite couldn’t have been used to unlock the phone, the question remains, how did they do it?

The FBI isn’t about to share that information with Apple.

“We tell Apple, then they’re going to fix it, then we’re back where we started from. We may end up there, we just haven’t decided yet,” said Comey to CNN Money.

Now that the government’s dropped its case, Apple has no jurisdiction to ask for the method used to unlock Farook’s phone. In a statement released shortly after, Apple said it would “continue to increase the security on our products as threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated.”

[source]TechCrunch[/source]