FBI Bought Tool to Break Into IPhone Used in Terrorist Attack

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid for the tool it used to break into a dead terrorist’s iPhone and is considering whether to tell Apple Inc. how it was done, FBI Director James Comey said.

The U.S. dropped a legal case against Apple last month after it succeeded in accessing the data on an iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife carried out the deadly December attack in San Bernardino, California. Comey disclosed during a speech Wednesday at Kenyon College in Ohio that the FBI paid for the tool to break into the phone, although he didn’t provide further details.

"The FBI is very good at keeping secrets, and the people we bought this from, I know a fair amount about them, and I have a high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it and their motivations align with ours," Comey said. The FBI hasn’t said who provided the hacking tool.

Discussions are continuing about whether to provide Apple with details about how the hack was carried out, Comey said. "That’s an interesting conversation because we tell Apple and they’re going to fix it, and then we’re back where we started from," he said. "As silly as that may sound, we may end up there. We just haven’t’ decided yet."

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-07/fbi-bought-tool-to-break-into-iphone-used-in-terrorist-attack

[metroins]

1. The FBI is not good at keeping secrets

We already know who did it and how they did it.

They had access to the flash and kept reloading it for infinite attempts.

Cellebrite.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Comey is a numbnut!

Should be interesting when Comey's and others in the FBI find their phone has been hacked and possibly bricked.

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

3. What one person figured out, someone else can replicate.

Of course the FBI won't tell Apple how they broke into the phone. If it's a security flaw that might be exploitable on other phones, then the last thing the feds want is for it to be fixed. Plus you can just see the smug dripping off of Comey's words; he's going to spend a looooong time rubbing this in the pro-privacy faction's collective face.

Also, he can't reveal any details, because he almost certainly doesn't understand word one about how this "hacking tool" works, if his tech people even bothered trying to explain it to him in the first place.

But if this is an exploitable flaw in iOS's security, then sooner or later someone else will figure it out and publish it, with or without the FBI's help. As the tech sector has been trying to explain to Comey for years now, encryption is one area where numbers work the same for the government as they do for everyone else.

[metroins]

4. We already know what the flaw was

It leaked on March 23rd.

It's the flash memory on 5c and below.

You can just make a copy of it and load it back on to reset attempts of the 4pin code.