FBI Purchased 'A Tool' to Unlock iPhones, Doesn't Work on Newer Devices

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Posted April 7, 2016 at 4:15pm by Shalom Levytam

FBI Director James Comey has revealed that the government had purchased 'a tool' from a private party to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, reports CNN. At this time, it's unclear if the data gleaned from the device is useful.

"Litigation between the government and Apple over the San Bernardino phone has ended, because the government has purchased, from a private party, a way to get into that phone, 5C, running iOS 9," Comey said.

It's likely that Israeli forensics company Cellebrite was the source of the tool.

"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," he said.

The tool only works on a "narrow slice of phones" that does not include the iPhone 5S or newer devices. Notably, the FBI has yet to decide whether to provide Apple with details about the security flaw that made unlocking the iPhone possible.

"We tell Apple, then they're going to fix it, then we're back where we started from," he said. "We may end up there, we just haven't decided yet."

FBI Purchased 'A Tool' to Unlock iPhones, Doesn't Work on Newer Devices

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Spawntech - April 7, 2016 at 10:09pm

FBI says it does not work for newer phones and my guess is two reasons: 1) to deceive Apple of patching the bug 2) to create a future case against Apple

joshWUa - April 7, 2016 at 9:18pm

Old news, but anyway I knew something like that would happen. The government always has schemes to get what they want.

nowayjose44565 - April 7, 2016 at 5:13pm

Funny because what was cached by Google shows the words iPhone 6 but now all reports show it as a 5c. I guess they think we are all stupid these days. They had a tool to work with iPhone 4 and 5, it was Project Dropout years ago. It probably is the reason iOS 9.3 has a very odd weblink issue. Apple does not want to publicly be in the limelight in these matters; otherwise, I don't think they have any problem helping the government. They just don't want backlash. Same thing as Project Dropout; as soon as it went public, Apple denied everything. It's all about what they want you to think as long as you're not revolting.

Guest - April 7, 2016 at 5:14pm

Here is the cached info from Google; it even refers to an iPhone 6 in a file photo. FBI Says It Unlocked San Bernardino Gunman's iPhone. KTLA reports that the FBI used a mystery method to break into the San Bernardino iPhone. Farook was one of two shooters in the December 2015 attack. An iPhone 6 is seen in a file photo.

qba - April 7, 2016 at 4:26pm

Jailbreakers are way ahead of all you, this prove to me that the FBI don't know nothing and the hackers they hire don't know neither. They always had tools and software to do this, stop fooling everyone.