FBI may have found way to unlock attacker’s iPhone
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The dispute over whether Apple must help the FBI hack into a terror suspect’s iPhone is about to play out in a Southern California courtroom. The hearing Tuesday, March 22, in U.S. District Court in Riverside is the first in the battle that has seen Cook and FBI Director James Comey spar over issues of privacy and national security.
LOS ANGELES » The government has been adamant for weeks: FBI investigators need to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, and Apple Inc. was the only one that could do it.
In a stunning reversal on Monday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to halt a much-anticipated hearing on their efforts to force Apple to unlock the phone. The FBI may have found another way, and Apple’s cooperation may no longer be needed, according to court papers filed late Monday, less than 24 hours before today’s hearing.
“An outside party” came forward over the weekend and showed the FBI a possible method to access the data on Syed Rizwan Farook’s encrypted phone, according to the filing.
“Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone,” the filing said. “If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple.”
If it’s viable, that also means the government has significantly undermined its arguments against Apple, said Kristen Eichensehr, a visiting law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“If they found another way into the phone, that doesn’t just weaken their case. It means they can’t satisfy the legal standard to sustain the court’s order,” said Eichensehr, referring to Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym’s Feb. 16 ruling compelling Apple to create software that would disable security features on the phone.
Don't miss out on what's happening!
Stay in touch with top news, as it happens, conveniently in your email inbox. It's FREE!
Pym granted the government’s request to postpone today’s arguments in the case and stayed her previous order. She ordered the government to file a status report by April 5.
The development raised more questions than it answered. It’s unclear who is helping the FBI with the phone and why it took so long for a possible solution to be identified.
One thing seems clear — that the government likely would not have disclosed it had found another possible way to unlock the phone unless it was almost certain the method would work, said Robert Cattanach, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who handles cyber-security cases for the Dorsey & Whitney law firm.
He said the disclosure alone weakens the government’s case by introducing doubt that it could only access the phone with Apple’s help. “They’ve created ambiguity in a place where they’ve previously said there is none,” he said.
In a conference call with reporters, Apple attorneys said it’s premature to declare victory in the case because authorities could come back in a few weeks and insist they still need the company’s help. The attorneys spoke under an Apple policy that wouldn’t allow them to be quoted by name.
The company hopes the government will tell Apple about whatever method it uses to access the phone’s encrypted files. But the attorneys said it may be up to the FBI to decide whether to share the information.
Lawmakers, civil rights advocates and other tech companies have criticized the FBI for not doing more to try to crack the iPhone itself before seeking to force Apple’s hand.
“To me, it suggests that either the FBI doesn’t understand the technology or they weren’t giving us the whole truth when they said there is no other possible way” of examining the phone without Apple’s help, said Alex Abdo, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Both of those are scary to me.”
The ACLU has filed a court brief supporting Apple’s position.
Prosecutors have argued that the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the Dec. 2 attack in which the county food inspector and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered 14 at a holiday luncheon attended by many of his work colleagues. The two were killed in a police shootout hours later.
The FBI has said the couple was inspired by the Islamic State group. Investigators still are trying to piece together what happened and find out if there were collaborators.
The couple destroyed other phones they left behind, and the FBI has been unable to circumvent the passcode needed to unlock the iPhone, which is owned by San Bernardino County and was given to Farook for his job.
Apple has argued that the government was seeking “dangerous power” that exceeds the authority of the All Writs Act of 1789 it cited, and violates the company’s constitutional rights, harms the Apple brand and threatens the trust of its customers to protect their privacy. The 18th-century law has been used on other cases to require third parties to help law enforcement in investigations.
It’s not clear what method the government now wants to test. But even as the FBI has insisted that only Apple is able to provide the help it needs, some technical experts have argued there are other options.
The most viable method involves making a copy of the iPhone’s flash memory drive, said Jonathan Zdziarski, a computer expert who specializes in iPhone forensics. That would allow investigators to make multiple tries at guessing the iPhone’s passcode. A security feature in the phone is designed to automatically erase the data if someone makes 10 wrong guesses in a row.
But if that happens, Zdziarski said, investigators could theoretically restore the data from the backup copy they have created.
The data itself would remain encrypted until the phone is unlocked, but it would remain viable while investigators continued to guess the passcode, he added.
“It’s a lot more involved than it sounds,” Zdziarski cautioned, and no one has demonstrated that it would work in this case.
Some experts have also suggested that investigators could use lasers and acid to deconstruct the phone’s memory chip, in order to physically examine the encrypted data and the encryption algorithm, in hopes of cracking the code. But hardware experts say that method has a high risk of destroying the memory during the process.
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Tami Abdollah in Washington, D.C., and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report.
39 responses to “FBI may have found way to unlock attacker’s iPhone”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
They better keep the method a secret otherwise all of Apple will be compromised. The concept that the iPhone can’t be broken into keeps their prices high.
Not at all. Apple will just send out a software update, upgrade the encryption even more. As in having to enter the passcode to do an upgrade, at every step.
It’s likely a former Apple employee who is helping the FBI. I like the encryption. I lost my 5S and I don’t want its contents known to everyone.
Oh great.
and when you do, go after ALL the family and friends of these killers that knew.
You mean the FBI and the U.S. Government as a whole doesn’t have enough expertise to solve the problem themselves? No wonder we they are subject to so many hacker attacks and theft of data.
The FBI should have given the phone to NCIS; Abby and McGee could have done it.
They forgot to Google an answer.
Means Apple no longer is the only guru on the block. If this most recent disclosure come to fruition and the FBI is able obtain the data sought all of the Apple hullaboo was for naught and it indicates that their application is not secure as claimed.
Apple has just become irrelevant.
Isn’t that a Groucho Marks joke??? The problem is the FBI never brought the Apple back home and let their grandkids work on it.
How little you know. A simple software upgrade will increase security.
60 minutes showed one messaging app called Telegram which has unbreakable encryption. Just one of many apps anyone can download for free, drive law enforcement crazy.
Ref: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-encryption-debate-lesley-stahl/
There is “no” unbreakable encryption.
If Apple had done what the subpoena asked, at least Apple would have controlled the technology (and could destroy it afterwards). Now it looks like Apple’s phone will be hacked anyway, and the program to do so is outside Apple’s control. But really, in this day and age when pretty much ANYTHING can be hacked, it was only a matter of time. I suspect Apple knew that, but milked its public position to get as much free publicity while it could (“Apple is standing up for its customers!” and “Apple phones can’t be hacked!”). That’s all over now.
@ ryan – Who knows. Maybe Apple is the third party helping the Feds. This way, they control the process and still be the good guy to the public.
Interesting thought, and highly possible. But with today’s ability to find the truth, that would be a marketing disaster for Apple. Trust and integrity in the company would be compromised, and any claim to security would be dismissed. I would lose faith and I’m all in with apple.
Right now there is a collective freak-out at Apple HQ.
Hardly. Apple won, and the FBI is a no-show in court.
Really? Apple lost because now the public knows their once secure iphone is not so secure. The FBI is a no show because it broke into the iphone without Apple.
I’m OK with you believing whatever the FBI tells you, as long as you’re OK with me knowing the FBI knew they would lose in court.
I know they would have lost in court because existing law (CALEA) explicitly forbids the FBI or the courts from requiring Apple to do what the FBI was asking.
Read about CALEA here:
https://techpinions.com/fbi-v-apple-why-calea-matters-so-much/44111
Apple lost! If it had shown the FBI how to get in, then they could have kept their claim (at least for a little while longer) that it is un-hackable by outsiders, including the FBI. Now they no longer have control over the flaw and it is now conceivable that anyone can hack an iphone. Bonehead move Apple!
How little you know. A simple software upgrade will increase security.
60 minutes showed one messaging app called Telegram which has unbreakable encryption. Just one of many apps anyone can download for free, drive law enforcement crazy.
Ref: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-encryption-debate-lesley-stahl/
I guess with enough time and experimenting the encryption can be hacked by those with the know how…..
Good luck – now let’s see if the FBI will follow through.
John McAfee. Cybersecurity legend.
The FBI has simply collapsed in the face of CALEA.
https://techpinions.com/fbi-v-apple-why-calea-matters-so-much/44111
They knew they didn’t stand a chance in court, and are trying to save face by making it appear there’s another way they can break the encryption.
The FBI may be starting to realize it cannot win this.
If it gets a court order, Apple’s engineers will quit leaving Apple unable to meet the request. The courts will not and cannot not order a private citizen to do the work against their will.
And the tech world is almost uniformly against the FBI.
Hence why the FBI has resorted to essentially lying about the issues here because an objective, nunanced understanding completely destroys the FBI’s argument here.
It is all political. If Congress passed bills opposing encryption without a key or back door available for governmental access, there would be no problem like this. But remember after that whole NSA/Snowden thing, Republicans voted against requiring that companies Ike Apple provide the key.
“FBI” already knew how to Unlock the iPhones! They just didn’t want to admit they knew how. They aren’t going to admit they’re spying on you–whenever they want. Ask “Hilary”…
The out side source is probably a high school or college student. There’s some real akamai students out there.
According to Edward Snowden, the government has always had the means and ability to break the encryption of I-phones and any other electronic device.
This was all a ruse on the part of the government to get Apple and the public in general to surrender their privacy and to formalize what the government has been doing
illegally already. Like they say, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little, temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.
This issue is not over. The government still wants to formalize and legalize their spying on us all which they have been doing all along in violation of the Constitution.
You really believe everything Edward Snowden says?
Pssttt. I have a bridge for sale.
Snowden is frankly more credible than the FBI these days. Remember, the FBI lied about this being just one phone.
Ha! FBI 1, ACLU 0
Apple is communist.
After their initial massive management failure with the phone, FBI will do anything to save face, hide their utter incompetence.
Word is they have already totally bricked the phone so made up this story to hide their failure.
Fact is the FBI will never say they unlocked the phone or bricked it. National security you know.
Meantime the next Apple phone has even stronger security.
For security purposes, I hope they succeed.
Apple? Absolutely. Apple should succeed. Otherwise we compromise every phone on the planet. To anyone.
The Gov always had a way to crack the phone. If they can find Bin Laden through digital surveillance, they can crack a stupid phone. C’mon! What they were really shooting for was a precedence to order Apple to open up Pandora’s Box. Our phone is one of the few things left that holds our personal right to privacy and the Gov can’t force us to turn it over…unless they get precedent from the courts to force us to turn it over. That’s why they were fighting so hard, and their case is weak to get Apple to comply. They are trying to undermine one of our most basic rights as Americans. Privacy!