FBI Hacks Terrorist’s iPhone, Defusing Standoff With Apple

The U.S. Justice Department said Monday that it had successfully hacked into an iPhone at the center of a heated legal battle with Apple, paving the way for it to drop its demand that the technology giant help the FBI access the phone.

A week ago, Justice Department lawyers revealed that an unidentified third party had approached the government with a solution for bypassing Apple’s security features. The government requested that the legal proceedings be delayed while the FBI tested the solution. Now, the government has revealed that the proposed solution was successful and that it has succeeded in accessing data stored on an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who, together with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a December 2015 shooting spree in San Bernardino, California.

Justice Department lawyers had demanded that Apple undermine the security features of the phone, which is protected by sophisticated encryption measures that make it difficult to hack. A federal magistrate judge initially sided with the government and ordered Apple to aid the FBI in unlocking the phone, but the company refused to comply with that order and argued that aiding the FBI would fatally undermine security for its millions of users.

That dispute has touched off a national debate over the government’s ability to access encrypted data in an era when counterterrorism officials say the widespread availability of such technology has been embraced by terrorist groups to shield their communications from authorities.

NSA Director Michael Rogers has said the Islamic State-linked operatives behind November’s attack in Paris use encryption to protect their communications and that such technology hampered authorities’ ability to prevent the attack.

Cybersecurity experts argue that encryption represents an essential technology to combat widespread data theft and that forcing Apple to sidestep its security measures could expose large numbers of its users to being hacked.

The fight between Apple and the Justice Department has grown increasingly acrimonious, with government lawyers accusing the company of using the courts to carry out a marketing campaign for its products’ security features. Apple CEO Tim Cook has likened the government’s request for assistance to introducing a cancer into his company’s software ecosystem.

But a week ago, Justice Department lawyers requested in a surprise filing that a hearing in the case be postponed while it explored a way to bypass the phone’s security features without Apple’s help. The government has revealed no details about that person’s or company’s identity. Unconfirmed reports have claimed that the Israeli firm Cellebrite, the maker of mobile forensics software, approached the government with the solution.

The news that the government has hacked the phone appears to have defused, at least for now, the standoff between Apple and the Justice Department. But Apple’s lawyers have previously said that they would fight in court to learn how the government got around the security features of Farook’s phone.

Apple’s lawyers argue that the company is playing a constant cat-and-mouse game to plug security vulnerabilities and that it would attempt to force the government to reveal how it hacked the phone. But, for now, it appears that the government has come across a vulnerability that Apple either doesn’t know about or cannot protect against.

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