Slashdot Mirror
FBI Paid Professional Hackers One-Time Fee To Crack San Bernardino iPhone
There's another new wrinkle in the never-ending FBI vs Apple saga. The Washington Post is claiming that FBI did not require Cellebrite's assistance in hacking San Bernardino iPhone. Instead, the report claims, the government intelligence organization bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers. According to the report, the hacker group provided FBI with at least one zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5c's security, which enabled FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and other security features. The bug hasn't been disclosed. FBI has previously noted that the technique it utilized in breaking into the iPhone 5c does not work with any new iPhone models (iPhone 5s or newer).
After they "cracked" the San Bernardino phone the FBI publicly came out and said they would use the information they gleaned to start assisting local law enforcement agencies to crack iPhones for their cases as well. I guess that was a bold-face lie, told to make Apple look bad to their security-conscious customers who are concerned that the FBI now has the ability to crack iPhones.
I found the timing suspicious at first. Cellebrite's previous known technique was to copy the entire NAND RAM contents then use the copies to repeatedly try the code. That would take a while even with 10000 number combinations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You know the director will be dragged in on the carpet by congress on the ethics of using hackers at this level.
If they paid them using gov't funds, lets hope they kept track of the funds used.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
I really wonder which hackers they hired... someone they are investigating, or just a dark web personal ad from Estonia. The more they say the more idiotic they sound. The FBI sounds as inefficient as the TSA and Congress. A bunch of blowhards with authority that can't get the job done properly because nobody trusts or likes how they operate. Public servants that are always at odds with the public, and never have any good news to report. Nevertheless, never getting the job done is the only job security that exists anymore.
Since they have changed their "post-hack" story at least once, I submit that the FBI either already had the phone hacked (sans Apple's help), OR they never DID get into the phone (more likely); but needed a plausible excuse to sabotage their own legal efforts, since it was pretty clear that the Court case was NOT going to go their way, and they didn't want to set THAT Precedent.
This is precisely my experience. Every time I've been broken into and called the police, a bored looking cop comes out, takes a statement, looks at the point of entry and then leaves, never to be heard from again. They only do this much so you can file your insurance, if you are stupid enough to file your insurance (since the insurance company will then just upgrade your risk and raise your rates enough to cover your payout plus an indefinite bleed of additional profit for them for the rest of eternity. No fingerprints. No searching area fences or eBay for your lost goods. No questioning likely suspects. If they are feeling enormously helpful, they may suggest that you get the broken lock fixed as the bad guys might come back and steal some more, and no, they aren't going to stake the joint out to find out.
Law enforcement is almost non-existent. Police are often called on to "keep the peace" -- to intervene in potentially dangerous situations involving human conflict or risk -- but they don't go out of their way to arrest anybody even then. They do arrest shoplifters, but that is because there is usually hard evidence and the perps are caught in the act. They do arrest anybody who rubs drug usage in their face and spend at least some time arresting the merely unwary. They do a decent job at pulling drunk drivers, when they catch them for obvious driving errors. Outside of that, by far -- far -- my most common interaction with Law Enforcement is getting pulled with a car tag a month out of date. Damn, they are hell on car registration. Makes me feel safe at night, knowing that no scofflaw is able to drive around without properly registered tags, unless of course they are an illegal alien without any driver's license or insurance at all driving a company truck.
Sigh.
The two laws that get en
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.