The iPhone unlocking tool used by the FBI to unlock the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone 5c can only be used on “a narrow slice of phones” the agency admitted.
FBI director James Comey revealed that litigation between Apple and the federal government has ended, but the tool the agency purchased to unlock the device does not work on the iPhone 5s or newer iPhones, including the iPhone SE.
“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,” said Comey.
Apple fought a legal battle against the FBI after a federal order that it assist the government in unlocking the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone by weakening the security of iOS. Apple CEO Tim Cook insisted that doing so would go against the company’s First Amendment rights, and put millions of users in danger.
Once the FBI announced in March that it had found a third party that could unlock the iPhone for them, the case was dropped. Apple has insisted that the feds reveal how they hacked the iPhone, however, James Comey says the FBI is still considering whether it should tell Apple.
“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.”
The public battle between the FBI and Apple may have been called off, but the issue of balancing national security with privacy and encryption is still far from solved. With some senators proposing laws that would make it legal for the government to force companies to break their encryption, there’s bound to be more cases like this in the future.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
3 responses to “FBI reveals unlocking tool doesn’t work on iPhone 5s and higher”
“FBI reveals unlocking tool doesn’t work on iPhone 5s and higher”
Soooo, a new lawsuit against Apple any minute now? Any second now? My prediction is the lawsuit is coming, but that even if it goes to the Supreme Court, Apple will not be compelled. Soon, Apple may even make it virtually impossible for even •them• to get access to encrypted data on an iPhone. I, for one, hope so.
And how much tax dollars have been wasted trying this “hack”?
The funny thing is that the FBI is even hurting themselves by admitting this much publicly. Now any criminals waiting to hear about this know to just get a newer iPhone with Touch ID and they’re safe from the FBI. Though they probably already assumed that. Smooth move, FBI. Apple is just going to make it harder and there won’t be anything you can do about it. Except maybe use all your other methods for gathering data instead.