Israeli tech firm Cellebrite, a.k.a. the mobile forensics firm which helped the FBI hack the iPhone 5c at the center of the San Bernardino shooting case, is reportedly “optimistic” about hacking the more secure iPhone 6.
The story in this instance involves an Italian father, Leonardo Fabbretti, wanting to access the iPhone photos, notes and messages belonging to his adopted son Dama, who passed away from bone cancer last September at the age of 13.
Fabbretti originally contacted Apple CEO Tim Cook on March 21, writing a letter to explain his plight. Apple staff tried help by trying to access Dama’s data from the cloud, but found that he hadn’t backed up his information in this way. After this, Apple’s customer care team expressed their sympathy, but said they were unable to help.
Cellebrite got involved after seeing Fabbretti’s story in the news — offering to help hack the iPhone 6 for free. Fabbretti met with Cellebrite employees last week at the company’s offices in northern Italy.
“The meeting went well,” Fabbretti reported, saying that the group is optimistic about its chances. “They were able to download the directories with the iPhone’s content, but there is still work to be done in order to access the files,” he noted.
While Apple has been very pro-encryption since overhauling the iOS security measures in 2015, the company has also acknowledged that there will likely never be a point when a device is completely unhackable.
We’ll have to wait to see how this particular effort unfolds.
Source: CNN
