Posted on 04/29/2016 10:57:08 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Earlier reports suggested the iPhone-unlocking mechanism cost as much as $1.3 million.
How much does it cost to hack into an iPhone? Not as much as we thought.
The FBI paid less the $1 million to hack into the iPhone 5C of one of the San Bernardino shooters, Reuters reported Friday, a figure lower than some observers had previously estimated.
FBI Director James Comey said last week the government had spent more money than he was set to make over the remainder of his tenure running the bureau. This was calculated to be $1.3 million.
The software mechanism purchased by the FBI from an undisclosed security company can also be used by the government to unlock other iPhone 5C models running the latest Apple software, even though the FBI doesn't understand how it works, sources cited by Reuters said.
The FBI declined to comment beyond what it has already said in public statements, but directed CNET to a page titled "Going Dark Issue" about intercepting communications.
The agency bought the mechanism after Apple refused to create a backdoor through its encrypted software, in spite of a court order demanding it do so.
Apple objected to the government's request, saying it was impossible to break its own encryption and creating a workaround would compromise the security of all iPhones. The company's transparency report, released earlier this week, shows it complied with around 80 percent of requests made by the US government in the second half of last year.
The tech industry rallied around Apple, lending support as it prepared to battle the FBI in court. But the government dropped the case after finding the alternative means to crack the phone's security.
Comey might know that the hack was pricey, but the sources cited by Reuters say he doesn't know which company supplied the technology, in spite of his seniority. Previous reports suggested an Israeli security firm was behind the hack.
The mechanism was purchased with a one-off payment and can be used again.
The contents of the iPhone, which belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, are still being examined, but early investigations aren't thought to have produced any noteworthy discoveries. In particular, the FBI hopes to discover whether Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, had co-conspirators.
Update 8:27 am PT: Added the FBI's response.
These are the guys who can’t find Obama’s BC or school transcripts. The have no idea where he went, when he visited Pakistan as a student?
These are the gum shoes who can’t explain why Obama has several SS numbers.
Not impressed.
Is it re-useable?..............
Don’t say ‘can’t’..........say ‘WON’T....................
they can’t get into the device
Pinging dayglored, Shadow Ace, and ThunderSleeps for their ping lists.
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They aren't even looking for those things. Never did look for those things. Those are not even on their radar because they don't want to make waves. They know they are crimes involved, but they know if they found they were crimes and found the evidence, and then went after Obama for his crimes, the Obama supporters in the country would explode like you've never seen, ala exponentially worse than Ferguson, Missouri, or the Rodney King riots.
“They aren’t even looking for those things. Never did look for those things.”
While I agree with what you say would happen, I think they actually *do* know his history. It wouldn’t be that hard for them to piece it all together.
What torques me off is how the media throws this kind of crap all under the rug. I was reading an AMATEUR liberal journalist’s article detailing how she contacted several of Ted Cruz’s classmates asking if he was into various kinds of sick pornography. Others were claiming he was without any proof. She was quite disappointed to learn from the people she tracked down that they never seen nor heard about it.
It was amazing the number of people she was able to contact and the lengths she went to find some of them. I was going to ask her if she’d use the same set of skills to track down people from Obama’s past, but figured it’d be a complete waste of time.
I’m sure it never even occurred to her that our media did absolutely nothing vetting Obama’s past despite what she did to learn everything she could about Cruz. It is beyond frustrating. The way liberals in power react when anyone questions Obama’s past is enough of a tell for me that something’s up.
They were probly told it was.
Only on the iPhone 5C models. It will not work on any iPhone 5S or later. They've tried and bounced.
They did eventually get into the Terrorists' iPhone 5C after paying some ridiculously high amount of money to a 3rd party. After they got in, they learned what they really already knew from the carrier. There was nothing on it except work related data. . . all phone calls, messages, and emails had to do with things related to San Bernardino County public health. . . which is what they learned from the meta data released by Verizon under a search warrant, and from Apple also due to a search warrant requesting the Apple iCloud backup.
OK, let me get this straight.
The FBI paid around $1 million for it.
They don’t understand how it works.
It returned no data.
...I think somebody just got scammed!
Yup! With one slight correction: No probative data that was useful to the investigation.
I mean, seriously. Someone approached the FBI and said they could hack iPhones. That had to prompt a few questions from the FBI about why they developed that technology and where else they may have used it. Basically they volunteered for additional scrutiny from the FBI for the rest of their lives. So there would have to be something like blanket immunity in there somewhere, just in case their motives were not always on the side of law enforcement...
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