FBI: We may not need Apple to unlock iPhone – update

The FBI claims that a third party has come forward with a method to unlock the iPhone of the perpetrator of the San Bernardino attacks. The government department is investigating the method and declares that it will no longer need Apple’s help if it works.

With that, the case between Apple and FBI about the iPhone of attacker Riswan Farook has taken an unexpected turn. The FBI has requested that a hearing on the matter, scheduled to take place Tuesday, be held at which Apple would set out its views. The judge granted that request.

“On March 20, 2016, a third party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method to unlock Farook’s iPhone,” US attorneys wrote in the request. They write that testing is necessary to determine whether the method is actually usable and does not harm the data on the iPhone If this is the case, Apple’s help would no longer be needed.The US Department of Justice has ordered a period of two weeks to investigate the method.

Apple informed US media that the turnaround came like a bolt from the blue. According to the Cupertino company, it was not known that the FBI was investigating other methods of unlocking the iPhone, as the government had raised the matter so much and emphasized several times that it would not work.

Apple’s lawyers are going to file a request to release the method and the third party that demonstrated it to the company, if there is indeed a working unlock procedure that Apple is not yet aware of. Washington said last year it would disclose 90 percent of vulnerabilities to companies so that they can make patches. In some cases, however, these are kept secret so that intelligence agencies can use them in operations, Wired writes.

The dispute between the FBI and Apple began in mid-February. The authorities demanded help from Apple in unlocking Farook’s iPhone, because the smartphone may contain useful data. Apple would have to write special firmware, something the company strongly opposed, because this would amount to a ‘master key’ that the US authorities could apply in many more cases.

Update, 12.40: iOS expert Jonathan Zdziarski writes in a blog post that he believes the FBI has enlisted the help of a third party from a time zone outside of the US because of the time the message was published. Also, the fact that the FBI takes two weeks to test the method would indicate that it is not a highly experimental technique and that it has likely been developed over the past few weeks. Zdziarski assumes that the technique that the third party wants to use is the so-called nand mirroring. The nand memory is removed from the iPhone and copied. Then different passwords are tried. If this results in data erasing after several failed attempts, thanks to the iPhone’s auto erase function, the copied content can be put back and the process repeated.