Last month, President Donald Trump and
Attorney General William Barr decided to go after Apple for not unlocking an
iPhone 5 and
iPhone 7 belonging to terrorist Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani. The latter killed three people last December at a Naval base in Pensacola, Florida and was killed during the attack which was ruled terrorism by the authorities. The FBI asked Apple to unlock the devices so that it could look for clues about any possible future attacks.
If the DOJ can unlock the iPhone 11 owned by Lev Parnas, why can’t it unlock a terrorist’s iPhone 5 and iPhone 7?
Back in 2015, the FBI relied on a Cellebrite “cracking machine” to open Farook’s handset. And Cellebrite recently bragged that “For the first time ever, a wealth of previously untapped data sets from iOS devices can be leveraged to change the course of investigations. This update allows you to quickly perform a forensically sound temporary jailbreak and full file system extraction within one streamlined workflow.” With an update, Cellebrite’s UFED Physical Analyzer software can access chipsets that power the
iPhone 5s to the
iPhone X. And that means the FBI should be able to break into at least one of Alshamrani’s phones. In addition, Grayshift’s GrayKey cracking machine allegedly unlocked an
iPhone 11 Pro Max last year. With that in mind, we wonder why the FBI says that it still cannot unlock the phones belonging to the deceased terrorist who cut down three people in Pensacola.
Apple is afraid to give law enforcement a version of iOS that will unlock criminals’ iPhones
According to Bloomberg, FBI director Christopher Wray revealed today that the FBI still cannot find out what information is in Alshamrani’s handsets. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Wray admitted that his agency cannot access the encrypted data on the devices. In response to a question posed by Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, the FBI director said that the FBI is “currently engaged with Apple hoping to see if we can get better help from them so we can get access to that phone.”
Apple has turned over cloud data related to the two iPhones used by the Pensacola shooter, but both law enforcement and the U.S. government want more. They want Apple to add a backdoor to its devices so that encrypted data can be easily obtained by U.S. agencies and officials. Apple does not want to do this pointing out that “Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers.”
And yes, there is some hypocrisy involved here. The current administration has banned Chinese manufacturer Huawei from obtaining U.S. made components and software and has asked allies not to use the firm’s networking gear in their 5G networks. Trump officials, lawmakers, and law enforcement have taken this stance because they fear that Huawei products contain a backdoor that could send private data to Beijing. Yet, the same government officials, lawmakers and law enforcement officials are badgering Apple to put a backdoor inside its phones.
Last month, we first pointed out that
the FBI doesn’t seem to need Apple’s help to unlock the phones in question. Security experts and forensic examiners agree with that conclusion. Last month the Justice Department said that it was able to extract data from the
iPhone 11 owned by Rudy Giuliani’s indicted pal Lev Parnas. The iPhone 5 and iPhone 7 owned by Alshamrani should be easier to open than Parnas’ iPhone 11 was.
Whatever is really going on behind the scenes, Apple appears to be wrongly targeted by Trump who said in a tweet last month “We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers, and other violent criminal elements. They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country.”
