Displaying items by tag: San Bernardino

An Israeli company that makes software for breaking into mobile devices including iPhones, has been publicly shamed by cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal messaging app, who exposed poor security in the software which the company uses.

The Australian firm Azimuth Security was responsible for hiring a researcher who succeeded in gaining access to an iPhone 5C used by a terrorist in the US in 2015. The incident led to a well-documented stoush between Apple and the FBI in 2016.

Apple is in the process of creating an online tool for law enforcement officers to make formal demands for data about its users, a report claims.

Both Democrats and Republicans from the US House of Representatives have characterised as "highly questionable" the FBI's claim that it could not gain access to 7800 mobile devices last year.

A company known as Grayshift based in Atlanta, Georgia, is selling a device called GrayKey which can be used to unlock iPhones — even the latest 8 series and the X model — a security company claims.

A court in the US has ensured that the public will never know whom the FBI contacted to gain access to data on an iPhone 5C belonging to a terrorist or how much the agency paid for the job.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook has defended the company's move to pull VPN apps from the App Store in China, saying that in this case the law was on the side of China's government.

An employee of the Australian Taxation Office has published information obtained from the Israeli firm Cellebrite online, detailing ways of breaking into mobile phones.

A Democrat senator in the US has revealed that the FBI paid a private company US$900,000 to break the encryption on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by one of the terrorists involved in an attack in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015.

Exactly who managed to obtain access to the data on an iPhone 5C, the centre of a row between Apple and the FBI last year, is unlikely to be known after the agency released 100 pages of documents related to the case but with most of the information redacted.

A senior Apple official reassured the chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign that the tech giant would co-operate with the US government when it came to handing over "meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data", as "strong encryption does not eliminate Apple's ability to give law enforcement" such data.

The FBI has left the door open to a future stoush with Apple, similar to the one that just ended, by claiming on Wednesday that the tool it used to access data on an iPhone 5C does not work with older phones.

The FBI has gained access to the data on an iPhone 5C without the help of Apple, ending a stoush that had threatened to end up in the Supreme Court.

The FBI appears to be trying to avoid a court showdown with Apple over accessing encrypted data on an iPhone 5C, asking for, and obtaining, a delay in a hearing set for Tuesday (US time) apparently in order to test whether another method of gaining access to the data is viable.

The FBI has sought to gain access to 13 different iPhones, not one, according to court documents, casting doubt on the version of events it has publicised in its stoush with Apple.

Last week, when Apple refused to obey a court order asking it to effectively create a backdoor into iOS, its mobile operating system, it looked like a straightforward fight with the FBI.