Apple closing iphone security gap used by police

SAN FRANCISCO • Apple Inc. is closing a security gap that allowed outsiders to pry personal information from locked iphones without a password, a change that will thwart law enforcement agencies that have been exploiting the vulnerability to collect evidence.

The loophole will be shut down in a forthcoming update to Apple’s IOS software, which powers iphones.

Once fixed, iphones will no longer be vulnerable to intrusion via the Lightning port used both to transfer data and to charge iphones. The port will still function after the update, but will shut off data an hour after a phone is locked if the correct password isn’t entered.

The current flaw has provided a point of entry for authorities across the U.S. since the FBI paid an unidentified third party in 2016 to unlock an iphone used by a killer in the San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting a few months earlier. The FBI sought outside help after Apple rebuffed the agency’s efforts to make the company create a security backdoor into iphone technology.

Apple’s refusal to co-operate with the FBI at the time became a political hot potato pitting the rights of its customers against the interests of public safety. While waging his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump ripped Apple for denying the FBI access to the San Bernardino killer’s locked iphone.

In a Wednesday statement, Apple framed its decision to tighten iphone security even further as part of its crusade to protect the highly personal information its customers store on their phones.

CEO Tim Cook has hailed privacy as a “fundamental” right and skewered both Facebook and one of Apple’s biggest rivals, Google, for vacuuming up vast amounts of personal information about users of their free services to sell advertising based on their interests. During Apple’s 2016 battle with the FBI, he called the FBI’S effort to make the company alter its software a “dangerous precedent” in an open letter.

It’s unclear what took Apple so long to close an iphone entryway that had become well-known among legal authorities and, presumably, criminals as well.

It got to the point two firms, Israel-based Cellebrite and U.S. startup Grayshift, began to sell their services to law enforcement trying to hack into locked iphones, according to media reports.