The mysterious case of a hacked iPhone
FBI deals Apple a setback as it cracks product’s security
WASHINGTON — The FBI’s announcement that it hacked into an iPhone is a public setback for Apple, as consumers suddenly discover they can’t keep their most personal information safe. Meanwhile, Apple remains in the dark about how to restore the security of its flagship product.
The government said it was able to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, but it didn’t say how.
That puzzled Apple software engineers and outside experts about how the FBI broke the digital locks on the phone without Apple’s help. It also complicated Apple’s job repairing flaws that jeopardize its software.
The Justice Department’s announcement that itwas dropping a legal fight to compel Apple to help it access the phone also took away any obvious legal avenues Apple might have used to learn how the FBI did it. The Justice Department declined through a spokeswoman to comment Tuesday.
It is a closely held secret how the FBI hacked the iPhone, but a few clues have emerged. A senior law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the FBI managed to defeat an Apple security feature that threatened to delete the phone’s contents if the FBI failed to enter the correct pass code combination after 10 tries. That allowed the government to guess the correct pass code by trying random combinations until the software accepted the right one.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the technique publicly.
The FBI hacked into the iPhone used by gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, who died with his wife in a gunbattle with police after they killed 14 people in December in San Bernardino, Calif.
The FBI was reviewing information from the iPhone, and it was unclear whether it would find anything useful.
Apple said in a statement Monday that the legal case to force its cooperation “should never have been brought,” and it promised to increase the security of its products. CEO Tim Cook has said the company is constantly trying to improve security for its users.
The FBI’s announcement — even without revealing precise details — that it had hacked the iPhone was at odds with the U.S. government’s firm recommendations for nearly two decades that security researchers always work cooperatively and confidentially with software manufacturers before revealing that a product might be susceptible to hackers.
Those guidelines lay out a process about how and when to announce that commercial software might be vulnerable. The aim is to ensure that consumers stay as safe online as possible and prevent premature disclosures that might damage a company or the economy.
As far back as 2002, the Homeland Security Department ran a working group that included leading industry technology industry executives to advise the president on how to keep confidential discoveries by independent researchers that a company’s software could be hacked until itwas already fixed.
The next meeting of a conference on the subject is April 8 in Chicago, and it’s unclear how the FBI’s behavior in the current case might influence the government’s fragile relationship with technology companies or researchers.