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Israel’s Cellebrite reportedly the security company helping FBI unlock San Bernardino iPhone

cellebrite

Israeili YNetNews reports that the so-far unnamed “third party” which has offered to help the FBI try to break into the San Bernardino iPhone is Cellebrite, a mobile forensics company based in Israel.

The FBI has been reportedly using the services of the Israeli-based company Cellebrite in its effort to break the protection on a terrorist’s locked iPhone, according to experts in the field familiar with the case. Cellebrite has not responded to the report. But if it is indeed the “third party” in question, and it is able to break into the terrorist’s iPhone, it would bring the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple to an abrupt end. Cellebrite, considered one of the leading companies in the world in the field of digital forensics, has been working with the world’s biggest intelligence, defense and law enforcement authorities for many years. The company provides the FBI with decryption technology as part of a contract signed with the bureau in 2013.

Cellebrite declined to comment officially, and no information was given as to the method the company plans to use. One unlikely source claims to know …

John McAfee told CNBC that Apple wouldn’t like the method.

“I promise you that [Apple CEO] Tim Cook and Apple are not going to be happy with the solution that the FBI has come up with,” McAfee, the controversial technology executive, told CNBC’s Power Lunch. “Because it is almost as bad as a universal master key.”

Not that there’s any reason to believe the man who previously suggested he was going to use “social engineering” when the phone’s owner has been unable to access it and the employee who used it is dead. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons not to.

There’s the small matter of the fact that the FBI hasn’t come up with anything – it has been approached by an outside company. McAfee also suggests that the technique is a relatively easy one. If that were the case, it would have been something that could have been tried without delaying the hearing. Finally, he has given no clue at all what the method is. If he knew it, you’d expect him to at least describe it at at outline level.

Edward Snowden has described two possible methods that could be used, both complex and high-risk. The first is to use chip decapping to physically reveal the passcode. A lower-risk method would be to desolder the flash memory and reset the counter between attempts by copying the original data back to it.

In the Congressional hearing, Cybersecurity professor Susan Landau strongly hinted that the NSA may also have the capacity to break into the phone using techniques unknown to the FBI.

The court hearing originally intended to hear arguments from both sides has been put on hold for now.

Photo: Opelika-Auburn News

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Comments

  1. 89p13 - 8 years ago

    John – Get back on your meds – they can only help you maintain!

  2. What a burn out…

  3. Lawrence Krupp - 8 years ago

    The tech world is full of posers claiming to be experts. Take a look at the videos on YouTube claiming to show how easy it is to unlock an iPhone with a certain sequence of button presses and option selections. Imagine all those posers pontificating at the local Taco Bell. “The FBI are hosers. I could unlock that iPhone easy. LOL, Android RULZ!” The FUD and nonsense being spread around on this story is epic.

  4. PhilBoogie - 8 years ago

    I wonder if Apple will contact Cellebrite should they succeed. And if so, would the FBI step in to intervene?

    • JBDragon - 8 years ago

      They’re not going to say anything to Apple. They want to continue using the security hole to get into phones. If Apple fixes it, they would be screwed and have to try to find some new way which will cost a lot of money!!! That is IF they can get into the phone. Though it is a older iPhone without the Secure Enclave the newer iPhones have.

      Really, i don’t have a problem with this. If a 3rd party can get into a iPhone, I don’t have a problem if they don’t want to tell Apple how they did it. Maybe it’ll motivate Apple to secure iPhones even better and looking for any type of holes in the security everywhere because they don’t know specially where it is. It’s not the same as forcing Apple to create software to get around their own security.

    • Worse, they’ll buy them.

  5. PMZanetti - 8 years ago

    What a surprise.
    This might actually be worse.

  6. Dbolander - 8 years ago

    Apple used to use Cellebrite devices in their retail stores to transfer customer data from one phone to a new iPhone.

  7. Israeli company… I’m sure that little tidbit won’t be lost on everyone. This isn’t going to end well for the FBI.

  8. Bardi Jonssen - 8 years ago

    Good reason to boycott countries.

  9. Gregory Wright - 8 years ago

    Here’s my prediction – Apple by taking the position it has taken will be interpreted as a challenge to every nerd and engineer in the universe to break Apple’s encryption. Apple’s encryption will not stand.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 8 years ago

      Provided they are ‘white hat’ nerds, that’s a good thing! The more people testing Apple’s security, the better, so long as they are reporting their findings to Apple rather than selling them to the highest bidder.

    • srgmac - 8 years ago

      First of all, it’s not really breaking the encryption…It’s finding some other attack vector to brute force the phone.
      Second, like Ben said, this is a good thing. When exploits are found, we all benefit from public disclosure and patching.
      This is the way it should be done.

  10. “The first is to use chip decapping to physically reveal the passcode. A lower-risk method would be to desolder the flash memory and reset the counter between attempts by copying the original data back to it.”

    The first method can easily destroy the chip, so it is not a good method to try.
    The second method could take years to work, due to the delay between tries (you can’t use zero seconds between tries) and the time it takes to restore the flash drive after each ninth try fails.

    I call bull on this whole FBI “discovery”. It is purely their way of finding an excuse to bow out of a case that they knew they couldn’t win.

    The FBI will not be reviving this fight with Apple in the future.

  11. srgmac - 8 years ago

    Say what you want about him but I love John McAfee…He’s certainly a character!

  12. James Smith - 8 years ago

    After seeing this guys face all I got to say is DRUGS are bad for you

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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