FBI successfully hacks San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, raises a lot of eyebrows

FBI successfully hacks San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, raises a lot of eyebrows

After a long feud with Apple and the F.B.I over creating a backdoor for the terrorist's iPhone, the latter have now successfully hacked the iPhone without an actual assistance from Apple.

On Monday night, the federal authorities have announced about successfully hacking the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooters without Apple's help. The FBI have now succeeded in breaking into an iPhone used by Syed Farook but this however doesn't set up any sort of legal proceedings for a future use yet.

 In a win-win situation for both Apple and the FBI, Apple have now filed to vacate a court order, in the latest tug-of-war is now speculating a lot of questions than the FBI would've answered to-date. It is pretty clear now that third-party entities have lent a helping hand for the FBI with previous reports that an Israeli firm ready to crack it for the FBI. Federal officials now have revealed the existence of a third party that came forward last week to offer assistance in cracking the iPhone. But it's still unclear whether there was involvement of only one cyber-security firm or a single soul itself.

The FBI declined to comment about the technical aspects in to breaking into the iPhone. "During the past week, to include the weekend, extensive testing of the iPhone was done by highly skilled personnel to ensure that the contents of the phone would remain intact once technical methods were applied. The full exploitation of the phone and follow-up investigative steps are continuing," FBI Assistant Director in Charge David Bowdich said in a statement on Monday night.

iPhone's encryption patterns include an auto-erase function making it more complex for any third-party entities to break into a locked phone. About an unsuccessful ten attempts to open a locked phone using the four-digit user-created code the iPhone holds all data is rendered inaccessible. If the auto-erase function is triggered, it will result in an entire-clean out making the iPhone useless.

However, Apple are adamant about the impossibility to create a backdoor for their iPhones since it would result in a security compromise of millions of customers in their user-base. Apple's statement read that "a situation like the aforementioned should have been never brought claiming that the Cupertino firm had outright objected the FBI's demand that a backdoor be built explaining about the results in security lapses. Their statement also read that Apple will continue to abide by the law assisting in law enforcements with their investigations and also continue increasing the security of all their hardware due to frequent attacks on customer data.

Officials of the U.S Department of Justice where however successful in retrieving the data store on the iPhone but were unclear whether it would be of any use for now but all their intention was to access the phone to see if there was a possibility of information about communications with others and intentions of attacks planned further, if any.