If you were the FBI and Apple refused to help you, how would you break into a locked iPhone? Obviously, the same way everyone else does (as long as you have sufficient capital): You pay professional hackers to do it for you.
According to a report from the Washington Post, published on Tuesday, the organization managed to crack the iPhone 5C used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook by paying a lump sum to an anonymous hacking group.
Hackers breached the device's security by exploiting a previously unknown security flaw in the iPhone's software. This flaw was then used to create a hardware device that helped unlock the iPhone without triggering the security feature that erases all of its data after too many failed login attempts.
While the hackers are not identified in the report, people close to the matter told the Washington Post that they were not the Israeli company Cellebrite, as previous reports have claimed.
Furthermore, at least one of the hackers involved is considered a "grey hat," a somewhat vague term that describes hackers who tread the fine line between ethical and unethical hacking.
The vulnerability used to crack the iPhone 5C likely only works on that model and only if it's running the iOS 9 version of Apple, making it a limited security issue for users.
While that solves the FBI's problem in this case, the question remains: Should the agency now make public the nature of the security flaw used to hack into the iPhone? According to FBI Director James Comey, who addressed the issue in a speech on Encryption and Surveillance at Kenyon College last Wednesday, the agency is "looking into it.".
"It's an interesting conversation, because when we tell Apple, they'll fix it and then we'll be back where we started," he said.
