Ondrej Holzman The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has decided to reveal several details about how it managed to break the security of an iPhone secured by the terrorist behind last year's attacks in San Bernardino. In the end, the FBI did get a tool that can bypass the security features, but only on older phones.
FBI Director James Comey revealed that the US government bought a tool from a private company that could be used to crack the security of the iPhone 5C running iOS 9.
Comey also confirmed that he quit because of it a closely watched lawsuit between the government and Apple, which refused to lower its security measures to allow investigators to get into a locked iPhone that had a passcode that the user had only 10 attempts to enter.
While the FBI declined to say who it bought the special tool from, Comey believes both sides have the same motivation and will protect a specific method. The government has not yet decided whether to tell Apple about how it jailbroken the iPhone.
“If we tell Apple, they'll fix it and we'll be back to square one. It may turn out that way, but we haven't decided yet," said Comey, who confirmed that the FBI can only get into older iPhones with the purchased tool. New models with security features such as Touch ID and Secure Enclave (from the iPhone 5S) will no longer be accessed by the FBI.
It is possible that the "hacking" tool was obtained by the FBI from the Israeli company Cellebrite, which was rumored to help jailbreak the iPhone 5C. At least now it is certain that to court the San Bernardino case will not return.
However, it is not excluded that we will soon see a similar case again, since the FBI and other US security agencies have many more iPhones in their possession that they cannot get into. If it's older models, the FBI could use a newly purchased tool, but it also all depends on whether or not Apple handles everything in the end.
it could not possibly be a better advertisement for buying a new iPhone =P